Me first time playing it, I had no idea what this game is about, I just started playing on my PS5 after watching a YouTube video.
The first mini “boss” left me with minimal health. Then I went through first Biome, there was one encounter that got me confused, dude with the shield and I didn’t had melee weapon yet, so I just risked it and pushed through it, got my Katana, killed the dude, killed the first Boss, Phrike. Continued on and got through encounter with Ixion. Biome 2 was relatively easy. But then, in Biome 3 I’ve encountered a lockdown zone with lots of flying enemies and no cover to hide, there was 2 pillars but they got destroyed quickly, turrets with shields, I hate flying enemies in games. The room was closed so I couldn’t get out. I’ve died there twice. On third time, I’ve got to the beginning of the game and… Realized that I’ve supposed to die on the first mini Boss, realized that astronauts figurines are very rare and me using them all in that lockdown room was stupid, realized that you don’t have to clear the whole map, if you remember encounter were you died and it’s not required to enter those or push through, you can avoid it.
I had a rocket launcher with a lot of damage in it, a lot of great parasites and artifacts. All that is gone, I am frantically searching the web and realization hits what this game is really about.
The only reason why I got this game is because I saw devs react to speedrun and though it’s a cool game. I’ve assumed rogue like games are similar to what From Soft does with Souls games. I’ve Platinum every single one on PS3-5. But this game just hits differently. If in Dark Souls if you die, you keep your stuff, you can even self delete if you trying to get certain items in those games in high level regions while you under leveled.
Since that death in returnal, I didn’t touched the game yet, only tried ascension and played it for couple hours. Ascension felt like Doom to be honest and gameplay is awesome. I went through other games in backlog to get unfinished platinums.
I will return to this game eventually, but that first experience with it was just painful. It’s not a hard game but any mistake will set you back drastically and it’s twisting my mindset completely. This was my first experience with Rogue like genre in general.
I assume you just need to push through it, memorize encounters, adapt and learn.