Returnal - Return All

FINALLY! I got through biome 5. I hate that place.

Made it all the way to boss 6 and nearly killed it. If I'd figured out how to damage it sooner I probably would have.

I got a super good roll on a weapon.

Level 27 Hollowseeker
10 x bonus damage
Shieldbreaker I
Serrated Projectiles II
Phasing Rounds
Portal Beam I
Portal Turret I

Dang.

Returnal - The Cycle

Stupid boss of Biome 4 can

Spoiler:

take his stupid organic pipe organ and cram it somewhere alongside all the explody bits I bequeathed to his stupid face.

Moving on to Biome 5!

Man, these drones seem to be armored as crap! Back to the tried and true "use the door as temporary cover" strategy! Oh, this looks like a boss room. Well, I'll just step out here and... oh dear. That looks like a

Spoiler:

Severed

but nastier.

[ 30 seconds later ]

I was right.

Well, I guess things will get more fun from here!

How good is the environment in biome 6

Spoiler:

you really get the feeling your under water. The movement feels spot on, you can jump further, your descent/ascent feels a tad slower & even running about has that slight resistance but it still somehow retains that trademark pace from the rest of the game.

On the Drones some weapons wreck them in a matter of seconds, others seem to have trouble with their armor. It then becomes really problematic when your taking 6+ seconds instead of 3 seconds to take them out, giving other drones a chance to close in on your position.

My goodness Orphu that Hollowseeker sounds like a bonafide BFG out of Doom I'm really loving the Dreadbound atm, especially in that last biome it seems very precise & has very high damage output.

Spikeout wrote:

How good is the environment in biome 6

Spoiler:

you really get the feeling your under water. The movement feels spot on, you can jump further, your descent/ascent feels a tad slower & even running about has that slight resistance but it still somehow retains that trademark pace from the rest of the game.

On the Drones some weapons wreck them in a matter of seconds, others seem to have trouble with their armor. It then becomes really problematic when your taking 6+ seconds instead of 3 seconds to take them out, giving other drones a chance to close in on your position.

My goodness Orphu that Hollowseeker sounds like a bonafide BFG out of Doom I'm really loving the Dreadbound atm, especially in that last biome it seems very precise & has very high damage output.

Yeah, agree about weapons with differing effects. The Rotgland Lobber seemed ineffective... until I got one with explosive and caustic modifiers. Like serrated rounds, it absolutely chews through mobs. My most recent run, I had a prof 15 instance of one that I was using all through Biome 5!

Spikeout wrote:

My goodness Orphu that Hollowseeker sounds like a bonafide BFG out of Doom I'm really loving the Dreadbound atm, especially in that last biome it seems very precise & has very high damage output.

I was having trouble with the Dreadbound in biome 6, simply because of the lack of walls really slows down the fire rate. If you can hit things, or are in a confined space that weapon owns!

I'm in!

I died to the first mini-boss type thing I guess. 2nd run I found an alt-fire for my pistol. Nice touch the half/full trigger thing. I do love that the dualsense is getting used well so far.

Seems good for the opening. Spikeout may have been right about me.

Biome 6 boss down! Some of the encounters leading up to the boss were absolutely BRUTAL. Once again, weapons with dmg over time effects seem to be my only method of progress. Game is still interesting, and I'm looking forward to going through the levels again now that I have all the fancy movement powerups.

I was on the fence early, but I'm glad I picked this up. I'll be done with it before Ratchet and Clank drops in a couple of weeks, but it's been a heck of a ride!

Dammit Dualsense doesn't work for remote play on Android. At the beach for a couple days and thought I could keep playing if I brought my controller. Man...

Stele wrote:

Dammit Dualsense doesn't work for remote play on Android. At the beach for a couple days and thought I could keep playing if I brought my controller. Man...

But it does work on PC. I guess my work laptop is good for something.

WTF though. Getting my ass handed to me. I'm thinking avenging suit ghosts is bad? Have never even come close. Going to have to do some outside the game research.

Combat is fun outside of those. Had some interesting runs with changing objectives. But I keep destroying runs with those suit things.

Suit recovery is not at all essential, and is hard. I'd wait till I at least get another weapon than the pistol.

I found an assault rifle one run and really liked it. 3 or 4 other times I found shotguns, which I did not enjoy at all. Felt like I needed to get closer and that got me killed. And saw a few pistols with different alt fires.

One time I did reach a big gap on the signal path and got a new directive to explore. Another run I got a new objective to find a way through red walls. Found a shop one time too.

Seems I'm missing a melee attack according to controls. And a couple of tips said something about a sword. So that's probably the next thing I need.

Also I found several sealed gates. Thought I needed to come back later. But the tips said find a yellow button to shoot. So that was important. I probably missed several power ups or weapons by not doing that.

Going back in with some knowledge tonight.

I think I played for 20 hours before I realized there was a yellow button to open those gates. I still haven't found the button for one of the gates in Biome 1... the one where there is a teleporter that takes you "up" but the gate is near the bottom. I swear I've looked everywhere.

Also, how do you kill the 3rd biome boss? I had a level 14(?) Hallowpiercer with serrated and while my damage avoidance was poor, I had no idea where I was supposed to shoot. By the time I died I had only taken half of his first life bar, and I thought I was shooting and dodging for a good 5 minutes.

Carlbear95 wrote:

I think I played for 20 hours before I realized there was a yellow button to open those gates. I still haven't found the button for one of the gates in Biome 1... the one where there is a teleporter that takes you "up" but the gate is near the bottom. I swear I've looked everywhere.

Also, how do you kill the 3rd biome boss? I had a level 14(?) Hallowpiercer with serrated and while my damage avoidance was poor, I had no idea where I was supposed to shoot. By the time I died I had only taken half of his first life bar, and I thought I was shooting and dodging for a good 5 minutes.

Spoiler:

This took me a while to figure out but there's a red eye type spot on the mid - lower part of its body you have to hit. This is still the tactic even when you get to the floating platforms phase of the fight, that has you a huge distance away from it.

Yeah got in another hour+ while kids were napping. Got several yellow switches for gates and some extra items. Found carbine a couple times which seems to be my preferred weapon. Got to the sealed red gate a couple times where the objective changes to find a way through, which I assume is my sword. And the very next room had a huge orb enemy and went on lockdown. Got my ass kicked by the extra enemies sneaking up on me the first time. Second time I had an item that turned enemy projectiles into currency, and a carbine, so I was sure I had him. Then the jerk jumped over, landed on top of me and killed me.

Ugh.

Since those encounters I've also ran into 3+ rooms with turrets that have a similar red shield around them that I can't shoot through. So again I'm hampered by not getting this sword or whatever. Just one stupid little mini boss holding me back.

I'm going to kick his ass soon. Very annoyed.

Good grief. Finally got the sword and tried the first boss. Died of course but at least I can practice some melee combat now. I think that will be important.

Also found that strange thing in the first area, then later got a key for it and went back to explore. That was weird.

Spoiler:

Welcome Home trophy. WTF is up with that door?

A little sad that none of those things I called mini boss enemies really were. Sword was just sitting there. Those lockdown room enemies are just tough and I really got my ass kicked for over 6 hours of game before getting a damn sword. Funny when all the tips are like you'll have melee in the first couple hours...

Yeah, in some ways sprinting through the rooms to get to the end of the level and get the sword early is something I wish I had done. I spent a lot of runs trying to explore and get everything, when really a suicide run for the sword would probably have accelerated my moving through the game.

For that first boss, its also odd because the sword feels like a bad tool to use against it (despite what the game design communicates by leaving that tool close to it.) I had a lot more success against that boss by staying as far away as possible and shooting his face.

Well there were several lockdowns so full spent wouldn't work. But I think the successful run I had I skipped 3 or 4 blue doors instead of trying everything.

I also read something today about skipping malignant chests. Think that might be a good idea for now when I don't know what is in there, and don't have enough ether to spare anyway. Parasites seem to have a much better risk/reward balance since you get it up front. Sometimes I've hit those 3 chest rooms, opened all 3, and got malfunctions from all 3, so that's critical, and lost an integrity resin. So extra penalty keeping me from increasing me l my health bar. Just brutal.

Similar to avenging pilots, I might skip those malignant chests for a while. Just feels like it hurts me too much early on. Plus there's usually some regular chests or locked ones with just as good stuff from what little I've seen.

Tonight, more runs at boss 1 planned after the kids are asleep.

I rarely open malignant chests. If I'm flush with ether, I'll cleanse a large or regular resin, or maybe snag a key, but chests are too much roulette for the potential annoyance of malfunctions.

Thanks tyrian, glad someone else agrees. Until I can farm suits or something it doesn't seem like I'm having much spare ether anyway.

Well damn. I had an astronaut and a parasite that avoided one death strike, so 3 lives... and only got to 2nd phase of boss.

I also finally got more that 6 ether so I tried the resurrection machine. But that only triggered after the other stuff and the boss resets since you left the room. So didn't even get through the first phase that time. Feels like a waste of ether since I had so much other stuff that time. Oh well.

After it was over I realized I should have teleported back to fabricator. Maybe I could have afforded more health or another good item before either attempt. Doh.

I don't think remote play is helping my timing on this stuff so I might take a break for a couple days while I'm at the beach and get back to this when I get home.

That's the final boss Ophion down in one go, finishing the main story. There was a lot of bullet hell attacks, a lot to keep track of but it was more positioning & patience, rather than crazy reflexes required. The weapon I ended up with was the Electoplyon Driver, it was fairly effective, The damage over time I'm sure helped quite a lot. I had my integrity up a hell of a lot, my weapon was level 29 or 30 & I had some cracking stat boosts across the board. The last phase of Ophion had me down to really low health but I stayed calm & prevailed in the end.

The elites like Typhonops paired with Abyssal Machina's can be a real test, I also purposefully left out the challenge room in the Abyssal Scar, that would be brutal & likely harder than Ophion itself.

Story wise the ending was good, it's still left way more questions than answers though. There's obviously a lot more to find in post game runs.

A cracking game overall, Housemarque have pulled it off, their first AAA title that will easily be in the conversation for GOTY 2021.

I'm ready to play more!

My Ophion encounter was helped in large part by damage over time effects (caustic rot, thermite charges, serrated rounds, etc) and an artifact I picked up at one point that gave any consumable a 30% chance to not be consumed on use! That with a damage siphon and a couple of health vials... I was feeling pretty good!

i'm burning through the levels again, seeking out the areas I couldn't access before and trying to obtain the remaining glyphs and scout logs. I defeated Nemesis again just to do it. I wish they'd let you progress beyond the 15 proficiency max in levels 1-3 after completing the last 3 levels!

I also just beat Ophion. Pro tip: He drops a silphium in between each stage at the back of the room. I had multiple plusses to repair efficiency and this won the fight for me.

Stele wrote:

I don't think remote play is helping my timing on this stuff so I might take a break for a couple days while I'm at the beach and get back to this when I get home.

Of course I didn't listen. One more run last night and RNG kicked my ass. Got a corrupted resin so of course I picked it up... Increased my integrity and then caused critical malfunction that cut my integrity in half!

A couple rooms later another corrupted resin.. another integrity cut in half!

So my max health was down to like 30%. Only lasted a couple rooms after that

Congrats all on your boss victories.

I haven't got into this hardcore yet. But I can already tell the gamble with some of these items is going to really screw me over. The collector in me just wants to grab everything under the sun, high-likelihood of negative effects or no.

There's my stats after beating Ophion & starting back at Biome 1 in the crashed ship.

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/ZMvP9LQ/IMG-20210526-155035.jpg)

I'm already halfway to your death count without beating boss 1. Ugh.

Last night it was so laggy I couldn't even see the enemies. Just firing blind so I had to quit.

Stele wrote:

I'm already halfway to your death count without beating boss 1. Ugh.

Last night it was so laggy I couldn't even see the enemies. Just firing blind so I had to quit.

Honestly don't worry, I probably died most in Biome 1, the other Biome's are tougher but by that time your starting to really learn the mechanics & understand the game better.

If you look at Hades I think it took me something ridiculous like 60 attempts before I beat the game. I think your first completed run was half that. You'll get there Stele. Remote play definitely won't help your cause :p

I cannot imagine trying to play a game like this over remote play. Congrats on making it as far as you have!

EDIT:

Also, now that I'm back in biome 1, I'm finding it pretty difficult and the weapons are so weak compared to later in the game.

I think the difficulty of this game doesn't really ramp. It's just kinda hard all throughout. In different ways though. Really neat how your strategy and approach evolve for different areas.

Got to the third boss. This is the first time I've run through rooms without fighting. I knew I was getting close to the boss and I hadn't encountered some of these enemies before and really didn't want to start now! I'm not sure how close you get to shortcut to this one but I wanted to get all the way to it so I'd be able to choose what types of runs I want to do. There's a lot to explore in the third biome so now I can explore a bit more freely and learn what's what.

I had a terrible weapon for the boss fight though and died pretty quickly in its second stage. I think I have a better idea of how to handle this boss - at least the first two stages - and with a better loadout I feel relatively confident. Which means I'll wrap it up after a dozen or so tries