I got an analogue watch instead of the cool futuristic digital watch I wanted, so I cried. After reading the rest of the responses I feel very very fortunate

Probably a sea turtle. Was snorkelling in Malaysia, completely obsessed with the coral and all of the fishes, when this massive turtle just cruises by. Held my breath for as long as I could to swim next to it, not too close but just wanting to be in its presence, it was so calm and majestic as it headed out into the deeper ocean

Also playing this on PC currently. It’s good fun, but I feel like it is far less polished than the first. Sometimes completely janky.

Performance is pretty much fine, with some stuttering here and there that nothing will fix. But not a huge deal.

Here’s a tip though: always save at a meditation point before quitting. There are a few auto-saving checkpoints around story beats, but reloading these can cause issues - I recently got completely stuck by relying on one.

Basically, there’s a moment where you can force pull a door open, but then end up going a different way and acquiring a new ability. Then you come back through the now open door. I had to quit the game after getting this ability, and on reload, the door was closed. Nothing I could do to open it from this side, and no way back up and out in the opposite direction.

I tried everything, and if I was on console I think I would have been completely screwed, at almost exactly halfway through the game. I had to download a mod to get to a debug menu where I could expose and load a previous ‘backup’ save. No idea why they don’t just expose a couple of these saves in the ‘load game’ menu…

I don’t play metroidvania type games very often, and I struggle to remember details to come back to. For example, if I gain a dash ability, I want to be able to check my map and know where to head back to as there might be half a dozen spots it may allow access to.

Add in a few other types of blocked routes scattered throughout, and all of the branching paths etc, I find it hugely helpful to have a customised map.

I first tried with just the in game maps and the pins you can drop, but I ran out of pins before finding the abilities to revisit and clear out the areas.

Hollow Knight for me also… I’ll resume once I find the damn paper maps I drew while exploring, I moved house and they’re somewhere…

Flying tips:

Always lock on to your target planet. For example, if you’re wanting to fly around Timber Hearth (home planet) instead of jetting off to someplace else, lock on to Timber Hearth first. This lets you use the ‘match velocity’ button to bring yourself to a stop any time you start feeling out of control. Use it a lot.

Until you have a hang of the controls, the landing camera can be helpful for exploring too. It doesn’t tell you this but when you’re in the landing camera, the flying mode changes too: the ship will automatically orient itself so that the feet (and landing camera) are pointing straight down (again, make sure you’re locked on to the planet).

Now you can stop worrying about pitch and roll completely. Don’t touch them. Just use the right trigger gently to hover, go up, or let go to fall a bit. Use the left stick to strafe around the planet. If it’s small like the moon, it can kinda feel like just rotating the ball beneath you to look at the surface.

The landing cam also has a cute little altitude meter that I didn’t notice for the longest time

Edit: feel free to message me in the future if you do give it another go and have any questions, I’d love to help you experience it. I wouldn’t worry about any ‘platforming’ in the game, if something is physically very challenging it’s usually not the intended solution. It is also usually very clever about any long trips to get back to where you were.

100%. It’s all about minimising risk, my tone with my other comments probably came across a bit harsh. But that fucker was telling someone it was all their fault. And that when they drive, there’s literally nothing that they couldn’t stop in time for.

They were so confidently incorrect it was annoying the shit outta me

That’s a good point, we had road safety ads and signs saying that the speed limit is not a target: drive to the conditions.

I would have gone into more detail about the type of roads that are signed at 60kph, 50kph and 40kph here, and the expected hazards on each etc. But at the end of the day, you aren’t going to slow down to car-park speeds for every parked car you go past, that would be making yourself more of a danger for other traffic.

And if you look at the reaction speed / velocity / distance travelled calculations I mention further down, you’ll never be driving slow enough to avoid a fast and low surprise side-incursion like a sprinting dog from between parked cars.

Safe driving limits the amount of hazards that would be unavoidable, but it doesn’t eliminate them.

Firstly, you’re either vastly overestimating how good you are at scanning every single gap and new space while also taking in the rest of the traffic, road conditions etc, OR you are the most incredible driver to exist and your brain should be studied by self-driving car companies for their software.

Secondly, and this is the simplest way to show that you’re incorrect:

Average driver reaction time is 0.75 seconds (that’s to see something, and move your foot to the brake pedal and begin to hit it). At 20mph, you’ve travelled 22 feet before you even begin to slow down.

And that’s a generous reaction time. This article puts it at 1.5 seconds for unexpected side-incursions: https://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/reactiontime.html

You’ve now travelled 44 feet before even hitting the brake.

If that gap you’re looking at is behind a tall vehicle and we’re talking about a kid or a dog, you’re along side before seeing the entire gap. Your back wheels are hitting that sprinting dog well before you’ve even touched the brake pedal.

I’m starting to think you’re either making shit up just to argue, or your overconfidence in your own driving is actually making you more dangerous on the road than safe

At 20mph, if something sprints into the SIDE of your car and under you back wheel, you’re not going to stop in time.

You don’t have precognition or superhuman reactions (and even if you did have the reactions of an F1 driver, physics are still going to happen). I applaud your approach to safety but your overconfidence is confusing.

Nope.

If you’re driving at 60kph / 37mph (60kph is a standard speed limit in residential areas here, not sure about the limits where you are), people and kids and dogs can sometimes be on the side walks. There can also be cars parked on the side of the road.

You can be as safe as is reasonably possible, but if something shorter than a parked car sprints out at full speed, into the side of your car, what are you going to do?

Yes be aware of your surroundings, yes drive at a speed where you can stop in a reasonable distance for almost anything that can occur in front of you in that environment. But no, not every single thing is avoidable

And most importantly - leash your fucking dogs

The answer to your last question should tell you why everything you wrote above it is fucking awful.

If you’re driving safely and an unleashed dog sprints into the road and goes under your car from the side, what the hell do you think you would do to avoid it?

It’s the owner’s responsibility and fault, not OPs

I’m sorry, that’s horrible. Did anyone else see what happened and stop? If so, chat to them first and see if they’d be comfortable backing you up on what happened (dog ran out, no time to react). Hopefully that’s not needed, but you never know.

I saw that exact thing happen when the car in front of me hit a dog. Poor thing was dying on the road and I heard someone down the street whistling for their dog to come inside. I went and told them what happened, and made sure to say that the driver is distraught and absolutely could not have done anything to avoid the dog. Fucking sucks for everyone involved

If the dog ran into the path of the rear tyre, what do you think you could have done differently in this situation? The owner is responsible for their unleashed dog

Checking in from NZ, sounds familiar to me

With peaceful violence

I’ve only attempted it once and can’t remember much of it except for those fucking tunnels being the reason I gave up also

The first Headless I encountered in Sekiro. I was seeing enough progress and understanding what was being asked of me just enough to be stubborn as hell and kept trying to fight it head on, without having any knowledge yet of any helpful items that make the fight less rage-enducing.

Outside of Fromsoft, my NG+ encounter with the green swamp monster thing in Lies of P seemed SO much harder than the first time. So I’m not sure if this boss is considered easy or hard, but I didn’t consider it to be very hard going in for a second time and got quite stuck for a while…

Yeah I feel like it would be a nice in-between option for ya, as you mentioned the second phase troubles in your edit. It really is harder to learn a second phase when you’re only getting through the first on every 5th try or so (Laxasia was a pain in the ass for this, I never really got a good feel for phase 2, just managed it somehow on a lucky run with wild and terrified inputs haha)

I think having Sekiro as my first soulslike taught me that there’s a big gap between surviving a phase and really nailing a phase though, so I try to take that with me and get phase 1 to point of just warming up. And looking for more and more windows to inflict damage - it’s amazing how quick some of the fights can be when you find more of them

My only soulslike games have been Sekiro and Lies of P (some bloodborne years ago but didn’t finish it).

Like others have said, play the way it feels right to you. I get that you’re saying it’s somewhere in between - getting frustrated solo, but too easy with summons. If you get to that point again, maybe try using summons to learn the boss (EG get to the second phase every time to then learn the second phase) but don’t allow yourself to complete it during that round. Then when you feel ready, back to solo.

Personally, what I enjoy about these games is the design of each encounter. I feel like I only experience the full intended design of the fight if it’s 1v1, hitting a boss that is attacking some other npc isn’t engaging to me. So I don’t touch summons.

If the game is well designed, even a really hard boss should feel fair - when I die, I should be able to understand what I did wrong and what I still need to learn, and once I’ve seen it all I need to hone my reactions to each tell and pattern. Then it doesn’t matter how many tries it takes, as long as I’m still enjoying that process (yes it’s still frustrating at times but that usually just means the win will feel even better).

If I’m not enjoying the process, I’ll put it down for the day, and play again when I’m into it. If it’s so bad that I don’t ever feel like playing it again, then that’s that I guess. Hasn’t happened yet (except Bloodborne, but I wasn’t as much of a fan of the genre back then, will play it again at some point. Remaster when?)