Support NeoGAF

[Salz01]

I got no major games for the rest of the year so I decided to return and do a new playthrough. Rolling with an Axe this time around. *smash*

Saw this info on a Steam thread. Looks like they're still working on the game (even if slowly). Details on Wednesday. And yes, Bluesky was the only social media I could actually find the info.

I need easy mode patch…. Pah leasseeee.

 

[Poppinfresh]

I need easy mode patch…. Pah leasseeee.

As far as Soulslikes go, it's pretty forgiving.

 

[Saint Boot Gaming]

I got no major games for the rest of the year so I decided to return and do a new playthrough. Rolling with an Axe this time around. *smash*

Saw this info on a Steam thread. Looks like they're still working on the game (even if slowly). Details on Wednesday. And yes, Bluesky was the only social media I could actually find the info.

Same info was on the reddit sub.

 

[ssringo]

New patch is live for Steam, PS5 and XBox. Notes finally got posted.

WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers - WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers - Version 1.7 Update - Steam News

Dear WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers Steam Players, Since the game's launch, we have always cherished every piece of feedback — each suggestion is the driving force for the game's progress. Version 1.7 is now officially live. We are continuously optimizing game performance, fixing known issues, and...

store.steampowered.com

Aside from deluxe edition armor and such there's only this:

* A new Rechallenge feature has been added. After dying in a boss encounter, players can now choose to retry the battle, and will respawn at the entrance of the boss arena upon selection.

* Fixed various bugs and addressed performance issues occurring under specific condition

 

[Poppinfresh]

Love this game.

New patch is live for Steam, PS5 and XBox. Notes finally got posted.

WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers - WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers - Version 1.7 Update - Steam News

Dear WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers Steam Players, Since the game's launch, we have always cherished every piece of feedback — each suggestion is the driving force for the game's progress. Version 1.7 is now officially live. We are continuously optimizing game performance, fixing known issues, and...

store.steampowered.com

Aside from deluxe edition armor and such there's only this:

* A new Rechallenge feature has been added. After dying in a boss encounter, players can now choose to retry the battle, and will respawn at the entrance of the boss arena upon selection.

* Fixed various bugs and addressed performance issues occurring under specific condition

Hasn't seemed to have hit Steam yet, at least not for me.

 

[ssringo]

Love this game.

Hasn't seemed to have hit Steam yet, at least not for me.

Weird. Mine started downloading as soon as I turned my PC on. Might have to restart Steam if it doesn't pick it up automatically.

 

[Poppinfresh]

I got to Commander Honglan tonight.

I'm going to be here awhile.

 

[ssringo]

I got no major games for the rest of the year so I decided to return and do a new playthrough. Rolling with an Axe this time around. *smash*

So, wrapped up this playthrough last night. I dunno if they nerfed/buffed stuff or what but it was so much easier than my longsword playthrough. Between the axe's heavy staggering and Rampage's heal on damage effect everything just got chopped down. Was able to take down multiple bosses in a single attempt than took me multiple tries and ragequits on my first run.

...think I'll do a new run as magic!

 

[Poppinfresh]

I got to Commander Honglan tonight.

I'm going to be here awhile.

I ended up beating her the next day, by just bashing her in the face with my axe and using leech/rampage.

 

[ssringo]

I ended up beating her the next day, by just bashing her in the face with my axe and using leech/rampage.

It's kinda great how different this fight plays out with different builds. My longsword kill was this crazy dance of dodges and parries, axe was just a staggering leech fest and my current 1h sword/magic a hit-n-run tactics trying to get off a spell.

 

[Salz01]

I can't get past the bride second form, no matter how many times I roll to the back…. I hate it.

 

[balls of snow]

Went back to Wuchang the past week or so after pausing it after Honglan. Damn I am impress with how good the bosses are. Once I switched out the boring old axe and went dual daggers with parry / longsword with parry, it feels damn good just noping some of these bosses long combos.

Oh and the patches the devs made are a godsent. No more runbacks thank fuck. No more getting hit while getting back up from being knock down.

Actually made it fun to want to finish it.

 

[Salz01]

I'm at the tiger boss, and want to throw my controller again… I finished Lords of the Fallen before diving back into this again, and I prefer that game compared to this. It just seems like you have to have a specific build, which is long sword, and always rollback of bosses to do backstab. Magic builds are basically ineffective in this game.

 

[ssringo]

I'm at the tiger boss, and want to throw my controller again… I finished Lords of the Fallen before diving back into this again, and I prefer that game compared to this. It just seems like you have to have a specific build, which is long sword, and always rollback of bosses to do backstab. Magic builds are basically ineffective in this game.

Magic is more of a mid-late game/NG+ build when you have access to certain spells and enough skill points invested. It's rough to play as from the start.

Axe is easy mode. But also wearing armor with appropriate resistances helps a lot with boss fights. As does item buffs; which highlights how bad the decision to limit your item bar to 4 items is (plus you can't do menuing in combat like in other Souls-likes).

 

[Poppinfresh]

I'm at the tiger boss, and want to throw my controller again… I finished Lords of the Fallen before diving back into this again, and I prefer that game compared to this. It just seems like you have to have a specific build, which is long sword, and always rollback of bosses to do backstab. Magic builds are basically ineffective in this game.

I personally thought this was the hardest boss in the game.

It's been a while, but:

I used an Axe, because, as others said, it's easy mode. I'm pretty sure I also used leech on the axe (because it's double easy mode), but I may have changed it to fire for this boss. If I remember correctly, this guy is really weak to fire.

You can summon up to two NPCs to help with the fight if you've done all the quests correctly. I had broken some of the quests in my game by this point, so I only had one companion - the woman.

Again, if I remember correctly, the fight was basically hit-and-run tactics while the NPC tanked the boss. Just get as many hits in as you possibly can, smacking him in the face with the axe.

This fight has two stages, and I found the second stage to be easier than the first.

Make sure whatever armor you're wearing is resistant to whatever the boss is throwing out, and also make sure you eat some stamina food.

 

[Salz01]

I personally thought this was the hardest boss in the game.

It's been a while, but:

I used an Axe, because, as others said, it's easy mode. I'm pretty sure I also used leech on the axe (because it's double easy mode), but I may have changed it to fire for this boss. If I remember correctly, this guy is really weak to fire.

You can summon up to two NPCs to help with the fight if you've done all the quests correctly. I had broken some of the quests in my game by this point, so I only had one companion - the woman.

Again, if I remember correctly, the fight was basically hit-and-run tactics while the NPC tanked the boss. Just get as many hits in as you possibly can, smacking him in the face with the axe.

This fight has two stages, and I found the second stage to be easier than the first.

Make sure whatever armor you're wearing is resistant to whatever the boss is throwing out, and also make sure you eat some stamina food.

Thank you for the write up. Will try this tomorrow.

 

[ssringo]

Thank you for the write up. Will try this tomorrow.

To add, what makes Axe easy mode is one of two skills. Rampage and it's heal effect is quite strong and can give you more wiggle room for healing without leech temperance while still dishing out good damage and staggering enemies. Costs 2 skyborn might and is the easier to get going from nothing. However, Earthshatterer is what's completely busted. Has great damage but more importantly it gives you a lot of resilience (poise) to not get staggered so easily. The downside is that it's 3 skyborn might to get off. But once you do, it's just hitting light attack to combo, occasional Earthshatterer to keep the buff up and maybe dodge/heal if whatever you're facerolling gets too many hits in. And yes, you just keep swinging because you'll either 'poise' through most attacks or you'll 'clash' due to skills. Weapon of choice is Empyrean Axe as it has the best scaling stats and it's ability is a pretty great gap closer when bosses get dodge happy. Leech temperance is good and lets you keep attacking without worrying about healing. You can min/max if you care but really you can use whatever talismans and benediction you like but the 3/6/9 discipline set is definitely the best for damage.

 

[Salz01]

To add, what makes Axe easy mode is one of two skills. Rampage and it's heal effect is quite strong and can give you more wiggle room for healing without leech temperance while still dishing out good damage and staggering enemies. Costs 2 skyborn might and is the easier to get going from nothing. However, Earthshatterer is what's completely busted. Has great damage but more importantly it gives you a lot of resilience (poise) to not get staggered so easily. The downside is that it's 3 skyborn might to get off. But once you do, it's just hitting light attack to combo, occasional Earthshatterer to keep the buff up and maybe dodge/heal if whatever you're facerolling gets too many hits in. And yes, you just keep swinging because you'll either 'poise' through most attacks or you'll 'clash' due to skills. Weapon of choice is Empyrean Axe as it has the best scaling stats and it's ability is a pretty great gap closer when bosses get dodge happy. Leech temperance is good and lets you keep attacking without worrying about healing. You can min/max if you care but really you can use whatever talismans and benediction you like but the 3/6/9 discipline set is definitely the best for damage.

Wow. Thank you too. Will try this later today when I play it. Excited to try this out now.

 

[Scary_Larry]

A buddy of mine keeps on banging the drum as this being the best Soulslike of the year. Consensus to those that have gone deep in the game?

 

[Poppinfresh]

A buddy of mine keeps on banging the drum as this being the best Soulslike of the year. Consensus to those that have gone deep in the game?

I'd tend to agree with your buddy.

Khazan was good, but it's more of a Nioh-like than a Soulslike.

A.I. Limit was also great, but I liked Wuchang more.

The only other really big release I can think of was the Lies of P DLC, which I haven't played yet.

 

[ChoosableOne]

A buddy of mine keeps on banging the drum as this being the best Soulslike of the year. Consensus to those that have gone deep in the game?

I only played Khazan's demo so I can't compare the two, but Wuchang was a great game. These random studios can actually produce solid soulslikes, we haven't really run out of good ones lately.

 

[Doomtrain]

I grabbed this on sale and I've played a little bit.

I have mixed feelings so far.

• I like the setting and the environments a lot. Some of the areas are gorgeous.
• The combat feels fast and I love how quick the dodge is. Dodging to refill MP is a cool mechanic.
• The game feels waaaaaay too easy. Or it did, until Honglan, who was a brick wall.
• Honglan was a weird fight that seemed very much to expect me to use a specific build with specific tactics. I initially was using a longsword with parry, but I had specced into the parry variant 2, which basically seemed to do nothing against her (to the point where I wondered if I was parrying wrong, but no, it turned out I wasn't). I went back and looked at my skill tree and respecced to parry variant 1, and suddenly that one properly deflected her moves. Once I did that, I beat her within a couple of tries. Still, MASSIVE difficulty spike; I went from not dying a single time on the prior several bosses to dying probably 15+ times on Honglan.
• Honglan also made me feel like combat isn't QUITE as tight as it needs to be. In a Souls game, even if I'm getting my shit kicked in, it usually feels fair, and like I understand what my mistake was. With Honglan, sometimes the fight would just react in ways that felt odd, and it sometimes felt like I'd die without understanding why, or without learning from the death.
• I like that the levels are open and the world is interconnected, but beyond that, the level design feels pretty sloppy to me. Way too many side paths that all look identical, and there's not always a sense of progression or knowing where I am in the overall level. Opening connections between areas is fun, but also undermined by the ease of fast travel. Despite all the branching paths, I haven't found any choices with real consequence yet (i.e. being given serious options for the order to tackle things in, or optional side areas, or even cool stuff to find). I'm still early, so I hope this changes. Nowhere near as tight as Bloodborne overall though.
• There's something lacking about the regular enemy fodder. Not a lot of enemy variety, but beyond that, I feel like encounters just aren't that interesting. In Souls, all kinds of factors are going into the outcome of a fight: the terrain, other enemies joining in, kicking enemies off ledges or ladders, and so on. Wuchang doesn't feel as dynamic. It feels mostly like I just run into an enemy mob, duel them with no consideration to other factors, and move on.

Despite the negative stuff above, I did just wander into a swamp area shortly after Honglan and it has some more interesting enemies and the challenge feels amped up slightly, so that's promising. I'd say overall, it's not a top-tier Soulslike for me so far, but I'm enjoying it a decent bit and I'm excited to see if it continues ramping up.

 

[ssringo]

A buddy of mine keeps on banging the drum as this being the best Soulslike of the year. Consensus to those that have gone deep in the game?

I generally agree with that. I'd have to sit and think about it but it's almost certainly in the running for my favorite non-Fromsoft Souls-like. I think it hits all the right notes with level design, exploration and tough fights that require you to learn and adapt. The story is interesting if you care to dive in but also completely ignorable if you don't. That said, the difficulty can swing wildly at points, especially if you don't explore or experiment with abilities, and some bosses/enemies have questionable hit/hurt-boxes. Can also be frustrating having to (potentially) die to a boss first to know what gear you should be wearing to not get you shit pushed in. But they have added the option to retry a boss fight which puts you right outside the arena so bad runbacks are gone. I hope the devs are able to make a sequel or another game of this type. I have over 100 hours in the game at this point and will get the last achievement either tonight or tomorrow (been slowly working on it all year).

AI Limit is probably a close second. It has pretty enjoyable exploration and combat though the budget aspect shows. Wasn't a big fan of the MC's voice either (emotionless characters don't do it for me). Definitely punched above it's weight.

Khazan is more like Nioh with it's loot grind, which I'm not big on, and it's level design/exploration was fine but unimpressive. I haven't finished it because I always get bored maybe halfway through.