(spoilers) The Final Progression Ability feels terrible

[Sniperfox47]

I loved this game, and have heavily recommended it to my friends as I've played through it but the final hour that I've played almost make me want to tell all of them to stay away and never buy it again.

The final progression ability feels terrible for a number of reasons:
1) It undermines the entire gameplay loop up until that point of using your shield as a resource, depleting it, and then refilling it to use it as a resource again.
2) It removes a core combat ability that people have been relying on up until that point, and which allows players who manage their shields well to punch through hard route-blocking enemies while backtracking
3) It slows down your ranged ability, and makes it take absolute loads of shield. This makes numerous puzzle rooms which use dark switches miserable to go through unless you go into them with a full bar, as you're left to sit and wait for it to recharge. One of those rooms is the first presented way out of Talos's Mind, meaning you're immediately funneled into it (the swimming room where you have to hit a switch 5 times)
4) Because of 2 and 3 above, getting through any areas takes twice as long as it would have prior to that point of the game. This makes backtracking and item hunting at the end of the game miserable.

I understand the story implications,, but from a player power perspective it's a massive downgrade compared to the mechanisms the player had been using up until that point.

A few suggestions to improve the feel of it without detracting from the story presentation:
1) Let the player continue to use Radical Acceptance. Seriously, why do you even lose this? This is a high risk high reward ability, allowing skilled players to synergize it with Auriel's regeneration while allowing low skilled players to benefit from the shield protection granted by her blessing currently.
2) Reduce the cost of the light blast. It's a low-damage charge attack... it doesn't need to cost a quarter of a maxed out light bar.
3) Increase the regeneration rate. A lot. End game enemies already do most of a maxed out light bar in damage, and the thing keeping it in check is the refactory period after the shield breaks, not it's regen rate. All that the super slow regen does is make using it for transversal miserable.
4) If for whatever reason the above 3 options are not reasonable add a tapped version of the light blast which triggers switches without using energy so that you can do puzzle rooms with it like you could with the previous blasts.

[geraq]

I agree, it would be far more enjoyable to backtrack if the switches didn't require energy to be activated.

[hickname]

How did you get through that room? Aura Blast works only if you activate light armor, and you can't switch armor while in the water.

[Sniperfox47]

Originally posted by hickname:

How did you get through that room? Aura Blast works only if you activate light armor, and you can't switch armor while in the water.

You can use aura blast in other forms like mermaid, if it's not then that's bugging for you.. The regen just takes f---ing forever... so if you deplete your shield you need to wait a good 10-15 seconds before you can use Aura Blast again. It literally took over a minute for me to get through that room...

[hickname]

I have a GOG version, so this is probably a bug that was fixed with patch.

I found that the more light bar you need to fill, the slower the regen rate is.
You need about a minute to get from almost empty bar to half-full, but only about 30 second from half-full to full.

[Sniperfox47]

Originally posted by hickname:

I have a GOG version, so this is probably a bug that was fixed with patch.

I found that the more light bar you need to fill, the slower the regen rate is.
You need about a minute to get from almost empty bar to half-full, but only about 30 second from half-full to full.

Even if it was 30 seconds for a complete fill of the bar that's too long when prior to getting that upgrade a refill of the bar was basically instantaneous... All you had to do was spam blast of Belial until shield runs out, then use Radical Acceptance. Even if you missed the timing on RA you then Lullaby which took all of 2 seconds, and still got 75% of your light bar back...

The refactory time on the shield starting to recharge after depleting alone is longer than the time it would have taken to activate Lullaby.

[HoneyDruid]

Fun to see the developer has deleted every post I've made on this game, due to the fact my negative review got the most helpful tag on it and numerous awards (it has too been deleted).

I agree with you. The final progression should have a much faster light bar recharge. It is near literally worthless on the final boss, having to count to 5 in the hopes of a recharge to activate wings.

[LordApollo474]

I almost said screw the final boss after losing Radical Acceptance, but I just went and fully upgraded all my stuff and learning the final bosses moveset was fine, especially when you use iris step and it continually hurts him! I agree though, end game felt more like a slog, I still enjoyed the game overall though!

[Serifina]

Radical Acceptance totally should not disappear and the shield recharge needs to be much faster. Losing the ability to use Lullaby to recharge if you miss RA being replaced by auto-shield regen is fine. Also, the magic blast needs to have it's cost cut in *half*. It's far too expensive.

[Zapatique]

Yeah, the energy blast/shield recharge thing is pretty awful in comparison. Especially with the loss of RA. I'm almost done with this game, but without the ability to heal at will and only the last(?) optional boss and final boss remaining I think I'll wait for an update in case they'll do one.

[MimicMachine]

Considering the blast doesn't seem to damage bosses and is only used for puzzles, I don't feel like it should take as much energy.
I would be happy with either a higher recharge rate or RA but after beating the game it doesn't feel like we needed both.
One other thing I'd like to see is having the energy blast and the wings take the empty spots in the upgrade menu so we can have an easy reminder and maybe that'll fix the achievement bug.

[Steelebourne]

I completely agree. I can't beat the 3rd form of the final boss because of the painfully slow recharge & lack of quick heal. It's no longer fun, which really sucks because I loved the game before this.