Bit confused on this one

[Liageta]

Hopped in, jumped into a chute, fought 3 enemies, suddenly got teleported to some zone that I later figured out is a respawn zone, so I guess I died despite killing the 3 enemies and no mobs around?

Teleported back out after I figured out there was a way to do that (there's nothing to indicate you can "use" the floor pad in the center).

Decided I was gonna climb some giant robot in the distance, got on top of it, found a hole, hit two beacons and spawned a boss.

Climbed up and got my ass whooped like 3 times and then beat him and then beat the follow up boss in one try.

Is...there supposed to be more going on?

I have a scythe and an air dash and a missing arm, and conceptually I really like the core idea here but I feel like there's an incredible amount of stuff I'm missing here, I see people talking about combos, I have like a 2 hit combo that immediately jumps into an air "shotgun" shot that blasts me back repeatedly?

I know some games go with the "no tutorial" concept but this seems like I'm just missing entire features and systems with no intuitive way to figure them out.

[awLTR]

Doesn't look like there's much beyond that. It's like a Nier Automata that looks worse, handles much worse, is far more confusing while simulatenously being far less intriguing because it doesn't even bother to estabilish stakes of the conflict and long-term goals. (and I'm not that much of a fan of Nier in the first place).
I'm suddenly appreciating Bleak Faith much more - despite being a weird, janky mess, it did have a strong feeling of direction and instantly hooked you with the curious mega-architecture. VA Proxy's attempt at megastructures looks more like "let's just throw a bunch of obnoxiously big rooms and very tall towers together".

[R4skall]

havent finished the new demo yet but there is at least one boss you can fight after some more exploration and id heard of a second one i never found in the last version

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Liageta:

Hopped in, jumped into a chute, fought 3 enemies, suddenly got teleported to some zone that I later figured out is a respawn zone, so I guess I died despite killing the 3 enemies and no mobs around?

Teleported back out after I figured out there was a way to do that (there's nothing to indicate you can "use" the floor pad in the center).

Decided I was gonna climb some giant robot in the distance, got on top of it, found a hole, hit two beacons and spawned a boss.

Climbed up and got my ass whooped like 3 times and then beat him and then beat the follow up boss in one try.

Is...there supposed to be more going on?

I have a scythe and an air dash and a missing arm, and conceptually I really like the core idea here but I feel like there's an incredible amount of stuff I'm missing here, I see people talking about combos, I have like a 2 hit combo that immediately jumps into an air "shotgun" shot that blasts me back repeatedly?

I know some games go with the "no tutorial" concept but this seems like I'm just missing entire features and systems with no intuitive way to figure them out.

I am in the same boat. i wish i knew what was happening in general. im no stranger to vaguely tutorialized games, this one is just really confusing. Of course, mentioning this is apparently heresy, because every single one of the posts I see similar to this have a bunch of [people] in them going on about how we're game journalists who need yellow paint or whatever, and how they're so cool and smart and awesome for understanding this super badass awesome game we just suck at or something.

i want to figure out at least vaguely what is happening and why so i can play the game with a little bit of direction. i see the big arrow on the map and i fought the, eh... "boss". and then it was "demo over".

I see a lot of posts talking about some library of babel and another boss and all these cool things people are doing, and all this fun they're having, and im left wondering if im playing a different game.

edit: also, the process of *getting to* the boss was really weird and jank. i had to walk up to a specific spot and interact with my robot thing with the E key (indicated by a tiny and easily missed white circle icon) which then gave me my objective to go into the big robot. the first time i tried this tutorial, i didnt even know that arrow was an objective arrow, because it rotated in such a way that i was under the impression it was simply a compass.

[Nyanzey]

There is more to it if you explore, there are currently... I think 4 or 5 bosses. Your confusion is absolutely valid though, the game doesn't manage to lay out the fundamentals properly, and without those it's rather tough to get some momentum up.

[dunai.theukie]

still yet to figure out where to look for bosses, weapons and how to execute combos properly, because there's absolutely zero explanation

[The_stealthiest_tank]

One boss is in the large cylinder structure on the opposite side of the ruined city, if you have the memento you can walk through the front door, otherwise you have to go round the back on top of the hill. From there get on top of the ¬ shaped pie and jump from there onto the building, it is possible with double jumps or just using missile riding. Another boss is the Lector, it can be found in a church like building on the other side of the mountain directly in front of you when you leave the canyon bit where it opens onto the plains. To get to it you must get into the heating structure which has several entrance points with the simplest being going through the tunnel on the motorway in the ruined city, following the "bridge" part to the other side and climbing up to the left of the NPC you can talk to. The other two real bosses are S-104 (Sin) and the Extinction Unit (Eri) which must be fought to finish the demo. There are also 2 other "bosses" being the E-Units or Executioner Units. One of these may be found on the left going up the valley behind the Extinction Unit up the stairs in some ruins. The other may be found on top of a control centre to the right of the canyon where you spawn, and can be accessed by jumping onto the tower from the left (from the perspective of just gone up to the scientist NPC who is interested in the grass). It can also be accessed by going into a hidden underground entrance before the first meditation point in the starting canyon. Drop through this into a pile of scrap, follow the pipe on your right, jump into the raised doorway at the end, then take the lift up to the control centre. If you turned left and followed that tunnel instead of using the life, you would find yourself in a part of the heating structure that cannot access the rest of it. One Honorable mention for a boss is the one the NPC in the aforementioned control centre/tower (not to be confused with the control centre on Eri's back) asks you to find to save their friend. This "boss" can be found in chained up at the bottom of a tower surrounded by a lake to the right of the grass scientist across the spawn canyon. This tower can only be accessed after interacting with the NPC that asks you to go there, once at the bottom of the tower the boss will speak to you. Then you must destroy the capsules around the room using attacks which will free the boss, the boss will then teleport away saying they were going to kill you but the machine they are possessing doesn't want them to, they will then leave behind the core dash if I remember correctly which cannot be obtained otherwise unless taken as a starting item.

I hope this helps and that you are able to follow my guide more contorted and poorly explained than a new programmer's first program and thanks for reading!

[The_stealthiest_tank]

To get to the "starting canyon" you must exit the box you fall into and jump across the pipes onto the platform with the training enemies and continue on the another set of pipes in the same direction, there will be a few enemies here.