Quality drop in Levels/Ennemies after Lower Stratum ?

[ᏫᏋᏒᎽ ₍^. .^₎⟆]

Am I the only person that think that the level / ennemies design are insane AFTER the lower stratum.
So many ennemies, so many projectiles, so many AOEs. Every platform has 1 ennemy waiting on it and 2 ennemies that will aggro once you're there. Sure, let me just outrange ennemies and shoot them 1 by 1, it will just take 50 minutes to explore 3 rooms.
Like yup, I'm going to keep my difficulty settings for bosses only.

EDIT: It gets better after the Central Stratum, it's just that one area which is really annoying to go through, the deposit was horrible too. But there are way better areas after. Removing the double ennemy hp modifier also helped.

[TokTheGod]

Originally posted by ᏫᏋᏒᎽ:

Originally posted by TokTheGod:

Nope, game is perfectly fine. Just 100% it on hard. Thought the last area was much easier than Ender Lilies even.

Yeah game is perfectly fine, that's why they nerfed the rats.
I'm playing on hard with 2x HP. Central Stratum was not fun.

Rats do alot of damage, but they can be easily avoided, although I understand the complaint. I don't understand the final area complaint though. The progress and difficulty seemed balanced to me, more than Ender Lilies final area.

[azuarc]

Originally posted by fwhite0782:

Please name me the game where that isn't how you progress. If people were destroying every boss on first try the howls would be "gAMe Too EZ".

Not bosses. Regular enemies.

[Taruwolf]

Originally posted by fwhite0782:

Originally posted by Taruwolf:

I see a lot of people only giving positive feedback, but I'm struggling to maintain interest the more I play. After lower stratum, everything feels like it's more about memorization instead of reaction. So many of the rooms and bosses feel like banging your head against the wall until you memorize away all the challenge.

Please name me the game where that isn't how you progress. If people were destroying every boss on first try the howls would be "gAMe Too EZ".

It's not the bosses that I find too challenging. Casual exploration is punishing. Instead of being able to enjoying the environment, you're always pretty close to death from normal enemies. Instead, the game feels like it's more for speed runners and Dark Souls players that run past everything looking for save points.

I'm a bit disappointed that I had to switch to the parry shockwave tactic for the second half of the game. It took the game from brutal to easy in an instant.

[Cat]

I'm playing on hard and I can feel some of the danger when I'm rushing past an area with enemies hitting for like 60% of my healthbar sometimes, but at this point I'm so deep that I should be getting the hang of encounters like that, but the further I go the more every fight becomes a fight for survival as enemies scale much faster than my ability to survive, but then again counter is so strong that I can just sit and parry all day and not worry about it.

All it's done is make me play slower and rely more on passive healing options like the 1% healing every 4 seconds relic, or heal on hit ones, it's not really that bad, but it slows down my exploration speed significantly sometimes. Ender Lilies felt similar to what I remember playing it, but neither were to a point where it felt extremely unfair, learning new enemies and what they do is just more important when they chunk you with every hit.

I understand the frustration though, the game gets a lot harder after the first areas, but I think it also expects you to adapt and master your gameplay a bit more too. I got stuck on a boss earlier so I had to really learn my parry timing which is helping a ton with the middle stratum areas.

[SunfireKnight86]

No you are correct. The entire game turns into "jump puzzles with health hazards and snipers on every surface." It's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring when games do that.

[ᏫᏋᏒᎽ ₍^. .^₎⟆]

Originally posted by TokTheGod:

Rats do alot of damage, but they can be easily avoided, although I understand the complaint. I don't understand the final area complaint though.

After playing without the double HP and now being near the end of the game, I can give more infos.
Obviously it became insanely easier once every mob can be killed in 2 combos which is fine but that's why I'd rather play on higher difficulties, which again is fine as long as areas are well designed.
The early game could do that properly, I really liked the Shackled Beast fight, it was long but it was fair, and it was also harder with the hp modifier than all the bosses of the end game that would drop super quickly. So more health = more fun except when RNG is in the way, then it's just annoying and a design flaw. For instance, there is one of the big robot bosses in the mid game that can go half off screen then attack with his offscreen hand, which is unlucky because you can barely see he's attacking. You can deal with it, but it doesn't make it less annoying.

[ᏫᏋᏒᎽ ₍^. .^₎⟆]

Originally posted by VonFirflirch:

I feel like the Rat nerf is unwarranted (even if I died to them a fair bit), given how you can outrange them... like a lot of other enemies, unfortunately (poor shocking mines).

But is it fun ? Playing with double HP makes this strategy very boring. If the encounters are not engaging, why bother at all and not run past them ?

Originally posted by VonFirflirch:

Do you have an area in mind, specifically?

After nearly finishing the game, there are only 2 areas that were like this, the final deposit sire (mainly due to the mobs that hang from the ceiling, shoot multiple projectiles, while balancing and being immune to fall damages), and the steel district, (the mobs spamming fire balls, the ninjas shooting exploding balls, the 50 drones), fighting them all at once wasn't fun when they're this tanky.

Originally posted by VonFirflirch:

If anything, maybe the difficulty sliders are the real culprit?

They simply outline flaws, you can fight good bosses for hours with nothing but a stick and it will be fun as long as you don't get BSed on every 2 minutes. If it matters or not for the average player is in the devs mind but imo, things that are well crafted for experienced players will always be less frustrating to newcomers. I think most bosses and areas from the Lower Stratum were very good.

Originally posted by VonFirflirch:

Oh, by the way, watch out, "enemy" only has one "n" in English.

Noted, I'll go full french and just say ennemi directly.

[Raitoiro]

No not at all, I could understand that critic for the upper Stratum as the lack of respite is a bit annoying, especially for the knight comander boss, but the central stratum was just fine, even playing on hard.
Sure the enemies hurt, but there're many ways to avoid/block damage and the enemies go down fast so it balance out.
The only thing, that really annoying me on the middle stratum was the large boss in the factory who's regularly halfway off the screen so you can't see some of the attacks coming.