After 39 hours, the only thing I have yet to complete is the 4th and 5th Pantheon. Here's my experience on the way to where I currently am. Warning: huge wall of text and obvious spoilers ahead.
So I'd picked this game up about a week and a half ago. This was my first metroidvania, so I wasn't sure what to expect. However, I soon fell in love with the art style, but the gameplay a bit less so. The first bits of the game are pretty boring, after all. I ended my first session around 3 or 4 hours in after losing all my Geo in Greenpath after wondering whether I could get two Shades on screen at once. Still kind of wanted to play more, but it was around 3am and I'd just lost all my Geo, so I hopped off for the night.
The next morning, I launched the game again, and got my playtime all the way up to around 12 hours. Sounds a bit crazy, and yes, it is. I didn't even realise I'd played this much until I had dinner and realised I'd just spent the majority of my day playing this game. I was hooked and couldn't stop, and I'd completely fallen in love with the Gameplay part now too.
My progression path was different than most. I obviously went through Forgotten Crossroads into Greenpath into Fungal Wastes, but then proceeded through to kill the Mantis Lords. I took a step into Deepnest, decided it was too scary and headed back to complete Crystal Peak for some more progression.
After this I decided to go back to Deepnest without realising City of Tears existed and got about half way through before finding the Fungal Wastes exit. After this, I finally headed over to the City of Tears where I got my ass handed to me by the Soul Master before finally killing him and his 2nd form.
After this, I headed down to the Ancient Basin where I proceeded to first try kill Broken Vessel, only to spend way too long on the Lost Kin and eventually taking him down after a charm loadout change. I went back to City of Tears and went to go kill the Watcher Knights and awake my first Dreamer. After this, it was pretty normal. I found out Royal Waterways was a thing, first try killed Dung Defender, explored the rest of Deepnest, awakened that Dreamer, went to Queen's Gardens, awakened that one, and went to explore Kingdom's Edge, defeating 2nd Hornet on my 2nd try.
Up until now, I'd refused to upgrade my nail or any of my abilities. I found it more fun to learn the bosses' patterns, openings, attacks, and to outplay them rather than to brute force my way through with a Pure Nail. Now that I'd gotten the King's Brand, I felt it was right to upgrade everything to its max. Not sure why, it just felt right. So I proceeded to grind 3 more Pale Ore (I had 3 already) for the 4 nail upgrades, go down to The Abyss for Shade Cloak and Abyss Shriek, and also upgrade the other two abilities. I'd also, along the way, gotten 2400 essence and completed that side quest.
After getting the first ending with about 90% completion rate (I don't exactly remember), I decided to start Grimm Troupe. I didn't know how to start it, so I started to look on the wiki for answers. This is where I started to rely on the wiki for my completion percentages, as well as DLC advancements. Before, I'd only go on it if I truly didn't know what to do or where to go, or if something small, like the HP of an enemy was bugging me.
After this, I went into the infamous White Palace I'd heard so much about online. I was especially excited to try out the Path of Pain, since I didn't think it would be that hard, yet still an enjoyable challenge without the rage with I'd seen from online videos. Was I right? Sort of. I'd played Celeste before this game, so the hours I poured into that game have decently translated over, minus the pogo bouncing. Thanks to this, I got through the Path of Pain in about half an hour, but I had to reset from the beginning thanks to the two enemies at the end catching me unaware on 3 masks of health because I got fed up of healing constantly and would only heal on 2 masks up to full, as that was more time-efficient. I also got pissed off at the noise the Grubberfly's Elegy made, so I consciously tried to avoid being at full health. I spent another 20 or so minutes on my second time around, with 15 of those being on the last section, which was more I spent on my first attempt. So after that unfortunate event, I swept through the rest of the White Palace without any issues. Oh yeah, there was a Grimm Troupe DLC, wasn't there?
So I headed back to the Holwing Cliffs to start the quest. After defeating Grimm on my 3rd or so try, I decided to take a peek into Godmaster. Here I proceeded to first try the 1st and 2nd Pantheon, and taking 3 tries on the 3rd. I still haven't attempted the 4th yet, or used any bindings on any of them.
After being hesitant on which ending I should choose, I ended up going for fighting Nightmare King Grimm simply because I wanted more boss fights. After about 35 minutes, I defeated NKG. One of the more frustrating fights, simply because some of the strategies I used against Grimm's base form didn't work against NKG. Particularly the one where he dashes diagonally down then into you, because I couldn't dash through him to consistently dodge him or I would get hit by the fire trail he left behind since I always dashed through him when he horizontally dashed.
I decided to then finally get two of the other endings. I proceeded to kill Hollow Knight another two times, and, to my surprise, first try killed Radiance. I thought it'd be more challenging, but I think I took damage twice during the whole fight. I'm honestly not sure why everyone says it's so hard.
That brings me to now. I'm preparing to face the arduous task of the 4th and 5th Pantheon, but before that I should probably try practise against Pure Vessel first.
I probably left out some stuff. Happy to answer any questions.
Here's my boss list and how many tries it took to kill them each:
1-2 tries
Broken Vessel
Brooding Mawlek
Brothers Oro and Mato
The Collector (I was actually so creeped out by this guy when I first saw him, I forgot how to fight and died once)
Crystal Guardian
Dung Defender
Flukemarm
God Tamer
Great Nailsage Sly
Gruz Mother
Hive Knight
Hollow Knight
Hornet 2
Mantis Lords
Nosk
Oblobble
Paintmaster Sheo
Radiance
Soul Tyrant
Soul Warrior
Vengefly King
Uumuu
Zote the Mighty (pure luck)
Literally all the Warrior Dream fights were 0 deaths
3-5 tries
Grimm
False Knight (I know, this was my first metroidvania, gimme some slack, I was bad at reading his attacks)
Enraged Guardian (he wasn't even hard, I just kept getting impatient and greedy with my attacks)
Hornet 1
Massive Moss Charger (yes, the miniboss in Greenpath)
Traitor Lord
Failed Champion
Soul Master
White Defender
6-10 tries
6 Watcher Knights (seemed way longer thanks to the long ass walk back)
Nightmare King Grimm (probably in 11+ tries but I'm not completely sure)
Grey Prince Zote
11+ tries
Lost Kin
Haven't fought yet - brackets are an estimate
Pure Vessel (11+ tries)
Winged Nosk (0-2 tries)
Sisters of Battle (0-2 tries)
Absolute Radiance (6-10 tries)
hornet best waifu btw
Submitted July 08, 2019 at 01:07PM by 106462910 https://ift.tt/2Xu07up
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