i think the frustration is directed towards the difficulty, not the game design, if that makes sense.
it's uhhhh complicated? I'm only like part way through the first act, so big grain of salt the game is absolutely beautiful. The platforming is incredibly fluid and tight -- especially once you get some of the movement upgrades its a joy to just run around on. but its also incredibly punishing. very easy for one slight mistake on a boss to throw your rhythm off and because of how the bosses work, quickly kill you. there is often a lengthy time getting back to a boss, which can add to the aggravation. Feels like there are more bosses/gauntlets than the original, so exploring can be a challenge because you never know when you're gonna get into another challenge fight you need to win to save all your rosaries. but all of the bosses so far feel fair, just hard and the joy of beating them is as good as ever. so as someone who loves the exploration aspect of metroidvanias rather than the difficulty, I'm maybe a bit disappointed it feels so much harder than the OG. But its still an incredibly good game and a worthy GOTY contender at this point (even if Blue Prince maybe still has the edge for me personally)
In general with projectile-based enemies, I found them a lot easier once I realized I can almost always just parry whatever they throw, and sometimes it will even go back and hit them. And if it’s like the throwing star bird in that area where the star gets stuck on the ground, then you can hit them while they’re on the ground and they should go away.
There’s actually like 5-6 versions of it, and they get progressively further away lol. But there’s only one with an actual timer on it, and that one is definitely hardest since you can’t just be cautious, you also need to be fast
yeah I can not stress this enough, the game is stupid hard. like it's fair, very rarely is it bullshit, but it's by far the hardest game I've ever played.
lol I was running around Greymoor for an hour last night trying to figure out where this super tough boss everyone was talking about was.
This happened to me right after I finished act 1 and was like ok time to chill and explore a bit. NOPE
Also Sinner’s Road is beating my ass, I’m playing like a coward and throwing poison knives at every enemy from as far as possible
Oh so you can buy it multiple times, good to know. I think that's the most expensive thing available in Act One so far
So there’s only one that you can buy from that shop, and then I just got a second one dropped from an enemy in a trap room but not sure how many others
I've died a good amount of times so far but I haven't had a big issue with any of the act 1 bosses so far. I think I'm just about into act 2. Nothing has felt insurmountable or unfair. Just about every boss has fair patterns once you get the hang of them. I'm sure I'll hit a wall eventually, but the difficulty feels fine to me so far.
Does it tell you when you are in Act 2? How do all you guys know you are almost done Act 1? Using the Google machine?
tbf I do think the i-frames in this game are significantly less forgiving than the original. barely touching a stunned boss shouldn’t give me two masks of damage