Hi, I'm Chris! Appreciating artful, thoughtful, and story-driven video games. I do Let's Plays, mostly of indie games in the genres of adventure, JRPG, puzzle, and metroidvania. I also play Celeste mods chosen for my by my patrons.
As a writer, I like to pay attention to how games tell their stories. I love environmental storytelling and when the gameplay strengthens the narrative.
10:22 here's an easy way to keep it in mind. imagine a stop sign. when you see a stop sign, you stop, right? stop signs are red. so imagine a green stop sign instead
Boomerang thrower: a ranged attacker that actually works! Jumping everywhere is just sort of the thing you do when a game has a jump button. Jump in time to the music for bonus points =) Yeah, with how insistent Facette was about not trusting Zelda and that killing the monsters would stop the rifts, it was a pretty easy guess that she'd been replaced. I know the game offers a lot of freedom, but some of your puzzle and especially combat solutions are so very brute forced jankiness, because you're limiting yourself to just a few tools when you often have more efficient methods at your disposal. And that goes doubly true for that boss fight, wow. Still, you got it done eventually! If you're having issues with playing tired, maybe do slightly shorter videos?
Well, I have mentioned I'm not the best at strategy, haven't I? Kind of overwhelming how many echoes there are, so I find myself scrambling for anything that works.
Red horizon is kind of an tradition level that made its return in 2024. In Chinese new year collab 2023 there was also an car driving level, and it also had an challenge room at the end. my favorite 'beginner' level is dream ridge.
If you like Metroidvania-like games, I recommend Shantae and the Pirate's Curse as well as 1/2 Genie Hero, even if you play them in your own time. Jake Kauffman (composer for the Shovel Knight games) also made the music for these games. Also fun fact: Game Development Department is a reference to Blue Archive, a gacha game that has a school with a club of the same name. The characters are also the members of said club.
Thanks for the let's play, what a journey :-)) I thought Gris was wonderful, but rather as an interactive art piece than as a game, but this adventure is wonderful in both ways!
I think Winter was my favorite section of the game. The atmosphere and sense of scale are simply outstanding, even compared to the already high standard from the other parts. Plus the platforming is the most fun here, I felt. It's not that the enemies have less health, it's the Neva attacking along with you I think doubles? your damage. By comparison, when you're hitting things with just your sword (when Neva is busy biting away at a separate target), you'll notice they take a lot more hits to die. It's a great way to set up for the harder combat in the next segment, where enemies take a lot longer to die because you don't have her with you anymore. Nice work beating the final boss first try! Fun detail I picked up on watching your LP: in the opening cutscene, Neva's mom has the same scar on her eye, implying she went through a similar thing, which fits the whole cycle of seasons theming and how that opening cutscene is repeated mostly shot-for-shot at the end. Spring may be a short epilogue, but oh WOW is it beautiful. Glad you enjoyed the game, and thank you for sharing your experience of it with us!
I'd say it's not quite fair to say Bobo's not a hero by any stretch of the definition. Yes, she has flaws, but she also has a certain level of common decency and compassion that's absent from a lot of the characters in the setting. She's not like a full-on anti-hero or anything. I wonder if having a higher danger level gets you stronger enemy encounters, or if the specific enemies that spawn are random? You were really insistent on correcting your science in editing, huh? With the weapon comparison when you get something new, the right is what you have in the selected slot currently and the left is the new thing, letting you compare damage values and see the stats they give side-by-side. The problem is that every single weapon type seems to have different stats it affects. For example, you replaced the umbrella with the whip, the umbrella gave +22% to your max ep, +14% to lp attack damage, and -14% to crit damage, while the whip gave +16% to life defense, -12% to max lp, and +11% to crit chance. Thinking about it a bit more, with the stat displays from equipment, the number on the left is the effect from that specific piece of equipment, while the number on the right is the character's overall value in that stat, accounting for whatever the base stats are, modifications from the skeyll tree, as well as changes from other equipment. At long last, your danger meter has dropped to level 0 and the random encounters stopped spawning nonstop. It makes sense that that gym was enterable since there was that encounter with the person right in front of it. I wasn't expecting a harder/better/faster/stronger reference in 2024! I had also completely forgotten about Carlotta until she showed up again. Wow Bobo has become significantly more bloodthirsty now that Titan destroyed her home. It feels like that chain skill would work at least somewhat better on your attack instead of your counter, so you can at least fully control when it comes out. Wow these enemies are defensive tanks. I'd guess the way to go here would be to use ep attacks, as the ep bar seems to be pretty small, but I guess you were just too tired at this point to think of that, until the game forced the issue.
Aside from just game balance issues, imagine trying to walk around with two spears at once and use them effectively. It'd be pretty cumbersome. As far as "is there a reason to play the Monk?" I'd say it's a (mostly) less stressful way to learn the world, its general layout and the mechanics of various things, if you wanted to do it that way. On the whole, things are easier in a lot of different ways, thogh some of the specific mechanic changes make certain select areas actually harder to navigate. Nice job working your way back up! I love how you're looking at the area list through the Passage menu, just going "That's the creepy place, I hate it" about all of them =) Getting frustrated is just part of the Rain World experience. It's a game meant to be both loved and hated simultaneously. And watching players get frustrated, lost, and confused is part of watching any good Rain World LP. You're now in a much healthier situation for finishing out the game, but I'm guessing next part is going to be extra-long, either that or things went miraculously well.
Monk has some implied lore significance as seen at the end of Rivulets campaign, but you would have to do that action yourself and there's no way to know that they did this when you first play it.
I've never liked glyph actually because it removes neutral jumping. It's so ingrained in my muscle memory that I cannot not do it- I even neutral jump in games that aren't celeste- and I use neutral jumps all the time for things that aren't infinitely scaling walls! Just leave it in and politely ask the player not to abuse it
That cave with the level 2 caromadillos was, I believe, my only death in the game. I went there almost right away, with just 5 hearts and no healing and didn't quite realize how much damage they were doing before it was too late. And at long last, the mango minigame reminds you the spin exists. That game is really fun, reminds me of something out of Mario Party. And targeting too! Two very useful bits of your toolkit I was pretty sure you had forgotten existed. I guess you forgot/ignored the tutorial telling you that summoned monsters will attack the thing you're locked on to. Well, it is a tried and true trope for royal advisors to be obstructive and awful. The desert has some some traversal echoes, like the platboom.
Kinda funny how there IS a path to Farm Arrays from Outskirts, so technically you could have been considered to still be going the right way, but honestly it’s probably for the best that you were able to experience Sky Islands. I mean, it’s a difficult area, but it’s worth traversing at least once
Good luck on Gallery Collab! Note that Bloom Wanderer has a Moon Berry you missed (for backtracking to the start once you get the ability to dash). 31:46 Gollab is split into 4 difficulties for its meters: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Hellish instead of the usual 5 (but the SJ-equivalent difficulties are always listed as well); e.g., Bloom Wanderer was "Easy" on the meter but listed as Green Intermediate.
YESSSSS!! Gallery collab is perhaps the best mod imo, I love it even more than SJ. There’s not a single bad map in this collab and has a ton of easily S tier maps. FR-C2 and Gravity Flow especially.
I loved Afterglow summit SO MUCH and also terminal, easily some of the best gameplay I’ve experienced, and the environments are AWESOME I love the music choices
@@baconflake0074 afterglow summit is incredibly beautiful yeah. The story (GAY!!), aesthetics, and music. imo worst part of it is somehow the gameplay, which is still amazing Terminal is great too, for sure. Super fun gameplay and nice calming music.
some side knowledge for GC: Star Sapphire indeed is an artist, and I suppose the profile pic used in GC is his own work. He also made many maps in GC, and all of those are decent in quality. Some levels have Chinese internet memes and CN celeste community memes/mappers own knowledges in them. I might or might not explain them depend on how I think of those. The lobby music (and heartside music) is (said by the composer) inspired by SJ expert lobby, and I believe you can notice some similarities on how the song is progressing.
excited to see you play this!! i recently played it after constantly hearing how good it is and it blew me away. one moment in particular was probably a top 5 gaming moment for me, so i’m happy to see you playing it too!
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes !!!!! i LOVE gallery collab so much ♥ i hopw you have as much fun with it as i did :3 (i wont spoil anything but the heartside is AMAZING!!)
I think the phrase "the maps here are at least OK" is an insult to this collab(I didn't play it but I know it is amazing). For HK, I beat Mantis Lords and now trapped in the city of tears... I can finally upgrade my nail! The music in city in silence is probably one of settings menu music that changes every season.
Fall starting off in the same area as Summer really lets you feel how much the decay has progressed. Ooh, I remember trying to 100% Brawl back in the day. Came pretty close, but there was one thing I couldn't quite manage, don't remember which. I think I did pull off that boss rush one eventually, though. Celeste golden strawberries are about the level where I draw the line when going for completion nowadays. I know I could manage them with the proper time investment to fully learn each chapter and make attempts until everything goes right, but I'm satisfied with the... 4? I was able to get with reasonable effort. I love the game, but I have other things I want to do with my time as well. Good luck on chapter 9 golden! Getting back to the game, I love how open they were in this about the Miyazaki inspiration. Gris had a few parts that made me think "these people enjoy Miyazaki movies," most notably the little woodland creatures, but Neva's designs of both Neva and her mother as well as the corrupted creatures are such a clear nod to Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. The callbacks to Gris in the architecture are very interesting to see, makes me wonder if the games are actually set in the same world. Like, do the creators have some ideas in mind for what this place is and why it is the way it is, or is it all about beautiful scenery and metaphor? Watching you play through, I'm picking up on lots of little details that slipped by me on my own playthrough. Like, the backgrounds will often have things going on more subtly that get overlooked while actively playing and having to pay attention to the platforming and combat. If I have one complaint about the design of Neva, it's that, compared to Gris, the more natural colors can occasionally make it hard to make out gameplay-relevant things, especially when the screen is zoomed out and the colors are more muted, like in the second section of Fall here. Projectile wolf! This whole nightmare section is so good at being eerie and unsettling. Love it. There is actually an achievement for breaking all the crumbling statues, sadly you missed one or two. Every segment of the game has its own specific achievement, actually, and you've been not quite getting most of them. Not that it really matters, just an extra little thing. This boss, for some reason it took me forever to figure out the timing for dodging the charge, I died several times due to that one attack. Winter is probably my favorite section, excited to see what you think of it!
You're really annoyed at the djinn bit, aren't you? While I read the whole thing as a big play on the wishes concept, with Bobo's wish being fulfilled in a way that was pretty definitely going to happen anyway due to the whole killed a Satellite, meaning the djinn effectively did nothing, even if he had done something to affect the world, it's easy enough to see it as introducing a new element to the setting rather than a deus (or in this case diabolus since it's bad for our protagonist) ex machina. Additionally, it doesn't necessarily come off as that strange; with what we've seen of this world, there's enough to imply it could be partially or fully a digital, created reality pf some kind, so an entity with sufficient power and access to the underpinnings of that reality would indeed be able to alter it on that kind of level. Mechanical detail you seem to have overlooked: I don't know if it's only certain ones or if things have changed now that you're in the city, but I noticed the vending machine here had a second tab labeled "gift shop" on top of the standard "consumables" tab. I went back through your earlier parts a bit trying to find other vending machine interactions to see if that was the case previously, but the two I looked at only had the one tab. Presumably, the other tab would be for new weapons, so it might be worth checking out, assuming you haven't already noticed it. Aah, it just gives you both classes's skill trees at once; that's an easy way of handling it. So with the double classes, there are effectively six different combinations, though the order of selection would affect which tree is more developed to start with. Okay, it looks like the enemy spawn rate is indeed tied to the danger level bar on the right, as you speculated. The instant respawn happened when the meter was full, but when it was a bit lower, it didn't happen right away. Glad you figured out how to adjust the attack direction in the hacking minigame. I figured that was what the arrow meant. Also I love how every single splitting enemy ever makes you think of that one boss in An Untitled Story =) You really didn't pay much attention to character names: Simon is the band's drummer. Given that there's going to be multiple endings, I guess we'll wind up with a Nahilys route and a Simon route at some point? I'd say Bobo's dialogue to Simon there is fine, actually. She's just had this huge revelation about someone she considered a close friend, so she's trying to go back over her relationship with him to reconfirm it as real. Wow this split choice came a lot sooner than I'd expected. And yeah, I'm leaning towards Simon here as well. Also it's really cool having this song as the background music for the battle. I'm trying to pay more attention to that danger meter, and it looks like after doing a fight it drops by one level, and picking up items is what raises it, as do certain interaction in the environment. Does it really not let you swap an ability to another slot once you've equipped it? That feels very limiting. I guess if you ever run into that Laplace's Demon character who let you reset you skeyll tree, that'd let you unassign it that way if you wanted.
Having issues with my comment not posting properly again, going to see if it'll let me post something shorter then edit in the full comment. Good, seems to have worked. With how much you're enjoying the game, I'd highly recommend picking up the dlc if you haven't already. I'm pretty sure I mentioned it before, but it basically doubles the size of the game even before the addition of several new slugcats. Additionally, those new slugcats are a much better ease in to the more advanced skills and knowledge you'd need to tackle a Hunter playthrough with any reasonable chance of success. "I should do something because the episode is getting boring." Part of the joy of watching a Rain World lp are those sense moments of waiting where nothing is going on, not knowing if a something is going to swoop in and eat you. It feels like you have this need to be constantly actively entertaining, but that's not really possible over a more than hour long video like this, it's okay to have moments of downtime. Your insistence on getting back to where you started here is fun to watch. I guess you forgot the directive you were given was to head generally west? Though I know you get back on track soon, since I saw your post saying the run finishes up in just two more videos. You always seem to think your spear throws are going to be slightly lower than they actually are. The slugcat throws while standing up straight when possible, so it goes just over most things walking at ground level. That death inside the shelter was highly unfortunate, but very funny from a viewer perspective.
Deku Scrubs have appeared in OoT & MM, yes, but also in the Oracle games & Minish Cap. I think Majora's Mask was the only other time they had their own town & region though...
Very late but when Gary said he'd rather not see stuff.. "stand on its own in this place" gary was referring to that he'd rather not be seeing any of the art moving on its own. Great playthrough btw! Binged the whole thing!
