Ori and the Blind Forest hard mode playthrough log part 4

Forlorn Ruins... already I'm hopelessly stuck... wtf am I supposed to do here at this part with the floating blocks? You can fall on one of them sideways, but that doesn't get you anywhere except towards a wall of spikes.

... aw damn... I had to look up a walkthrough to figure out that you can walk along all 4 sides of those floating cubes... that never even crossed my mind at all. The rest of it was easy... then there's an epic escape sequence, just like in the Ginso Tree... except this time you mostly just use the glide power to ride the wind while avoiding falling spikes and stuff... that part's really annoying, mostly just a matter of trial and error.

We get some backstory on Kuro, the evil owl thing... it turns out he's not evil, he's just trying to protect his family, cuz his species is very weakened by the Spirit Tree's light or something... and I'm guessing the Valley of the Wind is close to where he lives, because this is where Kuro finds Ori and there's a stealth sequence going back through Valley of the Wind to get avoid getting killed by him.

Screenshots:

Ori and the Blind Forest hard mode playthrough log part 3

I'm glad I started grinding the blue ability tree path, cuz it looks like I'm really gonna need that infinite air for the swimming sections in hard mode.

I re-explored everything again with my new powers, and then I ended up getting to the Warmth element area before figuring out how to get to the wind place. The top-left of Hollow Grove has some really crazy enemies, including one that shoots an instant-death laser all around it... and you really need to get good with the Bash move to get through this place... I got a teleporter and a few more energy/life cells out of it, but this isn't the way to progress right now. Also yeah I got the infinite swimming by the time I finished all of this.

Now I'm at 43% total completion by the time I even start heading towards the Wind area. By the time I get to Valley of the Wind, I'm so good at using the Bash ability, and I have so many life cells and energy cells that I'm actually finding the game a bit easy now.

Then, instead of going into Misty Woods which is where my destination is, I explored further to the south of Valley of the Wind... it seems the path keeps going this way. There's a lot of weird green glowy liquid down here... and then further down it turns into this frozen over area that looks really amazing...

I don't know if I'm supposed to be down here yet or not... but I guess I'll just keep going until I get to a road block.
ooh, so it turns out this is where you need to go after you explore the Misty Woods... at least I got the map for this area... Valley of the Wind is now 80% completed already lol

Wow... I did not see that insane difficulty spike at Misty Woods coming at all. This place is incredibly hard on hard mode. Not only is it hard to figure out where you're going since there's no map, but I also get disoriented often since I don't remember which way I was going after I die... there's a lot of stuff here that makes use of both the Bash ability and the new gliding ability. Also I got enough ability points to unlock the triple jump during this part... it doesn't really change the game that much.

This place keeps changing too... it's like, I think I went back and forth a few times but it was different each time, so it felt like I may or may not have been going the right way. By the time I got the lantern thing to make the map appear again and turned the forest back to normal, I managed to get 94% completion in this area... Now that I see the map it looks very linear, but I'm pretty sure there were more parts of it that aren't shown on this map. I don't know where to go to get the last 6% of this area done.

Ori and the Blind Forest hard mode playthrough log part 2

I spent like the next hour re-exploring everywhere to get what I can with double jump... there's a few things I noticed that seem impossible to get to, even after I get the triple jump and air dash.

I've now unlocked air dash through the skill tree, but I can't actually use it yet because I haven't yet learned the normal dash.

Finally, after getting a few more life cells and energy cells, now I feel much less vulnerable and I can actually tank a few hits before dying... now I'll start the inside of the Ginso Tree.

This place is kinda annoying, but also fun... It took me a LOT of deaths before I realized that going through portals refreshes your double jump. This area is a very unique section made up of single-screen rooms that keep going further and further up the tree.

Eventually I got to a new power, which is kind of like an air dash, except it's more like a counter move that bounces you off projectiles/enemies and rockets you in whatever direction you choose. If you use this on a projectile, the projectile will go in the opposite direction that you get bounced in... this gimmick is used immediately in the 2nd half of the Ginso Tree...

After you destroy the thorny things that were corrupting the tree and preventing it from producing water, suddenly there's an intense escape sequence where you have to use your skills to climb up through the rest of the tree while a rush of water comes flooding up from below you... there's also a bunch of energy pickups along the way and of course I want to get all of them during this escape segment cuz I don't know if I'll be able to come back here.

That last part was really fun, it reminded me of a Rayman Origins/Legends sort of level. I got all the things inside the tree, but somehow the map only shows this area as 99% completed. I guess it's because there's some small corner of the map that I didn't go into in order to make it so the map is fully explored.

Ori and the Blind Forest hard mode playthrough log part 1

This game has amazing presentation... the beginning cutscene really drew me in.

The gameplay... it's okay I guess. Once the real game starts and you gain the ability to shoot homing shots, I'm thinking this isn't very fun yet, but it'll probably get better as I gain more abilities. I can see on the pause menu that there's quite a lot of new abilities to unlock.

I really like the save system. You can technically save anywhere, but it uses up soul energy, which I think auto-recharges at a slow rate or something? Either that, or you need to collect it from the blue glowy things. There's expansions you can get that let you store more soul energy cells at a time.

There's also a skill tree menu that you can only access at your save points. Once you've created a save point, you can always go back to it and access the skill tree. The stuff that enemies drop is the currency that you use to gain skills. I can't tell whether enemies respawn based on time or on distance, but either way they made it so it'd be really stupidly tedious to grind in the early areas for a bunch of skills.

The first skill I unlocked was the "shoot faster" skill obviously. I bet there'll be a skill to increase the range of the homing shots because right now you really have to put yourself in danger in order to hit anything. Then I got the "pickups float toward you" skill, then the skill that lets you re-use your custom save points infinitely, so you don't need to wait for a soul recharge in order to save again.

So far the gameplay mostly revolves around exploring every path to collect the keys and then going back to unlock the locked door to progress. Also there are map stone things, like the map consoles in Metroid, except you have to find the missing pieces before it'll work.

After getting the wall jump ability, and the warp point at Hollow Grove, I went back to the first area (Sunken Glades) and found a path leading into Black Root Burrows... This area is completely dark... I bet it's probably possible to do some sequence breaking here, but screw that, I'm not exploring this place without some kind of light source.

Oh, and now I see that the charge shot also uses up soul energy... and yeah, you can only recover soul energy from the blue gems that don't respawn very quickly... and now there's a bunch of walls that requires charged shots to destroy and I have to juggle between progressing and creating save points. Also there's doors that require you to simply deposit multiple cells of stored soul energy... which I obviously can't do anything about yet because I only have 1 energy cell capacity.


This game is getting pretty addicting now. Once I got to the Moon Grotto and got the double jump ability, the platforming suddenly got way more intense. I wasn't expecting this game to have Meat Boy style platforming difficulty all of the sudden. This is great.

Fatal Frame III: The Tormented - First playthrough log

Prologue

Rei and her friend are in some old building for some reason. Rei mentions that she wishes this place were haunted... then suddenly she notices something, and sees what seems to be the ghost of her dead boyfriend down the hallway.

This starts out kinda similar to Fatal Frame 1. There's a grainy noir film filter over everything as you're wandering the hallways. It looks really cool when you use the viewfinder. Right now Rei just has a normal camera, although I can get points for shooting non-aggressive ghosts this early on.

Wow wtf, I just wandered into a hallway and got killed by the first aggressive ghost in the game, since my camera can't capture them yet... At first I thought maybe I wasn't supposed to go that way yet? But then when I respawned, it put me in a whole different area... what's going on?

I'm in some kind of temple/shrine looking building now. Rei sees the ghost of her dead boyfriend, and tries to catch up to him... Then suddenly she wakes up and is on the ground surrounded by a bunch of same-looking priestess girls, and they attack Rei with some cursed stakes or something... then she wakes up for real out of her daydream, she's still in that same building with her friend standing there...

Later, she processes a photo of the guy she saw in the hallway earlier, proving that wasn't just a daydream... Then that night, Rei is dreaming and ends up back at the outside of this huge temple building.

Hour 1 - The Sign

Now I'm wandering the hallways inside this temple like building... There's a few ways to go now. There's a bunch of locked doors, including some with special symbols on them... but the only way I can go is to the 2nd floor where I find the Camera Obscura, and a save lantern.

Then there's a couple fights against some angry woman and a younger girl... These enemy animations are really good.

And then Rei finds some an actual living person who is freaking out and wishing she hadn't survived... and and another person covered in tattoos who starts chasing Rei, and she freaks out and runs out of the house, and wakes up as soon as she steps out of the house.

Right after waking up, some kind of nasty bruise starts appearing on Rei's skin, but it goes away once her friend shows up to snap her out of it. The atmosphere of this bedroom looks so incredibly normal and non-spooky compared to the usual atmosphere...

Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment - First playthrough log/screenshots

Specter Knight can climb and wall jump off certain walls (only dirt walls I guess)... can only climb so far per wall-landing, similar to Skyward Sword...

His scythe attack is interesting... he can't jump very well, but any time you are within scythe range of an attackable object while in midair, you get a sort of homing attack prompt that, if executed, will either make you air-dash diagonally upward or downward depending on whether you are above or below the object... I dunno the exact hitbox dynamics here, but it's a pretty fun concept. and, you can already see it being used in really cool ways for the sidepath secrets in this first level.

Oh yeah... the levels have a certain number of red skulls to collect (10 in the first level)... these are used to trade in town for Curios, which are the special A button abilities you can purchase. Curios use up your Darkness meter... and there are Darkness Wisps you can find in certain levels that will increase your darkness meter. A woman in town tells you what levels the Darkness Wisps are, and also says that every level has one Willfullness Wisp in it (increases your Will meter, aka hearts).

And there's a thing in town that you can donate money to... so yeah money does still have a purpose here. I don't know what it unlocks but it's something.

Also you absorb the souls of all the enemies you defeat... I'm not sure what this does though. Do the souls just refill your Darkness meter?

I like this so far... and yeah the story is decent. It has a very Castlevania vibe where you're the bad guy working to increase Dracula's army.

The Red Skeleton misses his beloved, and the red skulls you find throughout the stages remind him of her, I guess? That's why he trades you Curios for them. But you don't just get the Curio power... he sends you to some secret skeleton zone that's like a mini level where you learn to use that Curio.

lol this mirror character... he tells you your various playthrough stats... "I'm not a mirror!"

woah, I think I just completed a sidequest on accident... this gold knight wanted to get stronger or something... and then I destroyed a lantern above him by airdashing through it too many times, and the lantern oil fell on him and turned him red, increasing his strength somehow.

oh, and I found out that donating to those weird spirits that float overtop of pots... well I did one of them at least, gives you access to upgrades for your Curios, in exchange for even more money.

Screenshots of first level:

A Hat in Time screenshots log part 7 (finale)

Wow that Mafia rocket race... that's like a way harder version of Koopa the Quick... I had to use the scooter and then the time hat near the end to just barely beat him... actually it's incredibly easy if you just use the time hat alone... beating it with just the scooter alone is a fun challenge though.

Metroid Prime comprehensive playthrough part 3

Phendrana Drifts - After Research Lab escape

The closest place to use my super missiles is that east door in Ruined Courtyard.

This leads through a short Quarantine Cave.

The Phazon radiation given off by Thardus negates auto-targeting systems, preventing lock-on. It may be possible to acquire alternate targets with a different Visor. The chaotic nature of Phazon irradiation leads to instability in its structural integrity. Thardus can encase targets in ice, and its colossal size and strength make it a formidable opponent.

This boss battle against the phazon rock galem Thardus is easy but very long... Actually the only reason it's easy is because of the very low damage all his attacks do to you, even on Veteran mode... It actually gets kinda hard to track him down later on when his power is causing a huge snowstorm and its too bright to use your thermal visor... and the more pieces of him you destroy, the smaller sized ball he becomes, and it makes it harder for you to hide behind the outer wall croppings...

Got the Spider Ball.

And I see there's another way I can get to now with the spider ball, that's not on the map... and a ledge I can get to later with the Grapple Beam. The path after that boss leads to the South Magmoor Caverns elevator... the top structure here is in runs and there's another spiderball path behind it leading to a white door.

A Hat in Time screenshots log part 6

I tried searching around in Subcon Forest for the 2 blue time rifts that became available, but it's such a huge level, I and the locations didn't show any useful landmarks at all... I couldn't find them after searching around for like an hour, and finding practically all of the gems and yarn pieces and tokens in the entire level...