Living fossil.

Also on: @coelacanth@aggregatet.org @coelacanth@piefed.social @coelacanth@fedia.io

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • I’m deep into Mandragora Whispers of the Witch Tree this week and having a blast. Played about 19 hours and it feels like I’m about half way. The story so far has been serviceable, but I do enjoy the world quite a bit and I also think some of the characters are pretty funny and well written.

    Gameplay has been excellent, combat has the right sort of depth to it without being crazy complex and the bosses have been very enjoyable. Good patterns and fun movesets. I’m just now at the second really big story boss and he’s a doozy. As someone who isn’t huge on platforming I am also happy to say the platforming segments aren’t really a big part of the game and have been very easy.

    Character customization has been another highlight and making builds is super fun between both the PoE inspired passive tree and choosing which active skills to use and choosing which active skills to upgrade. I’m doing a dual dagger build that dipped almost immediately into the adjacent Chaos Magic tree and while probably not a power gaming choice it is great how flexible the game is in what it allows you to do. Having a lot of fun so far with Chaos Echo and Shadowstep both giving teleports to the range-deficient daggers.

    Heavily recommended if you like Souls-likes and/or Metroidvanias!

    EDIT: Forgot to mention one thing. I really appreciate this game having difficulty sliders for both Enemy Health and Enemy Damage ranging between 40-160% (default 100). I haven’t used them yet, but knowing you won’t be hard stuck on a boss and worst case can just turn down the difficulty is actually quite nice. Helps my mental.












  • Finishing up Pentiment probably later today, and it will be nice to have it over and done with. I will appreciate having played it, but I can’t say actually playing it was all that fun. It’s beautiful, it’s well-researched and it has some interesting plots and characters in it but… god damn is it ever slow. Between the laboriously slow and often banal and uninteresting conversations and the lack of fast travel leading to half your playing time being watching your character slowly waddling across Tassing the game feels like an absolute slog to play.

    I’ve been breaking up the tedium with Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree. I’ve had my eye on it as it’s written by Bloodlines-writer Brian Mitsoda, and at 25% off on the summer sale I thought why not.

    It’s a Metroidvania Soulslike with a skill tree inspired by Path of Exile, and I’m really liking what I’m seeing so far. The combat has been solid, the build diversity seems great and the bosses have been good. The game is beautiful with a lovely art style and the level design is really good too.

    From what I’ve seen so far I recommend checking it out if you like these types of games!