Control

[Delphouneso]

15 minutes ago, GarethRDR said:

Honestly I'm not trying to flex, and I'm not great at video games (I am just coming off getting platinum on Bloodborne though.. and that is a flex, I earned it) but the only bosses that took me more than one attempt were Tommasi (3) because the invisible enemy jumped me a couple of times until I learned to just go ham on Tommasi and ignore everything else, and Anchor (4) where all my deaths were from falling off the platforms because I'd just picked up levitate and hadn't got the hang of it yet and kept accidentally releasing it thinking I could double jump.

 

15 minutes ago, GarethRDR said:

Mind you, second playthrough I knew to ignore Melee and sink points into Launch ASAP

This is probably why I didn't struggle, and found it repetitive. I like to go all in on damage at the expense of HP/defence when I'm playing any game with RPG elements so I pumped every point into launch/energy early on, and it's just ridiclously powerful so the game just becomes R1 spam until you run out of energy.

I'm usually the kind to min/max my stats/weapons in games like this, I love the idea of all the weapon types and mods, but actually I've barely touched them. I got a level 2 +34% damage mod for grip early on and that's still what I'm using, and I just use it as something to do while my energy regens. Some real variation would be amazing, so I could do a playthrough with a launch build where I prioritise launch damage / energy / energy regen at the expense of defensive stats, or a melee build where I could focus on melee damage / killstreak buffs / dodge mods, or a gun build, a tanky shield build etc. But there isn't really any specialisation, you can unlock every ability in one playthrough, and most of the mods are just clutter. Not to mention the gun combat is pretty damn clunky, melee combat is a complete non-entity, and as above launch is just far and away the best ability.

The whole mod system feels kinda similar to the Division, only the Division did it better, and that system was far from perfect.

[Delphouneso]

Also my game is bugged so I can't complete Arish's 'Put a Record On' mission, it just keeps putting me in a standard expedition (and the mission never completes which is infuriating), and those things are difficult, particularly if you roll a nasty modifier like -50% energy, as I did first time.

[GarethRDR]

4 minutes ago, Delphouneso said:

and most of the mods are just clutter.

Oh ever so much.  For the personal mods, I wouldn't even look at anything beyond health+ and health gain from source+ for the first 2 slots, the only way to offset Jesse being made of glass.  Once I got my head around just how useful the Sieze ability could be, third slot went to Seize speed+ and none of the multitude of others got close to them.  Having to stop every 20 mins to break down redundant mods was a slog. 

I think my first go was so tough because I (mistakenly) approached it from a defensive, almost cover-shooter mentality and you just get punished playing like that, you need to be constantly moving and keeping the pressure on.  You nailed it from the get-go. 

Ooft on the Expedition glitch.  I made it past level 1 before swearing off of it at the time, again the rewards are pish if you don't happen to have a lucky roll on the mods you get.  A fun place to revisit once you've got Surge and the unique DLC weapon mods though, and you know which order to approach the islands in (for me it was survive enemy waves - hold satellites - find rangers - furnace, I think the difficulty scales with each island so leaving the two where you can ignore the enemies and rush through until the end seemed to work, doesn't hurt to familiarise yourself with the possible ranger/cube spawn points either).

I give the game a lot of latitude on it's faults because I loved, loved, loved the story and setting so much.  And any soundtrack that includes Porcupine Tree = 

[Delphouneso]

1 minute ago, GarethRDR said:

I give the game a lot of latitude on it's faults because I loved, loved, loved the story and setting so much.  And any soundtrack that includes Porcupine Tree = 

Yeah this is completely where I'm at, but maybe I'm just not as forgiving, particularly with the performance issues and bugs I've had. It's not just the soundtrack for me either but the sound production as a whole on this game is great, the ambient atmospherics, the tape recordings, the radios and radio stations, it's all done brilliantly. I genuinely really like everything about the game.. except the gameplay, hence my original point about it maybe making a better TV show than a game. It's like JJ Abrams took a a bash at a superhero story, a kind of Lost/Fringe/Captain Marvel mash-up only I'm playing the lead role when I'd sooner just sit back and enjoy. I felt myself rushing through areas and bypassing enemies because I just wanted to progress to the next story point.