Humanity

@spunkyhepanda: The game has plenty of broken builds. Nerfing a few extremely overpowered weapons has just made everyone move on to the next best meta. So instead of using the Sword of Night etc everyone is just going to use the Rivers of Blood build instead. When From eventually nerfs that build people will steadily move down the ladder until every special and unique weapon in the game is no more special than regular smithing stone weapons, which defeats the purpose of them being unique in the first place. Single player PVE games certainly need balance but that usually comes in the form of making things more palatable for the player by reducing roadblocks - as they have done with Radahn which is good as many people were having problems with that particular boss fight.

Considering how much content was cut or held back from retail release and is now being trickled back into the game through patches it's not very surprising something like this exists. It's obviously not intentional and a result of the somewhat rushed release they decided on.

Tunic just released in both retail and Game Pass capacity to an unsuspecting Game Pass audience. This is great news because Tunic is absolutely excellent and worth every penny, but you can't argue with free if you're a Game Pass subscriber (as much as free is free when you subscribe to a service etc etc etc.)

Anyway - Tunic is a game that on the surface seems to be inspired by classic Zelda with it's isometric view, cutting of grass, throwing of bombs and so forth, but as you play on you realize it shares a lot more DNA with something like Fez instead. While you run around and complete dungeons and engage in cartoony violence against slimes and skeletons, there is an entire level of puzzles and secrets laced throughout the DNA of this game that makes it extremely exciting but also difficult to talk about. Quite literally most of the games core mechanics are in fact spoilers as I wouldn't want to rob anyone of the discovery. Tunic is very good at pulling off that trick where you learn a game mechanic that makes you think "oh wow.. so I was able to do that from the very start?!" It has a ton of secret passageways, shortcuts, and mechanics that make this an excellent speedrun candidate. What is surprising is that it's no pushover either. The combat can be challenging, especially if you encounter certain enemies earlier than planned. For instance I faced the first "boss" of the game with your beginning stick and through my experience with Elden Ring decided I just need to "get good" and beat this baddie. It didn't occur to me that the game intended for me to have found a stronger weapon at that point that would have made that encounter a lot of trivial. That sort of free-flowing exploration is both a boon and a curse on Tunic. Personally I think the boss should have been gated behind the tool that you are meant to have before facing it. Likewise while I love all the hidden pathways you find, it does mean that after a while you end up rubbing against all walls on every screen looking for that hidden off-camera path leading to another delightful chest.

All that said I am having an absolute blast with Tunic. Deaths Door was already a great little game with fun secrets but Tunic really takes that mentality to that "Fez" level you just don't see much in games anymore. So while I strongly encourage anyone who has Game Pass to take a break from Elden Ring and boot this game up and give it a shot, I would also implore everyone in this thread to heavily use spoiler tags when discussing anything more in depth.

SH2 and SH3 are the best in the franchise and then it’s a steep plummet in quality afterwards. SH2 is very much it’s own thing but SH3 has direct ties to the first game so it’s a good thing they played through it if they ever decide to keep going with the series.

@atheistpreacher: There are still plenty of broken weapons in the game. You are welcome to now shift your focus onto the next broken "I win" button and respec accordingly to use it. If you are going to use the most OP broken build the game has to offer every time because otherwise you feel like you're cheating yourself out of a fully optimized experience then as you said, the whole thing is a foregone conclusion. Plenty of people will play the game normally and rely on those methods when they need to. You are describing a very "you" mentality that doesn't necessarily represent the psychology of every person out there. I've had that sword for ages and I've had the ability to respect and use it but I didn't because nothing so far has pushed me to the edge where I felt that I couldn't handle things playing a "middle ground" of fair. I love stomping over enemies but I do want some pushback and thats what I'm getting with the option of an "easy button" if I ever need it. Of course when it comes to Soul games the idea of fair is extremely volatile to begin with. A true fair playthrough would have you ignore 90% of the games mechanics in order to attain some sort of honor against lines of code.

Ultimately I'm not saying this nerf ruined the game or anything. I do think nerfing OP builds in a single player game where you face off against AI is just silly because people will just go ahead and find the next OP build and document it for everyone online so that if you want to engage in that meta you can.

@efesell: Well that’s the thing, you don’t have to summon that mimic to fight for you, I consider all the overpowered stuff to be a built in mechanic for people that simply can’t get through a boss and that’s their way out. Or for people that just don’t like a boss and are tired of trying to fight them “for real” and want to move on.

I just think the game has more serious issues at the moment they should be focusing on rather than making sure you don’t have it “too easy”. Hopefully the team making balance changes are separate from the folks working (hopefully?) on the technical issues.

@efesell: Well that’s the thing, you don’t have to summon that mimic to fight for you, I consider all the overpowered stuff to be a built in mechanic for people that simply can’t get through a boss and that’s their way out. Or for people that just don’t like a boss and are tired of trying to fight them “for real” and want to move on.

I just think the game has more serious issues at the moment they should be focusing on rather than making sure you don’t have it “too easy”. Hopefully the team making balance changes are separate from the folks working (hopefully?) but n the technical issues.

@ll_exile_ll: The main feature of the map markers is that they’re supposed to show you where NPCs have moved to since a lot of the time they will change location without a hint to where they went.

The NPC quests were finished before the game shipped and were simply cut before release for whatever reason - this had been data mined and confirmed.

As for balance changes well, it’s mostly a single player game so I don’t see any reason why they would feel the need to balance weapons. Part of the fun is making an incredibly powerful build. Most bosses in this game are more than happy to one shot you and have insane amounts of HP so having overpowered weapons that you still need proper stats to use and you still need to farm upgrade materials to make them fully “broken” didn’t really seem like an issue to me. It’s not like you just stumbled into these things that were an instant win button - just like summoning and cheese strats it was a choice.

If anything this is a reason to wait longer. Seeing that From are fixing NPC quest lines just now and adding functions that were cut before release because they ran out of time makes you wonder how much is left to add back before the game is feature complete.

Imagine being a monster that showers in the morning. The only time I showered in the morning was was back in college when I was renting a room in a house and the landlord who lived in the basement complained that the pipes made too much noise at night when I showered so I was forced to go to bed filthy after an entire day.