Report #52: March 2025
Beaten This Month š„³
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ENDLESSā¢ Space 2
Took a while to get into, but proved a lovely 4x
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The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Great storytelling, mediocre game design
Also Played š
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Fallout: New Vegas
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Hollow Knight
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Persona 4 Golden
Added to Steam Backlog š
Nothing. Net backlog change is -3 so far this year. Chipping awayā¦
Ohhh, I have Ethan Carter but after Dear Esther I decided to take a quick break on walking sims. At least itās not too long right?
Hollow Knight is an absolute banger, where are you in the game? Also I love P3 but havenāt played any other Persona game. Still hoping to win P4 or P5 on SG at some point :)
It looks like I put 7 hours into Ethan Carter, and some of that was backtracking and redoing a couple of puzzles because of odd game design choices. The game has an open world design, but the story is linear so you can miss important information if you unknowingly skip sections. Pretty annoyingā¦
Iām taking my time with Hollow Knight - itās not my preferred genre and I think I might tire of it if I overplay it. But so far itās a lot of fun! Iāve gotten the dash and wall-leap abilities and am currently exploring the Fungal Wastes. Thereās a lot of mystery to this game, and I try not to spoil it by reading too much about it!
Thatās the way to go with Hollow Knight. I am a huge fan of 2D Metroivanias so I savored it like a treat, sank like 26 hours in one week which is insane haha
Some of the bosses can be really tricky, particularly in the beginning before you have a full moveset to take advantage of. I struggled a lot against the Soul Master, and in the 5x Watcher Knight battles. Some of the fights were very hard, but I cheesed them somehow, like the Dung Defender, Broken Vessel, or Nosk. Of all enemy encounters in the game, my favorites are still by far the fights against Hornet, and the Mantis Lords encounter. Mastering those felt so elegant.
Ugh I have to play it again. Thereās still a lot to uncover, even though I already beat the game one time.
Congratz for Endless space 2 ! I really liked 1 but found it hard to get hooked on 2. Is there one that you prefe, what hooked you on 2 ?
Thanks! I always get the feeling of having accomplished something when winning a strategy game play-through. I have the first one but havenāt touched it - did some āresearchā (i.e., typed some words into Google) and some people suggested that 2 is more of a gamey experience while 1 is more of a management sim. A lot of times when playing 4x games, I love the initial exploration/expansion phase but lose interest mid-game when you butt up against other factions and resource management becomes the main focus. ES2 kept my interest alive all the way into the endgame with quests throughout, both longer, campaign-level ones and a bunch of incidental ones. Iām sure there are other 4x games like that but itās the first one Iāve played that has had that, so a big revelation for me!
The 1st is much more simple, more āeasy to learn hard to masterā. The 2nd tbh from the bit i tried looks hard to learn lol.
Hmm i understand yes what you describe itās the problem in games like Civilization for example.
There are some more story-linear strategy games : Ixion is extremely story-centered so youāre guided by story with quests through the full game ; Company of heroes 1 has historic campaigns with missions that follow the history. Just have these ones in mind actually, the others are heavily āressources-managementā.