Returnal

I presume you lose all artifacts when you die as well?

Yeah I've seen corrupt stuff, which I've been avoiding because, you know, corruption. Sounds bad 😅

Do you have the sword unlocked? Melee is very powerful.

9 hours in and still can't get Phrike. Phase 3 is so hard. Man this game is tough.

Phrike is proper difficult.

I just pissed through biome 4 and boss on second attempt. Easiest part of the game so far, helped in large part by picking up an absolute beast of a hollowseeker which came fully equipped with some purple orb of death which appears every few seconds to melt any enemy unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity.

Agreed. The music in general is brilliant but that boss approach was another level. Took me a while to realise it was all a rearranged Don’t Fear The Reaper!

Recently started playing this. My first few hours were a struggle. Probably took 5 or so attempts to defeat the first boss, as I kept stumbling into them with either a crap weapon or no health.

Finally managed to do it and progressed to the second area. Initially the difficulty continued to be high, but I started to get to grips with it and actually managed to defeat the boss on my first attempt in a really fantastic battle. Got proper Souls-like feeling of triumphing over a real challenge, as I scrapped through with only 1 or 2 hits left.

The third area seems okay, except for arsing flying rocket robots. No clue how I'm supposed to deal with them, as the rockets home in on you, are pretty much impossible to dodge and direct hit will kill you in just a couple of hits (or a couple more if just caught in the splash). As soon as there is more than 4 or so of these appearing than I feel fucked. I'm really enjoying the game, but finding this particular enemy really frustrating.

The new weapons that have been unlocked also feel ill-suited to most of the enemies, particularly the rot launcher thing, which is far too slow (I thought the rocket launcher would be good, but not had much luck with it). The hollowseeker seems by far the best.

45 deaths, 12 hours and still haven't beaten Phrike. I know how Selene feels 😅

The melee sword is your friend too. And rush, don't hold back.

I struggled at first as I like to hang back and pick things off and then go in and finish the rest. That doesn't work in this at all.

Mostly true, but I do find the best way to handle the flying ones that glow red and swoop at you is to stay clear of the fuckers. They have a habit of surrounding you and you just get attacked from all angles. My best solution was to screw the money and just take them out at range.

True ending doesn't take that much longer if you're still in the mood for more...

I took a break at that point before the update. All I’ll say is you don’t need to do biome 2 again, just rinsing through 1 should be enough. That section is definitely the hardest in the game though, biome 3 can seriously fuck you up.

Look at the GoTY thread for your answer.

Its also something that you can play for the sake of playing with no real goal. If youre struggling to find inspiration with your backlog, its something you can happily just blast through for an hour.