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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3310 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 26, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Video games thread:

Back to Silksong after a few weeks break. A difficulty tweak mod made the game much more enjoyable for me. If you're in a similar boat to me — if you enjoyed HK1 but thought the Radiance ending challenges were too much, enjoyed the difficulty of early FromSoft games but thought they crossed a line around Sekiro/Elden Ring — I recommend the following changes to the config file, as the defaults trivialize the game a bit too much: 2x -> 1.5x Player damage, 2x -> 1.6x rosaries, disable Tool regen. On the other hand, consider changing the health regen to every 1 second; it only starts after you're 12 seconds damage free, so it won't make the boss gameplay much easier, but will make runbacks less tedious.

On my first post I complained that there's not enough exploration in Silksong. I'm glad to say the situation improves a lot once you read the Citadel at the top of the map. It acts as a massive hub area disconnected from the main fast travel network, with many hidden areas you can discover and tackle in different orders, lots of unlockable shortcuts, etc.

I can now recommend the game with a few reservations.

Battlefleet Gothic Armada II. Basically a Total War game for space navies. Lots of factions, lots of ships. Hard to tell them apart, a lot of the time, but at least I can pause and check. Gameplay is satisfying. I don’t love the focus on casting abilities and maneuvers; they feel too reactive, like a very low APM tax. I’d rather set up the pieces and watch them duel. Boarding, though, easily earns its keep. I particularly enjoy that it distinguishes subfactions like Space Marines. Why are enemies terrified of a puny 1,000 marines? Because they’ll teleport onto your bridge.

Excellent visual and sound design, as expected from a GW license. The biggest exception has to be the protagonist. His deliveries are flatter than the literal undead. We’re talking VN levels of white bread. Which, since it’s the Imperium, has that self-abnegating zealot crunch…but come on.

Some extra Clair Obscur thoughts (I'm at the second Axon fight rn)

  • the party composition reminds me of adult-only VNs: there's a hard cap on one human male in the party to avoid accusations of NTR. Maybe this changes in Act 3 (I've seen cosmetics for party members I don't have yet), but don't spoil this for me
  • the Act 1/Act 2 changeover reminded me of D&D stories about players that only play one character build with different names. It's totally a different dude, he has a white forelock and a scar!
  • I feel like Sciel is missing her share of character development. She's just... there.
  • Gradient counters are my bane

I will need a different build soon, as the damage cap is spoiling my current approach:

  • Lune is there to put the initial burn on the enemy party, then heal when needed or use Mayhem (the one that burns all your taints)
  • Sciel exploits the burn with the skill that jumps to burning enemies and hits the remaining one next turn if necessary
  • Maelle doesn't use the skills or stances at all (other than the shield-busting one). I've put a bunch of Luminae on her basic attack (double strike, +50% attack, +50% attack on the first turn, +50% attack after a free shot, +Powerful on self, +Defenceless on the enemy etc) and gave her the rapier that applies burn, this allows her to deal 3-5k per hit and keep the enemy Defenceless and everyone else to deal 5k-9999 damage per skill hit, plus 9999 burn damage every turn.

The problem with this is that 9999 burn damage per turn used to be the reliable killer of everything, but the bosses are getting too tanky now. If Lune or Sciel run out of AP or are incapacitated, the damage output drops quickly. I could theoretically mod the game to have 99999 damage cap and keep burning, but I'd rather look for a new build that can reliably hit the damage cap on multi-hit skills.

As substantialfrivolity says, the damage cap can be removed later, but honestly I'm wondering why you're concerned. In Act 1 and 2, none of the enemies aren't really tough enough that you need to break the damage cap to win easily. If I had any criticisms of the combat in the game, it's that a lot of mechanics seemed to be balanced around post game and new game+, such that you never need to learn or use them in the course of beating the game's story.

I'm wondering because I've noticed a negative trend. I sometimes need more than two turns to plow through trash mobs.

UPD: After calming down I have rehashed my luminae and can now reliably eliminate trash mobs in one turn again:

  • Lune starts with 8AP and can either cast the highest level fire-all spell or shoot down fliers and shields and cast the regular fire-all spell
  • Maelle uses either her base attack if there's a tanky mob left or the skill that makes everyone Defenseless
  • Sciel uses either her multi-hit skill if there's a tanky mob left or the skill that propagates to burning enemies
  • anyone left standing dies to 9999 burn damage when they try to take their turn

The only potential annoyance is fire-absorbent mobs.

FYI, you get the ability to break the damage cap in act 3. So hang on to those big hit builds, they'll come back in usefulness.

Interesting tactical puzzle game: Tactical Nexus

If Into the Breach can be considered a degenerate version of X-Com, then Tactical Nexus can be considered a degenerate version of Into the Breach. But "degenerate" in this context is not necessarily pejorative.

The goal is to beat towers full of static enemies. As enemies are defeated, the player obtains experience, attack, defense, health, and keys. Multiplicative upgrades to experience and health are rare and valuable. When the player character levels up, he can upgrade his attack or defense, or he can get keys. The player must strategize regarding the order in which the enemies should be defeated and the items should be obtained. Depending on how well the player does in beating a tower, he can unlock medals that can be used to make other towers easier.

The first two of the game's eight "chapters" are provided for free. The developer claims that the full game can satisfy a player for ten thousand hours, and that even the free parts are good for one thousand hours.

I haven't retro gamed in a while, and an earnest revisit of Mechwarrior 3 has been on my todo list forever. So I installed it on my K6-2+ with a CH Flightstick.

The good! If you pine for the days of mech construction following tabletop rules, rejoice! Every mech is a virtual blank slate, limited only by it's max weight. This is a feature modded into virtually every Mechwarrior game without it, although it does tend to render mechs a purely aesthetic choice. This is probably the most simulation oriented Mechwarrior also, developed by Microprose in their heyday.

The different. Heat and ammo are brutal. Painfully accurate to the tabletop, one ton of AC10 is literally 10 shots. 10 shots easily missed with the slow speed of the projectile and poor feedback IMHO of how you need to lead. The shot just isn't terribly visible to see where it's gone, whether you hit or miss. I also find myself overheating virtually 99% of the time. Firing medium lasers. I'm not sure that's possible in MW5, but maybe my expectations are set with all the end game goodies I've grown accustomed to in that game. But still, all tabletop accurate. Pulse lasers are weird, and you need to hold a beam on the target for them to do anything. I think I prefer just regular old lasers at this point as they are the most reliable virtually hitscan weapon.

The ugly. MW3 has issues. On systems that are too fast the physics are horribly bugged. The slightest jostle and the physics over react and send objects into orbit at light speed. This isn't noticeable on my K6-2, and I think it's a good fit for the game, but I notice the keyboard randomly stops working, or I get stuck a lot. No clue what that's about, but it's caused me to have to alt-f4 the game and restart it. Joystick never stops working though. And once shutting down my mech and restarting it got me unstuck on whatever had hung me up.

Anyways, wish me luck.

I played 3,4 and 5, 3 was by far my most favorite(people saying 2 is best but its 3D is way too early for me). Best mission briefings i ever saw in milsim\simulation games. Im very picky about what i believe in games, MW3 briefings felt authentic.

Never really had your issues, have you looked up guides on pcgamingwiki and reddit? My only problems was what they give you Bushwalker from the start, which is one of best medium mechs ever. Not easy to go up from here.

Well, so far as heat/ammo problems, I think I just need to commit to be ER LLaser sniper with lots of double heat sinks.

As for the others, who knows. One thing I did notice was that it appeared my mouse was only registering inputs sporadically. My working theory was that a click only registered if it occurred over the span of a frame. I'd noticed it in other games, but it finally annoyed me enough to start trying shit. So I uninstalled the Logitech Mouseware drivers I put on the system to get the mousewheel to work, and it went away. I'm curious if that had anything to do with the keyboard problems too, but we'll find out.

Old hardware, amiright?

MW2 will always have a special place in my heart. Something about the ambient music, the flat shaded graphics, and the utterly alien and somewhat abstract level design felt like a perfect encapsulation of how terrifyingly other the Clans are.

yeah, this looks like framerate bug, check this: https://old.reddit.com/r/mechwarrior/comments/504h3z/stonewalls_tips_to_fixing_bouncing_apcshd_gaming

This hardware is legitimately too old for it to be that. Its a K6-2 system only a year removed from its release date.

I remember back in MW3 my best setup was 2 or 3 ER large lasers + the rest heat sinks. You can snipe most enemy mechs from out of their range that way, with some heat management.

ER PPCs are good for a similar approach. My personal favorite (not best) setup Mech was in MW4, a Daishi crammed full of clan MGs. It's not necessarily the most powerful (though it does a surprising amount of work), but it's just so much fun to have that much dakka.

I just keep going back to Starship Troopers Extermination. Its 16 player player vs computer (bugs). Not a perfect game by any means, but I just don't want to be in PvP matches, and this game saves me from that.

I play with a light military sim discord which makes things way more fun. 1stmi.gg

Ahh I remember joining one of those back in the day it was fun. Maybe I’ll hop on with you sometime.

Is it me or does Silksong gameplay make the player rely on tools and spells way more than Hollow Knight? In particular, flying enemies seem much more of a menace, constantly dipping out of reach of the primary weapon while often chucking projectiles at you. If I'm stuck in an arena with multiple of those I basically have to blast them quickly with a spell or I'll be toast. I don't envy the "nail only" gimmick players.

The first vendor sells traps that hang in midair, they're very good on flying enemies but I do resent having to keep refilling them.

I got up to the swamp biome before moving on from SilkSong, but from my understanding all flying enemies were programmed and placed to be as annoying as possible. Also for some reason they share the same hp as tankier, slower, ground based enemies.

Some parts of the game are very high qualities, but in others you can tell that it could have used more QA or a larger consensus on what they were doing.

I am far more nail reliant in Silksong than I was spell-reliant in HK, partly because the upgraded spells in HK were just completely OP. It always kind of hurts to use tools because shards are not actually that easy to rapidly acquire if you are aggressively using tools.

I do greatly appreciate tool repair being free for some tough act 3 battles.

Still playing Clair Obscur. It kinda reminds me of Wes Anderson's films (before he completely fell into self-parody). My lexicon utterly fails me in my quest to describe what I mean without somehow confusing it with Whedonesque snark. I can only explain it by using an analogy.

Have you ever been to a Bobby McFerrin concert? The first few minutes are quite unsettling if you're there in person: an old black guy takes the stage with his co-singers and waits for the applause to die down, the audience falls silent, he raises the mic to his lips and starts babbling like a crazy hobo. You know that's what was supposed to happen, but you are still gripped by the "wrongness", that "that's not how you do things" sensation that quickly dissipates as the babbling turns into a melody, and you sit back and enjoy the next ninety minutes.

In that metaphor, what's the babbling?

The Gestrals, I guess. And Esquie.

Hades 2 came out yesterday! I just got into Act 3 on Silksong but........ now I have Hades 2!

Like Silksong, I find difficulty in describing it other than "more of the same game, in a good way". New enemies, new weapons, new buffs, new mechanics, but the same general gameplay loop and overall feel. I especially like that since the main enemy is Chronos, there's a rare event where he ambushes you and temporarily sends you back in time for a level. And back in time is the first game! It's only happened to me once so I'm not sure how robust it is, but it was an instance of an old map with old enemies that would be in the same spot in the run that I was when I got ambushed. That's definitely a cool throwback mechanic.

I will note that the artstyle and characters seem a little bit.... woker? It's nothing too egregious, and it was a little bit like this in the first game, but just the levels of androgyny, the ratio of more female characters, the lore of being Witches, and the weighting of visual sexualization weighted more towards male characters than female ones generally gives off lefty vibes. Heck, Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation, and is straight up naked in the game (though conveniently self-censoring with arms and hair) looks like a lesbian.

Again, it's nothing too egregious, and the gameplay and story are still good overall so far. It's just a mild annoyance.

Heck, Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation, and is straight up naked in the game (though conveniently self-censoring with arms and hair) looks like a lesbian.

I don't know what sort of lesbians you're hanging out with, but that is definitely not lesbian presenting.

https://www.lovepanky.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/lesbian-stereotypes-1.jpg

Not like the short haired butch kind, the feminine one in the pair. I don't think lesbians adhere to the top-bottom dynamic quite as strictly as male homosexuals due, since there isn't a sexual requirement to, but often you'll see a masculine obviously lesbian paired with a more feminine one who sometimes passes for straight but is sometimes almost-but-not-quite-straight-presenting. I dunno, I haven't put a ton of thought into pinning down a strict definition, it's just a sort of vibe I've seen in certain lesbian pairings. But I think it makes sense in theory, given that some lesbians are attracted to feminine features, some will maintain enough feminine features to attract them.

But on further thought, I'm not sure if I've seen it in real lesbians or only games/tv/movies...

This is your brain on online gender war.

I don't think it's a war thing. Different archetypes of personality just tend to look certain ways. Have you never noticed? Like nerd glasses or problem glasses, or dark eyeliner, or cowboy boots, or tank tops, or half-buzz-cut, or high heels. You can't automatically and definitively ascertain someone's entire personality from how they look, but you can often make a decent guess. Because people tend to dress like and emulate people they respect and admire, which often happens to be people with similar personalities, so they end up looking similar to each other.

I will note that the artstyle and characters seem a little bit.... woker?

Most obvious with Hestia, who they drew as a fat black woman with vitiligo. That one attracted enough notice at the time that it has a KnowYourMeme page. The vitiligo representation thing always feels a bit surreal when I encounter it outside of Tumblr art. It's the sort of thing I didn't predict penetrating the mainstream corporate world, but apparently there's no actual limit and SJW Tumblr art fads will show up at Target years later.

The architecture behind her is fucked up too.

Would have been too spicy to make her a white woman with soot on her face, I guess.

While i have issues with wokeness in Hades 2 Hestia isn't really it.

She is the goddess of the hearth and having skin like coal and ash feels like a thematically appropriate take. I didn't even consider that they tried to do something ridiculous like vitiligo representation.

I got more irritated at retarded stuff like Hephaestus wheelchair or the uglification and darkening of Athena making her look like a racist caricature.

The "which way, Western man?" memes really do write themselves. On the topic of shameless box-checking representation, disabled Hephaestus was a pretty good one too.

I prefer Western Hestia over Japanese Hestia, at least the western version refers to her myth (the embers on her head referring to the hearth) and isn't just "generic large chested girl of ambiguous age".

Hephaestus is disabled in the lore, though.

Hephaestus is described in mythological sources as "lame" (chōlos) and "halting" (ēpedanos). He was depicted with curved feet, an impairment he had either from birth or as a result of his fall from Olympus. In vase paintings, Hephaestus is sometimes shown bent over his anvil, hard at work on a metal creation, and sometimes his feet are curved back-to-front: Hephaistos amphigyēeis. He walked with the aid of a stick. The Argonaut Palaimonius, "son of Hephaestus" (i.e. a bronze-smith), also had a mobility impairment. Other "sons of Hephaestus" were the Cabeiri on the island of Samothrace, who were identified with the crab (karkinos) by the lexicographer Hesychius. The adjective karkinopous ("crab-footed") signified "lame", according to Detienne and Vernant. The Cabeiri were also physically disabled.

In some myths, Hephaestus built himself a "wheeled chair" or chariot with which to move around, thus helping support his mobility while demonstrating his skill to the other gods. In the Iliad 18.371, it is stated that Hephaestus built twenty bronze-wheeled tripods to assist him in moving around.

However in those cases when he is described as lame, such as in the Illiad, he is depicted as limping, dragging his foot, and/or using a stick to walk, not a wheelchair. I strongly suspect the reason why they put him in a wheelchair is similar to why WOTC printed a Wheelchair Accessible Dungeon for D&D, because wheelchairs specifically are treated as an icon of "disabled representation".

I was wondering where the Wikipedia article you quote got this:

In some myths, Hephaestus built himself a "wheeled chair" or chariot with which to move around, thus helping support his mobility while demonstrating his skill to the other gods.

So I followed the citation and it's an essay in Rhetoric Review using "theory from the field of disability studies", and it doesn't use the term "wheeled chair" even once. Rather it describes him as riding a "proto-wheelchair" on the basis of a single cup showing him on a winged chariot. Nothing indicates this winged chariot is serving as a substitute for walking rather than as a chariot, nor is there anything about it "helping support his mobility while demonstrating his skill to the other gods". (Is it even specific to him or does there exist art of other gods in winged chariots as well?) And then the Wikipedia article makes it even worse by creating the term "wheeled chair" and putting it in quotes, so that people who don't follow the citation and get past the paywall will interpret "wheeled chair" as a literal translation of some Greek source.

In the Iliad 18.371, it is stated that Hephaestus built twenty bronze-wheeled tripods to assist him in moving around.[96]

And then this is just an egregiously false reading, it says nothing about helping him move around. They're tripods (a pot/cauldron with 3 legs to straddle a fire) that move themselves around. The same passage says "he moved to and fro about his bellows in eager haste".

I'd argue this is actually one of those areas where you can get away with it; Hephaestus is specifically the god of the forge and crafting, and does have a limp. It fits well within his character to have him develop a mechanism for easier mobility. I wouldn't object, for instance, to Artemis and Apollo being portrayed as redneck hunters armed with rifles, as it still fits well within their characters.

I feel like when situations come out like this, it's important to save ire for when the diversity for diversity's sake actually ruins the end product; like, the 2016 Ghostbusters wasn't bad because they chose an all female cast - it was bad because they didn't realize that the reason the original Ghostbusters was good was that it was more about the realities of starting a small business than it was about the paranormal. You could easily have made a 2016 "female leads" version of Ghostbusters that wasn't garbage; were I writing it, I'd have set it up as an allegory for the realities of balancing working at a small business with raising children and maintaining a household. You can even make the lead women in the show the daughters of the original cast; that way you don't shit on its legacy, while continuing to explore the themes that made the original great.

I think as long as you're sticking with the correct themes and characterization, you can get away fairly easily with including extra diversity; however, most of the people including the diversity have long since had their brains dissolved by the woke milieu, and can't write anything interesting that isn't just "diverse = good." It's not bad because of the diversity - it's bad because it's bad, and you're only seeing it because a lot of people have had their brains rewired to think 'diversity!' is the same thing as a good and interesting story, so approved it despite it's terribleness.

And, of course, religion is the perfect way to shield an inferior story (and writers), since you can just launder your failure with claims of the audience’s irreverence.

The parallels between being woke and being in a religion have definitely not gone unnoticed.

I've been playing the game for quite a bit in early access and while I enjoy it well enough this does feel like "safe horny" the game, but extended to every single character and interaction. Everything is so HR approved and "safe" that I find myself just skipping through all the dialogue. Nothing is said and while it's mildly witty at times it's never funny.

I think a major issue is that they've replaced many of the major roles with women for the sequel and they don't think it's ok to make jokes at the expense of women so what we get is a whole load of anodyne nothing.

I think a major issue is that they've replaced many of the major roles with women for the sequel and they don't think it's ok to make jokes at the expense of women so what we get is a whole load of anodyne nothing.

2015+ in a nutshell.

How do you make the goddess of beauty look that ugly? She looks like someone drew a man and then added breasts. It's truly a remarkable feat of bad art.

How do you make the goddess of beauty look that ugly? She looks like someone drew a man and then added breasts. It's truly a remarkable feat of bad art.

Have you seen any women by Michelangelo?

Can't say I have.

...she's fine? Like I can normally see where female uglification complaints are coming from even when I disagree, but I have no idea what you're on about here, she's perfectly goonable as is. Is it the shadowing on her face making her features too angular or the bracelets accentuating her pointy elbows or what?

I couldn't care less about elbows. The problem is that is straight up a man's face on a female body.

I think it’s broadly the total lack of anything approaching softness or sensuality. Hades 1 Aphrodite I’m not super keen on either but she has a coquettish pose appropriate for the Goddess of Love and Lust. This one in holding a sword and shield and looks like she wants to beat you up. Aphrodite is always dangerous but not like that.

I’m reminded of a previous post saying that one reason people liked Sydney Sweeney was that she’s one of the only models to have doe eyes and look soft and approachable rather than glaring at the camera.

Is it the shadowing on her face making her features too angular?

This, IMO.

Wait, I think that might actually be the art from Hades 1. Hades 2 is this

Slightly less masculine, slightly more lesbian.

Which I suppose partly undercuts my point about it changing. I think it's largely deliberate. They're trying to portray a sexual character but not like... actually sexy. They're trying to say "this character is sex positive, but we're not trying to appeal to straight white men, because that would be gross.

This also is related to the race-swapping of many of the Olympian gods to be black or Asian. Again, it's not like super obnoxiously egregious: it's not like the story goes out of its way to talk about them being oppressed by the white gods or something. But it's anachronistic in an obviously post-2010 progressive way.

Unfortunately your second link is broken (it goes to some decade old reddit post), so I still don't know what the Hades 2 version looks like. But it sounds like the devs are kind of slaves to the culture war, and feel the need to make everything reflect it. Which is unfortunate.

I wouldn't say "slaves to". Again, it's not too egregious, and not enough to ruin the game. But their earlier games didn't seem to have this issue quite as badly. Or maybe I just didn't notice as much because they were original fantasy worlds so they weren't race swapping classic mythology.

You can tell throughout the time that they're definitely left-leaning. Bastion had a bunch of stuff about xenophobia and colonialism being bad. I never finished transistor but it was generally anti-establishment. Pyre had a made up religion that was abused by corrupt leaders to excommunicate people they don't like. But it's never so terrible that it ruins things. None of them are ever obvious and stupid ripoffs of current events, and Pyre still has you participating in the religious rituals because it wasn't the religion itself that's bad it's just the corrupt people exploiting it.

And most importantly the core gameplay remains good enough that it makes up for the slightly offputting lefty vibes (with the exception of Transistor, which I didn't find very compelling)

But yeah, they're clearly embedded in lefty culture, if not the actual war part of it. And they seem to be gradually slipping further and further into it.

Try: https://old.reddit.com/r/TopCharacterDesigns/comments/1cctx3h/aphrodites_design_from_hades_and_its_sequel/

Thanks! Weirdly the second iteration looks way better, because she actually looks female in that one. No idea what happened in the first game.

It's the wrong way around. The armed one must be from H2, because the unarmed version was in H1.

Yeah I figured that it was the H2 version first, then the H1 version. So I did have the right order in mind when I said that the second iteration looks better.

I haven't tried patch 1.0 yet, but I did play back when the alpha was released.

From what I remember, it's not bad, but I much prefer the vibe of Hades 1. Hades 1 is just very strong thematically - at first you think your dad is kind of a bad guy, keeping you down, but as you fight your way to the surface for your first glimpse of paradise, it becomes apparent that the curse is much deeper than you know: it's in the blood. You were born condemned, to a Sisyphean quest to seek paradise but be denied access, and yet... through your failure, you make lots of friends, realize your troubles may not even be that bad compared to theirs, and well, I won't spoil the ending, but one can almost imagine Sisyphus content. It's a very deep game.

Hades 2 isn't bad, it just... it feels like Arcane season 2 compared to Arcane season 1. It would feel a lot better if its predecessor hadn't set the bar so high. And yes, as you mention, it does feel a bit woker.

Now, admittedly, I haven't played the new 1.0 patch for Hades 2 yet, so I may be missing key aspects of the story that pull things together in ways that make the game deeper. But from what I remember, Chronos sure felt like an actual bad guy, in a very cookie-cutter sense, and there didn't seem to be much thematic depth behind this, like the passage of time rendering the gods increasingly impotent or something (the main character is a witch, after all). It just felt quite shallow.

You were born condemned, to a Sisyphean quest to seek paradise but be denied access

One of the major thematic turn-offs of Hades 2 for me is that, back in Hades 1, getting to the surface distinctly felt like a proper goal given everything you have to overcome on the way. The ...events that transpire once you finally get to the surface (to avoid spoilers) only add to the payoff; Zagreus is cursed, his kin was not meant for the surface world, and even with all his willpower he cannot manage more than a few minutes to try and come to terms with what he has found, and attempt to salvage it, before he is inevitably dragged back to the underworld and has to throw himself at the challenge again and again. There is no escape, as it were. Despite only getting a small sliver of dialogue every time you beat a run, the story still visibly progresses and you can't help but get invested in it. I think Hades 1 is easily Undertale-tier meta storytelling and one of the best in-story explanations ever for the bog standard "you must do X successful runs to get the ending", it is so immaculately arranged that you barely notice the seams, especially with the little twist of not having to fight a boss on the final run.

Compare this to Hades 2, where gaining access to the surface stages is... literally just a cheap early meta unlock for Melinoe; it is complete and total immunity, and the matter is never brought up again afterwards.

I understand this was largely gameplay-story segregation since they wanted to make the surface stages actually playable, but I still feel there should have been a better way to go about it. It solidly soured the initial impression of all the overpowered witchy bullshit for me, and so far it doesn't really get better - there does not so far seem to be a problem the protag's Quirky Cast of Strong Women doesn't immediately think of a meta unlock solution for.

On my first post I complained that there's not enough exploration in Silksong. I'm glad to say the situation improves a lot once you read the Citadel at the top of the map. It acts as a massive hub area disconnected from the main fast travel network, with many hidden areas you can discover and tackle in different orders, lots of unlockable shortcuts, etc.

Lol yeah I got to the final boss of act 2 and I didn't have double jump so I knew I was missing an area, so I went hunting and I found six more biomes.

Is anyone else playing Silent Hill f? I believe @Fruck expressed interest?

Is anyone else playing Silent Hill f?

I played a bunch of it (80-90% of a first playthrough). The main complaints online I've seen are about feminist rhetoric. I think the original idea was "Hinako was traumatized by her father -> her nightmares are dominated by male-inflicted trauma". But it takes a certain amount of awareness to realize these are her own issues rather than the developers making a statement about all men.

As far as my experiences with the actual game, I've played both SH2 and SH4 in the past and it's very reminiscent of them. The combat is very awkward, difficult, slow and tedious. About what you'd expect if a teenage schoolgirl found herself in a monster-infested town with nothing but random pipes and improvised melee weaponry to defend herself with.

The main new feature is the ability to donate consumables like food and candy to shrines and get faith in return. Faith can be used to regain sanity and buy minor stat upgrades. Sanity is essentially an extra health bar that can also be used to do a bit more damage.
There's also a somewhat limited inventory system. It's not quite as suffocating as Cronos' but many people will be annoyed they can't just bring a warehouse of consumables everywhere.

There isn't much of a story for the first 8 hours or so, just "confused schoolchildren wander around the monster-infested town". But there are some eventual plot-twists and happenings I won't spoil.

Overall, I would recommend the game to Silent Hill fans and urge fans of other horror games to set their expectations low. The combat and story are very slow, especially compared to something like Leon Kennedy throwing grenades and shooting at zombie hordes with a shotgun.

Oh I am loving the absolute shit out of it so far. I have two complaints - the inventory management system is stupid, just needlessly convoluted, although that might be compounded by the second issue - I want a combat difficulty between story and hard, because the refilling of all your health and sanity with each save makes most of your inventory useless, but my heart can't handle the tension of fighting disturbingly sexy scarecrows while three hits from death at all times.

I don't know what the story is about yet and I don't want to speculate, but the characters are great so far. I am both terrified of my friends and desperate to save them, especially after the beginning and Hanako is such a melancholy protagonist, which just makes the game feel more claustrophobic.

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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