Topic: Pure Xbox Game Club - Rise of the Tomb Raider (May)

@LtSarge fair enough, I didn't think of that. I might persevere for the achievements as I'm getting close to 100k so every little helps lol.

So I started earlier today and so far I'm really enjoying it. Mainly sticking to the story for now, although given some of the comments above I think that's a good idea! I did come across one off-story dungeon which seemed to have different paths - got to the end and most of the stashes were locked behind barriers I couldn't open. Guess I'll unlock the ability later, but I'll hold off trying any more until I get a bit further into it.

@dmcc0 You can actually unlock those barriers right away! You'll need to find and shoot eight red switches spread across the level, as well as a yellow key and do the dungeon fast enough under a set amount of minutes. The rewards are not that great though, one of them will give you a prismatic core though so that's definitely worth it considering you need them to progress through the story.

Ah, right. I did see the secondary objective to get the key but I wasn't paying attention at the start or the level so didn't actually know why I was looking for the key - I just saw the little box I'm the corner of the screen tracking the progress. The timer ran down long before the end anyway and I didn't hit all the switches either so wouldn't have made any difference.

I never managed to finished Recore when it came out i got to mission 10 the Eden tower and got to the 3rd floor but just couldnt get past it. the arena had K-9s and Corebyte Caterpillar and the arena itself was radioactive.

I think Recore is a good game and but its ridiculously hard at the end which kind of left a bad taste and im still baffled they didnt address this when they did the definitive edition

@trev666 Yeah that's partly why I said that the game wasn't fitting for Game Club because of how ridiculously hard the final dungeon is. I'm on floor 5 now but I still can't believe I managed to clear floor 3 lol. The only saving grace for this part is that you get to keep the experience each time you die, so you can technically just keep doing it over and over again while also grinding levels.

I've also heard the final boss is a real pain. At this point I think it'd be a miracle if I actually manage to finish this game.

@LtSarge Well, that doesn't bode well for me actually finishing the game either. I had to take a break from Horizon Zero Dawn when that came out because of his frustrated I got with parts of that game, but I loved the game otherwise so much that I did eventually finish it. This is not me damning ReCore, or discouraging others enjoying it to continue, but for me I have not enjoyed the game anywhere near to that level, so it would make it harder for me to continue to sink time into something when I have so many other options.

Again, not saying I won't go back to it at some point, but still a disappointing that the difficulty spikes so much after the first several hours being so enjoyable. I've actually been playing on my PS4 Pro recently, which is why I've taken a break. Finally finishing Uncharted 2 Remastered, which is either my all time favorite or 2nd favorite game, and then I was planning on playing Days Gone if I didn't go back to this since I never played that originally either. Days Gone or a potentially controller breaking experience? Hmmm.... lol

Why they didnt put difficulty levels in this game baffles me. I dont mind if a game has difficulty levels then if im struggling then in can drop it down a level or two so i can complete it.

@trev666 Not really sure. I don't usually have that problem, as like I said I just pushed through games that frustrate me like Horizon Zero Dawn, but I did do it with Final Fantasy 7 Remake. So, in other words the option is nice to have, especially for games that have sudden difficulty spikes like ReCore.

Again, I'm not trying to discourage people from joining in on this month's game, but the reason for the average review scores became apparent after a pretty good beginning to the game. If somebody can manage to hold onto that enjoyment longer than I did, great.

@KilloWertz Yeah if that's how you feel then you should probably stop while you're ahead. There's nothing more annoying than playing a game for multiple hours, get to the end and encounter a difficulty spike that hinders you from continuing at the pace you've been going.

Well I can proudly say that I'm one of the 3% who has finished the game now and it took me about 11 hours in total. In all honesty, the floors do get easier after the third one, and the final boss wasn't too bad once you figure out how to defeat it. But yeah, I'm so FREAKING glad that I'm done with this game. So much potential for a compelling gameplay system only to be ruined by outdated game design that forces you to explore the open world that you don't even want to explore and go through end levels that are incredibly repetitive and frustratingly annoying to get through. Oh and the ending was absolutely terrible and not satisfying at all after all the trouble you've gone through at the end.

I'm so glad to be finally done with this game. So, so glad.

@LtSarge Don't sound so positive...

Yeah, I think I'm just going to call it. Might go back to it if I have a ton of time and want to take a break from what I'm actually playing, but not right now at least.

I guess I'm just a curse since this was the first time I've ever participated in this.

What's your name on PSN? Just wondering since I've been playing on there recently.

@KilloWertz Well I'm happy to be Game Club's guinea pig and warn people beforehand. I sure would've appreciated a warning before starting this game lol.

It's "Sadodee". Kind of an old PSN username so apologies if you might get confused about who I am down the line, lol. Don't feel like changing it to LtSarge either because Sony's system seems to cause problems with older PlayStation games if you change your username.

so i take it your not going to do the recore dlc "the eye of obsidian "

@KilloWertz with games that frustrate me i turn down the difficulty so they dont frustrate me rather than pushing through. With horizon zero dawn that got hard so i played it on easy rather than force myself to do it on normal difficulty

@trev666 Absolutely not. I looked it up as well and the description seems to suggest just more of the same with new overworlds and more dungeons with the same generic rewards. Moreover, the story aspect of ReCore wasn't that great to begin with, so the DLC is definitely not for me. At this point I just want to forget this game ever existed lol. It's been a very long time since a game has genuinely made me so frustrated with it.

@LtSarge It's fine. I'll remember. I have maybe 10 people at most that are actually active people on PSN, so it's not hard to keep track of people.

@trev666 That probably would have made more sense than getting frustrated enough to take a break from Horizon Zero Dawn. At least I had enough sense to do it with Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Loved that game.

Played a bit more over the weekend and still sticking to the story missions at the moment. Got the second companion with the rail climbing ability which I quite enjoyed - kept the platforming varied which was nice although there were a couple of bits that were pretty frustrating. All going well until I got the third companion. At this point I'm still just following the story objectives and have to cross a pretty big expanse of....nothing much really. The third companion opens up an area called Shifting Sands and looks to be a big open area and the objective is on the other side.

I just took a straight line to the objective (a tower I think), but the enemies here seem to be a lot stronger than before - I died quite a few times before I made it to the other side, but got there eventually. So I get to the entrance only to find I don't have enough prism cores to open the door - not just a couple short mind, I've literally got half the amount I need. Now I do recall a level earlier where not having enough cores to open a door was part of the story and the objective changed to having to find more cores, but not this time. Literally no clues as to how many I needed to open the door until I get there and the objective is still to enter via the door. Looks like I'm going to have to backtrack to collect more - there are a lot scattered around the map so hopefully shouldn't take too long.

I feel like it should be clearer in-game what you need to progress to the next area rather than just dump it on you when you get there; usually in these types of games I'd expect to be able to progress the story without having to go too far out of my way for collectables, or give an explicit "You NEED to collect these to progress". I suppose it's worse that at no point previous (apart from the bit that was part of the story) was I short of these items for progression to then suddenly have nowhere near enough is pretty jarring. I guess if I'd been a couple short on occasion before now it would be more obvious that you need to collect them as you go, but to get this far into the game for it to suddenly go "Yeah, you're supposed to collect those" is really frustrating.

I'll crack on with it for now, but if it turns into a collectathon then I'm out I think - a bit of a shame really as I was enjoying it up until this point.

@dmcc0 Yeah I'm afraid that's going to happen with most people who play this game for the first time. You're not really compelled to explore the open world and so you'll reach areas where you can't progress because you haven't collected enough prismatic cores. It happened to me as well and that's when I started disliking the game more.

Do keep in mind that you need 30 prismatic cores in order to finish the game. There should be plenty of ones to find in the first couple of areas and honestly, it didn't take that long for me to grab the necessary amount. But it still felt so pointless because it wasn't fun exploring and finding them.

Totally understandable if you decide to skip it because it's hard to justify playing it beyond this point. The final dungeon consists of five floors that have frustrating platforming and firefights and it's definitely going to test your patience, especially if you're under-levelled.

@LtSarge Do I need to do any of the additional dungeons to get the required prisms, or are they more for companion upgrades/loot? There did look to be plenty of prisms dotted about the map, but wish I'd made more of an effort to get them now TBH. I'll maybe spend a couple of evenings mopping up some of the prisms and see how I go - maybe try the odd dungeon if I feel like it, but from what you've said I'm not confident I'm going to finish it.

@dmcc0 No, in fact the dungeons are probably the least time efficient way of getting more prisms because most of the rewards are just blueprints for your companion. You can get at most two prisms for clearing a dungeon, but that also requires fulfilling one of the requirements (e.g. finding all eight red switches or the yellow key). On the other hand, in the first area where Joule's Crawler is, you can find 4-5 prisms scattered around that you can access with your companions and it takes around 15 minutes or so to get them all. Dungeons will take much longer, not to mention if you're not even sure where to find all the switches and the yellow key. Looking up a guide will take up even more of your time, so the best thing would be to just grab the prisms that are in the overworld and not in the dungeons if you want to save time. Like I mentioned, it didn't take a long time for me to grab the necessary amount. I had 19 once I reached the 30 requirement and so I went back and grabbed the ones in the overworld and got 11 more in just an hour. So it definitely shouldn't take more than one evening for you.