Matt James

if I'm just going to be stronger next time.

Like, I'll get it eventually.

I know I'll get it eventually because I'm going to be stronger.

And this really came to accelerate for me towards the back half of the game.

They have this system in the game, in addition to your traditional skill tree,

these carcosin modifiers.

And the idea behind this is you can take these boons that will improve certain attributes of your character as long as you balance that out with taking some negative effects.

And I tend to not like doing that kind of thing in games where you get a good thing but you have to take a bad thing.

I usually will skip that.

And I did for the most part in this game until I got to a very spongy mid-game boss where I was just like, I'm very underpowered for this.

So let me dive into this system that I haven't really looked at before, the Carcosen modifiers.

And as soon as I did that and I figured out

how to improve my damage and reduce my damage taken.

I was just flying through the back half of this game.

I one tried the last three bosses and all of the tension in the game just kind of like evaporated for me.

And at least that kind of dip in intention and gameplay came with like an uptick in the story finally kind of coming together for me.

So that was nice, I guess, but...

Yeah, it didn't have that drive for me that Returnal had because of that.

It's really good.

The way they've made all the systems integrate with each other in the combat is very satisfying.