Yeah. I also assumed it was closer to 40 but figured I would check howlongtobeat.
And yeah, if you know what you are doing you are going to be closer to the golden ending than not on any given run. But if someone is doing a genuinely blind run (rather than following gamefaqs) they have good odds of missing out on the truly optional character, missing a lot of good loot, possibly missing out on the semi-optional character, etc. Which turns “1-2” runs into “2-3”.
There is also one (three?) party members that you can potentially lose due to story related reasons and not recover before endgame.
And yeah. With a guide and some save scumming you can definitely optimize your routes. But that also kind of defeats the purpose of “enjoying” the game, at least to me.
CT is one of the all time great JRPGs… if you put the effort in.
But it is very much a product of its time between missable party members and even mechanics that penalize you for opening treasure chests too soon.
Conceptually it is cool as hell that there is something like five or six main endings and then a bunch of variants and special/joke endings. But… this is a 20-30 hour JRPG and ain’t nobody got that much time. Although, different re-releases have helped speed those up.
All in all? The big set piece moments are some of the greatest in gaming. The moment to moment are… from the early 90s. I would probably recommend grabbing a totally legit dump of your SNES cartridge, playing until you get bored/annoyed, and then watching a lore video.
Ardenfall looks good and I vaguely recall liking the 2022 demo.
But it is interesting how everything is “morrowind inspired” these days. Which was especially egregious with stuff like Dread Delusion. Those aren’t “Morrowind likes”. They are Gothic.
Sort of like back in the 10s (?) when any even slightly retro aesthetic FPS was “a DOOM game”. Which was REALLY funny with stuff like Strafe where EVERYONE hated it because it didn’t feel enough like DOOM… because it was just Quake 1.
I loved Morrowind and I loved Gothic and I loved Kings Field so all this shit is great for me. But it is real annoying and I am concerned when an otherwise amazing game will get clowned on because there was more Daggerfall or Gothic than Morrowind in the “Morrowind inspired game”.
I have long standing issues with fares and the narrative shortcuts and tropes he uses.
But yeah. Watched the first hour or so on a stream and it was pure nonsense. It shows a complete lack of understanding of what SFF even is (there is a reason we just call it “Science Fiction and Fantasy”) but even what writing is. One character can never shut the fuck up about how “I am going to get published. Were you published. PUBLISHED” because apparently this dystopic future where machine learning steals ideas from people and combine them into the best stories ever told doesn’t have ebooks.
I got on a Whitest Kids You Know kick recently and they were talking about when they jacked off one of the guys on stage in a massage parlor skit. And I think it was Trevor (RIP) who couldn’t stop laughing about how they were dumbass kids who had no idea how ANYTHING worked and that was the basis for so many of their skits.
And yeah. That is definitely the rosetta stone to fares et al’s writing. Whether they are talking about undercover cops or writing or what it means to be a child of divorce.
I mean… basically every platform is calling it an “upcoming game”. I want to say even fricking Nintendo have put it in a few sizzle reels?
Yes, it is a scientific fact that acknowledging Silksong adds at least another week until it releases. But it is also THE biggest indie game out there.