Aeterna Noctis (2021)

I HAVE DONE IT! Turns out I was actually near the final boss the entire time. Went down the first try, my build was so overpowered that I would heal automatically and persistently, and my damage output was totally insane. Perfectly happy with my completion percentage and I don't plan on returning to this universe until the sequel comes out later this year.

I am very close to the end of the game.. I assume. Damn thing goes on forever! I think it could have been MUCH shorter. Some of the sections were so unnecessarily massive and really just serve as a timesink. My playtime says 35 hours and I've been playing it a lot in a short amount of time (as in, way more gaming per day than I usually do) to make it this far. I thought I was about to go into a final boss fight and then I've got to activate even more things, fight more enemies, clear more maps, etc. Originally I wanted to 100% this game but there's just no way I want to deal with all that, I want to wrap it up and get back to my other late night hobbies.

The thing that's keeping me going is that I believe I've perfected this build. Builds in Aeterna Noctis are a lot of fun to play with; not only can you reset all your stat points any time you're at a throne (a fast travel point, basically), you cann also change your equipped gems which is the other aspect of a build, so you can customize your perks as-needed (ie. spec yourself for boss fights, for difficult platforming sections, etc). This does make the gameplay loop a lot more fun and I wish more games let you respec for zero penalty.

Anyway, I've got to be close to the end now is what I keep telling myself. I'm excited for something more relaxing to play, this game is really solid but the poor performance on the Switch as I mentioned in a previous update has made it much more frustrating than it normally would have been. Add to that the ridiculous difficulty level, and I'm in need of September - AstroBot and Zelda are exactly the kind of chill my brain needs after the world of Aeterna Noctis!

Closest thing to Hollow Knight I've found so far, both in control rigidity and tone. Dark and ominous, just how I like it.

The downside is that I bought it on the Switch after not properly researching the ports enough, this would have been dynamite on PS5 but the performance is lackluster at best. Not so much the frame drops, those I can deal with, but there is some input lack during boss fights when the screen is busy, and the LOAD TIMES. Holy lord the load times are atrocious. Anywhere from 7 to 14 seconds and backtracking suddenly becomes a pain in the ass.

I'm playing on Hard mode (Noctis) and the platforming challenges are lot of fun - just the right amount of difficulty but with enough checkpoints to keep you from getting frustrated. I find it extremely cool that the developer Red Candle made it so you can switch between Normal and Hard mode at any time, and the platforming sections actually change to reflect that. I don't know this for sure but I believe that's the only time to my knowledge this has ever been done before.

One other issue is that the environments have a lot of background layering, and many times enemies or projectiles will hit you because you can't *see them coming at you, because they are behind something in the foreground. That can get a little frustrating.

Overall, a solid title that sadly suffers from bad performance problems on an advanced aging platform. If you are interested, get it on literally anything else.

went back and fought the boss that i accidentally skipped via hax (lol) because someone online posted save files before each boss, and i needed to do it to be able to say i actually beat the game. and folks. this person had NO RED GEMS! wtf!

proved what i was already thinking which is that the double-reload-speed gem was absolutely essential to fighting all the lategame bosses. i managed but whew, it was annoying having no arrows, especially when you sometimes need to teleport 3 times in a row. i honestly don't understand how you could beat the last boss without that, she requires 6 teleport arrows in a row within less than 6 seconds.

one last note, i checked out the trailers for their second game, the roguelike based off this game - and you can tell they already incorporated so much feedback on visual clarity. there's way more contrast between the platforms, your character, and the background. looks totally different. it's a shame, this game could've been a lot better with better graphical choices like that.

Done.

(This is 100%. You can't get the last 0.4% until you reload your save and turn in the final quest after beating the final boss.)

(Is it unsatisfying that it is literally impossible to get a game completion screen showing your 100%? Yes! But it's so emblematic of the questionable design choices in this game that it's kind of fitting, tbh)

lol the boss at the end of the royal stairway died in literally 30 seconds. i didn't dodge any of her attacks i just took hits non-stop and then she just exploded in light and i was like "oh god how do i dodge that the entire screen is filling with light???" and it was just her death animation.

guess all the sidequests paid off? triple homing darkness arrows is really good.

funny after i got the half-reload-time gem i said "i don't use arrows much" and after i got the 100% melee damage gem i said "now that's more like it" but now all i do is use arrows. used the melee gem for only a bit.

• actually now is a good time to maybe ask, i feel like my dark arrows are bugged or something? like they are way too strong. one shot kills everything in one hit lol. i went dragon slayign earlier for the beastiary and they die in one hit. maybe something is just wrong? lol

• lmao whoops. so. when i lost my map file early on, i downloaded cheat engine to try to help recover my progress. i used it a bit to help re-traverse the entire map and then closed it. but earlier while i was beastiary-hunting, i ran into another bug where my soul got stuck off-screen somewhere when i died, so i opened cheat engine again to get back my exp/money if i couldn't recollect my soul. i was able to go off-screen and grab it luckily, so i closed cheat engine. but i think just opening it somehow automatically turned on the "all enemies die in 2 hits" mod and it persisted even with CE closed, so for the entire final area i just thought my triple-homing darkness arrows were just really strong but no i was cheating lmao. whooooooops. i only just started using them so i didn't really realize, i just thought, well, they hit 3 times and it's a lategame ability, guess they're just strong. makes sense i only noticed something was wrong at the boss lmao. the weird thing is light slimes also took many hits to kill, guess it didn't apply to them.

lol one of the endgame quests makes you backtrack to 10 random spots on the map three times, each time having to check all 10 spots until you find the correct one.

all the comments online are about how its tedious and unfun but the devs probably don't care i guess, it's part of their vision or something!

• the devs actually did modify the quest after player complaints - at launch, there were no markers on your map telling you the 10 locations - in other words if you were doing this without a guide or online help, you'd just have to... search literally the entire map again. 3 times?????? i have no idea what they were thinking.

before finishing the rest of the area, i find the 4th seal so take a shoooort detour to go fight the emperor.

two hours later...

whew. if you had told me after my first go of that fight that i was going to not only beat it, but get the first two phases down without taking damage, i would not have believed you lol. literally seemed impossible. but of course, then i remembered that shooting arrows slows down time, and even with that you have like, a split second to react??? is there any way to beat this guy without arrow build??? i saw a reddit post that said they used a sword build and i do not understand - you'd have to be superhuman

unlike the robots though which was just tons of bullshit covering the screen moving around nonstop, this fight was fair and just pattern-based. can't believe i eventually got the air-slice swords down too. feels very Neo by the end of it. damn. very satisfying. and just when i thought surely it must end soon, no, of course there is a final phase that is the hardest. you basically need to go into it with full health and potions/mana, and i just barely won with 1 HP remaining lol. i'll take it.

apparently this is the biggest optional challenge in the game? so hopefully it's smooth sailing from here hahaha...

oh and again, i will say - this reward better be worth it! give me a strong non-arrow red gem!

wahahaaha. okay yeah i'd say that's worth it. all i could ask for, really. thanks.

could i have done this fight later? yeah, probably. would've been easier if i had my 6th gem slot, plus i had no good uncommon gems to use anyway, if there's any uncommon gem that makes arrows stronger then i would've been better off. not sure if there is. but i wanted to do it asap because i figured i'd get a strong reward that'd help for the rest of the game, and i'd say i definitely did.

i just went ahead and bought the atlas for the end of the world area because there was no way i wanted to spend an hour jumping off every cliff checking in case there was something there

turns out i only missed two items, and they were both along some clearly indicated paths i'd missed, but whatever, that area was massive and i just didn't wanna bother

hopped up into the next area and... uh. wow. mario galaxy?????????? i'd heard people say the next area was a standout but i was not expecting that.

oh wait, i guess this is all still the same area? huh. okay. so all the items are marked on my map for it 😆 i assumed this was a new area! guess not. (also oof this place is pretty and unique, but horrible to navigate) (also arrows barely even work here because they just shoot off into nowhere because of the curved ground so i'm swapping back to melee build finally. once i actually get a rare gem that improves melee i probably will permanently lol though the arrow build is neat, it's too situational)

wow, i went back to the undersea fortress to get some the darkness-gated stuff, and it was so much easier with the time dilation gem. i did the second emperor's trial too and it was way easier than the first, because of that. this gem should seriously just be part of the core gameplay.

i think this means i've now collected every single pickup in all the first 8 areas + the abyss. i'm probably missing like 1-2 hidden things but i wouldn't be surprised if i got it all. it's odd, despite this game being so... frustrating at times, i feel time is flying - i feel like i'm still in the early game, but i suppose i must be mid-late game by now!

next up, randomly stumbling around the end of the world until i find the map guy (i made it all the way to the abyss without finding him lol because unlike hollow knight this game gives no hints to where they are) and then probably climbing up somewhere.

wow, the abyss is way easier than the undersea fortress! i was going to say "and it comes later" but i guess you actually could've done these in any order. i actually had to check to make sure i hadn't accidentally switched to easy mode

(edit: oh wait, maybe its just because i have the time dilation gem now. i forgot about that lmao)

wow, the gem that slows down time when you fire an arrow is, like, absolutely essential and makes all the platforming way easier to do. this should just be a permanent feature, not something that uses up one of your limited gem slots.

went back through the whole map to get a bunch of stuff, think i basically fully cleared out the forge now and got like a dozen mirror shards elsewhere.

that's all very nice, but... it means that, according to what i can see, i've explored literally everywhere i can other than places blocked off by darkness jelly, and... i... don't see where to go next? nevermind for more secrets, for the main quest! there are at least two more main quest destinations marked on the map and i literally cannot see anywhere to go.

i googled what to do for the robot quest because i want my reward damnit and i felt it might be some obscure thing, and yeah there was a random computer terminal i forgot about that i have to go talk to. and then fight another optional hard boss... great. the last one was already hell, i think this one will be even worse -_- i'll try it and then figure out how to unstuck myself...

wow, that might've been one of the toughest boss battles i've ever done. i still don't even know how it's possible to dodge some of its attacks (mostly the random beams that cover the area) so it was mostly just practicing a ton until i could get good at dodging the rest and just accepting i was gonna take a ton of damage from some attacks.

i could've made this easier on myself by waiting until i gained just one more level as i'm one skill point away from getting the final talent in the skill tree (heals worth double) but uhhhhhhhhhh i just wanted to get it done with and i don't know where i'd go to find a skill point right now anyway so.

the reward had better be worth it... it looks like it might be the first rare gem, if its just like "your arrows ocasionally deal an extra 10% damage while piercing" i'll be pretty annoyed!

edit: wow, quest's not even done. next step unclear too so no reward at all right now! ^_^

Update: 7/26/23

Just replayed the game on the harder mode with the new DLC… even more fun this time! And I honestly didn’t find it THAT hard to 100%, maybe it was from my muscle memory on the first play but it felt perfectly balanced. The new DLC is excellent and I can’t wait for the sequel Aeterna Lucis!

One of my all time favorite games.

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This game is the perfect match for my tastes. Total hollow knight atmosphere, leveling systems, etc. Super challenging, but super fun platforming and combat.

Perfect map system, totally compelled me to 100% the game. The music is outstanding, the visuals are a great blend of 2d and 3D- the type that’s super hard to pull off. I just adore this game!

The story is not the best, so I’d probably give it a 4.8. But honestly it didn’t matter, everything else totally makes up for it. I want more games like this!