wow, undersea fortress was pretty bullshit. i saw a comment the other day saying this is where they turned the game off noctis mode, i can see why. the platforming starts to get insanely difficult, but my issue wasn't really that, it was that you could do entire platforming sections only to be told "haha, this was the wrong way, go all the way back, find a switch, then come back and do this section again!"

there are metroidvanias with challenging platforming sections but they're usually things you only have to do once, not stuff they make you re-traverse (and in this case for no good reason, just "haha you chose to go right instead of left, didn't you know left had the key for the door at the end of right?! do it twice now!")

wow, the infinity sea is beautiful.

it took me a couple of hours to re-fill in my map after losing my save file. i used cheat engine to turn on invulnerability and 2x movement speed and just went back through every single area. i did pick up a few items that were previously locked behind arrow/double jump but it's only fair that i get something since i had to spend so much time...

interestingly enough, this game started off super non-linear, being able to go to half a dozen areas at the start - but for a while now i've basically only seen one path, and i can't tell if that just means i'm missing something. i mean, there was the achievement for beating phoenix without teleportation... where would i even get teleportation?! i don't even see anywhere to go other than the 3rd main quest objective which only opened up after beating phoenix anyway...

i'm probably missing something, which is a nice feeling tbh!

um. okay. so this game apparently has some sort of bug where it takes control input even when it's not the main focused window. i alt tabbed out to write my previous status update and somehow it took all my keyboard inputs as game inputs and i pressed the "X" key to type "phoenix" and the X key is the "Delete Save File" key.

well. okay then?????????????

Phoenix... I think I recall some reddit posts saying this was the hardest boss in the game...? Am I remembering correctly? Maybe I'm not, because this is only, like, the second boss.

This was... not easy, but not that intimidating either. Kind of frustrating because a few attacks required split-second dodging very precisely. Eventually got down the patterns after like 10 attempts and even then a few attacks were kinda bullshit (the slowly falling feathers that stay into the next attack and are just in your way while dodging fireballs) and I beat it the first time I got to phase 3.

...Forgive my bad screenshot, it's hard to take one during combat. There's a phoenix somewhere in that giant ball of fire.

the very first thing i did on the skill tree was unlock all three nodes for quicker dash cooldown.

it may hinder me because it means spending points down at the bottom instead of moving up into any of the main branches but i'll take it - i'd rather the combat be harder in exchange for the massive QoL of not having to wait 2 years between every dash.

(it becomes nearly instant cooldown if you get all 3 nodes. worth it.)

This guy said I "wasn't strong enough to fight him yet" but I did it anyway. I got an achievement for beating him "before owning the arrow of light". I mean, I'm sure a ranged attack would've made it easier but his patterns were pretty simple and still leave him open to sword attacks a lot of the time.