Game:

Returnal (2021)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 21:45

101 views

3

After a streamer that I watch started playing Returnal, I decided to revisit the game again. No Tower of Sisyphus this time.

I have all but 5 weapon traits unlocked - sadly, I didn't get any more to unlock on this run.

I can run through every room (that I could unlock, anyway) in every biome and defeat each boss in around 4 hours (I skipped the biome 2 challenge room). A fresh replay would take longer because of story cutscenes, and would be harder because I would lack the consumable item slots in biomes 1-3, and I wouldn't have nearly the selection of weapon traits available to me.

It's a shame the way the weapon traits are done, because a good player would miss out on all the better weapon traits, where someone who has to replay a lot has many more opportunities to unlock them. Even then, after beating the game, it took me a few days of replaying to unlock all of the weapon traits, so it takes a long time to get them all up to tier 3. I mostly farmed up the tier 3 levels in biome 6 by killing the exploding squids at the squid generators, otherwise it just wouldn't have been feasible - it takes 10 kills to unlock tier 1, 50 kills to unlock tier 2, and 100 kills to unlock tier 3. I currently have accumulated over 7.5 days of play time (2.5 days to beat the game with 115 deaths, 4 days of farming weapon traits and otherwise goofing around, and probably 1 day's worth in Tower of Sisyphus DLC, grand total around 250 deaths). I hope if Housemarque makes another Returnal game, they improve the weapon trait system so that we can enjoy more of them during the story portion instead of resorting to farming them.

The whole reason I even hunted weapon traits was to build up the prized Expanding 3/Exploding 3 Dreadbound, which I finally find on this run and even get the Damage Multiplier artifact. Sadly, I goof up in Ophion Phase 3 and don't get the blazingly fast kill.

I also noticed that after the DLC, just a few effects were missing here and there, like the green light emitted from silphium in a few rare cases, and Nemesis' defeat explosion lacked the blue light. They changed Hyperion's purple cross lasers in Phase 1 to red, so I guess you can dash through them now. The gold glowing tentacle creatures that grant obolites on a kill also look a bit different.

Still, I had a lot of fun in these 4 hours. Such a fun game to just play.

Chapters:
0:00 Ixion with Rotgland Lobber and no music for some reason
4:41 Nemesis with mid grade Dreadbound, not optimal, but I dive at him in Phase 3
10:26 Hyperion with Spitmaw, Rapid Spitter
13:36 Biome 5 challenge room with Spitmaw, Rapid Spitter
17:39 Biome 6 Challenge room with Pyroshell Caster, Auxiliary Projectiles
20:34 Ophion finally with Expand 3/Explode 3 Dreadbound and Full Damage Multiplier, but I screw it up a little

Another recent discovery - a good player wouldn't see the house as often, so they may miss out on all 5 house sequences before finally beating Ophion. If that happens, then the sun pieces won't spawn in Act 3, and the 5th house sequence apparently ONLY plays in biome 4. I discovered this on a recent fresh playthrough, and wasted two hours looking for sun pieces - I had to play the final 5th house visit in biome 4 (the one with the DMCA music - triggered I presume by visiting biome 6), then I could reset back to biome 1 and proceed to find all the sun pieces. I was able to do a from scratch replay in about 12 hours (about 2 hours were wasted dying 3 times in biome 5, and another 2 hours were wasted realizing I didn't get the sun pieces to spawn, so a proper from scratch replay from me with zero deaths would have been around 8 hours, but that would complicate the house sequences, since I need to die - or just reset cycle a few times - to reach the house again to play all of the visits). I would post my fresh playthrough, but 33% of it is a waste, so I'm not sure if I will - and I don't want to just cut out the extra 33%, because I found extra scout logs along the way (I like hearing the lore). At the end of my fresh 12 hour playthrough, with 3 deaths, I unlocked around 30 of the 270 possible weapon traits, got three of them to tier 2, and didn't even find the Rotgland Lobber (Biome 1 using grapple) or Coilspine Shredder (Biome 4 using Visor).

So, for my future reference:
- Create new PS5 user, set Capture to Easy Videos
- Visit house as you can
- Kill Ophion (finish Act 2) - credit sequence song 1
- If you haven't gotten house sequence 5 yet (where the DMCA song plays), keep visiting the house in biome 4 (reset cycle as needed) until you get that sequence. Biome 4 required for final sequence.
- (Act 3 start) Return to ship, travel to biome 1
- Get sun fragment in each biome (in biome 3, reset cycle immediately after getting fragment and travel to biome 4, continue)
- In biome 6, when you get the last fragment, immediately reset cycle and visit house again, get final item.
- Kill Ophion again, finish Act 3 - credit sequence DMCA music

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