Continuing the Saga

[Darrell]

I'll repost the last two posts of my thread, "Absolutely hate this game right now". The name is no longer appropriate as I now love Too Human, however I think it's appropriate to finish the chronicle of Doctor Strange Darrell or "How I Learned to Stop Sucking and Love Too Human". The second-to-last post from my thread will be reposted in this post, followed by another post which has the last post, then I'll post my updated World Serpent and Helheim experiences.

So, onward we go:

Had to make a trip with my sister to the doctor today, so haven't got much Too Human time in. I am back in the Ice Forest, though, and I've reached the first arena.

I haven't died yet, so that's an improvement. I even managed to complete the first arena, obtaining a LOT of loot and I never took much damage. I ended up with a poison proc on me after misjudging a ruiner, but I have my +Armor % max'd out and I managed to live through the damage (Combined with some well-timed rolls). My first encounter with the Dark Elf Archer went much smoother. I'm getting better at timing my rolls to avoid the ground pound, a quick finisher destroyed the shield and removed half its life and a few simple attacks finished it off.

I met a second in the arena. I did a 2-in-1 ruiner and it died immediately. Took a bit more damage from some surprise explosive goblins that popped up (Tried to do a fierce and slid into one, immediately rolled back and primed another fierce that took care of the remainders). However, they dropped a health orb that brought me up to full so I completed the arena at max health.

My sister's controller seems to be working much better, though I'm still having a little trouble executing finishers and fierce attacks. I think I'm mistiming the analog pushes. Experience may fix this; we'll see.

I've been more giving about using my battle cry, spider and ruiners. Of course, now that I have points in my spirit ruiner I actually WANT to use it just to see that awesome bear come out. :) Doing a 2-in-1 allows me to minimize combo usage and using a battle cry after getting some hits in lets me get a slight discount through Everburning Heart. So, I'm finding that I'm able to maximize my combo meter without losing multiple levels. At max combo level, I can 2-in-1 a ruiner and pop a battle cry and still be at combo level 4.

We'll see if this improvement continues to occur throughout the level. Still have a lot of potentially aggravating encounters to go through.

For the record, I'm simply playing through the campaign again rather than teleporting to different levels. I'm actually interested in watching the cinematics again and trying to pay more attention now that I'm not fuming about yet another death.

Played some coop earlier with Legend, but he was level 50 so I died quite a bit. I am not going to count that. :)

[Darrell]

I'm now at the second arena. I just completed it at full health, compared to my last run where I failed this one (In addition to the first one) before I even got off the first platform.

The fights that previously caused me such a headache (Where Dark Elves, Trolls and a Dark Elf Archer were combined) no longer gave me problems. A 2-in-1 ruiner quickly gets rid of the Dark Elf Archer, in addition to anything within a very wide radius (Only have 2 points into my spirit ruiner as well). Trolls aren't a big deal once you take their respective arms off, and just sort of become walking rumble machines. Dark Elves are a lot easier once you don't have to worry about being shot by purple arrows all the time.

The particularly large fight that takes place on the collapsible platform went much quicker this time, since I just skipped the fight and blew up the platform's locks. It collapsed and I got a bunch of free loot. I was actually tempted to try the fight out just to see how I would do, but at the time I was focused on getting the Unstoppable achievement. That was before I realized I won't have completed the level in one sitting; there was literally like five minutes I played before I left with my sister. That knocks me out of the achievement, unfortunately. :(

I'm still not using the spider as much as I should, but things are still much easier. I have my battle cry at 9/10 now, so my melee attacks do +54% damage while it's up; this means I can pretty much one-shot-slide anything except for elite enemies which take 2-3 hits. I'm getting better at timing my attacks on airborne enemies so I actually get about 3 hits in before I perform my finisher. Get more combo that way and you ensure they're not getting back up. :)

Game is much more enjoyable this time through. I've even managed to listen to some of the Wolf Pack dialogue going on in the background, mostly centering around Neil (First Wolf) and Martin (Who tells the pup he did a good job back in the Hall of Heroes after the first well). Also getting to check out a lot more of the background, which includes things like huge moving platforms.

Not sure how much I have left to go; my Stats are only showing 1 token but I have to be further in than that. Or maybe I'm not. Either way, I'm enjoying the ride a hell of a lot more this time. :)

[Speak]

Glad to see you are loving it now! :)

But Kudos to you for sticking at it! Unlike these annoying reviewers who do not give TH a chance!

:) All the best with your Loot Hunting!

[Darrell]

I finished the Ice Forest without any trouble, although when I came to the boss I ended up dying on his third stage because I couldn't get a health drop the previous stage. On the first stage, I also mistimed several rolls which led to me taking quite a bit of damage that, if I had avoided it then, might have allowed me to stay alive. I wouldn't have gotten the Unstoppable achievement, but it would have been nice for the sake of my ego. As a whole, though, he's tough to deal with as a Berserker since my ranged damage is so weak.

The World Serpent went by similarly; I experienced no deaths until I got to the boss. Then I died twice and eventually killed him while at 50% health. I'm not sure what I could have done better. I think the problem stems from my extremely low ranged damage which gives me more chances to mess up my rolls which gives the boss more time to splatter me all over the ground. The goblins didn't drop any health and the destructible containers were similarly greedy. Not dying up until that point, though, was a great improvement on my part. Again, I was able to enjoy the level much more since I wasn't upset about dying so much and that let me take in the huge internal workings of the monstrous war machine. I was also able to pick up on more subtle story items in the cinematics that I had missed before.

Finally, I managed to go through Helheim without dying at all. Like the Ice Forest, however, I saved and quit during the level to do other things which meant no Unstoppable achievement. Unlike the Ice Forest, I didn't die on the boss nor the sub-boss. My first playthrough saw me beating the final boss without a death as well, but the sub-boss drove me nuts. This time, the guardian proved to be much less dangerous. I did have to grab some health, but this time the destructible containers obliged me (Although I was still at about 75% health when I broke them open). Contrary to what Henry had said on the last forum, it seems that my chances of picking up health drops are directly proportional to my health bar rather than [b]inversely[/]b proportional as he would have us believe. ;) I do have terrible luck, though.

So, a second playthrough (And being more aware of the bad habits that led to my original bad experiences) saw me loving the game and appreciating the story much more. I was able to enjoy the sweeping levels more, and I even found a few places that gave you a really large view of your surroundings. One of them was in Hel's "throne room"; if you walk beyond her throne, off to the right, you'll get a prompt to hit "A" that causes the camera to pan around you and back. Helheim is absolutely huge, and it's possibly the most depressingly dreary place I've ever seen. It looks like some kind of nightmarish hell of an industrial complex that has swelled to encompass hundreds of miles. Huge columns belch thick smoke into the atmosphere, bursts of flame erupt from cracks within the land and a thick haze of cremated remains hovers everywhere. I had a very large "Wow" moment when I saw it from that point of view.

My Berserker is now level 45 or 46 (Can't remember). I also started a Defender last night, now level 10, in order to change my playstyle up a bit. I thought I'd try something more akin to a Juggernaut instead of a Chainsaw. Right now, I'm thinking that I'll go down the middle to maximize my staying ability so I can get in the middle of things and stay there. Reversal of Wyrds looks too fun to pass up; it'll be nice to tell status effects to go screw themselves in a corner for a change. I decided to go Cybernetic as well, since my Berserker was Human, and found out the two alignments have different mini-cutscenes when you go into Idunn's lab. Humans lay on an examining table, while Cybernetics get injected with some sort of fluid then get to float in a vat. Pretty cool, I was wondering what happened to that scene as I hadn't seen it yet.

So, now I can say that I actually love and enjoy Too Human like I had thought I would before purchasing the game. I still don't have much coop experience, but hopefully that will change. I'll work on getting both of my characters up to 50 and then gearing them out appropriately. I'm hoping that switching back and forth between a Berserker and Defender will continue to keep things interesting. The story is also enjoyable enough for me to have played through twice without skipping any cinematics and I was always looking for people in Aesir to chat with. I'll probably continue doing it, since I like listening to the conversations which Baldur has with the other gods and the discussions you overhear from mortals.