Rabbit and Steel released a week or two ago and I'm already an addict
In terms of ๐ข๐ถ๐๐๐ ๐ฎ๐๐พ๐๐๐โข, I am squarely in the "tries really hard but isn't an expert" realm that I fall under in most games I play. I'm the Touhou fan who has only 1cc'd a few games on normal, the FFXIV player who's cleared whole Savage tiers but never touched Ultimates. Person who will die a hundred times experimenting instead of having the sense to focus on improving faster. But, that's what really draws me into this exact kind of game.
It's like learning a dance, with some cute violence
On one hand, coming from the MMO-inspired DPS rotation mechanic know-how, I'm used to there being one converged "meta" for execution perfection, for better or worse.
I've been a MNK main in FFXIV since HW, and god knows we've been through the wringer in terms of cursed rotation optimization until pretty recently. Which I had a masochistic love for every time.
Since this is a roguelike with random loot and upgrades though, I'm constantly having to rethink it in new contexts, all while multitasking to remember how to not take damage from every boss. Maybe for some this reads as a condemnation of overcomplicated difficulty, but for me, it's exactly what I like.
You learn to enjoy losing in new and exciting ways
So far I'm struggling to clear even a single stage of Hard, but I've done it a countable 3 times already so far, so the capability is there! King's Arsenal went surprisingly well, as the wolves' zoning-style AoE's were pretty easy to sightread, but it only got harder from there with the Dragons and the Frogs...
After around the 10th attempt to beat Emerald Lakeside, I figured that I could probably benefit from beating the game on normal a few more times. Having normal mode runs on something like a 90% clear rate seemed more doable than trying to squeeze out 1 good run out of dozens of attempts, for now.
...And after that thought, I tried another 10-20 times and squeezed out 1 good run with the revive item. It was a cheesed win but hey, I unlocked the last rabbit!
It's allegedly doable.
I haven't really tried multiplayer outside of a couple runs with a friend, because I don't want to embarrass myself in public lobbies. Most of all, I want to eventually invite more people to play this too, so it'll be helpful if the lobby I host doesn't fail horribly due to my own DPS greed. If anything it should succeed horribly due to my DPS greed, but that's just my own excuse to play this for another million hours.
For now, I'll just continue slowly documenting my progress as some minor motivation to see improvement over time. I certainly don't mind sinking an absurd amount of time into it! It's for sure the rabbit-themed game of the year.
Sorry, I guess, Bunny Garden.