I'm a terrible gamer that finished Saros.
So I finally completed the second fight with the King this morning.
This has to be one of the most satisfying video games I've ever played.
For a bit of context, I am 45 years old. I don't get hooked by many games these days. I usually know within the first 30-60 minutes if I'm going to keep playing it. When I first purchased Saros, it came with a degree of skepticism, and the knowledge that I may very well abandon it due to difficulty, however I was 30 days into having been laid off, and I had the time. If ever there was an opportunity to "git gud," this was probably it.
My typical reaction to any "difficult" game is to get to a boss I can't beat, fail a few times, then stop playing the game. You can call that whatever you want, but I just don't get any satisfaction from overcoming it. And this is coming from somebody who grew up with Battletoads, Ninja Gaiden and Ghosts N Goblins.
In the case of Saros though, for some reason I would not accept that. Again, I have no idea what makes this game different. Maybe the game is not that difficult. I'm sure this will elicit the inevitable responses like "Well it's not that hard, you should try this" or "Well did you activate +40 worth of modifiers?" etc etc. That's to be expected on the Internet. And if you're thinking that Returnal would likely humble me, you're probably right, and I have downloaded it and plan to play it next!
But there's something immensely satisfying about the running and gunning, popping the hostiles into a shower of lucenite, and knowing that the next time you hit that new overlord, you have their number. By the end of the game, I was not an expert. I'm pretty sure I brute forced my way through. I didn't know what the Command stat did. 95% of the time I didn't read the modifier text on the artifacts. By the time I beat an Overlord, I had enough lucenite to get every buff through to the next overlord blocker on the skill tree. I rarely used any weapon besides the smart rifle and prominence. And I utilized every single buff modifier I was allowed to. I did not progress through the game gracefully, and maybe that wasn't the intention of the developer. However, by the end, I was truly immersed in the zen dance of dodging, grappling, shielding, parrying, and shooting, and maybe that WAS the intention of the developer. At least I hope so.
I think I'll keep playing this game too, just to run through and get that dopamine rush whenever I get the urge, and maybe unlock all the halcyon nodes in the armor matrix. Saros even inspired me to read The King in Yellow, as well as begin watching the first season of True Detective, which references the subject on several occasions.
I'm hoping there might eventually be some kind of DLC or add-on. Otherwise, I eagerly wait the next offering from HouseMarque and hope it's even fractionally as engaging as Saros.
