OP
OP
- Pronouns
- he/him
Progress Update – Never bring a gun to a knife-fight
My last progress update was a belated one, so this one follows up on it a bit quicker than usual – surprise! Also, it's a rather meaty one, so buckle up.Deeper and deeper into the castle I go. I was greeted with a bit of light exploration and a small puzzle in the dining room, which offered a bit of a breather, and rewarded me with the snake head I needed to place on the chimera statue in order to progress further. Of course, the goat and lion heads were missing as well. Those weren’t locked behind puzzles, though, but rather behind encounters. The goat head was to be found in yet another mob infested room. The lion head was more interesting, as it was guarded by animated armor sets – seems like those parasites can take control of inanimate objects as well, which is kind of sick, in more than one meaning of the word. Ashley provided some light assistance during this fight, which was a nice twist mechanically.
Having collected all three heads and put them on the chimera statue, some story happened and Leon and Ashley got separated again – only this time, I found myself in control of Ashley. This was a nice change of pace. Ashley doesn’t know how to do combat for the life of her. All she has on her is a lantern, which she can use to temporarily freeze the parasite-ridden armor sets. I thought this segment was really well executed, and I enjoyed it a lot.
Then, some more story happened, and I found myself back in control of Leon, finally being able to progress even further into the castle. And I promptly got introduced to… flies. I don’t like those flies. They are big, they are nasty, and they gang up on you if you aren’t careful, even though they aren’t much of a challenge otherwise.
Having exterminated all of them, I pressed onward, and found myself in the most challenging room yet. I was wondering when I’d see the blind, clawed hunks of meat again – apparently they are called Garradors – but what I did not expect is to find two of them in the same room, accompanied by a frenzied congregation. This room took me so much trial and error. What finally worked was to just do my to ignore the mobs and taking out one Garrador before doing anything else. Things still went kind of sideways after that, but at least now I only had one of them left to deal with, even though it took me way too long to finally single him out and deal the final blow.
And so I was finally able to continue and find Ashley again, who didn’t look so good. Only to get kicked out immediately in the rudest way possible. Navigating the depths wasn’t much of a challenge. The flies down here were outrageously annoying because I couldn’t manage to keep track of them in the dark, and in the water, so I just legged it out of there and reached some kind of underground facility. And promptly legged it out of there as well, because it houses some insectoid man (or humanoid insect?) who is apparently invincible beyond the weakness of getting frozen.
Next, I needed to find my way back up to the castle – and did so with Luis in tow! Made our way up through the mines, but were cut off by a pair of giants, with one of them being armored. Luckily, Luis pulled his own weight, and so the unarmored one went down swiftly. The armored one followed soon after, thanks to Luis attaching some dynamite to him, and that was the end of that. Hope that giant likes his baths hot. The mine-cart section was surprisingly fun! I usually don’t like set pieces like this, but enjoyed the wild ride. Then it was just a quick detour through the hive (which meant more flies, yuck), and up to the castle we– not so fast, apparently. I don’t know if I’m supposed to know this Krauser dude, but Leon sure does, and apparently he likes a knife fight, so that's what he got. Until he decided to bail like an absolute coward.
That freed the way back up to the castle, which concluded chapter 11, and seemed like a good spot for me to pick things up next time. Luis didn’t make it though, which is a bummer. And just when I started to like him, too!
I also wanted to share some overall thoughts at this point. I have overcome my initial slight disappointment at RE4 fully abandoning the more exploration heavy and puzzle centric setup I enjoyed so much in 1 and 2. I said in my last progress update that all the action in RE4 kind of wears me out a bit, but this largely came down to expectations I’ve set myself that weren’t quite fulfilled. Ever since I saw the castle on the horizon, I had expected the game to open up once I reached it, but that obviously never happened. Granted, the game did open up a bit at the lake, but only very briefly.
Ever since I’ve realised and accepted that RE4 simply is a different flavor of RE, I’ve been enjoying it more again. I've liked the setting and atmosphere from the start, and it got even better in that regard in the castle. I enjoy the way the story unfolds, and even the dynamic between Leon and Ashley is more entertaining than I initially thought it would be. Some of the enemy designs are really great as well, and almost feel like they could be in DMC without any changes. Shoutout to the animated armor sets in particular; even though it’s a bit of a cliché, them being moved by parasites is a nice twist.
I don’t know how much more of this game I have ahead of me, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
