Arrow to the knee joke. I got a costume choice sometime before this, and it, down to the razor rim on the hat the pose, are a direct
rip offinfluence from a Mortal Kombat character from, what, 10 years ago? Who is it, Liu Kang? (Revisiting this idea later, there's also an apparent Clint Eastwood influence with the brown, poorly stitched serapa)
Most maps have a number of challenges ranging from killing a certain number of specific monster types to killing everything without using healing potions.
There's an objective tracker of sorts underneath the minimap that primarily tells you which dungeon to go to that will advance the story. After reaching the Befouled Tomb and running through it without killing anything of consequence, the objective tracker indicated that I needed to reach a different dungeon. Upon reaching it, I find that it's locked and the disembodied voice that has been making bad jokes to this point indicated that I would need to talk to the Queen. He made a shitlord misogynist comment about the Queen "being good at letting things in where they don't belong." Totally triggered
The Royal Crypt is what I needed permission to enter. Provided I report back to her, I have her permission to enter. Okay.
I've just noticed on this worldmap (which reminds me of Ghouls 'n' Ghosts/Goblins for some reason) that there's a "Den of the Broodmother" dungeon that I need to be level 10 to enter. They've allowed me to bypass combat to advance the story thus far; I'm really not certain why arbitray level caps are needed at this point to access more trivial content.
The first objective in the Royal Crypt is to find the entrance to the lower levels (the Weeping Halls or somesuch). As I skipped hundreds of enemies by running past them, jokevoice commented that I was lost (true) and running through intersections without regard to where I was going (also true). Upon accidentally finding the objective I was looking for (I was staring at the minimap), the joke voice commented upon my miraculous luck at discovering the entrance.
Running through this level, Victor comments upon what must be the 20th hunter corpse he's seen in the city. My new objective is to "Find Adrian" who at some point begins telling me that he's been luring me here for a reason and he'll tell me about it if I'll just jump off this ledge to talk to him.
Oh, Adrian is Victor's friend apparently. Up to this point, all information about what my character is doing, saying, or thinking is delivered via text at the top of the screen. Either voiceover is forthcoming (other things such as "hard" difficulty are unavailable at the moment), or I'm expected to adjust the camera to aim my attacks as well as read what's happening in the story (who cares).
Something I forgot to mention: starting at level 2 you get "Destiny Cards" which are flat or percentage upgrades to things like crit chance, armor, health, crit damage, etc. I found an upgraded version of one of the card choices I was given upon reaching level 3 (first card activated at level 2), but I can't equip it until I have another Destiny Point.
So the first real boss monster has a really slow fixed attack timer with a really weak attack. Every now and again (not sure if health triggered or timer triggered, I think timer), he summons totems that do a stream of not insignificant damage to Victor while apparently leeching some of it back to the boss. The totems go down in a few blasts with the shotgun at level 3. This part is really, really boring. After chipping away at his health for some time, he summons monsters and starts calling down some kind of artillery shit that is broadcasted before it hits. I avoided most of it without trying. The damage on the artillery is pretty high. When the boss gets to low health, he summons multiple vampiric totems (3 I think), and I just do not have the damage to kill them quickly enough to survive (they don't seem to have a range limitation).
I'm going to respawn at the Hub and likely try to get back to him as quickly as possible after purchasing a few things to try to get myself enough damage or other advantages to beat him. If I need to level up to beat him, I will probably shelve this game indefinitely as the trash combat and character building is in no way satisfying enough to incentivize playing the game further. Perhaps when they implement Hard difficulty it will be.
Stay tuned for another update.