Glermz

Hey Everyone, First off, I want to mention that I’m playing Grounded 2 as Perma Death mode — if I die, I have to start over. Even though this isn’t the intended way to play, I believe my experience can still offer valuable insights for other Grounded players and the devs. In many ways Grounded 2 is harder than the current Grounded 1, and that’s totally fine. Heck, even the significant healing nerf compared to the first game is fine by me. That said, there are a few things that either need polish or need to be tuned down. As someone who’s been through plenty of runs with max health upgrades and fully upgraded T3 gear, I’ve gone from barely losing health to being one-shotted, which doesn’t feel ideal. Here are a few specific cases: 1. Orc Ladybug There’s one attack (I believe it’s the charge forward) that can one-shot you. This seems a bit excessive. 2. The Boss Fight Nothing in this fight should one-shot you if you have T3 fully upgraded gear and max health upgrades — not even the sword charge stab. However, there is one exception: if the boss perfectly parries you, dazing you, you instantly die. This mechanic feels flawed. Having an attack that deals more damage with no way to avoid it (you can't even see it coming), feels problematic. The fact that the perfect parry mechanic is completely RNG too it doesnt help. You can consistently hit her while she’s blocking, and nothing happens. You can break her guard, and again, nothing happens. But the moment you start hitting her, it’s pure RNG whether she will perfectly parry you, leading to either a flawless fight or, well, "tough luck, you’re dead." I’m all for one-shot abilities from bosses (which I think can be good for extra added difficulty), but I feel these abilities need to be more fleshed out and should have visible cues that allow players to react. For instance, the same perfect parry ability causes me to lose 80% of my health if it happens during the fight. However, if I’m hitting her and she perfectly parries me, I die instantly. Why not reverse that? The first instance should require me to dodge or perfect parry the attack, while the second one feels unfair because it’s just RNG. Sometimes, she even perfects parries after I’ve already broken her guard, and she hasn’t fully recovered from it. This leads me to another suggestion: better indicators for counter-attack abilities and preventing mobs from spamming these attacks, especially when they lack visual animations. (Also may I add that if a bug blocks, but you brank the stance, that bug can't re-block again straight after? Gets specially boring agaisnt Multiple Warrior Ants and Orb Weavers) For example, with Wolf Spiders when you’re using daggers, they’ll sometimes perform the grab attack without going into the fang position at all — it just happens. Sure, after a lot of playtime, you can almost predict the timing by intuition, but I feel like a game like this should always provide visual or sound cues to help with that. Also the costant spam of this attack makes it so that she barely ever does any other attacks except that and the Jump. Can't be intended. These are the most blatant issues I've encountered so far. Everything else that might do more damage than it should is still manageable. For example, bees might deal too much damage with their triple attack, which can sometimes bug out, causing them to hit you even if they’re too far away, or occasionally miss even when they're too close. Anyway, off the top of my head, in 9 runs where I’m trying to 100% the current content, these are the most glaring problems I’ve found (And the ammount of bugs that are under the mesh... like A LOT). Keep in mind that this is just my opinion, and I don’t expect changes to these issues to even happen. Just marely feedback and suggestions. I’ll keep playing Grounded 2 and can’t wait for the next bits of content. I’ll follow up with a much larger post filled with additional suggestions, but I’ll wait until we get the first couple of fixes for the current issues and bugs. Best regards, Stay Grounded, Glermz