Alice wrote:"Wow, why do I have to farm so much?" asks raocow after having blatantly ignored what was clearly intended as a fairly casual mechanic to be actively used between exploring mental worlds. Like I get not wanting to farm but you really have nobody to blame but yourself here. The game made it fairly clear that you should get the dowsing rod early and make active use of it. You just chose to buy it then proceed to pretend it doesn't exist until you were forced to use it. If you had explored a bit more between worlds and made use of the dowsing rod during that time you probably would have needed to do little to no grinding to get the duster.
The game's cutscenes really encourage you to just go to the next main world (probably because novice players would otherwise get stuck). The game is most fun if you
ignore the next main world and instead explore and mess around.
Most "gamers" instinctively ignore the goal and instead explore. Most
people who play games with an audience (i.e., LPers and streamers) instinctively try to keep their audience entertained by moving on to the next real level.
Psychonauts kinda punishes people who don't explore aimlessly early on. I'm not gonna blame raocow for that.
If a game is best for people who have time to waste meanderingly, it might be an amazing game for people with time to waste meanderingly, but subpar for people under pressure. I loved Psychonauts back when I had lots of time to waste.
If this LP exposes Psychonauts as bad for people under pressure, great, I'm happy to learn that. I don't have that sort of time these days anyway. I'm happy to avoid replaying it then, and happy that we're encouraging more efficient games. Sure, psychonauts had lots of positive stuff that I hope is replicated -- and that will ALSO be showcased during this LP. No Problem.
Apparently Psychonauts 2 is under development finally. I'll probably play it. but I might have to wait until a year or two after it comes out. We'll see if it learns from Psychonauts's (many, important) successes, and its mistakes.