Well just reached a dead end on my second play through, so I though I would share my experiences so far

Ironicly, compared to the 1st play through, know what I'm doing makes the games much much harder. Trying to balance the hunting, the feeding and killing is no easy task. The randomness of the colour doesn't help also

Having three full cycles of only red growing in the beginning of the game can be very very bad, hehehe.


In both play through my objective was to conquer Ole, which happens to be one of the last sisters, so no easy task.

In the 1st play through didn't unlocked all chamber nor conquer a sister, but I managed to survive till the time limit ends, getting a weird end, not really realizing what just happened

On the second one, things started smoother, I knew what to do so I started feeding Ava and Uta fairly quick until I struck a shortage of emerald, so Ava path it is. Much further down the road, 2 brothers whant me dead (I can never seem to have enough colour to defeat them, especially Ironclad), I'm out of colour on the hearts, memory and palette, and the void only has colour in the mines; Oh that reminds me.. I hate mines

Could never do anything with them, on the first time I got extract but no expose; on the second time I got expose but no extract... frustrating. Not to mention my gardens keep dying even trapping them, I never have enough colour to trap them a second time, hehehehe.


Well, very hard game, very beautiful game, a master piece of design and ambience with a very interesting and convoluted story. Will recommend to anyone.


In the end, I like a challenge, so 3rd play through here I go... wish me luck on the field symbols and colour drops

[EDIT]: One thing I never understood and it isn't explained in game (if I his, I haven't reached that part yet). What the hell do the yellow chamber are for? Could never do anything there.

The yellow chambers (the wells) are essential for the game's conclusion (won't spoil more).

Tip: you can save one or two strokes before the cycle's end and catch the colors you really need, they aren't set and appear in random order.

Thanks very much for posting your impressions and good luck!

I'm glad the insane difficulty didn't scare you off - it wasn't meant to be THAT hard. Also, you might have noticed that the game is hard at times "unfairly" - we'll get rid of these moments in the English version.

Do you know that trees exhauste sooner whey you suck them out?

No they don't.

What?! When I suck dry the trees after each cycle, it takes two cycles for the trees to exhaust. Do the trees grow only for two cycles?

Well, I usualy only drain the trees after 5 cycles, when the first brothers appear (first garden) and they have a good amount of Limfa, 30 or so, depending on how much I spend to grow them.

30? This is not much) Try to fill the trees at maximum, they will give you more Limfa. And it's not advantageous to fill the trees not at maximum.

Hum... never had though of that, colour is usually in such small amount in the worlds (at least in the beginning) that I try to save every drop I can, using only the absolute minimum.

Doesn't work well with trees. Their color harvest is proportional to the amount of limfa used while reviving them. So the less you spend the less income you get. Capacity is limited, though . First trees (i.e. in the locations down and right from the beginning) are not that large.

I've been wondering.

Since I can't apply the official patch to the online version, is there a way to stop a brother when he is beating a sister, or am I screwed and all that Linfa is gone?

Unfortunately, you're screwed. The feature to stop the hunters while they're tearing the sister's hearts becomes available from 1.1 and forth.

Update:

Well, this is actually my 3rd play through(The 2nd I got stuck on day 19).

I finaly got Expose and Extract and god, I love mines! But I think this game was designed to toy with us: Now that I can use mines I get very few veins in them unlike the other previous play through -_-

Killed 3 brothers so far (Whaler, Ironclad and ball guy I can't remember the name), only 3 sisters remain to put raise them to level two (Una, Yani and Ole), and 3 brothers roaming the map (Mongolfier, Patriarch and Tyrant). (3 seems to be the magical number in this play through )

Got around 15 hearts I think (I know I can store 250 Limfa) and I'm on day 19. Think there is a good change to finish this one

Got the bridge garden pumping out limfa along with the fort mine.


I have to consider my next step carefully. If I go to feed Una, which I can since I'm maxed on blue and red, the Patriarch will go for her, and since I can't patch the game, I would be spending colour for nothing and would trigger a "sister hunt" on the part of the brother. So I think I'll max a few trees in the bridge garden with red and blue so I can have a backup storage and then try to kill the Patriarch since he isn't too difficult to beat.

After that I can unlock Una areas and then will have to kill Mongolfier so I can finally feed Ole, my target sister.

Well that is my plan, let us hope it works

If I manage to finish this play through by ascending with Ole I may do a video play through next

Thanks for the update, and good luck! Hope you make it this time

Well, finished the game last night! \o/ My dear beloved Ole...

Anyway....

The plan in my last post went well and I managed to feed Una after killing the Patriarch, and after Una, Yani and finally Ole after dealing with Mongolfier, and let me tell you something figuring out how to get the last glyth is not easy, not to mention reaching turgor with the clock ticking against me.

Fortunately after killing Ironclad (Again) and Tyrant, who were busy trading blows with each other, I had the full map to gather Lympha

After much frustration (4 out of 5 times on entering Ole's Cradle the game would crash), I finally managed to free Ole.

My final score:

Result: Guest helped a sister escape
Brother Defeated: 3
Sisters Killed: 0
3 Trips to the Surface: Yes
Turgor Day: 33

Final Score: 50

*SPOILERS BELLOW*

Final Impressions:

The whole game atmosphere and dialog is simply brilliant, not to mention the animation of the Sisters, just perfect.

The story is good, although in the moment they start talking about Godsend I lost track of the story a bit, mainly, who the hell is the Golden Sister (following the dialogs thru the journal is hard at best), and Godsend.

I finished the game by ascending Ole and then, with reload, ascended alone. In both endings I lost the final story since it is not subbed, therefor I could only look at the pretty pictures (LxR could you tell me what was told in both endings? Ole and Self Ascend)

It is really hard to understand who are the "bad guys", some of the stories from the Brothers made sense

And some unintentional comic moments, like Aya telling me not to hurt Mongolfier, 5 days after I killed him.

Sound is also perfect and some tracks are really hypnotic.

The brother fights are a bit unbalanced, some as piss easy, other are ridiculously hard.

Overall, one of the best games I played marred with some bug that couldn't be fixed in my version.

8.0/10 (-0.1 for the bugs and -1.9 otherwise LxR would hit me (Still a solid 10 for me) )

Oh, come on, you're flattering us. It'd be more fair to rate the game a solid 8.0, for me.

As for the endings... You might have noticed, that these texts read in background are poems, and they don't tell much about what happened - that's one of the things Tension was criticized a lot, and, hopefully, we'll make them a bit more satisfying in the English version. The poems are by Maximillian Voloshin, translated by bratt_n:

WARNING, SPOILERS!

Intro:
The dream of future that you see dissolves
And with the time so does the apprehension
The world under the sun is no exception
And all you see around you evolves

New traits in things familiar you sense
But futile is the hope without fruition
The grief you knew reverts to empty visions
The happiness you felt becomes intense

But winter leaves and so do snow and coldness
And spring revives the world with loving warmness
But there’s law: all things decay and age.

The vanity itself won’t dry your tears
And you’re afraid that once the time is steered
The word will turn devoid of the change.

Self final:
Above the surface cold the quiet seas are thrown
At a solemn rocky edge: the highlands built of bricks
The chasms black, the road metals’ shrieks
And boundaries woeful of the land unknown

I see the dreams so marvelously sad
The creeks of land so solid and so crusted
Where waves and tides upon the shores are busted
While singing by the twilight’s midnight bed

And canvas in the dark that rushes off its course
Is trembling with an ancient mystic force
The force of wind and wheezy breathless riffle

In ways of constant dare, rightful struggle
My boat is lead by water’s sheer ripple
And skies are lit with starry shining sparkle.

Ole final:
The ones who saw the dreams and knew the names
Who heard the grasses talking to each other
Who learned the will of their ancient father
And listened to the songs of tidal waves

The ones whose souls have been purified
The ones who harnessed pains of hardest challenge
Who lit the candles to a broken allege
Who have become a shade of darkest nights

Who didn’t squeeze their grade to sinful cup
And didn’t seek the joy in earthly leisure
Not in the priestess’ dance, not in the pleasure

But who descended in the hell’s setup
To meet own shadow at the very bottom
Those don’t expect their hearts with love to blossom.

Great Upd ))))))
There's more to do in Tension, by the way. We planted not one, not two, but 25 easter eggs. They'll show up in the rating after the game as icons - if you have a save game near endgame, where you can still explore - I strongly encourage you to do so.

Also, there's finally a patch for your version and hell knows who made it, since it wasn't anyone from the studio. http://www.ag.ru/files/patches/16162 - download it here, the higher file. The savegames will not work though. To make them work again - reinstall the game - they're not erased.
More impressions, please! Working on this right now.

I didn't fight all Brothers, but I'll give my opinion on the brothers I fought during all my games:

-Ironclad: Just about right, the hard part comes from him being able to take a lot of hits. I find this battle balanced

-Mongolfier: Balanced

-Tyrant: Hard to catch (could only with the Glyph that follows targets), but balanced

-Guy with the flying heads: Balanced

-Guy with balls: Piss easy, I think it was the only Brother that didn't do damage to me and I didn't use the Shell Glyph

-Patriarch: A tad easy, the long range attack is easy to block with Shell and he his too slow to be able to hit in close range, could dodge every hit from him

-Warden: Are you insane? His bone attack deals massive damage, very very very hard to hit unless you have the "target lock ball" Glyph and once he disappears and you end up inside him it is impossible to block, it all happens to fast (Unlike Mongolfier last attack were you can see him jump and have time to draw a shell)

Never fought: Pit, the guy full of spears, and I have a feeing I'm forgetting someone but can't check the brothers list here at work.

Hope it helps

Just remembered, the only thing that could be considered an Easter egg is a drawing in game, I saw of Ironclad in florescent green

No, not going to tell were

There are more than 17 easter eggs) Some of them need the Magnet to be discovered.

Exactly 25, as I already said. 17 have icons and descriptions.

And all of them are named in a certain file (Just the names not the locations)

Nope, only 17 of them. There are 8 that don't show up on statistics - pardon my disinformation.

What did you think of my battle analysis with the brothers LxR? Some comment would be nice, I mean, are some of those fights suppose to be extremely easy/hard or did I screw up somewhere?