I've tried playing with a controller for like 5 minutes and found the controls to be pretty clunky tbh. It didn't feel precise enough vs MKB.

I'm not sure if I like that the difficulty keeps up with your getting stronger, but I guess I wouldn't fit the vibe the game is going for if you could just plough your way to the end like in Diablo (bar being too scared by the game). I'll stay optimistic.

It used to be that ranged weapons had the highest DPS and didn't have a lot of counterplay to them. Similarly to souls games, you can stagger monsters if you deal enough damage, either by breaking parts of their bodies or just dealing enough damage in general. For really high kill times, you'd have four hunters stand in a circle around the monster and shoot them with their Heavy Bowguns for insane amounts of damage. In later installments, some monsters got quite a lot of mobility - think dashes, jumps, teleports even - to close the gap to ranged hunters. Given that you'd fight the monster across the entire map, following them from area to area with sometimes drastically different environments and verticality, you could either win out and have some kinda ledge to shoot from or your stuck in a very flat area with barely any cover to hide behind, so you're more likely to get hit. Stronger monsters sometimes have huge AOE attacks that could one-shot you as a ranged hunter if you're not careful. It was only recently changed that ranger hunters had to have a gunner armour vs a blademaster armour with lower resistances and defense to balance out their ranged DPS.

Similarly to Souls, ranged weapons played a little monotonous and one-dimensional, unfortunately. Across the three ranged weapons there used to be (maybe there's more now - haven't kept up with newer titles), you'd only have different types of ammo and coatings for your arrows for a bow and essentially the same kinda moves to attack with. In later games, additional moves have been introduced, kinda similar to Fable Arts in Lies of P or Ashes of War in ER, that spiced up the gameplay and allowed for more customisation and personalisation. Other than that, melee weapons were always and will likely remain the favourites among fans - they are just more fun and play better. Plus you're in the thick of things like in soulslikes which is the main drive of playing these games in the first place, I feel like.

Hope that answers your question somewhat :)

I've got a buzz cut, so my fiancée usually dyes some kinda patterns onto my head. She's done Starry Night by van Gogh before, spirals, geometrical patterns, hearts for Valentine's, card suits etc etc

Don't have any ideas currently. Open to suggestions :)

Darkwood definitely isn't a cozy game. I haven't played in a bit too, but I'd usually play for like 1h, maybe 2 at a time until I need a break. I haven't died yet and am yet to leave the first area of the map, so there's probably lots I haven't seen and experienced yet, but I'll get there sometime soon, I'm sure.

The 2010s are certainly guilty of that colour palette, damn. Add in a yellow-tint filter on top and you've got your average shooter.

That cheese sounds fun! I feel like ranged weapons in general are underutilised in soulslikes already. Weapons like Simon's Bowblade from Bloodborne add a little variety to the very melee-leaning weaponry.

It feels to me like soulslikes haven't really figured out the balance of how to have an interesting ranged weapon that can coexist with melee weapons. Monster Hunter figured out, and I'd say they share a couple of similarities when it comes to combat.

That one's quite easy to pull off too, right? And relatively early on. How many of these are there throughout the game? Two I think?

Awesome, enjoy! Looking forward to your impressions :)

So cute and love the colour! I should get my hair dyed soon too