Control Resonant is out now – and seemingly doing quite well – but based on “early player data” and reviews, Remedy Entertainment decided to drop a major hotfix patch on launch day, September 24. The goal? To make the game easier.
Whether you just want to breeze through the story and its open world, or to focus on its weapon forms-centric melee combat, you’ll do a lot of fighting in Control Resonant. The problem was that enemies were reportedly too “spongey”, especially early on. Were the devs right to rush to correct this? Players are now debating that.
Control Resonant Hotfix 1.3.3 Changes
“We strongly believe these changes will improve the gameplay feel and flow while still providing a challenge,” Remedy said as part of the post to introduce the changes and the reasoning behind them.
Specific patch notes weren’t shared, but it seems the focus was on bringing down the tankiness of most enemies during Control Resonant’s early hours:
- Reduce the base health and required Falter (stun) level of most enemies, as well as the Dancer and Deserter bosses.
- Increase maximum Aberrant Strength and maximum Ability Strength. These strength increases follow a curve, with progressively larger increases towards the end. The more upgrades you have, the more damage you deal.
Remedy also underlined the existence of an Assist Mode that allows players to fully customise their experience, even if the developers felt the need to jump in and tweak the game’s default experience.
Additionally, the cost of respeccing abilities/perks has been reduced, with vendors across the game also having more stock of “reset items”. On that note, the first boss also drops two reset items instead of one to encourage more early-game experiments with builds.
Was Control Resonant Really Too Hard?
As someone who played the game for a while before the public launch date, I’d say something about the combat definitely felt off, but I wouldn’t instantly claim the first damage and falter values were the key problems.
The lack of proper melee combos that allow a better mix of different weapon forms is a bit more concerning to me (given the game’s genre ambitions), or the fact that Dylan feels too glued to enemy at times with chains of attacks, making last-minute dodges tricky. It’s unclear (at the time of writing) if Remedy will be looking into deeper combat improvements based on feedback and the initial reviews.
In any case, the boost to health and falter damage against most enemies and some key bosses is welcome, as Control Resonant’s early hours felt a bit too sluggish, which isn’t ideal to make a truly good first impression. Longer, more tiring combats aren’t always better if there aren’t enough mechanics and systems making them extremely engaging, so it’s good that Remedy has decided to tinker with the game in such a major way right at launch.
Control Resonant is now available on PC (Steam & Epic Games Store), PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.