This game has such a neat concept but it has an awful difficulty spike after the second boss. I had to look up a walkthrough to figure out the way forward, and it turned out to be a hidden path that requires you to claw attack two enemies mid air. There is nothing that tells you you can claw attack enemies midair, and I'm still not entirely sure what it does? It doesn't seem to give me enough height to actually make it to the hidden path, and the actual part where you have to do it is at the end of a long path from the last save chamber filled with one hit kill enemies. I have spent the greater part of an afternoon on this and still haven't gotten it. This is the level of difficulty and obscurity I expect from really brutal optional content like the Path of Pain from Hollow Knight, or from sequence breaks the developer didn't intent for, not from the main progression of the game.
First of all, are you aware that you can still use rewind at zero hp? The game doesn't have real 1-hit kills, since you can always spend a little vision to make it so you were never hit.
Second, it isn't clear what hidden path you mean. The first area I ever needed the claw height boost was after the underwater area, and I could see the route to avoid the locked encounter room being described as a "hidden path", but it has a save chamber right before the platforming sections. If a guide is leading you elsewhere, it is possible that it is pointing to an area that is technical possible at that point but would be better off left for when you have more upgrades.
When you shoot something that cannot be destroyed by regular shots, sparks appear indicating what you need to use. Purple sparks mean it can be destroyed by charge shots, red sparks mean it can be destroyed by the claw, and yellow sparks mean it can be destroyed by the speed booster. This gives a clear indication that you need to use the claw on the rock in the path right after the underwater area, and when you try it you discover that you gain height by clawing stuff mid-air. It is afterwords that it gives you monsters which you need to not shoot so you can claw them.
On the claw not being enough to make your jumps, you are probably supposed to combine your abilities. When platforming I find that unless you are near the ceiling it is almost always better to do diagonal dashes rather than horizontal ones. You can also gain a slight height boost by firing a charge shot down while in the air (which really isn't introduced anywhere that I can tell), but I'm not sure it is actually necessary anywhere (in the area after the underwater section, it just saves the need to spend HP standing on a spiked platform).
It's the part after the underwater part that I'm talking about my dude. I didn't say it didn't lead me to the hidden path I said it never explained the claw jump mechanics. Every time I have died I have been out of vision, the game does a good job of explaining that you can rewind after death and honestly I feel you must be entering this discussion in bad faith if you're bringing that up as something I didn't know. Same with the breakable walls thing, I wouldn't be able to get to the second boss if I didn't know that, so there was no need to patronize me about it. And yeah, obviously I need to "combine my abilities" to reach the secret path, I didn't spent hours just jumping, clawing the enemy, then dropping down and dying. I have played a video game before.
>It's the part after the underwater part that I'm talking about my dude.
Then why did you say that it was at the end of a long path from the last save chamber? I revisited it, and to suggest that you could have failed to see the save point would be patronizing you far more than any of my previous explanations.
>every time I have died I have been out of vision, the game does a good job of explaining that you can rewind after death and honestly I feel you must be entering this discussion in bad faith if you're bringing that up as something I didn't know
I brought it up because "I got hit so many times that I ran out of vision" is not unlike "I got hit so many times that I ran out of HP" which is the opposite of "one hit kill enemies". Also, its been long enough since I first started this game that I didn't trust my recollection that it was freaking obvious.
>I didn't say it didn't lead me to the hidden path I said it never explained the claw jump mechanics
And I wrote about how the game explained the claw jump mechanism, only for you to complain about me telling you things you already know.
>and yeah, obviously I need to "combine my abilities" to reach the secret path, I didn't spent hours just jumping, clawing the enemy, then dropping down and dying
And yet for some reason you only talked about the claw. The fact is, the claw jump is not a complicated mechanic and if you are using it and not reaching the other side the problem is probably in how use use your other abilities. Which is why I provided a tip on air dashing, plus two different ways of saving your air dash for when you actually need it. I suppose i could offer you a third option, but that seems like asking asking for complaints since the mechanic behind it was literally written on the wall earlier, so I shouldn't suggest that it might not have occurred to you to use it in this exact spot.