Yoo what up. I thought it'd be cool to have a thread to discuss act 1 and act 2 of hiveswap, more specifically which one you guys fw more cuz i think there's room for interesting discussion about that stuff. i can go first cuz i like writing stuff
ACT 1
easily my favorite of the two. i think it's only real downside is of how short it is: even for someone like me who REALLY went in-depth with finding all the different interactions with items, and getting all the achievements, it still only took like 4 hours or so. like the game can be beaten in like 30 minutes if you're REALLY speeding through. also the puzzles are pretty light like I don't think you have to think at all.
however, it makes up for this in like every other aspect. there's only really 3 characters you meet in total but all of them get a ton of time in the sun and really stand out: joey, jude and xefros are all awesome and i love them to bits. this game's main selling point being the fact EVERYTHING has unique dialogue was also really nice to explore in, and not a single stone feels like the team left it unturned writing wise. was still cracking a smile like right as the game was gonna end for some of the jokes. also the music's super good like please listen to Joey Claire, Extraordinaire and your life will lowkey change for the better.
ACT 2
i don't have too much i like about act 2, but one thing i can respect is the amount of characters: i didn't play any of the VN games so i didn't know any of the fantrolls BUT there were some i liked, notably gaegrl is kinda the goat forever and ever. also the art is forever gonna be good (its a homestuck game) and the CGs were awesome asf. that one frame with the clown guy and joey listening to that guy's mixtape was my pfp for a while
however, i didn't like this act nearly as much as act 1. i think my main gripe is just how much of it feels like filler so you have a reason to go talk to all of the fantrolls. legitimately all of the train quests are just "go through every traincar until you find the specific troll needed to meet the criteria". all of the cool item interactions that made up most of my act 1 playthrough ended up feeling like they got kinda stuffed out, with a noticeably different and less interesting vibe to them. all the stuff with mutually exclusive routes makes it actually feel a lot like a VN, which given the fact that i've read a lot of the new team worked on the homestuck VNs makes sense. overall i didn't like it as much and the fact so many achievements are locked behind multiple playthroughs suuuucks (versus act 1, where you can basically get all but one mutually exclusive achievement in a single playthrough if you're nice like that).
i'm typing this from the perspective of someone who hasn't been too(?) tapped into like, ACTUAL homestuck stuff like that since like summer 2024 when i first read it. i'm more into mspfa stuff nowadays, which mighta shifted my opinions a lil bit.
would like to know what you guys think though! i will always fw reading discussion threads of media like this it's interesting to talk about
the yung filipino prophet
I think Act 1 is probably the better game but Act 2 had what I wanted after Friendsim, which is more of the cast of characters it built up. I think if I hadn't read or cared about Friendsim that Act 2 wouldn't really have been as enjoyable.
If you haven't you should check out the LucasArts point n click games, with what you liked about Act 1 I think you'd have a great time with them!
That's it, I'm gonna do what I should have done a long time ago.
I'm going to beat him to death with this hammer.
I feel much the same way. Seeing these characters again was the best part but otherwise Act 2 is just a massive slog with puzzles that are either nonsensical or drag on for wayyyyy too long. The court segment for example, while cool, really overstayed its welcome, And the final puzzle at the front of the train was actively frustrating for both me and the person I was playing with. There ARE hints but not only are they not always available (and this seemed to be the case for when we always needed them most), but ideally the puzzles should be solvable without needing to resort to that or brute forcing every item on every puzzle. Act 1 also had this issue but to a much less egregious extent since there were way less rooms and items to work with.
Kindness, Kindness Terezi~ Kindness, Kindness Terezi~
As much as I love both acts, act two is definitely my favorite. Both acts establish settings really well and have beautiful explorable aspects, but I especially love the expansion of Alternian society in act two.
I am forever a fan of Friendsim, which means Act 2 is definitely my favorite <3
>> You get the feeling that this person misses their wife, Tails. Misses them a lot. Who is Tails? You're not sure.
I think Act 2 has an inarguable lack of polish compared to Act 1, but I do prefer Act 2 bc it's just more substantive. More characters, more of the Joey and Xefros relationship, more world building, more involved puzzles, overall it just feels like a more complete experience.
Act 1 wipes the floor with Act 2 as far as i'm concerned. whatever advantage Act 2 has in breadth of content Act 1 makes up for in sheer depth. all 3 of the first act's principle locations are developed right down to the most minute detail; I know some players thought the item combining feature was pure fluff and they didn't miss it at all in the second act, but to me that MADE the second game. I'm hearing all the praise for the worldbuilding in Act 2, but personally I was never really able to feel like Act 2 was about any kind of world at all outside of the small slice of society I was forced to interact with on that train. getting the opportunity to keep combining items and keep learning stupid new details about every little thing in Xefros and Dammek's (and even Joey and Jude's!) houses really made those locales feel lived in. having these opportunities snatched away from me in Act 2, meanwhile, never felt like a decision that had been made for the sake of the art; it was always just another window into the hollowed-out guts of the lovingly sculpted but tragically underresourced world around me.
certainly doesn't help that I was just never all that compelled by the friendsim cast. paper-pushing teals was such an impossibly dull choice for a caste to focus on, and forcing them into proximity with the jadebloods really seemed to blanche all the interesting bits out of what i thought was easily one of the most intriguing bits of all Homestuck worldbuilding.
>eats somewhere other than olive garden once
>fucking dies
my name and overall favorite pairing would usually make me a very biased individual when it comes to this topic but honestly??? i agree, i prefer act 1.
i think act 1 was an excellent start to hiveswap, it was very intricate and made up for its small size with its depth, and i really really appreciate that. act 1 brought me into the world right off the bat, joey, jude and xefros are wonderful characters that you can really feel for their personality, exploring their rooms and reading their interactions was the best, and even though the puzzle-combat mechanics were a little janky, i was pretty disappointed to find that there was little to none of it in act 2.
act 2 is very VERY good when it comes to world-building, the sheer difference between the train cars is something i could analyze all day long, the backgrounds are beautiful and you can tell the team had a lot of fun designing all of the trolls. but for the gameplay and story aspects?? mmmmeh. the story continued off nicely, but it definitely didnt focus on xefros and joey too much until the very end‐which is understandable, considering they now have to juggle a whole cast of new characters too. but because there's so many characters, its hard to give them equal spotlight, especially more tedious when some trolls' only interactions with joey were glorified fetch quests.
the teals and jades, for instance, get waaaaay too much of the spotlight. in spite of my favoritism, i feel like the teal-jade car is a big slog to play through, and the time taken to explore the highblood car that i was really excited for was instead used to play a court segment that i only really cared about because tyzias and stelsa were a big part in it (lol)
even then, during my first playthrough i had a difficult time caring for any of the male troll characters in hiveswap other than xefros and marvus, i didn't care so much for tagora that i didnt even know his gender during the whole teal-jade car segment.... (but its more of a mess issue, than anything)
and the fact that 2 characters that should've appeared at the start of the game were cut, which made act 2 feel really hollow at the start of the game.
