Remedy’s Control Resonant is out today on consoles and PC. The open-world sequel to 2019’s excellent Control has received plenty of positive reviews, but early reactions to how much health enemies and bosses have in the early parts of the game have seemingly convinced the Alan Wake studio to make them a bit easier to kill via a hotfix.
Technically, Control Resonant launched on September 22 for those who pre-ordered the more expensive version of the game. But today, the game is finally out for everyone on all platforms, and based on feedback Remedy has received from reviews and early access players, as well as info gained from playing its own finished game, the studio is quickly implementing a patch to address the biggest complaint connected to Resonant: Enemies take a lot of damage to kill, and it makes the early hours of the game a bit of a slog.
“Based on what we have seen so far,” wrote Remedy in a blog post on Thursday. “We have decided to deploy a hotfix (1.3.3) at launch to address a few specific things: enemy health pools feeling too high, requiring too many hits to Falter (stun) enemies for executions, and Dylan’s overall combat strength early on in the game not feeling powerful enough (even if the man just woke up from a coma).”
As listed in the patch notes, Remedy is making three key changes to Control Resonant:
- 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.
The studio explained in the blog post that it “strongly” believes these changes will “improve the gameplay feel and flow while still providing a challenge.” Remedy also reminded players that Resonant features an assist mode, so players who think enemies are still too powerful can further tweak their health amounts and how much damage they can deal to make the game a little easier. Or you can use those same settings to make Control Resonant much, much harder.
Some other tweaks included in this hotfix include a permanent lower cost to respec abilities and some UI text changes to better explain parts of the game’s combat and mechanics.
The general reaction to this hotfix has been mostly positive, with many players suggesting that enemies having too much health was one of their biggest issues with the sequel and that this patch will go a long way to making the game better. However, some on Steam were upset that this hotfix forced them to reinstall the pre-loaded game.