If you are still stuck on this, I did it slightly differently than the video. I would stand in the same place, change the element, and bounce the shot off the wall to hit the crate since I couldn't both move and fire fast enough. I had to do it a bunch of times and didn't even notice right away when I got it right. I think the bomb might have bounced off on the far side when it destroyed the rocks (sometimes it would bounce off far enough to send the crate back but without destroying the rocks :( ). So yeah, there might be something unreasonably specific needed to make that one work, but try it again a few times and hopefully it will work.

There were a few hard things in that tower; I think that one is the worst but there were a couple of others that took me a while also and I don't remember where exactly they were. If you get to the "you must be kidding" level, that one isn't as hard as it looks (although still took me several times like all of the sequence levels). The final boss battle took a while but was fairly easy (at level 63 IIRC with fancy Rhombus Square equipment); I only had to restart once due to misunderstanding what was going on in one of the flashier moments. So you are almost done...

You can go back after the credits to finish the optional stuff but if you do I recommend having at least the -7 patch installed (of the gog patches) or you will be unable to get any more money (and you might need a bunch for one of the more obscure quests). -9 mentions "Fixed a few more things killing you VERY quickly during the final boss fight."

I am almost 40 and I don't think my reflexes are that great, although it certainly rewards patience and having enough time to keep trying over and over (I like that it at least doesn't send you back too far when you fail, that is what I really don't like about some games). I am disabled and was able to spend much of my waking hours playing for a while and it was great for me. For some people it might also be tough or impossible to physically make some of the movements required or the time needed might not be worth it.

Are you increasing your combat rank when trying to grind? I think you will get more XP as your combat rank increases (there is a S rank after A), although your party members will complain that you are fighting too much and beg for a break :(. I don't think I got all that far ahead, however, so maybe you are right.

I like that it was hard but possible for me and I could see myself improving significantly along the way. OTOH, it isn't always obvious if you will actually be able to succeed and a few things I didn't expect to be able to complete. IMO being able to fail a bunch of times without external consequences is a fun aspect of games. I was wishing for an automated bloopers reel at the end to watch some of those failures after having succeeded...

Soo, after I installed 1.0.0-10, i tried again. This time it worked on the first try... There seems to be something going on requiring a pixel-perfect throw. The bomb landing just a few pixels higher on the block made this work.
There is no momentum involved, the bomb did not move when the block stopped.

I have to admit that for two more puzzles i looked at the video. I am somewhat exhausted by this game to be honest :)
Im an now standing in the final room (I assume) and i will defninetly need to do this after some rest...

And yes, I made the same experience of simply getting better with the controller. I am still not good, but at the beginning i was really awful. I needed something like 7 or 8 tries for the dash and aim training at the very beginning. I cannot remember how often i died to the boss in the tutorial dungeon.
I still cannot handle dashing, can barely handle guarding, and I have trouble using any special abilities other than melee. But i have noticably gotten better. My whole handling of the controller has gotten better, and i think this will help me in other controller based games.

Hmm.. not sure if I did anything different to get it to bounce or if it is just my memory not being so great... I think since I was aming at the wall I also didn't really see what was going on that clearly. I bet it bounced off before I hit the crate in some cases. Hopefully the patch made it a bit easier too since that seems like a bug that it is so difficult to get right.

I felt that a bit at the end too, although somehow I still decided to finish up the last few quests, chests, and botanics after that :). I like that winning the final boss battle required using the different elements but wasn't all that difficult since I would have been really annoyed if it took much longer. Personally boss battles are always my least favorite part of games; I always wish there was a "make boss battles easy" option (I think I have seen seperate main game and boss difficulty settings once or twice and I wish more games would have that). I did like the duels though.

I think I needed 20-30 tries (maybe more) for that dash-aim training :(. I was rather worried about the difficulty after that but I only needed a few tries for the tutorial dungeon boss and I don't think I needed to do that exact move again in the game. I used regular dash all the time but not dash-aim. I could handle guaring with all directions guard but not both guarding and facing the right direction unless I had lots of time to prepare. By the end I could do melee arts and throw arts fairly well and occasionally guard arts, but dash arts I never figured out. I should go finish the Price of Persia series beore the better controller handling fades away (if it hasn't already :/)...

I'm not sure why but one of my favorite lines in the game is the guy in Rookie Harbor pointing out that the fruit is real and wondering what it tastes like. Even though the whole "vitual world in a physical place" aspect didn't make much sense if you think about it too much. All of the party member comments made the game much more fun for me too and sometimes encouraged me to stop and look at some visual aspect of the game that I might not have noticed otherwise.

I'll never even get close to the Boss fight. I threw this thing out the window and now I'm playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider. ;)

Well, i did it :)
Today was a good day for me, and in the end i needed only four or five tries for the puzzle.

The endboss was a bit tedious though. He could not really kill me (only had to use buffood in one of the later phases) I was mostly able to just tank him with some very few dashes and no guards at all. Took me a bit to realize hor i could damage him ;)
At first i was afraid that there is a timer (or rather several) but i managed, even when he was able to fully power up a couple of times.

One last question: I have all botanics entries in all zones, and managed to find one hidden plant in Rhombus Square. Where is the rest? I am not at 100%...

Yay!

Yeah, I agree it was tedious, although I thought they did a fairly good job trying to make it seem epic and have a few challenging aspects while recognizing that most people (I'm guessing) would just be wanting the final bit of story by that point and not a super difficult end battle.

The one you found was the most difficult for me and took me quite a while to find; I missed the hint the first time :/. I'm fairly sure the others are all in the main towns, Rookie Harbor, Bergen, Ba'kii Kum, and Basin Keep. They are either hard to reach locations, hidden, or just spots you don't need to go otherwise. I think at least some of them are in locations that previously had something else, like a chest or a quest, and they only appear later, but possibly I just missed them at first. You might have seen them earlier and not realized that you can collect them (they don't really look like plants to me). There are also a couple of the same type of plant hidden in the inn in Sapphire Ridge but those aren't ones you can collect.

Good to hear, I always appreciate those options, particularly when they can be changed at any point since it is always frustrating to play for hours and then not be able to finish the story.

I haven't played that series at all, is there much of a location puzzle aspect? The screenshots all make them look like a FPS (I avoid those) but they are categorized under platformers, at least the old ones on GOG (I don't have or want a steam account).

The two other games I can think of that had a similar wow factor for me as with Crosscode are Psychonauts and the Trails in the Sky series. Hopefully more games will follow Crosscode and do the "parkour in a complex world" thing. I guess there are also Q.U.B.E. and Tri and those types of games that are decent but lack story and don't have a complex world.

Hey the assist mode is now live with the last update of the game 1.0.1, the update it's only available for galaxy users for now.
I think that the offline installers will be updated very soon.

I reject Steam in its totality as well. Though GOG's recent twitter mishaps make me reconsider. :(

Tomb Raider still is first person, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider has location puzzles that almost harken back to the good old days of Tomb Raider in the 90s. The puzzles mainly revolve around cables, winches, rotating platforms and the like.

I had to quit the game after the first dungeon, because all-in-all it was a bit too challenging and demanding for me. Therefore I am happy to read that they want to make the game easier.

Could anybody be more specific about the "assist mode"? Can the combat difficulty be adjusted for boss fights or for all fights? And how about the puzzles? Are they just easier to solve now or is there a hint function?

Check Grimlock's post on the previous page (last post on page 1 on default forum settings).

Thanks, I had overlooked it. Looks promising, maybe worth a second try.

Ug, I hadn't seen that :(. Unfortunately, I don't think steam would be any better. I often wish there were other options. The only at all similar one I have found is Playism but they have an extremely limited selection, a barely functional website, and I have no idea if they would be any better about that stuff. The whole industry is rather bad.

Trying to play Prince of Persia: Warrior Within made me remember why I had given up on that series :(.

Maybe I'll try one of the ones from the 90s next time they are on sale,
thanks.

To be a bit more specific than Grimlock's post without needing to watch a video, there are three new sliders settable in the last options tab at any point and take effect instantly. Received damage can be set from 0%-100% in 20% increments. Enemy attack frequency and puzzle speed can be set from 50%-100% in 10% increments. For the Bergen speed runs the only one that seems to have any effect is enemy attack frequency that recuces the speed that the cannons fire (this does help quite a bit). You don't get more time to finish. The puzzle speed at least slows the timer when you need to hit multiple targets in a row (there is a particularly difficult one in Gaia's Garden), but that is all I looked at so far so I can't say about anything else.

Most challenge quests are still to hard for me with the sliders, but they are optional anyway (I just wish I could delete them from my quest list).

Puzzle speed affects quite a lot of things by the way. For example it also lets those bubbles stay alive for double the time at 50%. Flames stay out double as long. All doors also stay open for longer. All switches stay active longer.

They sadly never got Tomb Raider Anniversary, which was kind of the crowning achievement of "old" Tomb Raider games. But alas. My disc version runs fine. ;)