ITT: which act of hiveswap do you like better?

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

I really like Act 1, and I do think it's better overall. It's better paced, more focused and feels more well-thought out in general. I don't think I need to go too in-depth here, I basically agree with everything said above.

That being said, I do think Act 2 is still fine. It's not terrible and has a lot of interesting things - the expansion on Joey & Xefros' relationship being the primary interesting part, in my opinion, but getting a closer look at Alternian society is good too. I don't really think 'focusing on the Jades and Teals too much' is a valid criticism, personally - the game has no obligation to equally serve all castes, just whatever suits the story. And personally, I do think those two castes have the strongest characters that we see - although, this might just be a self-fulfilling prophecy, since they're obviously going to get the most writing (although I still enjoyed them the most in Friendsim too). My main criticism would be the trial, ostensibly the main set piece, just was not executed well, and the beginning feels weirdly barren? It's unfortunate that a game that was seemingly hamstrung a little by lack of budget blew so much of that budget in the first few areas that ended up going essentially unused.

Ultimately, I hope the ending of act 2 means a couple of useless trolls die and they can focus on those left over. I like a fair few of them (Tagora, Tyzias Lanque and Konyll come to mind) but some were total duds and not even really worth trying to rehabilitate, writing wise - who would care if Vikare, Barzum, Diemen or Azdaja got impaled by a railway spike?

okay so I see a lot of people saying act 1 here but hear me out... we wouldn't have the best character aka galekh if it wasn't for act 2 so im gonna say act 2 I really enjoyed interacting with all the trolls and getting unique achivemnents

reading through these, i like the point about act 1's depth because i think it's actually a pretty good reason as to why i like it so much. i think act 2 struggles with introducing a bunch of stuff at once that doesn't feel like it really registers unless you get super invested into it. act 1 has less overall "stuff" (3 characters and a couple of rooms) but they get a TON of cool stuff to look and think about. xefros and joey's entire houses/hives are chock full of detail that you can look over a ton of different times and find cool shit for every single one, and they generally feel like they have more life to them.

i think most of this depth in act 2 comes more from the characters and thus the world they inhabit (there's a FUCK TON of them), although a good chunk of them don't feel like they are anything really substantial. You get to learn some nice stuff about the world (like all the stuff with the jade-bloods were cool, i didn't know about that caretaker stuff before) but otherwise it feels a lot more flat compared to act 1. Not to say there aren't a couple of interesting trolls in act 2, but like diemen/mallek/a few others could get gurxed in act 3 and I don't think i'd blink at it.

Act 1, but that's mainly 'cos grinding through that sodding trial scene dragged Act 2 down. I did like talking to all the trolls, and even the fetch quests. It'd be nice if Act 3 has more of a balance between dialgoue and what I guess you could call environmental puzzle solving.