Gaming O Death - The FromSoftware Thread [ELDEN RING]

I’m nearly done with a second playthrough now. I messed up the Frenzied Flame ending on my first try, so now I get to drop down that insanely difficult vertical tomb again. Yay!

 

I finally dipped my toes in the Elden Ring waters, and not to keep comparing it to Breath of the Wild, but here’s the difference - in Breath of the Wild, I was excited to find out what was around the next corner, to discover what new puzzle or enemy encounter awaited me in the immaculate open world. In Elden Ring? I dreaded it. I didn’t want to go in any direction I wanted to. Because what if I wasn’t ready for that area? Odds were I probably wasn’t. The fear that pressed me on in Bloodborne paralyzed me in Elden Ring. Turned it off after a couple hours, started Yakuza 7, and haven’t looked back.

 

I completed my third playthrough this morning, and now I have all of the achievements. I very nearly screwed up the Age of Stars ending, because I forgot I had to do the Ranni quest line again. That was fun rushing through everything, doing the bare minimum necessary to get that ending.

Time to finally play a different game!

 

After a couple days of on-again, off-again attempts, I finally beat Rennala yesterday. In spite of the challenge, or perhaps because of it, that was the funnest boss so far.

I play mage, so Rennala presents a special difficulty to ranged magic users. After trying to Rock Sling her to death a dozen times, I dispensed with the spell-casting altogether, called up Kaiden Mercenary to assist with his stunlocks, and clobbered her with the Moonveil katana.

Radahn took me 4 tries. No biggie.

 

After beating Elden Ring last year, I've decided to finally try and actually complete the Dark Souls trilogy this year, after a couple of on again off again attempts. Finished the first game yesterday and am now several hours into the second. Controls feel a bit jankier in this one, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.

 

Dark Souls 2 is probably the worst of the series, but it does have some great moments, such as the Shrine of Amana. My big complaint is that most of the bosses are some variant of “Tall armored dude with a sword.” It got stale after a while. The boss variety of DS1, DS3, and of course Elden Ring was much better.

 

I started Elden Ring 2 weeks ago, my first time from this maker after hearing about the reputation of Dark Souls for years.

It's actually not that difficult. I mean it's difficult, but it's difficult in a challenging/absorbing/fun way. I did hate when I lost a fair amount of runes due to some bad luck (70k after killing a sleeping dragon, and being taken out by the same random mook twice in a tight spot before I could finish researching the best way to spend them all in the early game for my Astrologer) but I know that's the game. I've explored most of the map, to the capital and Volcano manor and the underground Siofra River, and the earlier places like Caelid and Liurnia and the starter region, just getting the map fragments and discovering all the sites of grace and random side jobs is a fun challenge, but story wise just beat the Grafted Godrick boss (lots of God-something and R-beginning names in this game) and made it to right before the first boss in the magic academy. Accidentally stumbled into what I think is a later-game boss fight too, with a festival with some side-characters at a foreboding manor where I think the game started. Also I've got to say that Morgit was a huge challenge, really needed to level up my Astrologer and watch some videos, but I beat the Grafted one on first try without looking up hints or videos so feel pretty good about that one. Random tip: if you need a lot of runes, just get on horesback and ride around the Wolf/Rat/T-Rex hybrids attacking the camp near a castle in South Caelid and just aggro some more of those freaky hybrids into the camp, then just wait a few minutes, then reset. A fun but easy way to get like 5000 runes every 10-15 minutes.

 

If that was in Caelid then you probably encountered the lead up to Radahn's boss fight. It's generally recommended that you hold off on it until your at least level 60.

 

I'm really liking this game, but also, really confused by some of the lore

Spoiler: some big game spoilers

Like...are there any normal civilian people besides like 5 NPCs and the merchants?

Rykard sounds like he'll be nice, he thinks injustice was done to the Tarnished... but then his mansion has a secret underground prison city of horrors... the lady still thinks he'll like us and wants to introduce us... but he immediately tries to kill us (is also part of a Snake) so we kill him.

Rennala's academy is in ruin, but people are still there, and technically she's still there, but all of them are hostile to us... but when we nearly kill Rennala, she then becomes a doting figure who wants to help us be reborn?

Margit also goes by Morgit... just because? Or are they supposed to be different?

Fia likes to give hugs... until she suddenly needs us to point out the guy next door, who she kills?

And somehow Marika is Radagon, their own second spouses, who had children with separate first spouses and also each other... but even accepting that, they have different ethnicities/backgrounds (Marika of the Numen women, Radagon descended from a Fire Giant).

Death didn't exist, but did exist, but was then half-brought-back, but seems like it was always around with the tombs and burial caves, but we seem to be the only character that gets brought back easily numerous times.

I'm just a little confused. Am I missing something?

 

Yeah that’s the other thing about FromSoft’s games, they’re not big on elaborating when it comes to story details. There's some info that can be gleaned from item descriptions and conversations with npcs, but other parts will be just left up to the imagination and you're basically expected to try and put the whole thing together yourself. My recommendation would be if you're confused about certain plot elements is to google it.

 

I never pay attention to the lore of these games. All I care about is, hey there’s this big dude with a health bar and some awesome theme music. I need to kill him.

 

Good morning:

 

Good, now they can start working on Sekiro 2

 

Have to admit the Armoured Core VI trailer looked good, but is this guaranteed to not be a punishing Souls game? Heard it might not be which would certainly get my interest.

 

I finished my second playthrough over the weekend (NG+) and went for the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending as I'm trying to get the platinum. Just need one of the standard Elden Lord endings now and that'll be me done. I've started a new game (not NG+2) and it definitely feels rewarding to not be so massively OP at the start again.

As an aside, the channel RKG started their playthrough of Elden Ring on Saturday. If you're not familiar, it's three lads called Rory, Krupa and Gav. They've done playthroughs of all the other Soulsbourne games, first on IGN as Prepare to Try and now on their own channel. This series is probably going to last a year at least, so it's quite the time commitment, but I've seen the first two episodes and so far it's really good.

 

AC6 is out. Prepare to die.

Again.

And again.

And again.

 

Prepare to die. Again.

 

Hopefully it's a bit more accessible than the DLC for Bloodborne was. Not in terms of difficulty, but in terms of actually being able to access it.

 

Last week for the first time in more than 4 years I went back to DS3. I had such a love/hate relationship with that game, I frequently found it both very unpleasant to play, yet so compelling I actually made it through the whole game and DLCs, which is very rare for me these days. I found an old build I was running in parallel to my main one for a while, but had stopped just before the King of the Storm/Nameless King boss-fight because I just couldn't face doing that fight again; though it took me an hour and a half, I have beaten them again, and gone on to finish off the main game by killing the Soul of Cinder once more. However I'm not sure I have it in me to wade though Ariandel or the Ringed City, and certainly the idea of fighting Darkeater Midir again is not appealing, so I think perhaps I'm done for a while.

I am tempted by Elden Ring, though. I have a friend who has never got anywhere in previous FromSoftware games who says it's great and he's completed it, which suggests it's much more accessible than their usual fare. Did people he find it less punishing?

 

I think the open world helped, as bosses were not a total roadblock in the way they would be in a level structure.