Video Games

[Jarick]

Been playing the indie game "Forager". It's really addictive. Spent a couple weeks digging deep into the game then took what I learned and trying to cut that time down to just a couple days to max level.

 

[laxu]

Lies of P final boss Nameless Puppet is kicking my ass so hard. I can get him to phase 2 pretty consistently but after that it becomes really tough avoiding many of his combos.

I hate how this game arbitrarily decides you cannot summon an NPC helper to make things easier, and a lot of the consumables, gear etc are not really enough to give you a huge advantage.

 

[Aelred]

You can also dupe the DLC remembrances at the base game mausoleums if you happen to need more

All I do is choose the weapon, save game, hand it to a friend, reload, collect and choose the other option. Usually multiple weapons at a time, and if I ask for maxed I get it maxed. I can ask for any weapon or talisman in the DLC and get it - I just want to earn it myself first. 3 coffins for 10 rememerances ... let me get my calculator...

Multiplayer gives you many more options and consummables to exploit. Try getting 100 Marika's Blessings and 500 Starlight Shards any other way.

The basic mechanic for any Fantasy RPG since D&D was invented (and yes, I am so old...) is that you earn XP - runes, echoes, souls - by killing things and improving. The more nasty the thing you kill the greater the improvement. FROM introduced getting back to your death-spot to retrieve points earned. You face an early Boss, lose badly, kill smaller enemies/farm until you get good enough to take that Boss out.

Not so in Shadow. Kill all the small guys you want, it won't help at all. Elden Ring sold tonnes because it was accessible to new players - I wonder how many of those new players are enjoying getting slaughtered at high levels in the DLC? Many single-player, no co-op or summons reviewers are howling about the difficulty/neccessity for summons as never before.

If I send out a Near/far to the Summoning Pools, if I get summoned into the main game I am at the right level of difficulty. If I get summoned into Shadow, I get nerfed or buffed to the Host's Scadutree Level and so can go from "Malenia was a cake-walk" to "Rellana was impossible" from one co-op to the next, making Shadow noticably distinct from the main game as a co-op experience every day. I play co-op every day.

Bloodborne felt incomplete and quite small without the Old Hunters, which had the best weapons, boss fights and music ever. But it still felt like Bloodborne, with the same basic mechanics for improvement.

Not so with Shadow, in my daily experience playing it anyway. Ymmv.

 

[laxu]

All I do is choose the weapon, save game, hand it to a friend, reload, collect and choose the other option. Usually multiple weapons at a time, and if I ask for maxed I get it maxed. I can ask for any weapon or talisman in the DLC and get it - I just want to earn it myself first. 3 coffins for 10 rememerances ... let me get my calculator...

Multiplayer gives you many more options and consummables to exploit. Try getting 100 Marika's Blessings and 500 Starlight Shards any other way.

The basic mechanic for any Fantasy RPG since D&D was invented (and yes, I am so old...) is that you earn XP - runes, echoes, souls - by killing things and improving. The more nasty the thing you kill the greater the improvement. FROM introduced getting back to your death-spot to retrieve points earned. You face an early Boss, lose badly, kill smaller enemies/farm until you get good enough to take that Boss out.

Not so in Shadow. Kill all the small guys you want, it won't help at all. Elden Ring sold tonnes because it was accessible to new players - I wonder how many of those new players are enjoying getting slaughtered at high levels in the DLC? Many single-player, no co-op or summons reviewers are howling about the difficulty/neccessity for summons as never before.

If I send out a Near/far to the Summoning Pools, if I get summoned into the main game I am at the right level of difficulty. If I get summoned into Shadow, I get nerfed or buffed to the Host's Scadutree Level and so can go from "Malenia was a cake-walk" to "Rellana was impossible" from one co-op to the next, making Shadow noticably distinct from the main game as a co-op experience every day. I play co-op every day.

Bloodborne felt incomplete and quite small without the Old Hunters, which had the best weapons, boss fights and music ever. But it still felt like Bloodborne, with the same basic mechanics for improvement.

Not so with Shadow, in my daily experience playing it anyway. Ymmv.

Having played Lies of P now, I started thinking what makes that game different from Elden Ring. There's not much difference in the gameplay of the levels, but the bosses feel very different.

Because attacks and dodges take a lot of stamina, it feels like you need to manage that much more, to actually stop a bit and catch your breath. But the bosses give you this time to do so and you can use it to heal, use an item etc, but in similar manner doing it at the wrong time gets you wrecked. Generally it's rare for a single enemy attack to kill you, there's very few hard to avoid, nearly instakill attacks in Lies of P. It has Bloodborne's regain system too so if you don't block perfectly, you can still recover health by doing damage to the enemy. Perfect guards inflict posture damage so you get a good reward nailing them, and they are easier to try than From game parries. Again, this feels a lot like Bloodborne where using the gun to parry at a distance let you try it out without it being too risky, so you actually end up using it in combat instead of avoiding the mechanic.

Elden Ring doesn't give you time to breathe unless you have a summon helping take the heat for a bit. It's like the attack interval is just very overtuned and the boss is rarely in an idle state for long, or coming out of an attack to give you an opening. I expect From might adjust the damage values of the final boss but are unlikely to do anything about the fundamental issue of that fight where you are 90% of the time waiting to get a single hit in, and so are many of the others.

It seems like such an easy issue to fix by just taking a look at their older games. Bosses like the Orphan of Kos or Sword Saint Isshin are aggressive, but they still leave you room to maneuver, and aren't just based on doing tons of damage with huge health pools.

 

[Aelred]

Elden Ring doesn't give you time to breathe unless you have a summon helping take the heat for a bit. It's like the attack interval is just very overtuned and the boss is rarely in an idle state for long, or coming out of an attack to give you an opening. I expect From might adjust the damage values of the final boss but are unlikely to do anything about the fundamental issue of that fight where you are 90% of the time waiting to get a single hit in, and so are many of the others.

And many reviewrs and others I play with online say Shadow takes all this to an even greater extreme, especially those who don't summon spirits, NPC's or players. A common comment seems to be that ER main game dialled this up to "11" already in the end game, so Shadow is over the edge into silly territory. I've been watching a guy trying to do the world's first No Hit run, and constantly gets to and gets wrecked by the last boss. No worries at all in the main game - he had done a run within the first week or so.

An online friend who plays at level 11 and beats NG7 Malenia says Gauis and the Scadutree Avatar are the hardest bosses they have ever faced (Scadutree level 16). Not best, mind you.

I spent 2 hours with her trying to beat Gaius and we got him (with a 3rd) to 2nd phase once in that time. She used over 100 rune arcs before finally lucking out a no-hit fight many hours and co-op friends later.

Malenia NG7 (with host at level 11) takes about a dozen tries and half an hour. That was to take a break from Gaius.

I do enjoy it, it just really does feel very different from the main game every day I play. But I play co-op.

I have gotten value for money, but I still wonder about replaying it the way I have the main game.

Who knows what is next from FROM? They don't seem keen on another massive open world anytime soon.

 

[mbenigni]

I've dropped Shadow of the Erdtree altogether. I was just weirdly bored by it. The level design (if you can call it that?) doesn't inspire any wonder or curiosity. I'm literally just plowing over fields looking for randomly dispersed Scadutree MacGuffins, or trying to find the next boss that will likely piss me off for a few hours. In terms of value, I got plenty hours of gameplay for my money. I'm just not convinced they were hours well-spent. It's a bit concerning since this is pretty much the only genre I'm into, and From has been my favorite developer for about 15 years running.

 

[Aelred]

Shadow of the Erdtree: I’m close to completion of a first DLC playthrough without looking at Wikis or hints as best I could (too much info out there now) and find I am in no rush to reach the “end game” of a DLC, since I am about to burn another tree.

“End game” for a DLC…?

I thought the end game sections and bosses of the main game had some issues, so expect total OTT AoE spamming along with 8 crazy combos straight into 7 more.

With every other Soulsborne DLC I couldn’t wait to do it again with another build and weapons (except the ice fields with unicorns in DS2) or collect the unique spells and incants.

Now I’ll just ask online for some of the DLC weapons and gear without bothering. At least co-op in the main game has picked up since the DLC release. Most of the fun I've had with it has been group co-op and funny deaths.

 

[laxu]

With every other Soulsborne DLC I couldn’t wait to do it again with another build and weapons (except the ice fields with unicorns in DS2) or collect the unique spells and incants.

I think it helps that their previous games are just shorter so going through them is much less of an ordeal.

I have 433 hours in Dark Souls 3, it's been my go-to "hey I could play another round of this!" game on PC. That's a lot of builds, some mods etc. Even with its linearity, it's still pretty fun to go through most of the levels.

I think I have something like over 300 hours in Bloodborne on PS4. Would be more if it was on PC or didn't run like crap on PS.

 

[laxu]

Finished Lies of P last night. The final boss was really tough and I barely made it through after stacking enough physical damage resistance and learning most of its moves. Still don't know what is the proper way to avoid or block those long combos in phase 2.

The story grew on me after hating it at first. I think they could have leaned a lot more on the horror elements.

I didn't like that there were some easy to miss things like answering wrong to the riddles or NPC quests that work inconsistently (some continue after the area boss, others stop after killing the boss).

I also didn't like how stingy the economy is. I started to run out of ergo crystals to sell later in the game, while the late game enemies didn't drop enough of it. You also really need to go out of your way to find enough quartz for skill upgrades, and the skill upgrade system makes it tough to figure out good choices when there are a lot of somewhat similar sounding options. The whole gold coin tree and wishstone system seemed really pointless. Similarly durability didn't exactly add to the game and was mostly a chore you need to remember to handle.

Costume options were terrible. There's barely any accessories, most of the hats are masks and too many of the outfits look like the same thing recolored.

Weapons were a mixed bag. There are some cool ones, but there are also a bunch of totally forgettable options. Boost Glaive, and Two Dragons Sword carried me through most of the game. I swapped to Acidic Crystal Spear for Laxasia and used the Tyrant Murderer Dagger for the final boss with the boss amulet that stacks damage on multiple hits.

The parry system is good, but I still struggled learning the timing a lot more than I did with Sekiro. Even after tons of attempts on the final boss I could not block some of his phase 1 attacks consistently.

Levels range from good to bad. The late game levels dropped off the cliff in quality, and could have been easily cut out without losing anything.

Regular enemies are serviceable at best. There's all the generic options found in most Souls games and then some tankier enemies thrown on top, most of them not that fun to fight.

To me the real highlight of the game was the boss fights. A lot of them are really well designed. There are a few that are in a too small arena, and for some getting to phase 2 took so much time that it was hard to practice it. The inability to summon a helper for some of them is a big minus because it's a good way to allow players to progress if they get stuck on a boss. I had to summon for Laxasia because I kept getting wrecked in phase 2 where it turns into a bit of a camera boss and some attacks could be instakills if you don't perfect guard them.

Overall a pretty good game and I'm looking forward to the studio's next title.

 

[the swede]

Sekiro is 50% anyone played it? Thinking about getting it because my som likes ER, souls and Pi and such stuff. It was GOTY also so… i might try it myself.

Is it harder that ER or just different? Seems from the trailers that there’s a lot of parrying going on…

 

[mbenigni]

Sekiro is 50% anyone played it? Thinking about getting it because my som likes ER, souls and Pi and such stuff. It was GOTY also so… i might try it myself.

Is it harder that ER or just different? Seems from the trailers that there’s a lot of parrying going on…

Very different. I found it to be harder, personally. I also happen to hate that one, so…

Very polarizing game, but it seems to get more praise than hate FWIW. I just can’t tell you why.

 

[laxu]

Sekiro is 50% anyone played it? Thinking about getting it because my som likes ER, souls and Pi and such stuff. It was GOTY also so… i might try it myself.

Is it harder that ER or just different? Seems from the trailers that there’s a lot of parrying going on…

Compared to Souls games, Sekiro makes the enemy health bar mostly irrelevant and replaces it with a posture bar that you fill by blocking enough of the enemy attacks, or doing attacks that the opponent blocks. When filled, the enemy gets staggered and is open for a killing blow, or with harder enemies/bosses, taking one dot out of their 2-3 dot life pool.

Similarly you need to manage your own posture bar, which fills up if you don't perfectly block, and goes down fast when you stand still and block without taking hits.

If you die, you can revive yourself once or twice, getting back up immediately instead of respawning. Successful attacks will bring back the ability to die and revive so you might die a few times during a level without restarting it.

Parrying is massively easier than it is in Souls games. It's literally just timing the button press to the enemy attack instead of having to carefully watch the swing coming down. It's more like a rhythm game in that sense.

Your usual skillset is block/parry, jump over attacks, or land a countermove against specific attacks that is done by is simply dodging into the attack at the right time. What you need to do is telegraphed by the enemy posture and a symbol above its head for special attacks, so you don't need to guess what needs to be done.

It's an excellent game, but playing it like a regular Souls game you will have a terrible time. It's got some great bosses that are fun to fight, and perhaps one of the best final bosses From has ever made - tough as nails, requiring you to use every ability in your repertoire. But still fair instead of relying on bullshit attacks.

Elden Ring is IMO harder.

 

[the swede]

Compared to Souls games, Sekiro makes the enemy health bar mostly irrelevant and replaces it with a posture bar that you fill by blocking enough of the enemy attacks, or doing attacks that the opponent blocks. When filled, the enemy gets staggered and is open for a killing blow, or with harder enemies/bosses, taking one dot out of their 2-3 dot life pool.

Similarly you need to manage your own posture bar, which fills up if you don't perfectly block, and goes down fast when you stand still and block without taking hits.

If you die, you can revive yourself once or twice, getting back up immediately instead of respawning. Successful attacks will bring back the ability to die and revive so you might die a few times during a level without restarting it.

Parrying is massively easier than it is in Souls games. It's literally just timing the button press to the enemy attack instead of having to carefully watch the swing coming down. It's more like a rhythm game in that sense.

Your usual skillset is block/parry, jump over attacks, or land a countermove against specific attacks that is done by is simply dodging into the attack at the right time. What you need to do is telegraphed by the enemy posture and a symbol above its head for special attacks, so you don't need to guess what needs to be done.

It's an excellent game, but playing it like a regular Souls game you will have a terrible time. It's got some great bosses that are fun to fight, and perhaps one of the best final bosses From has ever made - tough as nails, requiring you to use every ability in your repertoire. But still fair instead of relying on bullshit attacks.

Elden Ring is IMO harder.

Thanks for all that input on things!

 

[Aelred]

I think it helps that their previous games are just shorter so going through them is much less of an ordeal.

I don't care about going through them, I care about co-op opportunities and fun. My low level builds do not care in the least about finishing the main game, they exist to co-op and for no other reason. One day maybe I'll push them further, but no rush.

Bloodborne had the Makeshift Altar system, ER has Near/far to Summoning Pools. When I get summoned to a Pool in the main game, I am balanced to their level and weapons, in Shadow it could be any Scadutree level. That wasn't so with Bloodborne, and none of the other games had a similar system: you had to go to active Bonfires/aras and place a summons sign down.

The Old Hunters had Maria, Ludwig and the Holy Moonlight Sword, Lawrence, Whirlygig Saw, Bloodletter... and the Living Failures. I spent about 300 hours just hanging around the Maria fight to help.

Apart from chucking some Hefty Pots, most of the spells and incants are out of reach of lower level builds, so there is no reason for them to do the DLC. Not much fun to be had (I can get about 12 Scad levels without a Boss) that I can see, and I can transfer any weapons and Ashes of War I want.

I'll get a Sorcerer through for the spells (current one in DLC has Faith), but the Near/far summoning isn't as appealing as it "should" be and the area is just so huge galloping around collecting cookbooks and fragments seems more of a chore than a game for fun.

YMMV.

 

[Devin]

Sekiro is 50% anyone played it? Thinking about getting it because my som likes ER, souls and Pi and such stuff. It was GOTY also so… i might try it myself.

Is it harder that ER or just different? Seems from the trailers that there’s a lot of parrying going on…

It's a masterpiece and in my opinion one of Fromsoft's best

Very different than a souls game, very challenging, very deflection focused but the deflect window is very forgiving. If you play smart and take advantage of stealth you can one-shot instakill a lot of mobs

 

[the swede]

Any of you got hooked on watching AnarchyHD catching DayZ cheaters?

it has been my morning coffe addiction a few times… His voice, the way he catches the cheatos and all. Fun stuff. He seems such a cool dude also.

 

[Jarick]

Been playing the indie game "Forager". It's really addictive. Spent a couple weeks digging deep into the game then took what I learned and trying to cut that time down to just a couple days to max level.

I'm one achievement away from 100% now. Pretty fun game although it's a bit of a grind at the end. Switch performance is not good when you have thousands of things on the screen at once.

Will need a new game to play soon.

 

[laxu]

I started Jedi Survivor on Game Pass PC. So far I like it, but god damn they really did not optimize this game at all. It will basically freeze every time there's a cutscene with new shaders compiling, so you miss several seconds of the cutscene. Even though the game supposedly compiles shaders when it starts.

Watching my frametime graphs, it's got huge dips even on my 13600K/4090 system where it can tank to as low as 30 fps, probably compiling another shader.

Real shame because it's a very good looking game with somewhat janky but generally fun gameplay and a good enough story.

 

[Aelred]

As stated previously, I found Shadow of the Erdtree to be a bit odd – fun but unsure of replay value. Watching some of the online reviews of Shadow of the Erdtree is also a mixed bag, from “Greatest Ever” to “It Broke Souls” and everything in between.

Not all, but many of the negative reviews I’ve seen have been from the crowd who had some kind of quasi-religious experience with Dark Souls, and claim to have a special understanding of the essential essence of the “Souls experience” by never summoning or using any tools made available by the game itself, and this special understanding is broken by ER and Shadow in particular, what with having a method to increase the potency of the Spirit Summon (Revered Ashes).

As another put it, go back and play Dark Souls now you’ve been playing Bloodborne and ER for years. See how slow and clunky it is, how easy the bosses are by comparison? When DS1 was released it may have been hard by the standards of the day, but “Soulslike” is now an entire gaming genre. How are FROM meant to keep upping the ante/challenge now people can play their games on a dance pad?

If playing solo is your thing, fine, but please don’t claim some kind of special understanding by choosing that way of playing. NPC summons and Invasions have been around since Demon’s, clearly displaying the multiplayer aspects inbuilt into the game. Communities and friends trading items online has also been around since inception. If you choose to play solo, fine. I choose multiplayer.

Strangely, the most popular Mod on PC is for Seamless Co-op, which now includes Invasions. And I confess I have some slight schadenfreude with these folks getting told to “git gud” and resenting it.

I do understand the frustrations of the PvP crowd and the vanilla colosseums, and Invasions being Gank-fests. The PvP crowd also claim that they are the ones who keep the game alive years after release.

Who are they invading?

Oh well, time to start the long wait for the next FROM title. I may take my level 55 into Shadow for the hefty pots and consumables – not to kill anything. Which is an odd motivation.

 

[laxu]

As stated previously, I found Shadow of the Erdtree to be a bit odd – fun but unsure of replay value. Watching some of the online reviews of Shadow of the Erdtree is also a mixed bag, from “Greatest Ever” to “It Broke Souls” and everything in between.

Not all, but many of the negative reviews I’ve seen have been from the crowd who had some kind of quasi-religious experience with Dark Souls, and claim to have a special understanding of the essential essence of the “Souls experience” by never summoning or using any tools made available by the game itself, and this special understanding is broken by ER and Shadow in particular, what with having a method to increase the potency of the Spirit Summon (Revered Ashes).

As another put it, go back and play Dark Souls now you’ve been playing Bloodborne and ER for years. See how slow and clunky it is, how easy the bosses are by comparison? When DS1 was released it may have been hard by the standards of the day, but “Soulslike” is now an entire gaming genre. How are FROM meant to keep upping the ante/challenge now people can play their games on a dance pad?

If playing solo is your thing, fine, but please don’t claim some kind of special understanding by choosing that way of playing. NPC summons and Invasions have been around since Demon’s, clearly displaying the multiplayer aspects inbuilt into the game. Communities and friends trading items online has also been around since inception. If you choose to play solo, fine. I choose multiplayer.

Strangely, the most popular Mod on PC is for Seamless Co-op, which now includes Invasions. And I confess I have some slight schadenfreude with these folks getting told to “git gud” and resenting it.

I do understand the frustrations of the PvP crowd and the vanilla colosseums, and Invasions being Gank-fests. The PvP crowd also claim that they are the ones who keep the game alive years after release.

Who are they invading?

Oh well, time to start the long wait for the next FROM title. I may take my level 55 into Shadow for the hefty pots and consumables – not to kill anything. Which is an odd motivation.

I've never gotten big into Souls game multiplayer because I don't like the PvP very much and for co-op I've mainly helped some people with bosses in DS3 but it's just been a very tedious process because you have to wait around in the area for someone to summon you. Elden Ring's ability to summon from further away is nice, but it's still kinda crappy system. Not being able to co-op seamlessly throughout the game without using mods is straight up bullshit and From's lack of effort in improving many of its core systems.

The thing with previous Souls games was that summoning (NPCs or real players) was an option, not an expectation. You could get help, or you could try to take on the challenge on your own. To me From has built Elden Ring so heavily around the summon playstyle that other options have become less viable, instead of being an option.

With the NPC summons in Elden Ring you are expected to use them for bosses and many can get pretty hard if you don't. There's no way I would be able to do e.g Dancing Lion with my mage build without having NPC summons help, because that boss takes poor damage from spells and you don't have a lot of time to fling multiple hits. Similarly Rennala was very aggressive and quite magic resistant so you desperately try to pull off a cast that takes as long as a greatsword swing only to make pitiful damage.

Bloodborne is deliberately built for the faster paced gameplay where you have quick dodges and the regain feature where you can gain back some health by attacking immediately after taking damage. To me From made a mistake in making the DS3 and ER gameplay work the same way, without having the tools to properly support that gameplay loop like BB does.

For a modern game that plays basically like Dark Souls 1, you can look at the Demon's Souls Remake on PS5. That still has the "rolling takes a lot of stamina" and slower paced gameplay and it works just fine. I've been plays Dark Souls 1 on the Nintendo Switch and IMO it's still not easy by any means, the boss fights just aren't these super long ordeals with tons of phases and super long attack chains.