#FUCK dark souls 1. that game sucks & is bad

[cardboardcranium]

[doubleddenden]

The topic of Palworld is pretty charged, but often times I see people be shamed for liking it because the CEO tweeted stuff about NFTs and the company using AI art in a separate game. Acting as if that's the most damning thing ever for a gaming company in an industry filled with similar people.

Make no mistake, I dislike both AI art and nfts, but do you realize how many gaming companies have involvement with that?

To begin with, Pokémon used AI art in a promotional piece for Pokémon Go in September, and nobody gave a shit because uwu Pikachu. The Pokémon Company also put a job listing some months back seeking an expert in NFTs. That's not quite damning evidence, but if I were a betting man, no "NFT expert" will willingly say "yeah nfts suck are bad for the environment, man, I'll take my paycheck and fuck off now." There's also a strong argument to be made that Pokémon has stolen ideas from fakemon artists (Finizen and Palafin, Scovillain, Dipplin, etc) and other franchises (kaiju movies, Dragon Quest, Megaman, final fantasy, western cartoons and food mascots, etc), a dubious legal statement that claims they own all fan art from the remixes and fakemon made on youtube to the pikachu your kid drew at breakfast; they have yet to apologize for the state of Scarlet and Violet while charging full price to millions of paying customers for a clearly unfinished and barely functioning game (which i did enjoy, but you can't tell me it was finished baking when it struggles not to shit itself just to run), and a bunch of other things people shit on Palworld for, but A. It's Pokémon so people don't care and think it's fine, and B. That's not the point of this post.

You know who else does NFTs and AI art? (Yes I heard Muscle Man from Regular Show in my head just now, too, moving along)

Square Enix sold several of their IPs for NFTs and claims to have used AI art "a minimum amount" in Foam Stars, yet I see nobody yelling for boycotts of Final Fantasy 14, 16, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Life is Strange, etc etc etc.

Sony has invested in both, they want to implement AI into gaming, and has a patent for nfts to be used in games and consoles, yet there's no movement to throw out your playstations.

Bandai Namco- you know, that company with a hand in pretty much most anime games on the market and popular games such as the Dark Souls games? They have a game called RYU that's essentially a virtual pet game that uses the blockchain, and its AI driven, among other projects. Yet there's no outcry to stop playing the many, MANY games they brand with. This also includes quite a few Nintendo games (btw they just partnered together to form a special studio quite recently) like Smash Wii U/3ds and New Pokémon Snap. Nobody gives a shit though.

Android, Microsoft, Google, Apple- I don't even need to explain those, they have whole teams dedicated to both. Even popular VPN companies accept crypto.

I'm just saying an awful lot of you guys that scream and shit bloody murder about Palworld's company being involved with that shit are either the biggest "It's okay when my favs do it" type of hypocrites, or you're sorely ignorant to just how evil and greedy most corporations are. You'll be hard pressed to find a game company with popular AND fun games that DOESN'T have some interest in either, let alone movie and show studios. That's the awful reality we live in.

You have 2 options

1. You basically stop doing anything involving most modern tech, including throwing out your pc and smart phone. You could probably live a comfortable life with tech circa 2010, but you have to be aware that any thing you buy may go towards a cause you don't like.

2. You accept that people can enjoy a product while not necessarily agreeing with the CEO of said product. Most CEOs tend to be jackasses anyway, that's kind of the shared trait they all have. You can also discourage companies from using them while understanding it is everywhere.

Palworld at the end of the day is just a toy, that's it. From the looks of it, it's not even actually hurting anyone, and it seems like the company at least treats their employees pretty decently- at least according to a few things I've seen here and there that seems rather progressive for a Japanese studio (with room for doubt obviously, it's a company after all and as we've established, they're all evil). At the least its not like when people supported Hogwarts Legacy and directly put money into JKR's wallet so she can openly hurt more Trans women. In fact, the only people seemingly hurt in all of this Palworld drama are obsessed Pokémon stans that can't accept a parody, or the Pokémon Company themselves, who rightly deserve some punching up tbh.

You can just say you dislike the game, that's fine, I totally get that. Even though I personally think The Pokémon Company deserves a few nut shots after the way they've treated fans these last few years with the state of their games (and you know, stealing ideas from fans without credit), I can see why someone would be turned away from a parody that's literally meant to be Pokémon with guns. I can totally understand all of that, personally I'd prefer if the game was MORE like Pokémon with turn based combat.

But if you're going to defend Pokémon because you think its perfectly innocent because of Wooloo or something like that, just be sure you're aware you're defending the World's Richest Franchise and their own attempts at AI and NFTs while calling out an indie company (a real one thats learning as they go, not the fake "We're totally indie" franchise that hasn't been indie since gen 3) for having a ceo that also seems interested in the same stuff. And remember, you don't become number 1 without hurting people somehow (we could dig up receipts about certain partners Pokémon has teamed up with, such as Tencent with Unite, but I'd rather not right now.)

Just saying. I don't think you're an irredeemable person for still liking Pikachu, cuz I do too believe it or not. I've been a life long fan and still have fun with the games despite the clear scummy business practices towards their paying customers. Just maybe extend that courtesy to the millions of players just trying to have fun in this awful, putrid, shithole planet that just keeps getting worse and worse with each passing day.

Plus... you know, think about it. Do you think Pokémon would ever get around to making a gunless Palworld? Probably not. Do you think Palworld would exist if The Pokémon Company and Nintendo were the slightest bit chill about Pokémon fan projects like SEGA is with Sonic? Also probably not. From what I've read, the devs just wanted to make a fun game that happens to mostly be ARK with Pokémon adjacent monsters. That's not really a bad thing, all things considered, and it seems like the worst they've done is reference official Pokémon when making their own models.

Palworld being successful is actually beneficial to Pokémon fans, as well. It'll never really truly compete, but it has outsold Legends Arceus in terms of units sold (not as much financially because Palworld was only $30 plus a sale recently, but still impressive), and it is enough that Game Freak is aware of its existence. Let Palworld light a fire under their ass, and maybe GF will actually finish their next game before releasing it for full price (and no, we're not bringing up the tired imaginary ball and chain game devs, game freak owns 1/3rd lf the franchise and can easily take methods to get more dev time, they just haven't because money). Just saying, at least the Paldevs were honest enough to sell it in early access for half the price.

[marina-the-witch]

My Souls Hot Takes

Decided to write up a couple of my less popular opinions for souls games. Please don't get upset over any of these, if you disagree that's totally valid

Dark Souls 1:

Bell Gargoyles is my favorite base game boss

I don't like Ornstein and Smough that much

Gwyn's theme is nowhere near as sad or dramatic as its made out to be in my opinion

Painted World isnt fun to me at all

Tomb of the Giants isnt that bad

I miss the whimiscal 80s fantasy aesthetic the series lost in the following entries even if i understand it narratively

Dark Souls 2:

I'm not just a hater or fail to appreciate an underrated gem, I simply dont enjoy this game

I think Darklurker is mid and the runback gimmick is stupid

The world and lore arent that much better to me than any other souls games and dont save the game

Life Gems are actually pretty okay

Old Dragonslayer is really not that big of a deal

Royal Rat Vanguard is the single worst boss in souls to me

Fume Knight is just kinda alright to me, I enjoy Sir Alonne much more

The health cap loss fucking sucks i hate it

Its perfectly fine to both love and hate this game please calm tf down

Dark Souls 3:

Soul of Cinder isnt that exciting, I might just be biased though bc i started the DS games with 3

Jailers arent that bad, Thralls are way worse

Ancient Wyvern kinda funny tbh

I really really dislike Sister Friede

The random wolf guy in ariandel is the wost boss in 3

Corvian Knights are the coolest enemy in the trilogy

The game isnt actually as ugly and monotone as people say

Pontiff Sulyvahn is sooooo mid to me I could not care less for his parry bait jojo stand ass goofy fight

Yhorm is such a nothing boss without the siegward narrative to me

Demon Prince solos literally any other duo boss and its not even close

R1 and O spam is a dark souls staple to me, not DS3 exclusive at all

Dragonslayer Armor and Oceiros are insanely underrated

Sekiro:

Demon of Hatred actually slaps

Corrupted Monk actually slaps

Great Shinobi Owl is really mid to me, too gimmicky

Guardian Ape has the same issues as DoH just to a lesser extend

The 2 giant beast (serpent and carp) area hazards are so good

Souls should give underwater another shot imo

Most of the minibosses are kinda bad to me

Bloodborne:

Laurence is actually peak

Not really a fan of Maria's fight, gonna replay the game soon to see if it'll finally click

Winter Lanters are pretty cool

Micolash fans are weird why are there so many

Yharnam Sunrise is the most boring ending of any souls game

As much as i would love it, I cant feasibly see a logical contuination of the Bloodborne universe

Saw Spear mid idc

Chalice Dungeons are both infinitely better and worse than people say I really dont know how to feel about them

Simon's Bowblade is one of the coolest weapons in fiction

Elden Ring:

Morgott is underrated

Dragons are underrated

Placidusax's theme is kinda eh to me

Radahn and Malenia are equal, both fandoms can stfu, it said fought to a standstill for a reason

Rykard is genuinely a good fight even with the gimmick in mind

I don't care for vyke, frenzy, shabriri or any other madness hoobla

I hate using great spears so much

Summons are VALID. If they were cheating they wouldnt be in the game. Get over yourself

Idc how much you can counter it I dont like malenia's waterfowl dance and health regain

Godskin Duo isn't that bad, the REAL enemy is valiant gargoyles

Royal Revenants, Birds and Runebears at least have the decency to be rare... Imps and Lobsters though

Volcano Manor is underrated as fuck, such a unique level for a souls game with so much cool lore and visual flare

[hexitca]

Finished my replay of Devil May Cry 1

I hadn't played it since I was like in middle school (my older brother ordered it on gamefly and I played after him a little bit but then it had to go back to gamefly and then replayed it in full once during summer in college once I got my hands on the anniversary 3 game pack for ps2) and while this is the Switch version it's much the same in my view (or my memory is fuzzy lol but it felt pretty much the same)

The camera sucks ass and there were times where I was confused where to go (it's been a fucking long time since last replay lol but I also kinda suck at DMC not gonna lie) but god it was so fun to hack and slash. Once I got use to running around again I was okay. I will admit I played on easy mode this time bc again I hadn't played since like 2013 of summer and I started the replay back in 2023 so like 10 years omg!

I'd give it an 8/10 just for the camera alone. Everything else was great~

lmao the fucking "fill your dark soul with LIIIIIIGHT!!!" scene kills me every time it's supposed to be like dramatic but Dante's voice cracking makes me lose it. I love it though I'm never disappointed lol

But Trish is so cute in the after game scenes like damn I wish we got more time with Trish!!

Trish: "There's no need to worry, right? ‘Cuz the world has the Legendary Dark Knight Dante... and his sidekick!"

LIKE TRISH YOU ARE SO CUTE STOP IM DYING AAA I know that like...she's a bad ass but her calling her his sidekick I'm like kicking my feet AAA she's so cute~

I'll try on normal mode later but I wanna play DMC2 and DMC3 first.

[beesmygod]

What is your ranking of the 'souls' fromsoft games you've played and why? I SUSPECT bludbornt takes the number 1 slot for reasons.

this is actually really really hard because while i love the bloodborne story, some of the structural and pacing issues can result in an awful gameplay experience. like if its your first time playing the game the last boss you're going to fight is mergo's wet nurse which is a huge wet fart of a final boss with a dogshit soundtrack. some of the boss fights are rank as well. like laurence is fucking awful. rom is a SLOGGGGGGG i dread having to fight rom every time bc its just a test of my patience instead of a skill check. defiled watchdog and amygdala are terrible. not fun. very bad. great dlc tho

it ties with dark souls 1 which i dearly, dearly love so much i could play it forever except once you play literally any other fromsoft game it is so hard to go back to. the quality of life additions in later games like "being able to fast travel without needing to complete half the game" and "being able to move at a reasonable pace instead of plodding around like the gravity on planet dark souls is stronger than earth" are completely absent. is...almost a little too mean. some of those boss runs are real rough. also great dlc. i love broken pyromancy so much. wait i just remembered centipede demon i hate that fight. fuck him. and fuck his ketchup kids

ds3 is a close second bc its ds1 but they gave it a bunch of quality of life fixes that make it much less frustrating to play. however, the pay off is that it has one terrible dlc and one thats just ok. i hate the final boss of the base game i think it sucks. nearly everyone disagrees with me so dont listen to me. but i think it's a stinker lol. the midir fight is grueling, unfun. ive done it and it was awful. i think there are too many "puzzle" bosses (wolnir, yhorm, ancient wyvern) that feel like they were imported from a zelda game. i do not like those at all. dont waste my time from! im here to kill monsters by the skin of my teeth!!! not play donkey kong!!!

i took a long time to warm up to sekiro and really disliked it until it "clicked" and then it became mind-blowing. i really hope they make more like this with this fighting system. maybe even a sekiro 2 (tomoe story PLEAAASSEEEE FROM. it was teased so hard...). it has an incredible plot, world, means of delivering its story, heart pounding battles, and the single best fromsoft final boss fight ever. bar none. sword saint isshin is an unbelievable experience.

but...fromsoft what the fuck am i supposed to do with all this currency ive amassed lol. they forgot to give me things to buy. you dont have this problem in souls games because you use them to level up, but in sekiro you have to fucking git gud. there's no level system and defense bonuses are tied to defeating bosses. if you can't defeat a boss you are absolutely fucked and have to throw yourself against the wall over and over, which can truly be a terrible grind.

some of the boss fights are h o r r i b l e. most fromsoft games have me chasing down minibosses to beat for fun but the headless are literally dreadful. i just skip them altogether now because if it wasnt enough that they cast a "remove fun" AOE spell, but the items they drop are worthless. i will never use these lol. what the fuck from. the second fight with the ape is stupid. im never going to fight the demon of hatred sorry lol. you can't put a fucking bloodborne beast in a game almost entirely revolving around human enemies.

never finished ds2

[szif]

ok so here's apparently all the games i've played in 2023 like as in actually finishing them.

[the cat lady dark souls 1 + dark souls 3 the first 2 spyro games +ECHO vn +tsukihime portal 1 pathologic classic disco elysium]

i also started half life then dropped it and some other games too but it took me days to compile this list cuz i really really cant remember a lot.

the cat lady was nice, easy little game, misled me on what it is like twice but i feel like it was nice. the fact that a gold ending exists that nullifies anything you experience is kind of bleh though. like that fucking sucks. and also some aspects of it were just over the top like the cradle thing. also that one parasite that's linked to that other game. honestly there's a lot about it that really just spells out "the creator is somebody who keeps making these styled games and desperately tries to string everything together and the fans eat it all up" but i only played this one so its all fine.

dark souls 1 was really cool, nicest graphics nicest map it was interconnected i liked the armor i liked the physics i liked how slow the gameplay was (literally just 2 mins of me holding my shield up so that i can just drink while having a fight and nothing happened haha lol) there were some real good areas after midgame like demon's ruins (absolute favourite!!) and i also liked tomb of the giants (well, i didnt really Like Like when i played it, i was kind of running around like a poisoned hamster with everything leaving me at the tiniest hp lol) but then the game started sucking with the crystal cave/duke's archives and all that shit it was just so fucking annoying having to go through those shitty places (...and hearing everybody worship them..) but i feel like overall it was still nice? i liked the optional areas to go through (those are my favs, the great hollow + ash lake!! they were sooo soo good and lower blighttown was also so cool!!) and it just felt like, enough of a "i dont like this part but i like this one" that i continued playing it. the flow felt good

dark souls 3 was bad and was the combination of everything i disliked about dark souls 1 and then took all the things i liked too. it was so fucking lame and on top of it confusing too so i really disliked it and i just got through it real quick. lame. sucked

oh yeah, i also have the remastered pack of spyro games - i never played spyro or knew about it or anything, i first saw that dragon on tumblr posts i honestly have not much to do with it, but i got them because they seemed fun and uh. they were cool. like it felt so smooth and i liked running around and i think the collecting gems part was also cool. its literally like, a children's game so what do i even say about it. it was fun somewhat but it had SO much in it that i finished most games with like, not exploring all of it because i literally didnt give enough of a fuck about it. and it didnt ruin my experience either so like, honestly, some things are really not needed. i might or might not play the third one with the dragon eggs and stuff, we'll see.. like sure i started it but am i motivated to go through the same motions with the same guy? idk...

portal 1 was so solid. great characterism of ms. glados, the sudden pronoun swap in the hungarian subtitles was so clever and i loved it even if the other aspects of the translation was a bit lacking. the puzzles were actually fun and i could figure them out on my own for the most part (literally looked up like, 3-4 puzzles?) and it was actually cool to play through them. i liked it it was nice and it didnt really think i would because i fucking hate(d) portal 2 but it seems like the first game is like, great.

pathologic was. holy shit the entire like, environment and all that about diseases and like the huge progression of like, everything going on? it was so overwhelming but also right at home it had such a great feel to it. i started playing with the haruspex but then i thought he was a fucking bitchboy and quit the game then started one with the bachelor and then i had actual fun in the game. there was this one questline at day 11 that i fucking hated and was confusing and it's 100% the developers' fault, but anything else? it was engaging, i was full focused on the game, i kept going back to it more and more, everything was just getting more and more intense and more fun. then the ending happened and its like, eh, who cares. like it was lame and i just felt like it was great to just like, let it go. if the start and the middle is good then i dont care about the end sucking that much. it didnt even "suck", it was just nothing. which is better than it sucking. huge fan i liked this

just finished disco elysium literally like, today, actually, since i sat down for like , 11-12 hours and played it with zero break. i got a genuine fever sickness and many days of worth of muscle stiffness from it. like this shit is dangerous. it was sooo sooo captivating, i didnt really think i would like it at first because i thought of it as those like, random supernatural roll-a-dice games with like, a very specific style that i loathe with all my being and since it had a similar structure i didnt really think i would latch onto it. you know, just try it out, then delete. but no, it really dragged me in. i am relieved it was like, a, mainly "you fail something and failure IS a part of the game so its fun to do that" type of thing. like theres nothing more sucking out the joy of something than just like, something just making you fail and thats a part of the whole thing but it feels pointless and unreasonable, but then succeeding all the time and going through it is also not really fun if you have to engineer success situations all the time. this game is good at like, not doing that. i was so fucking invested in the entire situ of the story and the environment and i liked reading the books and re-building communism with my shitty college buddies who made me write essays about books haha. it just had a lot going on and it was also like a super relatable game and it hooked my brainnnnn. i loved kim! i loved the tribunal[s]! i loved doing all the little things for everyone! it felt rewarding doing literally anything! i actually had a lot, and by that a lot of time where i couldnt do anything because i was talking to Everyone and so in the later days i didnt have Anything to do and it wasnt time to sleep yet so i had to re-talk and re-do books and it was sooo annoying. but its fine its really just a tiny thing. it was sooo good it was sooo nice i loved it. genuinely game of the year 4 me but only because i barely play games and when i do its not that big of a deal. huuuuge huuuge fan. #1 honestly

+i literally fucking forgot. right after i made the post. but i did read tsukihime + ECHO in its entirety. like all branches all endings. i saw. a lot. no im not putting them in separate entries. tsukihime was. it was a thing. i cant even tell if i liked it or not but it was interesting to see what other people like, i guess. echo was real good though and its going up to the games i really really liked list. from being the first game to actually make me feel anxious and have that real fucking awful oppressive atmosphere to actually making me care about the fuzzy animals. it had good writing and i also binged every single branch of it like i did with disco elysium and i kept waking up more and more fucked up barely unable to exist then i had to sleep for like, around a week and do nothing else for me to offset playing that game. it was soo much, honestly. but i was so hooked and it was so much fun (well, "fun",) like it was irresistible. absolutely amazing game. im trying to think of what i didnt like but like, honestly i dont really know. maybe the sydney parts in the flynn route? that wasnt exactly my fav thing. but thats it, really. i had fun

[kinnoth]

Things i learned about sekiro when I finally started unlearning my dark souls habits:

- HOLDING BLOCK RECOVERS YOUR POSTURE. Fucking WHAT. Oh I'm sorry did we NOT port over "drop your shield to recover stamina" from EVERY OTHER FROMSOFT GAME seriously WHAT THE FUCK.

- STRAFING IS BAD. Extraneous movement is in fact always bad. STAND THERE AND TAKE IT. Do not fucking dodge around like a motherfucker fishing for i-frames. STAND. THERE. AND. TAKE. IT. Wait for the fucker to come to YOU. DEFLECT HIM. TAKE IT.

- CHEESING IS ALSO BAD. DO NOT CHEESE BOSSES. Not for the fairness of the sport or anything gay like that, just bc if you cheese bosses you will not learn the lesson the boss is trying to teach you. Every one of these fucking bosses is trying to teach you something different. If you don't learn your lessons you'll get stuck on a future boss which you won't even be able to cheese because you don't have the skill level to pull off the cheese. GIVE YOURSELF A CHANCE. FIGHT THE FUCKERS FAIR.

- IF YOU HEAR THE SOUND OF METAL ON METAL YOU HAVE MISSED YOUR DEFLECTION WINDOW. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's just not how I learned how to parry. I waited for the sound. I don't know.

- USE YOUR FUCKIN ITEMS. Holy shit they make a difference. Nearly everything is infinite or infinitely farmable. WHY ARE YOU HOLDING ONTO YOUR SHIT. USE IT.

Bonus thing I learned by myself bc nobody was able to explain this for some reason

- The resurrection system: You start off with two resurrection nodes. The one that looks like a snowflake recharges every time you sit down and rest. The one that looks like a leaf charges with "life force" sucked out of killed enemies. Not every enemy has "life force" to suck out of them. By my rough estimate it's like 1 in 8. Each regular enemy only contributes something like 1/25 of your node recharge. A successful life force suck will glow red in your chest for a split second after you kill them. Recharging your leaf node by killing regular enemies require something like 40 enemies. Taking a health bar off of bosses recharges it much faster (like 4 life bars or something). Leave an easy to stealth kill boss alive while dealing with harder bosses for an easy leaf node recharge. Simply hit and run away continuously until your node is refilled. This is so fucking stupid.

Your leaf node will be struck out if you die and use your primary snowflake node. You won't be able to access your second revival until you either kill like 20 enemies or last like 10 additional minutes against a boss or take another health bar off a boss. It's also stupid.

[mallowmaenad]

im unemployed and smell bad. im slightly addicted to thc, i couldn't get passed undead burg in dark souls 1, I have manic depression, bpd, ptsd, autism and something like schizophrenia, i suck ass at most physical activities, I make microwave quesadillas at 3am, i eat pepperonies straight out of the bag, I can easily be pushed into a spiral of panic and sadness if you use a harsh enough tone with me, I drink to get drunk, all of my previous friend groups have abandoned me for my rancid vibes and mental illness, I have opinions on hentai, ny favorite streaming service is tubi, when i was a kid i would always get into the flash in the pan comeptitor to pokemon that would inevitably fail, i have completely silent orgasms, i sometimes go two or three days without changing clothes and sometimes don't shower for several days. I am still touch starved even though I have a girlfriend (im polyamorous but i dont think anyone else wants to hit at this point) I can't drive, I dropped out of community college, I have a fear of rain, I have given up on leaving my house to socialize, my favorite video game series of all time is Borderlands, I liked the live action super mario brothers movie, I go too far when it comes to kinning fictional characters, doing the dishes makes me really sad, I have such a specific hair color that it is hard to accurately render it in a piccrew. ive been on tumblr since 2013. I think homestuck is good. im a lesbian but id fuck big the cat. i feel bad about exerting authority in any of the like three discord servers I administrate. I kind of like the newest limp bizkit album and playsation 1 y2k liquid dnb jungle compilation playlists on youtube. I have just the right cocktail of adhd, memory loss, DID and chronic pain to make me seem like a lazy inconsiderate asshole. I dont care that the designs in dragon's crown are sexist. I have not listened to any presently relevant music other than Kendrick Lamar's diss tracks and struggle to recognize artists and celebrities by name, most of my skirts are so short that they're slightly inappropriate to wear in public and im not conventionally sexy enough to pull it off, my tits are small but are just large enough that they dont appeal to people who like small tits, I unintentionally put random affects on my voice, I want to learn japanese one day for nerd reasons but probably wont. I liked Rogue One, I suck at reading books, I hate going to places with a lot of people that play loud music, I hate 21st century pop a lot, I feel disconnected from the lgbt community despite being a transgender lesbian, I crave intimacy and pleasure but hate sex, im extremely easy to misunderstand in drastic ways, i think i might be a demon no i cant do any cool demon magic, i havent made music in several months and what i have made isnt very good and is technically incompetent because i dont have any actual training in any instruments, I think Pinkerton was a mediocre at best album, I like taco bell and don't care how much it fucks up my stomach, im a germaphobe with a piss fetish and yeah that makes it just about as conflicting and complicated as you may think it is, ive been kicked from age regressor discords, when I was early into my transition i modeled my fashion after vriska serket, i used to live off of shoplifted protein bars, ive barely ever paid rent on time when i was still paying rent, at multiple jobs ive worked at management has made it clear that everyone working there hates me. i play weird and obscure races in dnd. I do not like most of the final fantasy games released after final fantasy 9, I get sniffly and congested embarrassingly often, my dick is too short to be attractive to people that like long girldick and too long to be attractive to people that like short girldick, I like that cheap hot sauce is 70% vinegar. im like if tomoko kuroki was too large, too masculine and just old enough to no longer be moe anymore. anyway my dms are open

there is literally nothing in this world more endearing than a girl who is an absolute loser

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary245

5/19-20/24

sunday - monday

soon i rlly will quit work.

today was a good day off of work, i got stuff done around the house and worked on one song, + wrote something new ( i feel like almost every day i'm writing little new things, little riffs and new sounds (need to track those better in my notes soon too (i might save that for after i quit cuz it's a bit like busy-work which is too soul crushing to do when i have a real job (maybe why the mixing stuff is so hard for me also))) but this one feels like there's a lot possible for a song, or like, it's already kind of pretty formed as a couple ideas. starting w/ a lady gaga idea which is "start with the chorus" which i don't necessarily believe in, or i guess i don't believe in the other half of the quote (obvious hyperbole on her part) but it's "your song sucks otherwise" or somesuch thing. anyway, that seeped its way into my head and then the little idea i had, some fucked up chord thing, emerged as a chorus to me i guess. so that's fun.

i did also do some other mixing stuff, a couple songs i remixed weren't where i needed them so i got them there, so it's more like i worked on 3 songs but only 1 bit of headway in the track listing basically. it's crazy to think about how much effort i put into all this, and how many people will even notice? it's such like, fast and sloppy sounding (intentionally) music, does the fact that the snare's ring is kind of harsh and weird even come through in the timespan of these songs? it doesn't matter, honestly. just odd to think about.

so 15/32, not too bad, the goal today was 16/32 but that's okay, if i'm too tired and busy with like, having fun i guess, that's better for me probably and i need to not be hard on myself always.

i spent a lot of today, beyond doing the prep for cooking, and actually cooking, and dealing with the horrible creatures we have to share our stupid apartment with, playing vampire the masquerade bloodlines. the game really relaxes me, in a way lot of other games do not. i just really love the atmosphere and that i can be a weird awkward looking vampire girl (i playe tremere cuz the blood magic thing is like so cute tbh. like is there anything cuter than being able to make people explode from the inside??). n-e-wayzzz, why can't i be a vampire irl?? it's so messed up. i would be really good at it. or maybe not but i'd be good at the 'stay in the dark all the time' part.

anyways i am super sleepy, i stayed up too late but i go in pretty late at work tomorrow, so that's okayyy.

i sent off the assemblage poem, or part of it only, to a friend, to see if that can be put somewhere. hope that gets accepted, if not, i'm going to try and work out some shorter poems/poetic-ish things. that has to happen this week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i have to make sure i do that or at least approach it.

summer break starts for the kids, i'm really horrified about that. hope it's really nothing but it could be something. awful!!

so,

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gorematchala]

I've been playing a ton of shit and not talking about it but

Star Ocean 2nd Story (PS1) is already one of my favorite RPGs just like First Departure R was. I'm kinda leaning toward not liking Claude but its probably because I'm playing as Rena so I'm not getting his internal monologue. But based on his intro in the 2nd Story R demo and how he's acting about Dias I'm like youre kinda a dumbass huh. But not in the lovable heroic way Roddick was. But I think its fine if he kinda sucks, there's room for that

Umihara Kawase is another game that is like instantly on my favorites of all time list. I'm on stage 5 and I'm like okay top 3 SNES game. Could be top 1 but Hebereke and Star Ocean are on there too hehe. But its like a physics based grapple platformer and its so cool. I need to go look at the new one again even though its kinda uggy

I bought Mushihime-sama because I'm still trying to expand my shmup horizons but I haven't been on my Switch much because I'm playing Star Ocean 2 and Pokemon Ruby but from the 2 seconds I played it was really good

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days, I'm giving so much leniency because I want to like Xion and I wanna experience her story. So far I've only done the tutorial with Axel and its a DS game so I dont expect much from it in terms of performance or visuals or whatever, its fine. My problem and why I'm having to exercise patience is that the writing of that series is so frustrating. The idea of that game is flawed. The whole thing exists to make the organization seem lamer. Like the mysterious shadow guys that were a big threat in chain of memories and 2, those guys all get together for meetings where xemnas assigns them busy work and they groan and complain about it even though i always forget theyre supposed to be emotionless. Vexen doing the Nagatoro crazy eyes all the time doesnt come off as hollow to me. It just makes me mad because its like FF7 where it could be great but a man named Tetsuya Nomura was handed a pen and paper and now we're here. But I will do it for her

I played 20 minutes of Izuna Legend of the Unemployed Ninja and I basically did the intro and then died to the 3rd enemy in the first floor of the dungeon but that game shouldve been more popular. It's really good but unfortunately it released on the same system as Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. Izuna sucks so bad I love her. The first thing she does is go to a shrine that says "this gem keeps the gods from being mad at us do not touch" and shes like hehehe all for meeee. Then the inn keeper is like I'm charging you 300x the rent till you fix this and shes like "we cant afford that, I will pay it... with my life" and she takes out a matchlock pistol and puts it to her head, and the inn lady is like yeah alright do it, and then you hear a click noise and Izuna is like damn out of bullets. I was like this is an insane way to introduce this character but shes my fail girl and we're gonna solve this curse together

The other fun thing has been playing Dark Souls 1 with my brother alongside his co-op playthrough of Smellden Ring with his partner, cuz DS1 is a good game and Smellden Ring is so bad that he has fully admitted I was right when i was bitching like a year ago or whatever. Cuz he took faith this time and now that theyve hit the wall of Mohg and Malenia hes like why the fuck is everything in this fucking game INT. And I'm like yeah dude, idk!!! But then like, we just did Sen's Fortress in DS1 and that place is so mean and fucked up but I was having a chill time just walking through all the traps and snake men and kicking my feets under the desk. DS1 is fully relaxing to me just like Bloodborne and most of DS3. Next time we play is O&S though so I'll get back 2 u on that statement

[terras-diary]

game review - valkyrie elysium

it sucked. okay review over, thanks everybody.

okay so i will say more but just know i could have left it at that and it wouldn't make much of a difference.

context: i started this back in july of 2023 but then i booted up final fantasy xiv and well we know how that went.

story: what story? nothing happened. it's a walmart retelling of the love story of the first one plus the typical odin bad which was VP 1+2 (and maybe the ds game? never played that one) there is nothing original that is simultaneously good. it's the same shit but worse!!

also - in the original valkyrie profile games it's assumed that (at least this is what i got out of them) that there is a single valkyrie soul. it travels space and time to reincarnate into different human girls and takes the form of one of the three valkyrie. hrist in the far past, silmeria in the distant past, and lenneth in the present. they are separate personalities but at the end of the day they cannot exist all together. except that one time in valkyrie profile 2, but that was different.

so who is nora then. she's the valkyrie now. but where does she fall into the line? what about hilde? why did she 'betray' odin'? shouldn't they be the game girl? the game doesn't even answer what little questions it presents.

battling: it's not even in profile! okay, only half kidding (or am i) but none of these damn buttons do what you think they should do.

you can't cancel out of any moves you make. so if you see you are about to get hit, welp! too bad! you just have to sit there and watch nora get her ass beat. and god, when she gets knocked down it takes her twenty years to get back up. this isn't even an action game, it's like if you put my big ass in there and expected me to do this stuff. that's about how this game plays out.

no stores either. i kept all my items because up until the final boss gauntlet i didn't need them. i used all my items in those 3 fights and still, just by the skin of my teeth, did i beat the game. get good or whatever. you have to replay each chapter (to the end) to get and keep your items.

and the enemies. all five of them. plus their four recolors. so awesome.

other odds and ends: the voice acting is not synced to the lip movements at all. what's up with that?

the graphics suck. everything is brown, dreary and dark. there are thick black outlines over most things because it's too difficult to see otherwise.

why the fuck is this game called valkyrie elysium? valkyries = norse mythology and elyisum = greek mythology. it's simple stuff like that that makes you just know that they just didn't care.

and who is they you might ask? well square enix nor tri-ace could be bothered so it was handed off to soleil. you know one of the reasons i gave this game another chance is that i had such a good time with the star ocean 2 remake. that game was handed off to a (seemingly) no name studio only for me to find out it was founded by the same guy who was the battle programmer for valkyrie profile + star ocean. so i was willing to give it another chance, as i had only played for like two hours.

i shouldn't have. soleil makes like shitty anime fighting games. which explains the janky ass battle system.

one good thing i will say - you know i liked nora's design. hilde too. it wasn't too sexualized the way anime girls are now. they both had an oddly square jaw i found charming. i loved hilde's wavy long hair. at least their outfits were reminiscent of valkyrie profile.

conclusion: this is a shut up game. this is something so corporate so churned out of the cogs to feed as slop to valkyrie profile fans. no, i am not known to exaggerate at all. but seriously, don't waste your time. it's obvious no one else bothered so why should you?

[hotcupoteckla]

So, I like different editions of the game and they give different Vibes.

1st: The Beta Run, the old Fallout Game & Diablo style of play. It IS just Dungeons & Dragons, but if you're witty or clever enough you can break the DMs expectations and win the loot.

2nd: thac0 and the gritty art & relevancy of Every Rule Ever that you need to know all conditions that apply? Fuck yes, you're in the Dark Souls version where there is Deep Lore & some Role-playing available, but combat is deeply involved, and everything that spent time specializing has become relevant in later levels and your skill generalist is the support as intended. You need to know what you have with you at all times and you get minions that mean something to the story so you can build influence in an area and become the Dark Souls Boss. Rules Lawyer Haven.

3rd-3.5e: Did you want EPIC QUESTS?!?! We have the place for you! Steampunk? Check! Samurai? Check! Fucking wicked ass magic items that are regularly everywhere and everyone you meet has been an adventurer at one point? CHECK, MY FRIENDS! You don't need to worry about that BESM system over there, or that D20 modern system over there, just stick with us and you can live out your Human to Hero Final Fantasy Pokémon dreams right here, buddy!

Why yes that means out focus on Role-playing has diminished the coolness of survival type styles of games, but we do have lots of undead available in our rules for your Gunslinging Dark Tower Action Man to take them out on the regular. Leveling from 1 to 20? Why? You're super powerful at level 5! Minions are meaningless? Why, of course they are! They just follow you around, and I mean you can have them if you wanted, I guess, but this is YOUR STORY, so don't you want more Epic Quest?

4th ed: Hey guys, I hear Warhammer is having a revival of sorts and everybody's into painting all of a sudden, why don't you try out OUR EFFICIENT Non-Rules Lawyering,(Not stolen from the Star Wars Minis) 100% No RolePlay Encouraging, We Only have Battles on the Table Now System?

Elminster? Who the fuck is that? We don't care- I mean, here he is! Check out his minifig stats! Put him up against...*rummaging in box noises* Strahd! And his 3 delicious Vampire Babes! And check out these Eberron Steamjacks!

Did we say it was Non-Rules Lawyering?! We LIED! All of your Worst RP Friends ever (BroGrammers Galore!) will both Complain ceaselessly about this game WHILE Insisting On Only Playing This System, because while it SUCKS ASS FOR RP, it makes SENSE for Minis, that they live for. Minis & Cards.

Aka Hey man, I heard you like Warcraft & Starcraft? Well we put plastic pewter in your Warhammercraft/Starcraft.

5th Ed: Hey guys, um sorry about that mess back there. Did you guys miss role-playing? Oh, I see we're making podcasts now, that's nice, let's make a rules set for you 😉 😀 I mean, we gotta put these Rules Bits in there so the 4th ed and 2nd ed guys are willing to buy our books again, but yknow, this edition isn't about that. It's about sitting at the campfire with your friends and having fun Magic stories to um... to be nostalgic about, and come up with to make memories with um... hey are you guys hearing that? *checks bushes, 👀 Critical Role hitting a jackpot with a slot machine* huh, well as I was saying, what? *Witnesses Acquisitions Incorporated making a whole supplement book crossing the camp* "HUH. As I was saying, while we can't specialize and expect to make a prof-" *Vox Machina, Fool's Gold, Legends of Avernus, Dimension 20 & Dungeons & Daddies making specialized systems as mini games to fix bad rules, making bank*

"HEY, STOP THAT. YOU CAN'T JUST TAKE OUR NICE RULES FREE GAMES AND MAKE ACTUAL MONEY OFF THEM. WE CAN'T, SO YOU CAN'T EITHER"

rp groups who are doing well: "Hey WotC, we tried getting hired by you, and you said we didn't have the business sense to make it in the industry, and you made it be a free access license because that was the terms you bought it from TSR."

WotC: "Well, we'll see about THAT!"

Yeah, different Vibes in each edition.

Anyway OP, If you can find a set of 2nd edition, it might be more your style, but I do agree that it's weird the developers feel the need to include Bad Rules in order to make a profit, when after all, they could just remove the rules and make a minibook revolving around survival and make more money that way.

It's often remarked how D&D 5e's play culture has this sort of disinterest bordering on contempt for actually knowing the rules, often even extending to the DM themselves. I've seen a lot of different ideas for why this is, but one reason I rarely see discussed is that actually, a lot of 5e's rules are not meant to be used.

Encumbrance is a great example of this. 5e contains granular weights for all the items that you might have in your inventory, and rules for how much you can carry based on your strength score, and they've set these carry capacities high enough that you should never actually need to think about them. And that's deliberate, the designers have explicitly said that they've set carrying capacity high enough that it shouldn't come up in normal play. So for a starting DM, you see all these weights, you see all the rules for how much people can carry or drag, and you've played Fallout, you know how this works. And then if you try to actually enforce that, you find that it's insanely tedious, and it basically never actually matters, so you drop it.

Foraging is the example of this that bothers me most. There's a whole system for this! A table of foraging DCs, and math for how much food you can find, and how long you can go without food, etc. But the math is set up so that a person with no survival proficiency and a +0 to WIS, in a hostile environment, will still forage enough food to be fine, and the starvation rules are so generous that even a run of bad luck is unlikely to matter. So a DM who actually tries to use these rules will quickly find that they add nothing but bookkeeping. You're rolling a bunch of checks every day of travel for something that is purpose built not to matter. And that's before you add in all the ways to trivialize or circumvent this.

These rules don't exist to be used, that is not their purpose. These rules exist because the designers were scared of the backlash to 4e, and wanted to make sure that the game had all the rules that D&D "should" have. But they didn't actually want these mechanics. They didn't want the bookkeeping, they didn't care about that style of play, but they couldn't just say, "this game isn't about that" for fear of angering traditionalists. And unfortunately the way they handled this was by putting in rules that are bad, that actively fight anyone who wants to use that style of play and act as a trap to people who take the rules in good faith.

And this means that knowing what rules are not supposed to be used is an actual skill 5e DMs develop. Part of being a good 5e DM is being able to tell the real rules that will improve your game from the fake rules that are there to placate angry forum posters. And that's just an awful position to put DMs in (especially new DMs), but it's pretty unsurprising that it creates a certain contempt for knowing the rules as written.

You should have contempt for some of the rules as written. The designers did.

[glassmarcus]

Bigger Dark Souls

*Played in February 2022, Written in October 2022 (before Armored Core 6 got a trailer)

Look, I wanted to write a 20 page analysis on why Elden Ring is a lightly flawed masterpiece and how it evolved from the other Souls Games in a logical way, similar to what I did for Pokémon Legends: Arceus. But there's 3 problems with that:

1. I'm writing this ~7 months after beating it so my memory isn't up to the task.

2. Even if I decided to write this in March, I don't think I could do that because there's just so much of it I haven't played.

3. I still haven’t beaten Sekiro, and I’d feel like too much of a poser speaking about the whole franchise/genre without doing that.

So instead, I figured I’d do my sleep schedule a favor and hone in on a single aspect of From Software’s latest work. Just get to the core of what it brings to the table and talk about the adjacent details as they become relevant. I want to take the most important change brought to the established formula and put it under a microscope. And that thing is its size. Elden Ring is big. Elden Ring is really big. I’d go so far as to say that Elden Ring is too fucking big. I mean this in basically every possible facet. Too many weapons. Too many areas. Too many bosses. Too many items. Too many side quest. In blatant summary, It’s just Bigger Dark Souls. Elden Ring’s world, The Lands Between, is the land of too much. It lathers and bathes itself in content, and then exits the tub without drying off, leaving itself dripping with excess. This is a wonderful thing for the most part. It's so big that it's impossible to fully experience without shifting into no life mode for weeks. And I think there are games that benefit from being this size. Scale is a big draw and can be a huge boon to the few that can pull it off. Elden Ring is one of these games....until it isn't.

Why an Open World Souls Game owns

The first Dark Souls seemed gigantic the first time I played it. I'd regularly spend whole afternoons learning and moving through a single area only to be greeted with a seemingly bigger area. I perceived it as this massive interconnected world. Then I got better at the game. I engaged encounters with far more temerity and started rolling through areas way faster. I stopped having to experience every aspect of the world geometry ad nauseam. The secret to the massiveness of Dark Souls is that it's only big if you are bad at playing it. My first playthrough of Dark Souls was 80 hours. Because I had no skill. Every run afterwards has been between 15 and 30 hours because I don't suck anymore. When I started Elden Ring I had enough experience to be decent from the jump. I was getting through dungeons with haste. I was taking out bosses in less than 3 tries. I could run through areas, ignore enemies, while only getting punished for it some of the time. And even with all my tempered puissance expediting the process, this game still feels enormous to me.

With only dying a few times per area, Elden Ring took me 115 hours to complete and I still missed so much. Every time in the future when I play this, I will be in awe of its stature because it's truly big relative to anything. And I think that's pretty cool. It’s easy to go, “whatever, quantity isn’t important, quality is” and brush off Elden Ring’s feat. In some cases I would agree with that sentiment. But while quality is ultimately sacrificed to an extent, I can’t ignore the phantasm of adventure crying out within my soul every time I complete a mile stone and then realize there’s still so much more to do. Elden Ring aspires to be a grand exploit, and it succeeds by constantly delivering the feeling that there’s more on the horizon and it keeps giving you that feeling for an absurdly long time. And even with some sacrifice in potential quality, this is still a polished and thought out game. It is a bountiful high caliber product. If quantity was all it had going for it, it would just be Dark Souls 2 (Yes I am one of THOSE guys).

It's more than just the spectacle of the size. A bigger world with more items, more enemies, and more mechanics leads to a vast array of unique experiences a player can have. As someone who has played through these games a lot and has viewed an irresponsible amount of Let's Plays on them, it's always a joy to see how you and others handled certain situations based on their build and play style and what area they wandered into when they weren't supposed. Elden Ring ends up being the perfect playground for these moments, simply by being a larger one. There is a boundless matrix of ways people will distinctly approach all the content this game has to offer and I am here for it. No two playthroughs are going to be similar. There are too many ways for the player to stray from what might be the intended path.

I had a discussion with some co-workers about a boss I had to fight and how brutal it was. And they were confused, as they got to that area way later in their adventures and that boss wasn’t even there. I was stupefied by this knowledge, and wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or laugh, but I was definitely impressed regardless. Elden Ring incites the urge within me to listen to other people’s experiences with the Lands Between. Wanting to be immersed into not just your experience, but other people’s is the mark of a truly special game. I loved playing Kirby and the Forgotten Land earlier this year. It’s pretty much perfect and I will write a review on it soon. But I do not care about other people’s Kirby playthroughs. The intrigue just isn’t there. When you play a game, you are crafting your own narrative and Elden Ring gives you a surplus of ink to write to your hearts content. And these stories have a tendency to be very interesting.

Elden Ring gives you an abundance of options. Not every reward you are given in the Lands Between will be of clear value to you, but it will be of value to someone. An important aspect of an open world game like this is having loot that's worth seeking out. This is what I would call the fatal flaw of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Well not actually fatal because it’s still a pretty solid title. But if being a strong 8/10 instead of a 10/10 is tantamount to death, this issue would show up in the autopsy. That game has 3 weapons and they all function as soft consumables. You only get that new toy feeling 3 times and then you're done. That fire sword you just picked up is the same as the sword you are already using. That giant hammer you’re swinging could be a giant sword and the enemies wouldn’t know the difference because they react to it the same way. It has a weak Loot Illusion. And once you shake the genjustu you’ve been put under for the first handful of hours, you start to get...very comfortable. Nothing surprises you anymore and once you reach a plateau of difficulty, there’s no reason to fight or search for treasure outside the fact that you ran out of weapons.

Elden Ring doesn't have this issue. Everything you get has some functional purpose even if that purpose doesn't fit your current build. Instead of getting the same present over and over again, you are gifted a veritable grab bag of trinkets and doodads. Where it be weapons, spells, crafting materials, currency, or fashion, it can aid you theoretically so it always feels like you should be exploring. Elden Ring’s obsession with giving the widest breadth of options it can generate, makes it so that you can never ever assume that the treasure chest in front of you isn’t worth it. A world that is too big requires you to navigate it with less confidence. It requires you to accept that you don’t know everything, even if you think you do. Previous Souls games operated this way in the past and it’s even more effective now. The Loot Illusion is strong in this one and that's because it’s basically the same technique used in Dark Souls...only bigger.

Clearly A lot of mechanics of Dark Souls suit itself to an open world setting just due to having strong RPG aspects incorporated into them. But even outside of that, I have to give this game a ton of credit. The world design in this kicks ass. There are interesting landmarks and varied biomes littered through out the world. Every corner has a secret dungeons or cave to explore. The joy felt from getting a map of the area and seeing all the points of interest you want to go to is truly remarkable. The map is filled with a bevy of enemies ripe for running through or running away from. The horse makes traversal a breeze by being instantly summonable and having a double jump. The horse has a double jump folks. Based on that alone, this is Game of the Year material. And the jump is not just a fun thing you can do. It is vital for vertical exploration and allows for the world design to be much more interesting than if it wasn’t there. Even without using Dark Souls as a skeleton, Elden Ring is a profusely competent open world game. But it does have that skeleton, and does have the same general gameplay loop. So summing it up as just a shit load of Dark Souls is valid. And really, you can't have too much Dark Souls right?

Why an Open World Souls Game kinda blows

Elden Ring's ass is simply too big. In proportion to the rest of its body it doesn't look too bad. From the right angle it elicits "Gyatt Dayum, that's a big ole ass" reactions. But from less flattering perspectives you start to see the grotesque consequences of such a grand posterior. You perceive the rolls of fat teeming out of the top of the pants, the lumpy bumpy denimscape failing to keep everything together, and fissures of thread revealing the mantle of unwashed underwear between the seams. We may all say we love ass; We may all claim ‘the bigger the better’. But without proper form or support, it can potentially look like an abomination. I wouldn't go so far to say the backside of Elden Ring is as bad as it could be, but I would certainly say it lacks form and support. There's just not enough denim and skin to keep that shit tight.

OK I'm losing faith in my analogy, so I'll just say it. The last 3rd of Elden Ring kinda sucks. At least in comparison to the rest of it.

The first third is a splendid feast of content where you are spoiled with a buffet of fanciful cuisine. It seems like each area has it own topology and citizens. The enemies you fight feel unique, the bosses you fight feel one of a kind, every dungeon is it's own adventure where you don't know what is in store. You can't even comprehend the structure of this game. But around the 30% mark, you can. You start seeing the same enemies you are familiar with, but a tad stronger, you know what to expect simply based on area names, bosses you've seen before are remixed. It's no longer fresh, but that's to be expected. You are still getting new content and being introduced to new concepts so it never feels stale. And from what I can tell it all makes sense lore wise. The repeated assets are understandable and even welcome. A lot of the content is things I've seen before in other Souls games, just reskinned and remixed to seem a bit different. This really is just Dark Souls 3 at it's core. I see animations from characters and enemies and can identify the exact origin of them, yet that doesn't make it feel rehashed. Context is important. Elden Ring is packaged like a new game and carries itself like a new game and thus feels like a new game.

But then you get to the final act. And it's basically just more of the same. I struggle to think of an entirely unique enemy in the last stretch of Elden Ring. Even the geography starts to feel unremarkable. I don't want to say it's mailed in, but it certain has Mario Maker vibes. It's not something I'd want to cap off my epic journey with. The whole game, it feels you are given bread crumbs. Hints of what the climax of the adventure will be. But it's not just bread crumbs. It's actual slices of bread. And when you get to the half eaten loaf at the end, it feels as if you've already eaten this before. You've already fought the Farum Azula foot soldiers. You've already slain scores of Trolls and Hand Spiders. You've already fought the Ulcerated Tree Spirit. You've already tracked down all the Death Root in the area. You've already fought the Ulcerated Tree Spirit. You've already snuck past this Rune Bear with fear deep in your heart. You've already fought the Ulcerated Tree Spirit. You've already fought the Ulcerated Tree Spirit. You've already fought the Ulcerated Tree Spirit. In its attempts to make a magnificently fresh first act while putting hints of the end game in the second, the third ends up having little to bring to the table, copy and pasting the things you’re already intimately familiar with. Calling this “Bigger Dark Souls” becomes even more apt now. It has a sizable drop in quality near the end, just like the first Dark Souls has, only it last much longer.

The distribution of resources is not the only thing that suffers from the inflated size of this game. A work of this stature is impossible to balance. Dark Souls has always had an abstract difficulty curve. The rigor of each area increases steadily, but because you have so many options as a player it is very easy to trivialize challenges or get completely walled by them based on what you choose to do with your build. But even if you fuck that up it’s still very doable. You can not level up a single time and get through just fine (speaking from personal experience here. Yea I'm ALSO one of THOSE guys). Elden Ring follows the same philosophy and applies it to a much larger world. This game gives you so many resources that you can use to break it wide open. There are builds which can trivialize everything in front of you. It can be kind of a joke if you use everything at your disposal. But if you don't then the joke is on you.

If you don't level up HP, late game enemies will one shot you without a moment's notice. If you don't use summons, then later down the line you will be ganked and shanked by an assemble of group bosses. If you don't use the bloodhound step art, then you cannot dodge this 1 health melting attack Melania does sometimes. Balance here feels kind of impossible given how open and free the exploration is. Managing general player progression and estimating what they might have at what point is a task I couldn't even comprehend how to execute. With how much game there is and how many options there are, decent balance can only last so long and I'd say that also falls apart around the 3rd act. Not just because the stats of enemies and their amount is cranked up to an annoying, yet uninteresting degree. But also because the behavior of the bosses start assuming you are playing optimally. And by optimally I mean using spirit summons.

I like the idea of spirit summons. I think it's cool to have adventuring companions in these games at no cost. However, it feels the game is often designed around them. Particularly the bosses. In past games it felt like bosses had decently sized windows to get some hits in after dodging an onslaught of attacks. It was a dance and you were rewarded handsomely for knowing your partner's moves. The reward in Elden Ring is a single hit usually, maybe two. It leads to fights taking way longer than they need to. The best way to speed it up is to have spirit summons draw aggro so you can get some damage in. I enjoy using spirit summons for fights that aren’t duels because aggro is being distributed as it's intended. For 1 on 1 fights it appears they are designed to be broken rather than conquered. And this isn't actually that big of an issue. I hesitate to call it an objective issue at all. It's more personal. I would have been more satisfied if I didn't use summons and just downloaded them after dozens and dozens of attempts. So why didn't I? Because I don't have that kind of time and the allure of this unique brand of “easy mode” is too enticing.

Every day I anguish at all the potentially amazing art that I might love but will never have time to consume. Now more than ever, I stress over what art is worth my attention, despite knowing how ghoulish of a mindset this is. I want to spend my brief lifespan playing games that aren't just Elden Ring. As much breadth as it offers, I can only play so much of it before reaching diminishing returns and thinking “I should be doing something else right now”. The consequence of this game being so big is that I can't feel the satisfaction of mastery after downloading it into my brain's non volatile memory. Every corner of Dark Souls is etched into my cranium. Every hallway in Dark Souls 3 I can recall fond or not so fond memories about. I will never be able to say the same about Elden Ring because I don't have the time to have one all encompassing playthrough and I can't knockout a short playthrough whenever I feel like it. I'm in the middle of an Elden Ring replay right now and it still took pretty long to get to the 3rd act and I skipped a ton of stuff this time around. And then I stopped because I’m not a big fan of the rest of the game. There's still so much I don't know about the mechanics and geography. This isn't bad at all, but it does brush against my preferences a bit. I’d like to play Elden Ring, play it again, play another game or two, then play Elden Ring a few more times without that process taking an entire year.

People were very quick to call this a Breath of The Wild like Souls game. I certainly did. I wasn’t the first person to call it ‘Death of the Wild���, but I sure wish I was and will continue to use that term when it’s relevant. Despite it being another reductive video game comparison, they do actually have a ton in common. There’s a reason I brought it up earlier. They’re both vastly larger than any game before them in their respective series. They both foster creating a completely unique experience for play, Elden Ring with it’s build variety, Zelda with it’s world interactivity, and both with their lack of limits on where you can go and how you can get there. Both even have an underwhelming phase 2 for their final boss. They are similar games, not just in design, but in their place in their franchises. Breath of the Wild came out during a time when people were getting fatigued with Zelda games. I will go on record and say that those people are morons and that the formula was fine and that if they just gave Skyward Sword another year in the oven and made it a cross generation title like Twilight Princess, no one would have been bitching. Despite it being what I would call an unnecessary switch up for the franchise, it was exactly that and it turned out really well. Elden Ring is in that same spot now. Souls games have come out, Mediocre Souls-likes have followed, and before the lead up to Elden Ring, people were getting kind of sick of them. Much like Zelda, I didn’t understand the burnout and would have been perfectly fine with just a Dark Souls 4 equivalent. But Elden Ring switched things up and now I’m left with a certain fear.

We haven’t had a new traditional Zelda Game in what will be 10 years pretty soon. The last one was A Link Between Worlds and it’s my favorite one. I was very excited about the future of the franchise after playing it, because if they could make more titles as clever as that, then the franchise was in good hands. But then they made Breath of the Wild, and it was great. I was a fan of it (I sunk far too many hours into it), but I preferred the former structure instead. After that game ended up selling more than any Zelda ever by a wide margin, I knew there was no chance of them going back. The sequel announcement basically solidified my fear of what the franchise’s trajectory was going to be. Just more big open Zeldas while remakes and spinoffs are made on the side. It’s fine, but it’s not what I’d prefer. I want both of these approaches to making a Zelda game to coexist. But it doesn’t seem like they can.

That's the risk when it comes to substantial change ups in a franchise. You make big strides, but not everyone can keep up. Elden Ring sold so many goddamned copies. Deservedly so. But that makes me worried that they're just gonna do this again right away. I felt similarly about Sekiro when it came out. Sekiro is a Souls game that has basically none of the things I enjoy about Souls games. I knew Elden Ring was in development when it came out, so I wasn’t afraid of it becoming the new standard for every future From Soft product. But if Sekiro became more than just a fling, I would have turned into pillar salt, as I cannot resist the urge to look back and pine for the good old days. I’m glad that the most successful game is one that leaned into the RPG aspects rather than shyed away from them. Yet, that fear still remains.

I adore Elden Ring, but I still want regular sized Dark Souls games to be made. I’ve had my fill and the inevitable DLC isn’t even out yet. Now that I know they can craft an adventure of this size and of this grade, I want to see them return to sculpting a more concise adventure with all that quality packed into a 30 hour game. I truly think both styles can coexist, but I'm afraid they won't and one will overtake the other. As fair as it may be, do not want traditional Dark Souls fans to become the new Armored Core fans. I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to see anything like this til 2033 at least. It’s something I’m gonna have to play 2 more times before I think I've truly experienced it. And I’m excited for that. So please From Software, make a shorter masterpiece in between your next giant one.

[blueempty]

Oh yeah, its 4:30am alright

Listen kid, there's two ways to live ya life. You either post on your sky blog at 10pm because youre going to bed at 12am, or you post at demon hours because you decided it was your night to experience joy. I decided it was my night to draw

I've had big Fairune brain the past few days because I've been needing to finish the collection and I finally did. I found out there's a new one coming out this year and got excited until i saw it looks more like their games they made after Fairune which does not spark joy. I rememered having seen their game Kamiko on sale forever ago and liking the title screen art and then immediately nope'ing out when I saw what the game looked like. The old artist must've left or taken a dark path at some point because the Fairune 1 and 2 art is really really good, but then for Kamiko, Transiruby, and their slow life RPG thing I cant remember the name of, they switched to this generic early kickstarter era indie pixel art thing where the sprites legs are one pixel wide and they dont have enough frames of animation for how detailed they are and its just not great. Regardless, Kamiko is on sale on switch for $1.99 right now and I had 192 gold coins, so I bought it for 7 cents. I havent played much but uh, I wish that new Fairune was like the old ones lets just say that

I'm beginning to absolutely fucking love the PC88. The games EGG Console put out are all so fucked and jank but they arent unfun to play like bad NES or Genesis games. Silpheed is legitimately good, I'm talking more about Hydlide and Relics. I mention this because what made me play Fairune was that Hydlide wasnt on the switch lol. But I also just watched a video on Xanadu and like man. Like I dont think games should be that anti-player but literally zero games are released today that have that energy. Like imagine if the Marvelous guys were still making games like Chulip and Moon. Where theyre unbelievably charming and deep but they also fucking hate you and if you dont know all the enemies despawn if you kill them 3 times the game becomes incompletable. I guess Dark Souls 2 was like that

Anyways its my partners birthday tomorrow (cuz I havent slept yet tomorrow means friday) and were going to da zoo baybee, during a massive covid surge baybee, with non refundable tickets and N95s in our hands baybeeee. The event were going to starts late tho so I'll be fine on sleep. Lately I've been being a better employee and getting into work earlier, and actually doing my job for 7 hours than leaving and going to bed by 3am at the latest. Thats why most of my posts have been baffling or short, this shit sucks man. No time for Barony hat update. But I'm not working any extra days this weekend so i'm gonna eat all the hats that game has to offer soon

Peace and Long Life

[punkgemjasper]

I can't stand game journalists anymore. I'm tired of this constant negativity that surrounds one of my favorite hobbies. They just mimic the sane man covered in shit energy as the scumfucks who think every gane HAS to be this hyped up image of it they had in their heads.

More under the cut. But it's just a rant.

Like saying a game will have a 3rd person camera option is a bad thing.

It's an OPTION. You never have to ever use it and I know that not everyone can play first-person games due to motion and light sensitivities, that option allows them to play the fucking game you abelist cock womble.

Comparisons between games in the same genre need to end because big fucking surprise two games in the same genre don't have to be the same exact thing as each other to be good in their own rights and for all their wanking off Cyberpunk 2077 atm, that game still isn't a masterpiece by any means, not to the extent these fucks go on about it.

I love Cyberpunk 2077 but it still feels clunky in places and not being able to interact with your npc partners past the initial romance moment, sucks, as an example.

I love Starfield but it needs a few quality-of-life improvements and is a bit clunky. The minuscule inventory size & only 1 skill point per level with a crap ton of skills to level and no way of earning bonus points via quests, sucks.

Should these two games be compared? No, the fuck they should not. Why? They bring different things to an already oversaturated with fucking clones, genre.

People like that are the reason so many games these days decide to be punishingly hard because Dark Souls became popular. I'm sick of seeing it. There is nothing wrong with playing a game for fun. There is nothing wrong with liking a 'bad' game.

I liked the new Saints Row ffs. Is it bad? Yes. Was I disappointed as a long-time fan of the series, yes. But I still managed to have FUN with it.

These journalists are fucking bottom feeders. Stop letting them suck the fun out of gaming.

[ghostphobi]

i keep saying this on my twitter but the 3rd and 4th movies of persona 3 are literally the same plot as the 333 and 3+1 evangelion rebuild movies. they share the same fucking general plot its actually insane

*any analysis here might be incorrect. my memory sucks + i watched the rebuild movies almost a year ago + these are all oversimplifications of plot

3rd movies: main character witnessing multiple deaths, both feeling full of guilt and shame, wishing to be alone and separate themselves from the world. suddenly, non-human pretending to be human comes into picture and befriends mc, allowing them to heal (somewhat) with them and make amends (shinji wirh kaworu, makoto with ryoji).

4th movies: main character rejoins their original group of friends and together, (shinji back with asuka and mari, makoto back with the group) they fight to destroy an extremely powerful deity that wants to take out humanity for whatever reason — in the end, the mc is the one who saves everyone and resets the universe/makes everyone forget

obviously there’s more major differences like

kaworu never comes back and is officially dead all while ryoji lives and becomes one with the deity makoto fights — kaworu’s death is a pretty major blow on top of the millions of deaths he’s caused; kaworu was the only one who cared and talked to him until rei and shinji got stuck in the village of impact survivors. it definitely caused more trauma on top of everything compared to makoto’s “oh shit i released death himself who I befriended and was sealed inside my soul the past decade and now is going to end the world!!!”

makoto witnessed 2-3 deaths including shinjiro and mitsuru’s father all while shinji had to be told he was the cause of millions of lives from an almost-impact he created, even killing kaji, 14 years ago — the number is definitely subtle but still enough

makoto fights death itself, who is ryoji/nyx. shinji actually fights/talks with his father who became a god for the sake of reviving his wife/shinji’s mom

there are multiple endings for evangelion, 1 “bad” ending and two “resetting the universe” endings. the rebuild has the entire world reset — no evas, no angels, just normal lives. the manga resets the universe to make it seem like the almost-3rd impact that’s seen in end of evangelion happened way before humanity and no one, especially shinji, has no recollection of it and life is normal.

^ the end of persona 3 (both game and movie but I’m talking the movies here) is 2 months after having the world “reset” and everyone’s memory of the dark hour and The Fall. everyone only remembers after seeing cherry blossoms and makoto’s already on his death bed (somehow he survived an entire month, remembered the fight with ryoji, stumbled his way to the school roof, laid down, and died)