#I imagine a boss fight with them is like a fromsoft game

[jack-o-phantom]

Possible redesigns of the guards!

Since they haven't done much in the past hundred years, im guessing they're pretty dusty in the creaks, poor Y/n has to deal with two large cats who see y/n as a toy

[beesmygod]

How do you rank the various freak ass gods in elden ring so far. Just in vibes and such.

ok now that i know them all:

godfrey: not at all what i imagined. very funny how he has a furry jojo stand preventing him from going beast mode. 5/10, ultimately just a big guy whose wife took his godhood in the divorce

godwyn: creepy. he looks terrible. 7/10 for being interestingly yucky (both bodies).

godrick: total scrub, which is very funny. once you see his ungrafted corpse, he really is the runt of the litter. 6/10 for yucky points.

godefroy: somehow a bigger scrub. 4/10 for no dragon

morgott: the quintessential fromsoft epic grandpa character. huge bastard the first time you meet him. the next few times feel less dire. resourceful little bastard, taking the capital city like that. 6/10

mohg: whats his problem lol. i love a boss that blabbers at you as you fight. NIHIL. i see the dlc semi-explains wtf he was up to so maybe ill find out some day. 7/10. good fights. semi-tricky.

radahn: WOULD. 9/10 fun fight too. all of your friends come in with everything for a HUGE murder!

malenia: the lady maria fight but if it sucked. her strat is to do biological warfare on you when she loses in hand to hand combat fair and square. 4/10 at least she looked cool.

miquella: dead (?)/10. sir not appearing in this game (so far). seems to be trying to fix problems instead of causing them, which is a nice change of pace. doing a bad job, though.

rykard: 8/10. freaky weird design, stupid motives, and a fun fight gimmick. TOGETHARRRR WE WILL DEVOURRR THE VERY GODS!! or whatever.

ranni: 6/10. shes fine. she does nothing for me. kind of a neat design i guess.

radagon: this is all your fault. 7/10 kind of a lame fight.

marika: what is her problem lol. 8/10 bc i love how she causes so many problems for no reason

the gloam eyed queen: pretty sure i know who this is. what the hell is her game. 6/10, inscrutable motives and the godskin apostle fights are just ok

[marina-the-witch]

MAJOR Shadow of the Erdtree Spoilers!!!

Alright I need to get this out, so here goes.

Promised Consort might be the single most conflicting boss in Fromsoft for me, and I need to talk about it. Firstly, I want to say in full honesty that I don't really mind it from a narrative standpoint. As much as I would have loved to see Godwyn get his time to shine, seeing Radahn in his prime, especially after he got beaten out quite hard by 4 other bosses in base game when he used to be my favorite after some consideration, is very cool and I don't personally think it assassinates either of the 2 characters involved, as it doesn't contradict or invalidate Miquella's previous actions nor does anything point strongly towards Radahn willingly being involved in this. However, one complaint I do have is that Mohg's involvement feels quite irrelevant and ignored by both the fanbase (aside from the dedicated Mohg club) and the game. Promised Consort has a couple horns slapped onto his arms and a SINGLE move that is reminiscent of Mohg, that's it. No shared weakness, no cool wings or scales or anything, hell, why not make Mohg's shackle work to make this difficult fight a little bit less over the top. On that note, I would like to address the fight. Aside from a wonky hitbox or two, I think, on paper, Promised Consort has a very solid and fair moveset in Phase 1 that's fun to learn and exploit, even if the openings do feel aggressively tight. Phase 2 on the other hand...Why? Why, instead of giving this conceptually sound and interesting boss an actually new moveset do you just slap frankly annoying AoEs and weird Dragon Ball bullshit ass afterimage attacks and the ability to fucking toast your CPU on what could have easily been the best final boss fight in Souls thus far if you had just TRIED. Many people have expressed they feel as though Promised Consort doesn't "try" narratively, that he's just a cheap, shoehorned attempt at fanservice like Soul of Cinder What who said that instead of providing an actual final boss to cap off the narrative, and I don't fully agree with this even if I did find the ending cutscene a bit underwhelming. But I do feel as though Promised Consort isn't trying to actually be challenging in a fair and fun way. Just kinda, overtuned. Aggressive. Unfair. I had my fun with the boss, no doubt, but I didn't feel good about beating it, especially not after the only way out I saw was summoning a tanky spirit who drew all the aggro while I tried to do literally anything in Phase 2, when no other boss in the DLC or in the game at all has ever made me that desperate (Note that i don't mind summons in general but don't personally enjoy using them as it takes the excitement and rewarding feeling out of a boss fight for me) (Also note that while i am fairly good at this game, I am extremely easily overwhelmed by too many bright visual stimuli as part of my ADHD/Autism, which is part of the reason I struggle with Fortissax and Bayle every now and then, now imagine that but tenfold for Promised Consort). This boss needs some sort of nerf. Not one that completely neuters it, Radahn has had enough of that already, it just needs to be towned down. The speed, the damage, I don't know, hell, toning down the visual clutter of phase 2 would probably be enough, so you could actually SEE what the boss is doing half the time, just do something to not make this fight as unfair as it is now. I don't know if I'll have the same experience I've had with this boss as I did Malenia, where after several attempts that ended in a mere , underwhelming, unrewarding "Glad that's over", to thinking its the worst thing ever to it being my favorite boss, I kinda hope it will, but for the time I can't say I'm excited to fight this boss again.

Stan Metyr and Romina instead everyone, we love weird nasty girlies <3

[gamejoypod]

I'm incubating a strong opinion in favor of the new collectables in SotE, i'll stick it under the cut just to be double sure i'm not spoiling for anyone.

I have a very hard time sympathizing with complaints about the Shadow Realm Blessings

The blessings are almost explicitly stated to your face as a way to incentivize exploration and engage with the non-boss fight elements of the game.

1. The blessings balance your damage & defense to keep you from just melting everything with a busted end-game build from the word Go

2. a lot of them are RIGHT next to points of interest, significant npcs, merchants, and lore

3. they're scattered around the map so you actually have to explore

4. Your stats are Red on the status screen until you get enough Scadutree Blessings, then they turn Gold. The UI itself is implying that ignoring the blessings is actively detrimental to your build.

It feels like the blessings are fromsoft's best effort at making sure players can still feel a sense of progression through the dlc even if they bring in an end-game character.

If I imagine a player who's offended at the ideas of exploration, discovery, engaging with new characters and lore, and the feeling of starting weak but growing strong over time, that doesn't sound like someone who actually likes Elden Ring.

It sounds like someone who wanted to ignore most of the game and skip from boss to boss to boss and melt them with a meta build (that they googled) so they could be smug about how easy the dlc was

The blessings aren't a new easy mode, they're a condensed version of levelling up.

[milfbius]

honkai souls bosses pt 3

MEI, Herrscher of Thunder:

I loooove love love the hi3 Herrscher of Thunder design and how many cultural references it has. For her appearance in Honkai Souls, she will also have a mixture of Japanese cultural references, but her overall design will be more traditional and god-like.

(Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert on Japanese religion, please let me know if I got anything wrong and I'll correct it.)

Raijin motifs: Raijin is the god of thunder in Shinto religion - one of his other names is 雷電様 (aka Raiden-sama) from which Mei stole her last name. Raijin is almost always depicted with an arc of drums - obviously they have to be very prevalent in the soundtrack.

Lightning is depicted as red in Japanese culture - similar to Raijin, Mei will summon red lighting spears to strike the player in her ranged attacks.

True to her godly inspirations, and as is typical of a fromsoft boss, Mei will be at least three times as tall as the player. Like Raijin, she will have red skin.

Fudou Muyouou (Acala): Fudou Muyouou is the Japanese name for the Buddhist deity Acala. One legend about Fudou has him getting into a fight with a non-Buddhist. Naturally, he changes himself into a flaming sword, but unfortunately his opponent does the same. To beat him, Fudou changes from a sword into the dragon Kurikara (same name as the Herrscher of Thunder's dragon in hi3). He then winds himself around his opponent and starts swallowing them (in sword form!).

Rather than summoning a dragon as she does in HI3, Honkai Souls Mei follows in Fudou's footsteps. The second phase of the fight has her transforming into Kurikara, who takes on the appearence of a more culturally-traditional Japanese dragon. I also think Mei, as a dragon, should vomit swords at the player. To serve as a fromsoftian religious perversion, but also because it would be fuckin sick.

Youkai (Oni/Tengu) motifs: Souls-Mei will have red skin with oni horns and wear giant fucking tengu geta. Obviously.

Hokushin Ittou-ryuu: is the kenjutsu style favoured by the Raiden clan - Mei was tutored in it by her father. IRL, it is a super influential and famous Japanese sword school, focused on dueling and dominating your opponent with an offense-is-defense approach. Mei's 1st phase move-set should borrow heavily from this sword style.

Video demonstration

Other notes on Mei's boss fight:

I want her to be wearing a full set of traditional 17th century samurai armor while she's still in her humanoid form - red horns poking out through the helmet, but her face completely obscured. Long black hair escapes the back of the helmet, and red, clawed hands grip her sword.

Her arena is located in the city of Nagazora - honkai beasts and zombies run rampant. Honestly, just imagine what Nagazora looks like during hi3 chapter 15-17 and add another 200-300 years of dilapidation and honkai corruption.

The full moon shines bright and large over the boss fight, which takes place on the roof of an old high school.

The boss is fairly straightforward in its mechanics - Mei fights honorably, no health regen gimicks. However, it is the first true two-phase bossfight in the game, and she has faster attacks than any previously encountered enemies.

Mei transforms into Kurikara after you deplete her first health bar, after which the fight relocates to what can only be described as a realm of thunder - black clouds, pouring rain pooling at the players feed and forks of red lighting reflecting off the ground and back into the sky. The moon is still visible, but it, too, is blood red.

Upon a killing blow, Mei reverts to her oni/humanoid form, appearing on her knees, reaching vainly towards the moon before she collapses.

Mei drops the Core of Thunder upon defeat. The player can activate it to increase attack speed for a certain duration.

previous boss (SIRIN) // next boss (WENDY)

[sapphic-scylla]

I mean i really feel like I have to at this point because i talk so much anout this subject in relation to boss fights, so here it is.

25 Best Boss Fight Music Tracks of All Time

(As a clarification, I will not be adding tracks for games that haven’t publicly released yet or Scylla would be dominating this list. Also, endgame, higher stakes boss fights will be taking precedence because obviously.)

Malenia (Elden Ring)—I mean, come on. How could it not be this? This track is a banger and I hear it in both my dreams and nightmares. Also, the phase transition with the cutscene is always incredible to watch.

Rivers in the Desert (Persona 5)—In general, all of the Persona games have the best soundtracks in all of existence, but hitting endgame bosses and hearing this slowly go from instrumental to vocals in a fight that stretches for essentially four phases? Literally chilling.

Battle Hymn of the Soul (Persona 3)—This barely missed the 2 spot only because it doesn’t have vocals. Not that it needs it. This was peak vibes at the top of that tower.

Troupe Master Grimm (Hollow Knight)—Maybe a hot take, but the first fight music of Grimm is better. It just is. Can’t explain it and don’t even really need to, but it’s just soooo good.

Mohg, Lord of Blood (Elden Ring)—Really ominous theme for such an imposing figure and really fits the vibe of the fight. Kinda hectic while also being fairly controlled in a very interesting way.

Dancer of the Boreal Valley (Dark Souls 3)—By far, the most haunting track on this list. This fits the mood perfectly and has such a otherworldly tone to it, I love it so much.

Sister Friede (Dark Souls 3)—Much of the same as Dancer, only this sits in a little bit more of a lullaby transitioning into an anthem.

Radiance (Hollow Knight)—I truly hear this track in my actual nightmares. It does the whole God theme really well and it is truly etched into my brain.

Lichdragon Fortissax (Elden Ring)—Oh baby, I love me a choir that can fucking knock me on the ground. This hits every boss fight soundtrack itch in me and I ADORE it.

God of the Dead/The Unseen Ones (Hades)—Yes, this entire suite is amazing. All three phases. Ramping the guitar each phase, the increased intensity. Glorious every time.

Nosk (Hollow Knight)—I think it’s fair to say that no track is better placed. This music fits the area so well and just oozes panic and terror and i love it so much.

Tears Aflame (Code Vein)—People forget this game exists and I can’t imagine why. This game has so many fire boss fight tracks it’s insane. This one has great mounting pressure that really suits the intense amount of soeed that picks up in this fight.

Successor (Code Vein)—Simple, but great. Fantastic orchestral vibes while taking on the ACTUAL big bad of Code Vein is a fantastic energy.

Maliketh, the Black Blade (Elden Ring)—Trust me, I swear I’m not trying to dominate this list with Elden Ring entries, but when FromSoft has spent years perfecting the craft of boss tracks, this is bound to happen. Maliketh builds such an impressive vibe and builds to a fantastic crescendo.

Metroid Final Boss Tracks (Metroid Franchise)—Is this cheating? I don’t think so. It’s my list. Metroid games always have boss fight bangers and I feel like putting them all here is only fair.

Throw Away Your Mask (Persona 5 Royal)—Such a great way to end a great game. This has all of the bravado of a clashing of ideals and the energy of a final stretch. I love it.

Mass Destruction/Last Surprise (Persona 3/5)—Obviously, not boss tracks, but if you don’t think these fight tracks SLAP, you’re a liar.

Yaldabaoth (Persona 5)—I mean, how can you not love this? Everything you want out of beating the hell out of a god.

Darkeater Midir (Dark Souls 3)—Bayle before Bayle was even a footnote on a page. The original orgasmic dragon theme that just was COVERED in prestige and energy.

Slave Knight Gael (Dark Souls 3)—The track that rounded out the entirety of my favorite franchise of all time. No more need be said.

Messmer, the Impaler (Elden Ring)—This track actually surprised me. I genuinely got this stuck in my head for a week after fighting this man. Very much an earworm.

Sepiks Reborn (Destiny)—OK, Fine. I’ll make a reference to my old life. Michael Salvatori was a visionary and to think they could have fired him after ANY of the Destiny soundtracks he put out is ABSOLUTE BLASPHEMY.

The King and the Bull (Hades)—Let it be known, I despise Theseus and everything he stands for. This particular fight track is a fucking banger though.

Godskin Duo/Apostle/Noble (Elden Ring)—I mean, it doesn’t get out of your head. It just stays there and ruins your brain. I love cathedralcore music and it just is so good.

Orphan of Kos (Bloodborne)—Eerie, unsettling, frantic, intoxicating. The perfect track to get your ribcage kicked in to by a savage creature of the Old Gods.

[nohaijiachi]

Man, I think another thing that buggers me is that, Mohg gets all this flak for his actions, which... Alright. I DO understand why people would be uncomfortable with his character due to implications which COULD lead that route.

And yet Seluvis doesn't nearly get quite as much hate, even though he's VERY blatant about what he's up to with his puppets.

Crap, Gehrman from Bloodborne seems to get more hate than Seluvis all for his doll comment...

To be entirely fair Mohg is very much a more 'important' and prominent character than Seluvis, being one of the shard-bearers and a boss we get to fight, so on the one hand yes, of course more people will have stronger negative feelings about him than Seluvis, a character than depending on the way one is to play the game they might only meet once, if at all--

On the other hand I have very little doubt the amount of vitriol directed at Mohg VS. Seluvis is very much also a gut reaction to the icky feelings caused by the idea of something sexual being done to a child-like character.

(Even though again, there is no canon basis to make the assumption anything sexual does happen, and not only me, but a lot of other people I've spoken with have also reported not even considering the sexual angle at all... Which tbh is kinda funny because kidnapping Miquella and subjecting him to blood rituals being carried very likely without Miquella's consent is still very much very fucked up? But I'm ready to bet that if this interpretation of the text was outright spelled by the canon we'd have a lot fewer people hating so fervently on Mohg lol)

So yes, I also perfectly understand people's discomfort with the character, but the blatant double standards still very much grind my gears, because as I wrote in the post, all the demigods have done/are doing fucked-up shit. That's just Fromsoft writing in a nutshell; you never get perfectly clear cut bad/good characters, but rather complex individuals with their own motivations and reasons of acting in a certain way. Moral grayness is very much the name of the game.

I'd be much less irritated if people were honest and simply admitted that their own interpretation of the lore makes them dislike Mohg and leave it at that, instead of consistently acting like Mohg being a rapist is a 100% canon and thus he deserves all of the bad things that have been done to him, which, sorry I'm repeating myself here--- BUT the entire concept is bullshit and very much erases what makes Mohg interesting: the way his actions are so very clearly shaped by his past and what has been done to him, just as much as the other Demigods' past shape their characters as we meet them in the game. Not a justification, but an explanation... And yet Mohg gets uniquely singled out, his character flattened down to a boring, no-shades-of-gray villain, when he is -at least for me- one of the most fascinating characters in the entire game.

I don't care if people consider him a 'villain', what he's doing ain't a nice thing by any stretch of the imagination, but to erase the complexity of his character is just so, so, so endlessly irritating to me >:V

[snoozyrobin]

I feel like Radahn was a complete himbo before he got Scarlet Rot. I'm actually a little disappointed he's feral when we fight him, I would really enjoy an honorable duel with a god of combat. My favorite thing about Elden Ring's demigods was that they were largely present mentally speaking. Most of them are by no means sane but Morgott, Mohg, Malenia, Godrick, and Rykard are all still themselves mostly. Rennala I genuinely think just kinda snapped a bit but is still mostly herself. Honestly it would take DLC or a HUGE rework of the game's lore but I genuinely think he'd be my favorite boss in the FromSoft Soulsbourne lineup and possibly even all of gaming if he just. Could talk and sounded like Kronk preferably. Imagine this hulking figure cackling like a madman and saying some Senator Armstong-esque lines in the cutscene before the raid fight it is.

[shinypeachpainter]

Imagine midras flame dying down, and he laments how tired he has become before going to rest. His flame extinguishing, you come back after resting at a grace to find he is gone and his rememberance in his place.

Similar to Messmer, perhaps some of his men will become passive towards you afterwards unless you attack them and give the players an option to pet the snake.

After giving Melania Trina's concoction she asks that you go find him and bring him back in her stead, a task that we know is impossible as the Miquella she knew is gone. But afterwards we would start to see Trina/Miquella lilies started to overtake the rot of the haligtree with them spawning in her boss room.

Unfortunately as this is a fromsoft game, happy endings seldom happen. Perhaps as another symbol that no matter how hard you try sometimes failure is inevitable, especially in a world that is doing everything in it's power to ensure you do not get to be at peace. Regardless of how badly I would like to give everyone their happiness, the pain of knowing that we are too late to change that, too late to fix what has already happened hurts so good.

Everyone is stuck in the past, our characters have no ties to what has come before and is only interested in what will happen now. The bosses have already accepted what has become of them and fight only for the sake of fighting, perhaps there is no more room left for peace in them, that they are essentially a rabid animal and the best thing we can do for them is to put them down so they may no longer live in pain or cause pain to others.

I wish there were quest-locked ways to end certain boss encounters in Elden Ring that didn't necessary involve killing them. Trade me the last 10% of their HP bar for a get-out-of-killing them-jail-free card.

If I have it, then let me give Miquella's Needle to Midra. Let me end his long vigil; let him rest after enduring for so long at Nanaya's request.

If I have entered the Erdtree, let me tell Messmer where his mother is. Maybe he will go kill the Elden Beast for me, just to release her. Maybe I trade him a Blessing of Marika, apologizing that no one can craft any more.

Let me lull Malenia into a healing sleep with a Lulling Branch or five, or perhaps Thiollier's Concoction. Let me grant her the peace of sleep that St. Trina may have, had Miquella returned.

[maximuswolf]

I really want to like Black Myth Wukong

I really want to like Black Myth Wukong I have played all of fromsoft’s soulslikes, Lies of P, Lords of the Fallen, and Another Crab’s Treasure, and I find Black Myth Wukong to be more frustrating than all of them. I don’t know what game people are playing that is somehow easier and more forgiving than the typical soulslike. The boss at the end of chapter 1 took me longer to beat than any other boss I’ve ever faced. I just don’t get it.The gameplay feels unpolished. The heavy attack and healing inputs feel so inconsistent. To get the LT+RT attack to work at all I feel like I have to spam those buttons. The first transformation ability you get is so jank to control to the point where I never want to use it.I especially hate the barrage of archer enemies that are perched up onto places you can never reach. It is ridiculous that an NPC interaction in chapter 2 is directly in their line of sight.The stats in this game’s RPG system feel misleading. Somehow upgrading my weapon from a stat of 30 to 40 made it feel like it was dealing 3 times as much damage. It made the chapter 1 final boss finally beat-able but the drastic improvement did not make sense to me at all.So often, moreso than a lot of other difficult games I’ve played, it feels like the janky-ness is getting in the way of boss fights. A good 15% of the time, my mistakes don’t make sense to me. 15% isn’t a lot but it’s enough to make me feel like I’m just not having fun with the game.I could go on and on with criticisms I have. I’m glad I tempered my expectations these past few months and tried not to hype the game at all. I can’t imagine what I’d be feeling now if I did. As of the middle of chapter 2, I’d probably give this game a 6/10. (I like viewing things holistically so even though I’m not enjoying it, it isn’t all bad) Submitted August 22, 2024 at 07:35PM by MetaMysterio https://ift.tt/adglOi4 via /r/gaming

[veiledfox]

} kinda random, but watching some videos before bed about fromsoft musics and I'm reminded how only ONE video game boss theme has stuck with me so damn much to the point that every time I hear it I can imagine/remember one of my fights against the boss it's for, because it's the ONLY boss that I've ever fought in any game where I felt like I was truly dancing to the music with the boss

LUDWIG, THE HOLY BLADE

This fucking boss, not only did it introduce Bloodborne's Moonlight Sword which is a fromsoft staple, it presented one of my absolute favorite boss themes ever. The build up to the chorus of the second phase and the sheer tension that was present when facing Ludwig with his guiding moonlight once more. Then the chorus itself hits and the constant swelling of the vocals and instruments during it, I can always, ALWAYS, recall one of my fights with Ludwig where everything just CLICKED.

Attack, dodge, strike, dodge, attack, dodge, attack, dodge, strike, attack attack, dodge, strike. Everything lined up with the music that it was as if Ludwig and I were quite literally dancing to it. I had goosebumps EVERYWHERE because of just how utterly perfect it was.

IMO, nothing from Fromsoft's games has beaten Ludwig Phase 2 yet.

Elden Ring's Mohg, Lord of Blood and SotE's Promised Consort are probably the two closest to be honest, and even then they're not even close cause they just never really registered whenever I fought either boss.

Some stuff from Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon also come close, but they're in a similar boat because I just got so focused on the fights themselves because they were so high-paced and frantic.

A lot of OSTs from other games as a whole have been utterly fantastic, and I've loved tons of them, especially a lot of FFXIV boss themes and the music from Journey, but absolutely nothing has stuck in my mind to such a degree that I hear it and I relive my experience with it.

[falinscloaca]

Hollow Knight pale court mod impressions

mostly boss fights so we'll be doing shit list format

Hegemol (armor'd knight): hate it. hate it. why does bumping into him deal two hearts of damage. between all the BULLSHIT this fight is throwing at me why the fuck would you ALSO put that in there. HOW HAS HE NOT BEEN KICKED OUT OF THE CITY FOR PROPERTY DAMAGE. this is stupid.

Dryya (dead one before WL): i enjoyed it well enough. bit easier than the others and a good choice of "one to actually beat first after giving up on Hegemol the first time". Don't have much to say on the matter, probably could've been way better, also she's weirdly proportioned for what she looks like in the vanilla game. Feels too big.

Ze'mer (sadstuck): Good! Personally I imagine her more as a generic fromsoft-esque Guts knockoff but this fight works fine.

Isma (tree fuck shit fuck): OK LIKE I LIKED IT BUT ITS A *TOUCH* OVERTUNED. Good god i'm like 50% sure the White Palace leitmotif was in her theme which was APPROPRIATE because ACK. It's spammy area denial bullshit and i loved it but Wow what the fuck.

Overall: Very little sense of how *much* damage i'm doing to any of them. Only Hegemol has any stagger mechanics. Isma was the only one whose "phases" had more distinct effects than one or two new attacks. Additionally, they feel poorly-balanced and arbitrarily harder in comparison with the Defender's dream fight. While the difficulty is absolutely intentional design, as the mod is intended for stupid silly people who 112%-ed the main game and have been playing for like ten years now, it lacks sense from a diagetic perspective.

Writing has. Issues. Nothing I can put my fingers on though. Dream nail dialogues been bad. Journal entries are likewise "just alright".

[wolfewritings]

I'd say some areas of even FromSoft-designed soulslikes are poorly designed to the point where needing to remember which pieces of the environment your character will snag on is more frustrating than anything the actual boss/enemies could do. Plus some bosses seem like they were designed from a completely different camera angle than what you have to work with (regardless of whether or not locking on is the "optimal" way to fight them) and that's more often than not the real challenge. For me, Malenia "DODGE!!" the Blade of Miquella was more satisfying to beat because she took skill/overwhelming force to beat; but I actually had to take a several months long break to beat The Elden Beast because no matter how cleanly/quickly I beat Radagon I couldn't overcome the fact that Elden Beast's moveset, boss arena, and potentially even lore were designed around a core mechanic you just weren't allowed to use, i.e. Torrent, on top of the entire fight feeling like it was designed for an isometric view.

I firmly believe that most, if not all soulslikes, should do what Code Vein did and have a checkpoint between each stage of multi-stage/form boss fights. Each stage can be as difficult as the designers need/want them to be while still not being tedious.

I also firmly believe that soulslikes would be much more enjoyable (at the very least for me) if they took character writing and character design inspiration from C-RPGs. Imagine if after doing Millicent's questline, you were able to doing literally anything beside just beat Malenia to death; or even permanently replace body parts with prosthetics instead of just using Malenia's as outerwear. Hell, imagine side quests doing something other than killing an NPC "for story reasons" or unlocking an ending you might not even know how to follow through on once you reach the appropriate points because you didn't buy the strategy guide or wait for the wiki to get filled out. Imagine actually romancing Ranni, Fia, etc, through dialogue choices or even stats/starting class. Or character stats having a use other than "number go up" and what equipment you can use. Or, you know, just being able to understand anything other than combat mechanics without needing a 40 minute VaatiVidya video that still relies on guestimating, cut content, determining which patch version is the most lore accurate, and what's just a Beserk reference.

To me, there's structural issues with the way soulslikes are designed that will probably need a complete redesign/reexamination to improve or even make a horizontal change. Adding a map to Elden Ring didn't make quest progression easier to follow because quests in (most) soulslikes seemingly weren't designed to ever be tracked and even professional game critics/reviewers basically said "sucks to suck" to anyone that criticized that aspect or even just asked for a questlog. Not to mention any aspect of an "easy" mode or any accessibility options more intensive than "subtitles: yes or no?" being shut down because the entire genre wants its fans to gatekeep it. Hell, the fact that it's hard to tell what's supposed to be an attempt at slapstick comedy to provide relief and what's actually supposed to be a punishment for bad gameplay decisions means it's hard to find genuine joy in the genre, or any emotion other than "well, that's done now" relief.

What we need is a wildly popular game that does for soulslikes what Celeste did for precision puzzle platformers.

[sealer-of-wenkamui]

Got to Morgott, I loved everything about this boss fight, his entrance, his moveset, the phase transition where his cursed blood is released and he’s shamed by it, and his death...... the only thing is, it was way too easy? I don’t know if I was overleveled from doing everything else first (~110 I think), but rocks stunned him fast, and he bled fast, and the phase transition was just another chance to deal a ton of damage on him, I wish he had more health because it seemed fun to learn all his attacks.

Its odd that he lost his omen features when defeated, I’m still not quite sure why? Is the curse somehow lost in death? And reading up on him, for all his dramatic talk, he has so much self-hatred, and pretty much dealt with his cursed blood the opposite of his twin. Mohg fully embraced it and ran off to live his best life with his blood cult, while Morgott denied it and sealed it away and served the Erdtree, the Golden Order than never loved him, but even so he loved it... It looks like he has cut horns on his face, but royal omens don’t have their horns removed, which makes me think it was self-inflicted... its odd that he doesn’t have horns covering the rest of his body either (and his clothes leave little to the imagination) are they somehow sealed away?? Like his sword of cursed blood? Not really sure. Hard to tell if Mohg has horns covering the rest of his body because most of it is covered by his robe, but his head horns are especially extravagant, and he does have a horn that looks like a sixth finger on his left hand.

These two need to balance each other out, Morgott, please have some of your brother’s pride in his cursed blood, don’t hate yourself! Mohg... please have some of your brother’s restraint and uhhh, don’t be evil?

Upon approaching the Erdtree, I was not allowed to enter, so Melina is like... lets burn it! So that’s what we’re going to do, which is apparently a cardinal sin, but even the finger reader seems down with it all the same. Off to the mountaintops for me...

Ahh, and I loved the tower where you activate the omen twins’ runes... There was a surprise mini boss consisting of twin omens, one with full horns, one with cut horns ;A; As if representative of Mohg and Morgott... and I loved seeing their runes side by side... I love the omen twins!

I love the blood cult too much, so I finally added the cult symbol to my forehead... its largely hidden by her bangs (and I wear the war surgeon set 90% of the time) but still satisfying.

Found Diallos again with the jars, I guess he is taking care of them now? Good for him, I really hope nothing bad happens, but its soulsborne so maybe I should fear the worst. I also fought his brother (who has a pretty helm) in the mountaintop, which finished up the manor requests.

So I was finally able to fight Rykard, which was the stormruler fight of the game, but it was actually considerably more challenging than storm king or Yhorm. Phase 1 was largely easy except for one attack I’m still not sure how to dodge that would one shot me... phase two had a good theme and atmosphere and was pretty fun.

And then I found Tanith eating his corpse and now I love her even more, yeah she’s a cool, intimidating masked woman that eats a corpse, how can I not.. but. I cannot believe fromsoft did this to me again (though a little more twisted). The only way to get her set. Which includes the most beautiful mask so far. Is to kill her. As she’s mourning. Yes. Very familiar situation...isn’t it..... my dear Ciaran.... hahahahhHAHAHAH REALLY FROMSOFT??? AGAIN???? IM SO MAD....... But I did it. I fought her knight, not her actually but I did get her set but aghhhhhhh I can’t believe it.... You humans Tarnished, always taking what you please...

The Goldmask quest always looks so funny because we’re just T-posing as Corhyn has a crisis in the background, you okay there? (No he is not)

I had given Zorayas the potion earlier because I didn’t want to kill her, but now I’m not sure should I have just waited it out instead...? She’s back at the now empty manor, with no memories of what she learned, waiting for Tanith ;A; This doesn’t feel right....

And now I’m just exploring the mountaintops, I keep getting weapons I want to use... this time, a death spear that’s actually dex/int (I’m so sad most death stuff needs fai....) and another blood cult weapon, the bloody helice. I kinda want to try Morgott’s sword as well, but it’s a tad too slow for my liking.

[toxapexremade]

my thots on each fromsoft game ive played

bloodborne: literally game of the year every year for forever if i start talking about it thats gonna be an entire essay. fav fav fav fav this game radiates comfort. the only bad part of it is the chalice dungeons (fully optional thank god) and whoever made them should be stoned for crimes against humanity

demons souls: absolutely fantastic game, i found its story and premise extremely interesting and compelling and i Love to think about it. the demons system for its archstone main bosses was really cool and its also th e least confusing in story i think. there are obviously Some things cuz its a fromsoft game but still. cannot imagine playing it without cheating yourself 4000 boss souls and eating each one slowly and methodically. got some of my fav npcs and honestly some of my fav voice acting even for really minor characters, aesthetically also Such a fav. i love looking at the game sm

ds1: i appreciate it as an art form and love what it did, i love how it is about the heros journey but also about people Using the heros journey as a manipulation point to get you to do what they want you to do, but i hate playing it more than anything ever is the thing.

ds2: definitely different and has its elements that arent really for me, but fun to play from what ive gotten through and i appreciate that its definitely the easier without being Easy ykwim. unfairly hated. i cant say much more im not too far in but so far i like it ^_^

ds3: i have the worlds most i hate you i love you relationship with ds3. the most playable dark souls for me but also calling what i do with ds3 "playing" is a BOLD claim because i basically boss rush because i find fighting thru 90% of the areas so miserable that i simply decided it wasnt worth doing after a while. bosses were fun, the regular enemies and level terrain traversing i cannot say the same for. but yorshka is there which it gets like a bunch of extra points for

[palegengarsiloved]

Buddhism, Existentialism, Dark Souls

Fromsoft's games revolve around a core idea, one that other Japanese auteurs like Hideo Kojima, Fumito Ueda, Yoko Taro also touch on: the cycle of life and death, the suffering inherent in that natural system, and the connections we can still form and the meaning we can still find within them. It's obviously rooted in Buddhist and Shintoist beliefs, as well as other East Asian philosophies that acknowledge the supremacy of nature (and natural processes), accept the impermanence and imperfection of the world, and yet (therefore?) also the beauty found therein. First, how do other forms of media try to communicate these ideas? In traditional East Asian visual arts, humans are oftentimes either ignored or viewed as very small, distant figures, entirely dwarfed by nature. Early Buddhist art avoided human depiction at all, using instead icons like wheels and lotuses/cherries to communicate ideas of the cyclic nature of the world and the impermanence of the moment (it's argued that human depictions of religious figures only came into prominence after the whole Greco-Bactrian thing where Greeks set up shop in what is now Afghanistan/Pakistan and started carving gods-as-people, and I mean, you gotta compete with that seductive reification of divinity). Shintoist poetry is brief, fragile, incomplete, often summoning a brief moment of nature ("this dewdrop world / is a dewdrop world / and yet, and yet--"). Kurosawa's deep love of rain and bamboo, Ozu's pillow shots of landscapes and rooms devoid of people. All of these use tools unique to their respective mediums to manifest a sensation or emotion into the audience: Ozu focusing on an empty street for 10+ seconds wouldn't be possible in painting or sculpture; architecture's capacity towards grandness and sense of proportion to a person inside it can't be communicated through photographs. Think about the tools unique to video games, now. Think of all the ways you interact with a game: user interface, input controls, gameplay loops, level design, etc, and how those connect to create a totality of experience. All of these drastically affect the interplay between audience and art; think of if a Jeff Koons balloon animal sculpture were installed in some small garage versus a giant New International-style skyscraper lobby. (Imagine if Dark Souls was presented as a visual novel or whatever genre Undertale is.) Now think about how Dark Souls approaches each of those tools. User interface and item management is one that is quite clever: you are given an item, and you have zero idea of what it is, so you find a brief safe moment and take a look at its item description. It's vague and honestly impenetrable, with a little bit of equally-impenetrable lore on it. You only have one so far, so you're afraid to use it, but you have the feeling that not only could it be useful, but perhaps even necessary for some encounter. You see that you can carry up to 99 (and store 600) of them, so maybe there'll be more later? You know that you've picked up stuff that you thought might be one-off and found more later, or a merchant who sells it. Fuck it, might as well try it out - after all, this user interface is almost begging you to think about the lore meanings, the possible item use, and exploring for more of them, or how/where you could best use it. It's designed so that you acknowledge the rarity of it, but also are assured to not to worry too much about it and just try it out for whatever benefit you can get in this dangerous world. What's the worst thing that happens - you die and waste it? You've lost thousands of souls (the precious in-game currency) before, what's one lightning paper or green blossom whatever? You know this game is famously difficult; "It's like Dark Souls" is industry shorthand for "It's a fucking hard game" at this point. Might as well try something new in this brief cycle you have before the next inevitable death. That leads me to the next tool: the corpse-running / death mechanic. You'll die a lot, sure, but then you'll learn more, have the opportunity to think about what you might be doing wrong or not seeing, maybe even find a shortcut or trick or use a different item this time to make it easier. It's another ostensible punishment that's actually an opportunity for you to get better at the game, and to think about maybe using that one item for a boost or trying out a different weapon, but also it starts teaching you something very important to the series plot and themes: it's okay to die - natural, even. A part of life. It's not a waste any more than anything else in life is a waste - the only waste is if you don't learn from it, appreciate it, bask in the purifying fire of failure to find yourself in something close to Zen gameflow. Even then, it's not the game disrespecting your time; I would say that it's the player disrespecting their own experiences, discarding any outcome other than an easy victory as a waste, as pointless, as if progress is the only marker of a life well lived. Resisting death, panicking, generally facing it in an undignified manner... all of these are counter-productive. To do so is to miss the philosophy of why there isn't an instant boss restart button! The brief little life as you scurry to your undistinguished death is, perhaps, the point. I mean this in a game sense, too. If you are deeply reluctant and fearful of death, you won't have as much success exploring dangerous and unfamiliar areas. Once you accept that you might lose some paltry number of souls in exchange for new items, new shortcuts, new areas... the game becomes less of a hostile slog and more of this world that you want to explore and understand. Yes, there'll be some suffering; that's to be expected. But there's still rewards you can find, NPCs you can ogle, vistas you can enjoy. Kind of a blunt metaphor, huh? That leads to the level design. By that I mean not only shortcuts and verticality/horizonality, which are ingenious from a design perspective, but in how the levels evoke two major things: one is the lived-in nature of the world; the other is how small you are in comparison to it. Cathedrals are prominently featured throughout the games. Historically they were specifically designed to make laypersons feel small in the presence of divinity, to make their eyes look upward, and to contemplate the sheer power (physical and social) necessary to create these things. Think of how small you are, then, that there are even greater powers in nature that can make these monuments to humanity fall. As for the lived-in aspect, think of how strange the items you find are, how fragmentary their lore, and yet how they start to fit together, even from their placement in the world. (Why is a Choir investigator-assassin hiding out in the School of Mensis? Why does he drop sedatives?) There's this giant world taking place around you and you're so unimportant that no one really bothers to tell you anything more than vague prophecies and allusions. Anyone who points you somewhere concrete sees you as the pawn you are; you're also literally smaller than many other NPCs (Non-Player Characters) to illustrate this point. The NPCs are yet another way that the game acutely communicates its existential ideas to you. Everyone in the Dark Souls world is cursed to not die, but rather turn Hollow – that is, to lose their minds in lieu of death. The only way to fight against this curse is to commit to a purpose and use that willpower to stave off insanity. This is strongly absurdist in nature, as a cursed undead either completes their goal and then, newly purposeless, goes insane, or the goal is unfulfillable, and the goal-seeker is doomed to an eternity of Sisyphean torment. Some NPCs appear broken under this will, crestfallen or twisted or gleeful upon recognizing the sheer injustice of their burden; some soldier bravely on; some offer unconditional kindness; some perform a mixture of all three. There are startlingly few characters in this game, each almost hidden by the landscapes, and each clearly dwarfed – both literally by the environments they are lost in, and by the staggering difficulty of the tasks they took up. It’s almost easy to attack all the NPCs you come across, as you’re conditioned to be fearful of any other entity you encounter; many players kill a certain peaceful demonic entity because they’ve slain so many similar-looking monsters defending her. It’s easy to miss these connections, and the game makes no effort to protect them. It’s the hedgehog’s dilemma: can you let down your guard towards someone who very well may hurt you, in a world that has done nothing but hurt you? Will others do the same? The multiplayer component of this game adds a corollary to this social experiment: there will, inevitably, be those who seek to invade and destroy you, those who will defend and avenge you, those who will help you, and those who will dabble in all three. You see every day in real life: the wounded lashing out in pain, the happy few just trying to help others along the way, the people who want to create some sense of justice in an indifferent universe. Oftentimes, one human will try out all three roles in their life. Why do we do this? Perhaps it’s how we work through the cosmic injustice of our existence, in a form of primitive dialogue that we need to act out. The human condition, after all, is reconciling oneself with the fact that we, and everyone we know, are fated to someday die. That's where the plot intersects with the gameplay and themes to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The directive you’re given at the beginning of the game is to extend the Age of Fire, the era you are currently living in; you are told that this is because with Fire there’s light, and time, and the creative spark of divinity on high. However, it turns out that unnaturally prolonging the Age of Fire is actually pretty bad, and results in all sorts of upheaval and foul consequences (including, possibly, the undead curse itself, unless you believe a certain scholar in DS2…). We learn as we venture through this game and interface with its mechanics that death must be a part of life and dark must accompany light. We also know that something can arise out of nothing (as we know there was a “time” before the Age of Fire; think pre-Big Bang), so it turns out that even if you don’t extend the Age of Fire, the larger cycle of death and rebirth perhaps never ends. In any case: fighting against this inevitability, fighting against the possibility of pain and loss caused the Gwyn, the Lord of Fire and Light, to ultimately sacrifice and thus lose everything he defended in tragic irony; similarly, trying too hard to lean into the turn caused Oolacile/New Londo/Farron Keep to be lost in the Dark forever. By dying over and over in-game, by investigating the subtle hints of lore found in the items and the sparse dialogue, and by witnessing the sad existence of these once-great powers of Fire that have long-since shriveled up under the infinite and inescapable wheel of nature, you begin to internalize the themes these games try, through all the tools at their disposal, to make you feel. You can live, however briefly, and value it, but also learn to let it go. You can love nature and respect its impersonal processes, understand that ultimately it will reclaim us, and find some comfort that the end isn't necessarily the end. There will be suffering, but there will be moments of total (if brief) triumph. There will be moments of tenderness with NPCs that can only be generated by a video game world where life is immensely fragile and nothing but the curse of insanity permanent. Will you allow yourself to try and help them, knowing how difficult and obtuse it will be, and how little it might seem to matter? Will you extend the Age of Fire to uphold the lie, because this Age is the only thing you and the rest of the world has ever known? Will you be brave – or perhaps, human – enough to reach out to others in this brief moment before the end of the world, and when the time comes, to let the Age of Fire fade? Can you live, and perhaps just as importantly, die with dignity? The totality of the experience gets the player to directly feel these themes in a way that can't be done in other media. By showing - through the death mechanic, NPC quests that can permanently be failed or missed, unforgiving and vast levels with tons of secrets and shortcuts, obscure item descriptions and the resultant need for exploration and player-driven introspection and experimentation, and not by telling through cutscenes, everything works together to evoke a mood that the player directly feels like they're helping create. The sheer unity - the, ahem, ludonarrative assonance - of the design is beautiful to consider on an intellectual level but also satisfying on an interactive, practical level. You have fun not despite these things, any of which alone may be disheartening, but because together they're so thematically consistent. Taken by itself the corpse run mechanic might be considered unnecessary or anti-fun, but when placed among the larger picture it not only makes sense but makes the player consider that there might be something they're missing, that there may be more to explore elsewhere or some item that will help, because the game is so mysterious and rewards exploration and experimentation so much. This is in addition to how much it reinforces the themes of the game! I could expand on about how such well-executed unity of purpose and audience-medium interplay makes it high art, like, true fucking Michaelangelo's David type shit, but I don't want to get swept up in the hype, so I'll leave you with a classic Dark Souls quote: "therefore try tongue but hole"