#in dark souls 3 parrying was useful for a few specific bosses and generally not worth it for everything else

[death-rebirth-senshi]

Of course they buff critical hits AFTER I beat Malenia with my stance breaking strat.

[maliciousjasper]

Just wanna talk some Bloodborne...

As discussed in my last post (FOMO) in regards to picking and sticking with a game, i wanna talk (or write more specifically) about Bloodborne.

It's hard for me to pick a game and stick with it nowadays. I get distracted easily but Bloodborne was the most recent exception to that rule, at least sort of... I finished and replayed it, and am now working on my 3rd playthrough (that i'm streaming on Twitch) for the final trophy.

Quick sidenote: there will be some spoilers in this blog so you're warned...

Before i start talking about Bloodborne, know that i've played both Dark Souls 1 & 2, so i was at least familiar with the general genre of gameplay.

I started playing bloodborne at the end of 2019. The beginning was really tough even though i was sort of familiar with the gameplay. Enemies are dangerous and can do quite a bit of damage with one or a quick succession of attacks and of course i didn't really know the mechanics. Not that that's changed... i still can't parry to literally save my life in the game. Still, i was able to defeat a couple of bosses with the last 2 being Vicar Amelia and the Witch of Hemwick but for some reason i quit the game shortly after.

Que a global pandemic and me being at home way more than usual, i decided to continue my Bloodborne playthrough and try to finish the game. And it's then that i fell in love with the game. I sort of clicked with me, partly thanks to me using the wiki. The boss fights were great and challenging but not too challenging. I almost stopped playing again due to the Shadows of Yharnam bossfight, since it was the first bossfight since i got back, but i managed to overcome them. After that the bossfights were a bit easier, though not actually easy, with a few exceptions (Ebrietas comes to mind...). Needless to say, i was hooked.

After finishing the game, i did something that i hadn't done in quite a while and that was going for a second playthrough. I learned, thanks to the wiki, that there were 3 endings and i completely skipped the chalice dungeons as well (though i'm to the biggest fan of those). So i decided to go for a 'perfect' playthrough. I changed my weapons to change the combat a bit, chose a new outfit (Father Gascoigne set) and hit the road. I started doing the chalice dungeons ti get to the Pthumerian Queen and kill her to get that trophy. All in all the second playthrough went smoothly and during this i also decided to buy the dlc. And i had a blast, except for Laurence the first vicar... that fight was quite the challenge and frustrating!

I'm now on playthrough number 3 but i'd like to finish it on stream and don't have a lot of time to stream recently... Hopefully soon i'll be able to continue and get the platinum trophy for Bloodborne!

Maybe at some point i'll sort of review Bloodborne and tell you my thoughts on things like gameplay, story, design, etc... but that's something for another time!

Cheers everyone and see you next time!

[lateviews]

Lateview: Absolver

If you've heard the expression, “Biting off more than you can chew”, then you'll understand how I feel about Absolver. Fans of third-person fighter games like “Dark Souls”, “Devil May Cry” and “God of War” know that these types of games require high levels of love and polish to do well. Despite the starved market, there’s a lot of room for mediocrity. Surprisingly, Absolver doesn't pull any punches and goes toe to toe with the best... until it runs out of steam.

Absolver is a third-person fighter game trying to set itself apart from the crowd using two unique mechanics: stances and the combo builder. The “build your own combo” system has been done before, most notably in “Remember Me” and “God Hand” but the way they combine it with the stances really sets it apart. Each move has a speed and damage rating as well as some of the moves having unique properties like breaking guard and interrupting attacks. There are 4 combat stances, visually corresponding to the direction your torso is facing. Changing stances will result in you turning your torso to face to the left or the right of your opponent while others will leave you with your back facing towards the enemy! Each stance can be assigned an escalating number of light attacks and a heavier “alternate attack”. Most attacks transition you from one stance to another; then, since you’re in another stance, you can immediately use that stances attacks. If you build your combos correctly, you can create loops where one attack will lead into one stance before an attack in that stance returns you to the same stance you started in. The end-result is a custom-built train of attacks that you've personally engineered to confuse opponents as you flow from stance to stance. Since you’re changes stances so often, your alternate attack changes over time. Predicting what move your opponent is currently planning on doing is daunting since there is so much they can do. Oh, and did I tell you that you can pull out a sword or gloves and doing so swaps you over to a brand new page of attacks that you need to customise and memorize?

The game has RPG elements to it as well. Gear will drop from mobs as you down them and you'll also find stashes of gear hidden within piles of rocks. Most interestingly though is how you acquire new attacks. You start the game with a reasonable number of attacks but soon you’ll run into people using 'new' attacks against you and if you block that attack, you'll start learning the move. Use your right thumb-stick ability against it and you'll learn it even faster. Story wise, this is a cool concept. Get punched in a particular way a certain number of times and you should be able to know how your opponent punches like that. Unfortunately, in practice, this just results in you actively not killing your opponents. You end up standing around as they are wailing on you while try to block/dodge/parry all their moves; grinding out all the moves before you move along. There is a risk/reward system at play here wherein all the learning you've done during a fight won't be saved until you kill the opponent and exit combat, but there is a lot of moves to learn from random grunts in the world and these don’t really pose a threat once you’ve got a handle on the game. This system gets even worse when you're trying to discover sword specific moves because swords are rare, and by the time you find someone wielding one, they are normally a very strong opponent and you can't afford to grind out these moves because you won’t survive unless you actively damage them.

That's pretty much the entire game. Fight, learn moves, earn gear, equip said moves and gear, repeat. Thankfully that's not as bad as it sounds because hey, it's a fighting game. You came here to fight. So why am I so disappointed in it? Well before I get to the big one, let me just rattle off a few smaller impressions the game left on me: ●       Falling off ledges is far too easy. Admittedly this is a designed mechanic; forcing someone up to a ledge and just pushing them off with attacks is a legitimate way to win a fight but it still felt like it was far too easy to just slip off. Even with nobody attacking you as you’re navigating the environment, one foot off the path might mean falling and most of the time falling is death, because when it's not instant, the insane fall damage will ensure you lose the fight that you just dropped into.

●       The environment is not easy to find your way around. The “map” you're given is essentially 3 circles, and you don't know where you are unless you sit at a bonfire an energy shard thingy or kill a boss as these are the only 2 markers on the map. Many times, vital paths that you NEED to go down are not highlighted or made evident in any way and are sometimes, out-rightly obscured. As a result of this, I completely missed an entire area of the game for a long period of time simply because I couldn’t find the path AND I thought I had already entered that area of the map… There's a time and a place to do-away with the hand holding evident in modern game design but this is too far the other way.

●       Maybe why the environment is so convoluted is to try to hammer in this sense of mystery that the game is so stubbornly trying to instil. The game makes a point of telling you NOTHING about where you are, who you are, what you're doing or why. Thankfully it does tell you what to do (fight people and open a door). It just comes across as entitled. There IS an interesting world here but by the end of the game, nothing is explained at all. Who am I? Why did I teleport when I put on this mask? Why do I need to kill these people? Did I travel through time? Who is this chick with a sword? Who were the people who were here before? The game makes a point in referring to the tesseract-looking particle effect that happens as you kill others, get killed yourself or even unsheathing your sword as “folding” which seems really cool! To sum up my feelings on the aesthetics and lore of the game, I have two words. Obnoxiously Mysterious

Finally, the big one. The game ends. It just ends. No big finish, no special reveal, no closure. Nothing. If you remember before, I mentioned the map being 3 circles? That's it. That's the whole game. I have FOUR HOURS in Absolver, and it's finished. The entire story-mode. That's a third of the I spent in DMC and less than a 10th of the time I spent in Sekiro. Now sure, those are AAA titles with massive budgets behind them, but I cannot help but feel starved of content, especially since the story does not wrap itself up. The game starts with you and a bunch of other initiates standing in an arctic wind before you are chosen, you don a mask and teleport to another world. You then traverse through 12 named areas (3 of which contain nothing) fighting 11 different bosses. There are probably below 50 enemies to fight in the entire game. And then you're done. After fighting the somehow important Risryn, you're teleported back to the place you started with, you graduate from being a “prospect” to become an “Absolver”, you get a neat cape and you get told, “Idk, wait around and grind a bit I guess?” before it teleports you back to the “hub”. To put this in perspective, if the game had 3 times as much content as it currently does, I would still probably call the game short. I have no idea why (besides development problems) the game ended when it felt like Act 2 should have begun.

The game tries to justify this by placing a big emphasis on PVP. There is a system to look up other players and have a tussle and the game is always online so you might find people in the world and decide to start smacking one another but if the game is dead (like it was when I got to it) then all the PVP is non-existent. That's not even mentioning the players who don't WANT to fight other people. As far as I can tell the “latest” addition to the game included the “downfall” mode. This mode (only available after you have graduated to be an absolver) is randomly generated rooms of goons to fight endlessly. The lore explanation for this area only adds questions to the already tall pile of unanswered ones. The game allows you to fight bosses again at a harder difficulty, but this is locked behind PVP progress…meaning that if you weren’t able to find a game like myself, then you just can’t

I hate having to be so negative. Other indie games cater themselves to a casual market and can have all the depth of a puddle and still receive high ratings but because the devs took on such a loved genre, all the depth they have added only makes people want more. I mean really, if my biggest complaint about the game is that I wanted more, there's got to be something good about it. In shooting for the stars, the devs came up short, but the time, skill and effort they put into trying to get there far exceeds a lot of other developers. I can say that the game was bug free and (until it ended) felt close to a AAA title and the sad thing is that it starts to get judged by those harsh standards. For a AAA title, this would be an insult; But for a fighting game? This is a worthwhile experiment; for an indie game? This is one heck of an accomplishment and for your time? This is worth it.

Overall, I'd look to pay $15 to $25 for Absolver, despite its $42 default price tag. It depends on how much you love the third person fighter genre; how much you enjoy PVP (and if you're lucky enough to be in a locale with players online) and how much you want to support the studio. If you can make a trio of yourselves, maybe you can get some mileage out of the co-op enabled Downfall mode, but I wouldn't want to pay much more for that.

[guardevoir]

@lamecoupleblog replied to your post: … I just went ahead and bought Dark Souls 3, too....

@guardevoir I also bought DS3 the other day on humble! How far are you??

Somewhere at the beginning of the Profaned Capital (with ten bosses defeated) - I went back to Anor Londo to practice parrying and back to Irithyll to get a particular weapon from one specific enemy* though, so I haven’t actually done anything story-related since yesterday. 

It was pretty smooth sailing so far - I still died a bunch, but generally not very spectacularly... and apart from getting shot off the same roof ten times in a row, I haven’t really run into problems since the Abyss Watchers. 

I’m taking it slow, though, and exploring ever nook and cranny I can find (and just staring at the scenery a lot, lol), because apart from a few hours of DS2 (which I temporarily gave up on due to porting issues - I finally caved and bought a controller, so I’ll go back to that game after I’m done with 3), this is my first Souls game.

*There is one Pontiff Knight carrying a kickass scythe instead of the usual sword... which, mind you, I can’t actually use because I play as a Pyromancer and I have literally none of the stats necessary... but it looks really cool

[timsim26]

Zelda Breath of the Wild Review

Many could not believe the impressive showing at E3 2016. Zelda Breath of the Wild promised a huge open world, go at your own pace gameplay/story and challenging combat that required you to fail over and over before you would achieve success or master your craft. Everything and more has been delivered by Nintendo and it is accompanied by the launch of a console that suits Zelda’s gameplay and length perfectly. In Breath of the Wild we dive back into Hyrule after a traumatic world altering event 100 years ago. Adventure and mystery surround Link and the game delivers sets up a deeply enchanting and thrilling world to explore.

Zelda Breath of the Wild is a gigantic game. After roughly 70-75 hours of gameplay, it is safe to say I could play this game for another 30-40 hours without getting tired of it and finding something new to see or do. What Breath of the Wild does so consistently, is encourage exploration and rewards people who think carefully about how to go about traversing the world. The biggest change other than the open world for Breath of the Wild is the fact that Link can climb absolutely anything. So many video games use the line ‘you can go anywhere you can see.’ Often this is simply not true. Other than The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, this is just a buzz saying to promote the size of games. Often size is promoted rather than focus on the quality of what consists in the open world. Ghost Recon Wildlands is this year’s perfect example of an open world that is absolutely gigantic but is completely lacking in interesting experiences. Breath of the Wild nails having things to do and the consistency of new and exciting gameplay moments around every turn. This is the new standard for open world games. Everywhere you look there is something new to see and the way the world is designed it actively encourages you to seek out the next adventure. The climbing mechanics makes this a reality. As long as you have the stamina, which is arguably the most important new gameplay mechanic other than the climbing, you can climb and make your way to new areas. Mountains, cliff faces, buildings, boulders, ravines, ditches you name it, if you can see it, you can climb on it. There is always a way to climb from somewhere to get a better view of your surroundings and to potentially discover something new. Run out of stamina though and you will very quickly tumble to your death. Breath of the Wild likes to kill you. It will kill you often.

Nintendo have clearly been watching the competition very closely for the last few years. Breath of the Wild takes a lot from other games, but it handles the mechanics and gameplay attributes with the Nintendo love and care we see so consistently from their first party games. A big mechanic featured is that of Ubisoft like towers. They are scattered across the map and split the regions, allowing you to have a visual goal as to where to go to next. 1 for every region. Once you climb these towers, Link activates an ancient mechanism that scans the area and reveals the map. In other games, this would highlight points of interest, unlock new quests and encourage you to head to specific locations for the next interesting element of gameplay. Breath of the Wild is similar, but handled in a way that makes you feel empowered and like a true navigator. You are the explorer in an unknown, yet strikingly familiar world. After you unlock a region, you are free from atop the tower to look around, using Link’s Sheikah Slate as a pair of binoculars to mark your own points of interest on the map. This encourages you to seek out the exact locations you think look interesting or simply gives you the lay of the land around where you have been searching. The map in Breath of the Wild is completely blank other than a few specific locations like towns, towers and any shrines (more on them later) that you have previously discovered. The map tool gives you a number of icons and marking points that you, yourself are able to mark and leave. Find a treasure chest but can’t get to it at this moment, leave a marker. Find a challenging enemy that has great loot but are simply not strong enough to defeat it, leave a marker. See a shrine from a distance and want to come back to it later, leave a marker. The map is filled out by you and the more you adventure, the more full of things to do the map will be. The sense of hand holding is instantly removed and the sense of discovery and adventure is so fresh and rewarding.

The hand holding is removed in most facets of the gameplay. The combat in Breath of the Wild is very challenging. From the get go, you only have 3 heart containers and very minimal stamina. As I mentioned earlier, this game likes to kill you very quickly. At the beginning of the game you will be faced with small groups of enemies that vary in attack patterns and approaches. The AI is very intelligent and it becomes more evident the longer you play the game. Enemies in the early stages of the game and well through the first 10-15 hours of the game are very deadly. They can often kill you in 1 hit and must be treated with respect. Bokoblins, Lizalfos, Moblins, Keese, Guardians and the occasional boss enemies all have their own unique way to attack and this will keep you thinking and ensure you use every option in combat to succeed. Breath of the Wild feels a lot like Dark Souls. People scoff when others use that example to compare a game, but as I mentioned it is abundantly clear that Nintendo have been watching other developers and noting what is working. Melee combat is the main course of Zelda’s combat with a side dish of bow and arrow/bomb slinging. Link is a versatile and skilled warrior, after all he is Princess Zelda’s royal protector. He has a number of dashing moves that ensure his survival and that he brings down enemies with ease. Unfortunately if he is hit, he is dead. You need to use your dodging mechanics, parrying with shields and general precision movement in order to make sure you are positioned perfectly in order to avoid being hit at all. Good movement, pinpoint dodging and timing your attacks after an enemy has attacked you, or while they are bumbling around trying to lock onto you. Sound familiar? Combat is a very rewarding experience, however it is not visible that you are getting better or Link is improving. This is the one thing I think Nintendo have squandered with Breath of the Wild. Even though the combat is fun and after every single fight you feel more powerful and stronger, you really don’t notice it straight away. The only upgrades come through finding equipment after exploring or completing shrines (trust me more on them later). A progression system of some form would have made combat situations feel more meaningful, especially with level of challenge they present in the early stages of the game. Prepare to Die. Prepare to die trying and then understanding that sometimes running away is the best option, especially with how often your weapons will break.

Combat is highly impacted by the weapon system. Something I didn’t enjoy in the early stages, but grew to love was the weapons and how they break so easily. Seriously who is making all the weapons in Hyrule? In the early stages of the game, every weapon you find is expendable. Fighting against a group of 4-5 enemies, it is not unusual to go through 1-2 weapons. However you are consistently picking up their weapons and using them against them. It is particularly entertaining when you knock an enemy to the ground causing them to drop their weapon. After scooping it up for your use, they look at you with utter fury and frustration, charging to end your life. Weapons that are on the verge of breaking can be hurled at an opponent for double attack damage and this can be an absolute life saver at times, or a great way to start an assault on an enemy camp. This causes the player to really evaluate a situation. If you are running low on weapons and equipment, then a enemy camp may be extremely challenging, causing you to take a more stealthy approach, or avoid it all together, leaving a mark on the map to return to when you are more kitted up. The way enemies attack you is also impressive. The enemy AI is certainly a highlight of Breath of the Wild and can make every fight play out in different ways. Enemies will flank you, they will use the environment to their advantage, they will scramble if they are knocked down by an explosive, they will use fallen enemy weapons and they will overwhelm you if they have a chance. It is imperative that you approach every situation with a plan, other wise you will not succeed. As you get further into the game, the level of challenge falls dramatically. Despite the weapon breaking system there are always new weapons to pick up and hunt down with the many hidden chests and enemies that you encounter. Heavy weapons, spears, fast swords and clubs are all available to be mastered by the warrior Link. They are all unique and feel fun to use and give you the edge depending on the enemy type you are facing. In addition to melee combat one of the more impressive ways to take out a group of enemies is by Robin Hooding them all to death. Bullet time with a bow is definitely one of the best additions to combat and Link can activate slow motion when he leaps from the back of a horse, from a high vantage point or from a draft caused by a fire. This is definitely the way to start a fight. 

Combat can also be enhanced by the game’s cooking system. This is one of the most rewarding and deep gameplay systems within Breath of the Wild. It can make or break certain situations and give you the edge against a particularly challenging group of enemies. Every enemy when downed drops monster parts and other loot. Everywhere in the wilderness of Hyrule is foot and animals to be scavenged. Like Far Cry, you can hunt and kill animals for their resources. Deer, pigs, wolves, birds, bugs, horses, bears, fish, lizards, frogs, snails, squirrels, sheep, you name it. There are a lot of animals to hunt and cook up. In addition, there are a number of fruits and veggies and even sugar cane and rice that can be added to meals to give extra boosts of health and stamina. Mixing and matching ingredients to create meals is a lot of fun. Boosts to defence, attack, stamina, number of hearts and stealth, movement speed and more can be enhanced by cooking the right dish and reading the reading the descriptions of the items. Monster parts and bugs can also be cooked up into various elixirs that can win you a fight or help survive some of Hyrule’s harshest environments. Not only do the animals and enemies want to kill you in Breath of the Wild, but the cold and hot air  of the terrain will end your life quickly too, not to mention a brutal thunderstorm that will strike you and your enemies down if you have anything metal.

While combat, exploration and cooking are what you will spend a lot of your time doing in Breath of the Wild the other main element of the gameplay is puzzle solving. I have mentioned shrines earlier in the review and the shrines are one of the most impressive, dynamic and rewarding puzzle solving experiences I have ever had while playing a video game. Early in the game you are given 5 key powers that will help you navigate the world and also solve the 120 shrines hidden carefully throughout the world. Statsic (freezing enemies and objects), Magnesis (lifting and moving metal objects), two types bombs and Cryosis (freezing water blocks). These powers are all acquired in the first hour of the game, meaning every puzzle you come across in the world or within a shrine can be solved right there and then. There are no come back later, or I am not ready yet experiences in Breath of the Wild. While the powers are self explanatory the shrines can be solved in some pretty remarkable ways and the experimentation and combination of powers mean there are normally a number of ways to solve puzzles. Shrines range from combat trials, puzzles that require physics manipulation, puzzles using motion controls, quick reflexes and dodging, using your bow and finding hidden solutions to puzzles that are complex. These shrines all take around 2-10 minutes to complete and are very rewarding. Inside each shrine there are chests that require even further puzzle solving to claim their rewards and each give you further progress to unlocking more hearts or stamina. There are also numerous shrines in the world that require you to complete a side quest to unlock or navigate a particularly tricky area of the map. Some are hidden behind breakable walls or locked away deep within a winding labyrinth. The 4 dungeons in the game feel like the logical next step from shrines as they feel like 4-5 shrines locked together and also hold a challenging boss enemy controlled by Calamity Ganon.

To combine all of the wonderful gameplay experiences is also the absolutely stunning art design. Breath of the Wild is a gorgeous video game. One of the most picturesque and beautiful they I have ever played in my life. The huge expanse of Hyrule looks stunning as the sun sets, or the wind blows through a shady forest, or the ripples of a lake or river sooth you after a tense fight. The draw distances of the game are impressive and this is so crucial as a major aspect of the game is being able to see that next point of interest from miles away. Every character design is well animated and this allows for such a complex and interesting combat system. The game not only looks glorious bus has a subtle, yet effective soundtrack that is most noticeable during boss encounters and quiet moments as you journey from place to play. 

All of these elements add up to one of the most deep, complex and free experiences that I have ever had. The fact that I can also play it on the go is remarkable. It is easy to pick up and play, controls very well and has hours and hours of content. Nintendo have produced one of the best games ever made with their latest entry of Zelda and I cannot wait to see more and explore more with the upcoming DLC.

10/10 Reviewed on the Nintendo Switch