#the a+++ experience of ng+ in elden ring

[lordrandreaming]

How NG+ if going for Daedra (me):

SERIOUSLY i just can't get enough of these things. I have like 30 bc i haven't used them yet LOL

So why not give Daedra the same, odd obsession to collect the stone sword keys? Idk man just something about them makes my brain go magpie mode

Frothing over my stone sword key collection

Its such a menial item.. But it's just so alluring... Must.. Collect..

[waywardsalt]

oh i definitely really like elden ring if ive put together a whole plan to stretch out the last four bosses left in the game and procrastinate on them until i get the dlc in a few months

[whyyouacknsocraycray]

Me: I should play Elden Ring's DLC with my first character. I mean, he's based on Wolf from Sekiro, he's great! He's...

Also me: strength build tho

[princekirijo]

I wanna talk about it more but god Elden Ring is so much fun I can't believe it took me this long to get into From Software games

[stayatsam]

is this what it's like now that i've become obsessed with bloodborne? just replaying the game over and over again, forever and ever

[julijbee]

Id love to hear your review of the dlc and your alternate plot ideas if youre willing to share! The plot seemed. questionable

i am so glad you asked (evil smile). so i'm going to spoil the whole dlc, even irrelevant things that aren't "main story" plot that you'll probably want to experience on your own if you're still playing so proceed with caution. also this is entirely opinionated and you'll likely have a different opinion from me and that's fine. my opinions aren't objective fact they're just how i feel.

also if you are familiar with the plot of elden ring, particularly to do with miquella, as well as the plot of the dlc, you know what content to expect. if you are new to this content and have no idea- first of all what are you doing here? second of all i'll be discussing incest and sexual assault. peace and love, enjoy my 5,920 word review.

I played the dlc as a NG+, FAI/DEX build using vyke's spear, godskin peeler, and bloodhound's fang, and used my incantations for both buffs and attacks and switched them often. summoned mimic, always wore pot on my head, and favored light/med carry weight.

:D

GAMEPLAY (not story, just scroll if you only care about story)

so i'm going to start with reviewing the gameplay first because unlike the story section this is more positive, and while less people probably care about this, I DO!! i've been playing fromsoft's games for years and its because i enjoy them and think playing them is fun, that the stories they tell have resonated with me and i liked (most of... .. .) them has been a happy bonus. my honest opinions about the gameplay difficulty is that at this point in my souls playing hobby i think i've finally become one of those really annoying people who has no real idea of how hard the game actually is. with the exception of a few bosses, i thought the dlc was easier than expected, and i sometimes found myself wishing i found some of the earlier bosses more challenging, because those were objectively more fun fights than the later ones. i think the scadutree fragments are a really interesting way to both:

a: help players control the difficulty of the dlc, collecting more if they are stuck somewhere, or abstaining from use if they want more of a challenge

b: encourage exploration of their very vertically dense dlc map

it both maintains that idea thats vital to elden ring's formula, that the open map allows for you to explore and level up before attempting a boss again, but also ensures that you can find those levels you need without having to grind too hard in a smaller dlc area, and aren't kept from the main story for too long. i really enjoyed this, and honestly the side stories were the only things keeping me playing once i realized what the main story was doing, and all the life was slowly sapped from my body.

i am pretty sure at this point in time that i have completed most of the bosses- i think i am missing one of the four mausoleum bosses and i think i skipped one of the dragons on the way to bayle because i was sick of fighting so many dragons in a row, and i'm sure i've missed some mini bosses or areas, especially in the rauh area which i am guilty of sprinting through at a certain point.

with the exception of the final boss and bayle, i enjoyed the bosses in this dlc. the thing with the difficulty of these games is that in the past a lot of the difficulty spikes between games comes down to movement speed of player and bosses, and the effects this quicker and quicker timing has on the gameplay. they've also introduced some combat enhancements or tried out some ideas like weapons arts in ds3. (in non-souls games you have a lot more variations on the formula, with bloodborne's parry mechanics and less of a reliance on the character builds and armors, sekiro's systems being something that almost felt like you had to relearn how to play their games)

elden ring complicates this formula even further by introducing an expanded and much more practical system for weapon arts, a shit ton more weapons and armors, faith and int builds that are finally viable, and consistent boss summons with the spirit ashes. i'm both impressed that the game maintains the challenge of prior titles and even has some bosses that well outdo their difficulty, and also remains fun to play. the dlc maintained this FOR THE MOST PART, but with bayle and the final boss this kind of stumbled.

the problem i was shocked elden ring didn't already have was that when you're already going as fast as seems feasible, how do you augment the difficulty to give new challenges, and how do you make something fresh within this old formula. their bosses are difficult, but for the most part they're fun, and you can get to a point where you make that call of okay, this is hard but this is possible, or no this isn't possible right now, i need to change my strategy or level up or something else. the dlc was very fun to me because i was able to utilize the full arsenal of things id acquired over the course of my two prior playthroughs of the base game. if i had trouble with a boss, i realized at some point that i had plenty of viable builds i could apply to my character that better suited the boss. i switched between weapons, swapped out miracles, did some experimentation with the talismans and armor, and it felt a lot like fun trial and error to see which build would work, and very rewarding when it finally did!

bayle and the final boss felt kind of like they knew they were obligated to be crazy difficult, but they couldn't quite iron out how to do that without it being ridiculous. bayle less so than the final boss, but i feel like the warning for the final boss was there in bayle. he was whispering to me hey, hey, watch out. you know i cant be the worst, you know that final boss will be worse. also bayle gets a bit of a pass because he was a side story boss (i appreciated that the main story was a little bit easier than the side stories, because obviously you want your players to be able to get through the main stuff, with the side stuff being the extra. i personally liked that. anyways.) i did not have fun playing the final boss and it wasnt just the psychological damage (though that made me want to stop trying way more than the difficulty did tbf.) so far as gameplay is concerned i really enjoyed the dlc and i had a lot of fun exploring and fighting my way through it, there were some beautiful areas that made me excited to look at the concept art, and the weapons and new systems they added were a lot of fun when i tested them out. if it were just this gameplay i would be happy with the dlc and would probably still be playing it now.

THE STORY REVIEW. (hell.)

what makes me mad is that to some extent they gave me what i wanted. if you look back through my old posts or have the displeasure of knowing me in real life and heard me gushing about this, you already know some of my dlc wishes came true!

some of my dlc wishes:

i wanted new flowers to pick (small fish all things considered)

i wanted a boss with a large spear to skewer me in the air like a kebab

i wanted more frenzy content

i wanted some kind of resolution or at least some mention of godwyn's situation

i wanted miquella's gender to be unambiguously weird

i wanted miquella to be evil

i wanted more explanation for marika's whole "deal"

i wanted dumb melodramatic dlc npcs that are doomed to die horrible dlc deaths but one of them must be unspeakably snatched while doing so.

let sword freak (denoted by a line i heard from one of the dlc trailers) be a woman

please let the bewitching branch item description not imply what i think it implies about miquella and mohg

so. if you know the story you will already notice some red flags. i'll start with some positives

i really enjoyed my little dlc npcs, hornsent was the only thing carrying me through the middle-end section of the main story as i was buffeted on all sides with the terrible realization that they were going the exact direction that i begged and pleaded they would not go. i loved the heightened role the npcs played in the story, how frequently i was able to check in with them and have new little dialogues or tidbits, and i love that there are absolutely batshit unhinged women in this dlc and i am so happy there are more than one. in no particular order, things i really liked about the npcs:

hornsent is my sweet cheese he is my guy. i was really rooting for him and as someone who went into this dlc as an attached weepy miquella fan, i was on his side before the dlc killed my hopes and dreams and dashed them against the rocks. character who abandons all sense of self and personhood to become the embodiment of their hurt and rage? faceless formless gnarled twig of a character with desiccated bugs all over his face? character who i can feed soup to? character who somewhat hates me? character who made me laugh following the messmer fight by calling him "your ugliness"?? his death was inevitable and i accepted it, because i agree with him. miquella should not take his revenge from him, there will be no forced absolution nor "gentle kindness" imposed upon him. this was the evil miquella i wanted, the god so compassionate that no discord nor hate could exist under his rule, and all will be enveloped in kindness. it is horrifying to discard the self when the self is entirely made of hurt, and it is horrifying to be robbed of personal agency. anyways i love hornsent.

freyja is so gleefully ready to commit unspeakable acts of violence and so genuinely happy and excited about it that it makes me squeal. i love a character that is so excited to punch things that they cant keep it to themselves. they are happy and thrilled to be in the dimension of violence and strife. and she's so nice! usually you see these people falling into the edgelord stereotype which i am not particularly fond of unless they're especially pathetic and camp about it, but she was just a joy to interact with. when she told me not to worry if we were to fight on opposing sides, she would gleefully meet my blade and it would be an honor to do so, i wasnt even sad! yeah! it will be fun freyja, thank you. little bit soured to her towards the end there where she learned about the incest plot and had no other reaction to that other than to be excited radahn would be back, but to be fair to her why would she give a shit about this. sure, freyja. i'm happy for you, glad you're enjoying this dlc.

speaking of unhinged women, leda is despicable. i love her. the point that she sees nothing wrong with herself or her actions is integrated into even the most inane little dialogues, the one that stuck with me was her explanation of the war with the hornsent- she said they were the losing side of a war, and it was a terrible shame what happened to them, but they were no victims. (they had it coming. further than that, it was right that they were the ones to lose, winning holds significance in terms of showing divine favor and justice. its a terrible shame what "happened" to them (passive word), but they were not victims, the actions of marika and messmer's army were somehow vindicated in their actions). she's another look at what i had hoped for with my evil miquella point. i will expand on this when i start ranting about miquella so put a pin in this for now.

moore. another point into the miquella as a refuge category, or miquella as the water that washes away, and provides absolution. outside of that though i'm always somewhat on my guard with a character who has a speech impediment and seems to have some kind of cognitive disability, but he made me happy to talk to. i don't know if what i'm feeling is unsure about how he's written, or just wishing for more from him, but the exchanges you have with him where its clear his motivations are intensely people-pleasing, and that he is honestly very sad as a person made me sad :( hes a big guy, and dangerous in a fight (as i figured out pretty fast after he downed me with scarlet rot) so its difficult to minimize this outward appearance to keep oneself a: safe and b: friendly or pitiable enough to others that they offer the sort of protection necessary in numbers in the situation he finds himself in. i think he makes sense as a character, and i think hes very concerned with the opinions of others and his helpfulness to them and his perception. and while i think the kindness and generosity is learned and a necessity, i also think he's just genuinely a kind person, which is why he's relying on his strengths like this. anyways, sorry moore. :(

igon is way too much and i'm so glad he's real. i genuinely cracked up when i summoned him for the bayle fight and cackling at him got me killed. i wasn't expecting him to scream his little heart out and then keep going. and then keep going again. he won't stop it's spectacular. another thing of note is that he didn't get a single hit off that entire fight for me, drawing his bow took too long, and he spent most of that fight flat on his back with the damage counter going up. it just made his shouting even funnier, i wasn't even mad he was awful as a summon, he was so funny i was just glad he was there as a morale boost. also appreciate that dragon priestess seemed pretty done with him. i hope everyone else can appreciate his autistic charm with me.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT MIQUELLA NOW.

so i want to set the context for my dlc experience properly so everyone can understand where i'm coming from, because miquella was already a delicate character to like, and how they're a radioactive trash fire that's trying to kill me.

(also dlc confirms he/them miquella alongside he/him base game and she/her trina so you'll note the pronouns shift around. it's a little complicated given the whole trina splicing and diverging of identities thing so it'll be inconsistent, but hopefully everyone can tell who i'm talking about as i'm talking about them.)

having a character who is unspeakably old, but also has the physical appearance of an 8 year old is a red flag so large that anyone could see it, and i knew this from the moment i started picking up their lore in earnest. IN THEORY this could be a very compelling character, it has been done a couple times before well, and countless times before very poorly. i was not optimistic, and already in the base game his character was not treated as well as i would have preferred, but i was coping.

having someone who is trapped by their own body, or confined by both the perceptions of- and the realities of their body can be a compelling character. having someone who's life is impacted by perceptions of, judgements upon, limitations thereof of their body tends to be a character that i gravitate towards because surprise, this can be relatable for a lot of people- and a lot of different types of people. whatever allegory you're applying to this narrative of the disconnect between the body's presence in the world and the world's treatment and expectation of the body, i'm sure you can tell there's a broad scope of applications there. and then you add on this element where they're present in the realm of dreams. the implications of a god who walks dreams, the realm of the subconscious free of expectation and limitation, and then also is trapped by both a cursed body and the weight of duty, faith, and expectation, i enjoy these dynamics, i really do. it only helped that their gender was weird, and he walked dreams as a girl.

and the thing is, i've wanted him to be evil, i wanted him to be evil so bad you have no idea. not just because (by base game assumptions...) evil had been done to them, and theevil was a reaction to this, no! there was always something wrong with them, he was always scheming, they didn't turn evil.

the haligtree and their actions in going against the golden order are calculated- do i think their aspirations are better than his mother's? maybe? i think it's more the order he instates has the possibility of being better as a side-effect of his actions and they would have gone forward with their own ambitions with or without this possibility of things being measurably better. taking in a class of people subjugated by the current order to build their armies feels a bit cynical and calculated, no?

the second huge red flag was the bewitching branch item description. at first i was a bit thrilled, there! i said, there is the canon justification for my somewhat unfounded hopes for evil miquella! the suggestion that he is able to meddle with emotions and perceptions is a pretty troubling trait to have! especially by a character who is spoken of with both love and to a smaller degree hatred and fear! and then i spent longer than a few seconds thinking about this and was immediately worried about the implications that had on the mohg issue.

THE MOHG ISSUE.

so first things first, the existence of the dlc does not mean that suddenly mohg isn't bad gay rep anymore. like let me be clear here, for two years we had a gay pedophile in our triple a title who kidnapped his little brother for pretty unambiguously sexually charged reasons, the fact that the dlc seems to tack on an addendum of "oh by the way its actually not his fault and he didn't choose to do that" doesn't suddenly erase those two years, and the initial judgements a new player or someone who is unfamiliar with the lore might make. like that's bad, guys, that's pretty bad. i was really disappointed at the time that they had included this character archetype- moreso because i was a fan of their previous games that had their little nuggets of queer representation, and i made the mistake of expecting better from the developers and writers.

i was also mad because they didn't have to write it this way, this was a choice they made to include this, and it's my preference to not enjoy it, but it wasn't necessary at all. if the plot necessitated that something go wrong with miquella's cocoon and initial schemes for god pupation, it didn't have to be that his half brother kidnapped him.

(my borderline au content writing no one asked for: an alternative that i was fond of at the time (B.D., before dlc) was that proximity to malenia's rot could have caused him issues. you still have the issue of something has gone wrong, miquella remains asleep and rots in his cocoon, but you also have this element of the potential guilt on malenia's end- that would be incredible guilt to know she was at fault for the failure of all they had been working towards, and the added grim irony that (as we figured at the time) in shedding his curse in order to help her shed hers, she unintentionally sabotaged him by staying so close to "guard" him. it also involves malenia more in the game story, which was something i had hoped for a bit more of from the base game anyways.)

my concern over the bewitching branch lore can be summed up by saying this. having someone the story paints as the victim suddenly revealed to have wanted it all along, and been the instigator behind the assumed assault is shitty. it's just shitty. and i'll admit i might be more sensitive to this topic than the average elden ring player, so this is all colored by my opinions and biases, but it's bad taste. it's not a fun surprising revelation, it's not a plot twist you feel particularly excited about, you feel bad, and then you feel confused. I like the lore of elden ring, i've spent a lot of time reading it and speculating on it, and it is confusing why miquella would be the one to instigate their own kidnapping and assault.

you would assume that their intended plan would be the plan A he was going with, stay in the cocoon, do his thing, remain in the haligtree so it is sustained and they are safe within it, let malenia handle the defense and conquest while he naps, wake up at some undetermined date with his goals achieved (whatever those mysterious goals may be) and continue on with later stages of their plans. and you would assume that being ripped from the haligtree and doused in blood in a basement somewhere was not within the bounds of his plan A. part of why i dared to hope that i was reading too much into the potential mind-control thing was because it didn't seem like mohg's actions were benefiting miquella's plan in any way- it seemed pretty bad. the haligtree was dying, malenia was rotting, their body looked to be in pretty awful shape, and even their allies did not know where he was.

BACK TO THE DLC.

the dlc did not really expand the context in a way that made this make sense to me. context that he was discarding his body entirely made sense for miquella's character, and if they didn't care about the state of their body, i guess he wouldn't care that his body was taken from where it was abandoned- but it didn't seem like that was their intention to abandon his flesh from the start? or if it was, that they placed his flesh within the haligtree for a reason, and i'd assume he'd have wanted it to stay there. if they were concerned that his flesh was no longer safe in the haligtree and wanted it spirited away by any means necessary (i.e. "kidnapping"), first off i'm unsure of the danger that would cause that, but second off if he didn't care about their flesh- see earlier point- why would they care if it was endangered within the haligtree enough to have it kidnapped? so, this already doesn't make sense to me, and the added justification of oh, he just has the hots for their brother, this isn't satisfying to me. sure i don't enjoy it as a story element in general, but past that it just doesn't feel like a satisfying justification in context. he's ambitious and he's seeing his ambitions through by any means possible, why would they act in this selfish manner that seems to be detrimental to their own ambitions?

issues with the sense of the mohg situation aside, why radahn? the justification given in item descriptions and dialogue states that miquella found him sure and kind and worthy of being a lord in contrast to the conflict, fragmentation, and personal afflictions they were facing, but. why radahn? i liked radahn, i'll gladly point out that yes, he does seem to satisfy all of these character traits, but there isn't any established context between them. miquella doesn't interact with radahn in the base game, malenia dooms him to walk the battlefield addled by scarlet rot and reduced to an empty husk, and if it was miquella's intent to have him be their consort from the start, this paints malenia in a pretty negative light, no? we were led to believe they were a united front, her and miquella, that many of his actions were for her benefit, and they worked so hard in part because of his desire to cure them BOTH of their afflictions, especially and explicitly her affliction. so she's sabotaged miquella's plans? for what reason, did she not agree with it, did she hate radahn? there's no explanation given for this, like how there is no further explanation as to why it is radahn miquella is so hell bent on bringing back to life.

which is odd when you consider that there is another demigod who meets miquella's criteria, was definitely loved by miquella, seemed to be loved by malenia, seems to be depicted in the haligtree, and miquella was previously confirmed to have been trying to bring back to life. where the hell is godwyn?

let me clarify here, i do not like this plotline they have created where miquella apparently has the hots for every other brother in his family, i don't tend to appreciate incest as it occurs in stories, and if it were my choice i would just choose not to include it. i also understand that plenty of people don't care about that, and that media like game of thrones that features incest pretty prominently within the story is beloved by mainstream audiences. i am also aware of the historical trend of royalty being inbred and incest existing on a sliding scale of taboo through the millennia. the greek gods are all siblings, i still enjoy greek myths, etc. etc.. so if i were the sole writer for elden ring and was beholden to no one the story i would write would diverge from the current canon and i would not write myself into a position where miquella is marrying their brother because personally i do not enjoy this. this is not the reality we live in, and this is not the story we got.

within the framework of their story, it should have been godwyn, and i have no idea why it wasn't. i can speculate all i want, was it misplaced fanservice because people liked radahn? was it a plot twist executed poorly, is there some other reason im missing but someone else has pieced together and they'll call me an idiot over? i don't know, and i also sort of don't care, it doesn't make sense, and it also disregards a lot about radahn's character than i and others liked to get him to fit into this weird situation.

where is his horse? if miquella cared for him, and they were able to bring back a whole demigod, was it so impossible to resurrect his beloved horse? if miquella didn't care about him enough to bring back his horse, wouldn't radahn put up a fuss about that? if miquella was controlling him to agree to being his consort, and didn't allow for him to be concerned about his horse, this raises a few more questions about malenia fighting radahn and destroying all of caelid- and likely everywhere else if the fires at the borders of caelid ever go out. was he always controlling radahn, were they ever controlling radahn? what are the limits of this control, what are the rules, if any? there are too many frustrating elements that make very little sense about radahn.

conversely, these elements make a lot more sense when applied to godwyn, and it pisses me off that it seems like, to my speculative eyes, they pivoted away from him. it would make sense why they would need a body to resurrect him when he is just a deceased soul, and his body is busy being a tumor. you could argue radahn's body was not in great shape and was eaten by alexander, and that's a completely fair point, but to me godwyn makes much more sense. not to mention, again, miquella had been explicitly trying to bring godwyn back in the base game.

(and this is a smaller gripe, but radahn's previous boss model had no feet. in his lore they discuss him riding his horse, and then learning the gravity magic to lessen the load on his horse so he could keep riding it. like yes the missing feet could be chalked up to rot, but he also just could have not had feet and was using his beloved mobility horse and the gravity magic to get around the challenge of not being able to walk. i thought that was cool if true, and it was a little speculative thing about his character i really loved, and that just kind of got thrown out with the dlc too so i guess i'll have to die mad.)

was it really necessary to have the assumed sa victim with the body of a child secretly be the instigator and assaulter all along? and then to add insult to injury not even have their actions make any sense within the existing plot? like was that all entirely necessary.

OTHER DLC LORE OPINIONS

you might be surprised to learn that i did not hate most of the other dlc lore.

miquella using mohg's body as fuel to resurrect their consort, while fucked up, i think could work with character motivations. especially if he was holding a grudge towards mohg, or mohg's actions were in fact antithetical to their plans, or he wasn't the one in control of mohg's actions. it could make sense that he would want to humiliate him (as ansbach mentions a few times...). and as i've said before i think miquella is fucked up, i think they do bad things, i think their moral compass is skewed, i think he's a creature of ambition and spite. i could see a world in which he does this out of hatred and spite, but in the situation they've set up where miquella was the one potentially compelling mohg? it lessens that spite, why would they be so hateful or willing to humiliate him if they were the one to compel his actions? you could just say oh, miquella is cruel and messed up like that and he's doing it for the hell of it, but it's not that compelling and doesn't make it as interesting. it just kind of feels gross. so yeah, in the current story i'm not a huge fan, but i see the potential here.

marika's character development was genuinely cool to me- and i understand i'm speculating and i've been speculating this whole time, but that's my business and and i acknowledge it's speculative. marika as a hornsent is a really cool concept to me, and it makes pieces of the main game make more sense. it makes her motivations make more sense, adds color to her character (and she was already interesting to me) and even though this dlc is like a lot of their other dlcs where it adds characters and backstory for no reason and does the ds3 thing of surprise! more secret children! i enjoyed it. it gives her more of a why past judgements of her personal moral character, it grounds her more, i like it. i also enjoyed the tidbits with the pots and sages, further (if not vague) developments with the outer gods. like this is speculative lore than i enjoy, and it's the kind of stuff i was excited for in the dlc.

as i said before elden ring kind of did the ds3 thing where they just added a secret child that was suddenly plot relevant and added a bunch of unnecessary lore, but i didn't really care too much in ds3 and i don't care here. messmer's voice actor is funny and messmer himself is compelling enough that i'm fine with not taking things too seriously. it helps that without messmer there is not hornsent, and a dlc without hornsent is a dlc i wouldn't have finished. (genuinely, i was so discouraged by the main story plot revelations i didn't feel like it was worth it to finish the dlc, but i felt bad leaving hornsent unresolved so i killed messmer. and then just finished the dlc anyways, so thanks hornsent.)

truly and genuinely i was happy with st. trina. i was so excited she was included in this, i've been a st. trina truther for too long and i don't even know what that means because there were like two sentences about her in the whole game, but she's great. i could take or leave thiollier, on the one hand having a creep as a character is fine and hes written in a way that feels believably creepy while also like hes enough of a 3 dimensional character that he has his own personality and motivations, but him included with miquella being elected the president of incest for no reason was a bit of a sour note.

the idea that miquella is discarding his body, and every piece he discards is a piece that they may hate, but they also have to discard those pieces that he doesn't hate, and their power, and all that he is, that's a real sacrifice and i think it speaks to the depth their character COULD HAVE HAD. that and their very clear conflict with their own gender, and conflict with himself over his actions. they discarded the girl sleeping within them and locked her in a pit in the ground so that none would find her. and he discarded with her their love, and the "treacherous" parts of himself that doubted, and disagreed, and with this he was able to become more resolute on their path. trina disagrees entirely with miquella's path to godhood and begs you to kill him, pities him, says their path is destroying him, and those are all doubts he has discarded with her. it is genuinely sad to me that this is not the side of miquella that we get to enjoy as a character because of all of the rest of the mess that's thrown on top in the dlc.

and of course i'm mad because he's acting like marika, they're shaving off pieces of themself and sacrificing for ambition, and they're becoming her while he's intent on being the opposite of everything she stood for, and we were so close to having this. we were so close.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

so far as gameplay goes, i enjoyed this dlc and it did a good job of replicating that feeling of playing elden ring and exploring again in its condensed and familiar setting. i like a lot of their new mechanics and ideas they introduced, though some of the later bosses fumbled it for me balancing the difficulty with actually enjoyable boss fights that feel fun to play.

the main story pissed me off so bad i almost put down the dlc, and erased all excitement i had to play it (even keeping in mind the reservations i already had going in). the side stories were frustratingly fun and compelling when compared to the main story being such a trash fire. i wish things were different but they are not, and i am very disappointed.

if you actually read all of this bless you, i hope you have a beautiful day.

[tlgtw]

Aside fromsoft, are there any fantasy game settings/stories you're into?

Like what was the first game that pulled you in and before you realized you were checking dialogue for inconsistencies?

Zoooooomg, I *wish* had any other answer for this but the first game that "pulled me in" indeed WAS a Fromsoft game; and it was Bloodborne.

This came around a few months after it came out, (Meaning I was 14.) and I'd wanted Bloodborne the whole time because of how wicked fucking awesome it looked. (even if perhaps I was a little too young for it.)

I can't remember how, but by some means or another leading up to or concurrently with Bloodborne's initial release I got into all the "Loretubers" from that time, as they're known now.

VaatiVidya of course--most likely he was the first person I ended up watching, but also the other ones. Like the one who wrote that big book about it basically called like "The Paleblood Hunt" or something, and a few others!

The most significant of which I can tell you for a fact was the 'late' Jerks Sans Frontieres.

Her videos shot straight into my spinal cord because she wasn't a summarizer. She, in a similar sense that I am now, was a detective.

At that point I was still purely an audience-member for that latent genre of YouTube videos. As the consumer I enjoyed all of them, but I liked her's best. And I must've rewatched each of her Bloodborne videos at least a half-dozen times before I finally got my hands on the game myself--for my 15th birthday--and I got *so* scared by my experience in Central Yharnam that I think it took me days to pick up the controller again the second time.

I legitimately considered returning it! It was my first FromSoft game. I'd never played something that just, say, *didn't* have background music all the time, for example. I remember it still, clear as day, how unnerving it was just walking around the early areas hearing just your footsteps and the background rumble and when I was unlucky the screaming sounds of the crows and other enemies.

Precisely, when I first came up that ladder to the Central Yharnam checkpoint, when I heard the scream of the Cleric Beast, it scared me out of my wits so goddamn hard that I stopped moving for like 15 seconds.

I was still *just* turned 15, but at that point I had watched all of Bloodborne over and over again like 80 times. I'd watched tutorials and build guides and cheese strats and weapon movesets and everything else I could about that game, before I finally got my hands on it. I thought I would be, at least, ultimately okay. Cause I would still know everything I'd have to do.

I was wrong.

But I did get through it, hahaha.

In-fact I ended up getting through it so hard that by the time I got my hands on the actual DLC, my main save file was in NG++. So the first time I beat The Old Hunters was in NG++.

Fortunately I was very grinded-up so I think ultimately the experience balanced out.

And nowadays I've beaten Bloodborne so many times that I have the entire level of Central Yharnam actually memorized. Until a few years ago could've draw an accurate map of it from memory (and I have).

With Bloodborne being my introduction, as it were, to the concept of Videogame Story Explained Videos, it was also my introduction to the concept of seriously reading a videogame's story in the first place.

What this wasn't, yet, was me actually going in *myself* to actually cross-reference item descriptions and dialogue, for my *own* understanding. You don't do that sorta thing unless you're specifically involved in discussion. And I was involved in *no* discussions in 2015, or 2016, or '17 or '18 or '19 or anything all the way up to until 2022, because online I have the tendencies of a weird hermit.

Although that is me exaggerating. In truth prior to my dealings with Elden Ring I had been a Redditor and I talked (argued) about the story details of Little Nightmares 1 and 2 (My favourite games.) on the subreddit for those games. By then I had already become the kind of person I am still now, most of all in my disinterest in finding any answers regarding a fictional story that can't account for every extant element... of that story. (As you've seen, and will see more of in Episode X of ERwSET. When an idea I have appears to conflict with work in subject, I drop the idea. And develop one that doesn't conflict with it instead. This is opposed to the alternative of making up reasons or justification to keep the initial idea regardless)

No doubt doing that instead would probably make me a lot more content to make money with... Personally, doing so isn't engaging to me, because I am already someone who writes fiction. And in my opinion, "Videogame Story Explained Videos" are fundamentally a non-fiction genre of video, and for me are more interesting in general when they conform to that, because they interface directly with the media itself, and the material that media's author's put into it. Rather than just the individual video creator's personal experience of that media, of that material.

In part this comes from my background as someone who writes poetry and fiction. Of course.

*Of course,* an author who writes and puts meanings into material themselves, finds themselves more interested dissecting the material and creative decisions of *other authors,* who do the same thing, as opposed to the material and creative decisions of just *other readers.* Who most of them don't--generally maintaining more humane professions and areas of expertise instead.

And probably this is rooted into my tendencies as a 'weird hermit,' too. But, from my perspective, if I wanted to see what a fellow member of the audience thinks are the inner working of this character or imagines regarding the off-screen elements of a story, I would read their fanfiction.

...

...

That is of course reductive, but I think saying it like that is really funny, so that's why I'll be still saying it xd.

"Everyone consumes, but not everyone makes," you could say. The same way there are less farmers than people in the world. There are less writers than readers in the world. When I analyze a work of fiction, underneath it all what I'm looking for is to see what decisions the authors made, for *their final product:* "What does that do?" "What does this do?" "If it was different, what would that make?" "What does this matter? Does it?"

"Would I do this too?"

And this interest excludes the question of 'why,' predominantly. I'm not interested so much in wanting to know 'why,' because the only way to learn that is if the author themselves actually decides to share "why." I'm interested just in what the final decisions "are."

"Why'd the author decide to make this character do this?" Well, maybe they were really hungry that day. Or maybe they saw an ad on TV. Or maybe they were talking to their friend about something unrelated and their friend happened to say a phrase in a peculiar and cool way and the author decided he wanted to make use of that, too. And everything else that encompasses the spectrum of the human experience.

"Why" is whatever it wants, it's not like it would change what the final product "is," right?

And of course this doesn't preclude the fact that author's can just *lie* about their motivations too. For that reason, actually trying to find out 'why' is generally an impossible task.

And I'm not interested in pursuing those/I'm not interested in not #winning.

Perhaps this, you could say, then, is the ultimate source of my attitude. Not in the way that it's why I actually decided to write and draw and voice and edit my 80% Elden Ring lore series and 15% weird cartoon; "Elden Ring Explained with Snake-Eyes Teieruji." I did all those for completely circumstantial reasons! (And I go into detail about them in Issue #0 of the Kinda-Monthly Newsletter.)

Nor even in how my show is... the way it is! 'Cause even that is just me being really really slow and meticulous, (as you've no doubt suffered) and anyone can act like that~!

But it is, perhaps, what made me come up with the idea of making such a show as ERwSET, at all, in the first place. (And you can also read about the *second* major exclusion in my recounting here from that same article in Newsletter #0, which was the Sekiro-related project for which Snake-Eyes Teieruji was actually created, that didn't end up going anywhere.)

You'd have be a pretty specific kind of chucklehead to actually think of doing, specifically all this; y'know?

But you may be surprised to learn that I'm normally not like this at all, when I play videogames. Most of my creative energy in such regards are channeled into my poetry, art, and fiction. When I eat games, or movies, or books or TV, I don't really feel a want to find out "exactly what the author did for this character" or "exactly what elements of this scene connect with another scene" because I guess, perhaps, I'm too occupied with enjoying myself...

Hm.

Well, maybe it'll be more accurate to say that what I'm presenting, "of myself" in ERwSET, is effectively extremely extremely scripted and deliberate.

I spend months writing my scripts. (sorry about that.) And those months include the meticulous cross-referencing and fact-checking that gives those videos their noticeable pow.

It's a large amount of *work,* that that is. The desk-jockeying kind. And it's not something that can just do itself when you're relaxing playing any game normally. (I'll never just stop what I'm doing while playing a game to fact-check whether I'm currently right about something, while I'm still in the middle of playing it.

For example in my first playthrough of Elden Ring: I wasn't actually sure how Marika's name was spelled until I had finished my first playthrough. That I wasn't sure if it was "Marika" or "Merika" at the time just legitimately didn't concern to me. I just didn't pay that close of attention whenever I passed a Church of Marika or whatever to actually remember how it spelled her name, afterwards.

I actually kept a journal to keep track of all of my sidequests and stuff for my first playthrough, too! So maybe here's another example, haha:

And here's one more dfbjkskjdbfbkjsdkjbfsjdsf. These are all things I actually wrote down in the middle of playing the game so reading these myself is really fucked up I just remember what I was doing when I wrote them:

What I'm referring to as 'the fucking castle' there is actually what I thought the Siofra Aquaduct was, the first time I saw it, hahaha. I was even a little bummed out when I actually got to it, I'll admit. I thought it was gonna be an entire dungeon.)

In any case;

The experience of *creating* something, and the experience of *consuming* something, are just fundamentally incomparable things.

You could never figure out how houses are built by just living in one, even if you lived in one for a really long time. Right?

It's that very sort of thing; in terms of cross-referencing dialogue and noting game-wide consistencies and inconsistencies for discrepancies and explanations, no playing a game inspired me do that, or could. It was my becoming an author of fiction that inspired me to do that, and my burgeoning desire to understand the decisions *other authors* made, for *their* fiction.

"I wanna know how to do that too." Right?

Eventually this desire lead to me writing poems instead.

Which lead to me (once I finally became good enough at writing to realize--as related in that poem I flashed from highschool in ERwSET1) disavowing the written word entirely! TOO limited for me, I though...!

Pictures have WAY more pow than words!!!

And that's how I got into drawing...

(which are like *way* more powerful than words, right, like it's not even comparable, the only thing words are up-to-down unbeatable at is, indeed, non-fiction... but also in being a trillion times faster than everything else to actually work with. I have returned to the written word, since then, as you might tell. And I'll tell you that writing also has one advantage that no other skill on Earth has--and that's you can practice it using only your head. Every other skill needs equipment, lit only needs words.)

...which is lead me to my foray *now;* the likes of 2-dimensional medias like video! (visual + audio)

:DDD

But that's maybe not the kind of question you were actually asking, either... so...

Y'know... maybe it actually *is* Elden Ring, that's what 'pulled me in'.

I'm pretty far-in-deep right now in this, aren't I? And I've certainly never been this deep in something before!

How... did I get here...!?

I talk all about this in Issue 0 of the Newsletter as well but it's because of how Elden Ring served to combined FromSoftware's skills in atmosphere, the acting of the characters, visuals + audio, and gameplay, with George RR Martin's skills in actually have a coherent plot to present with those elements.

I've stated so before so I'll say so again that earlier FromSoft games such as Bloodborne and (especially) Dark Souls 3 are, to *a* meaningful extent, "not worth" looking into closely from a narrative perspective. In the way that their stories were never purposely finished.

The Soulsborne games have the reputation of having stories that are predominantly based on vibes, and that's not by accident. They are based on vibes.

Gameplay, atmosphere, acting, etc. Those are things that dictate the vibes. But they're not precise. You can't find the definitive answer to a character motivation in their boss theme, that's music.

*Power,* of course, they have in spades, but obviously not any 'precision.'

As we know, Bloodborne had a lot of cut content. And Dark Souls 3.

And as a result of the same internal situations (i.e. real life reasons like time, budget, and workforce) that lead to all that content being cut, a number of the questions you would ask regarding the plot details in those games, literally do not have answers *in* those games.

The stories of Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 are ambiguous. But not in the way that there are multiple answers: In the way that there are *no* answers.

Again, that isn't by accident. The games themselves are obviously, literally, finished products. It was deliberate decisions made during production to *remove* material communicating parts of the story, for variable reasons, from what would become the finished product.

Thus, leading to parts of "the story" being, for the reader; missing.

Most people will frame this as equivalent to "the audience deciding what the truth is." And I think this is completely inaccurate.

"The audience can choose what the truth is" is when there would be multiple possible answers. (Little Nightmares 1 and 2 are my favourite games.)

"The audience can *never* know what the truth is" is when there are no possible answers.

And in my opinion they are completely different narrative outcomes. They shouldn't be equated.

...

...not acknowledging, of course, the *massive* amount of subjective legwork the word 'possible' is doing there, with those vibes-based definitions:

"Possible" as in, coherent with what is (percieved to be) in the text... by the reader?

Or "possible" as in, literally possible to be imagined by someone... such as the reader, whoever that happens to be?

The topic is only more complex from there. (All into academia and shit tho I wouldn't know I'm an art school dropout.)

And... almost definitely that's also not what you asked, either...

Hm...

Well, I ask that you forgive me.

As for *why* Elden Ring was special to me, circumstantially, such that it lead to my actually making ERwSET, the explanation for that will remain in Issue 0 of the Members-Only Kinda-Monthly Newsletter.

As to *what* lead to me becoming this way, as you see before you? (Insane.) I hope I was able to answer it.

As for RECOMMENDATIONS, for games in general, that inspire ME, personally!?!?!? (Specifically, in the way that they inspired me to think about the setting and wonder about how things in there connect. These listing might look random but I'm positive they're exactly what you might mean in you including, specifically, what "settings" I'm into. Albeit, you are getting this from a poet. So... there is that as well. I hope if you end up looking into any of these that you do end up pleased with the experience.)

Hohokum (2014), for PS4 and PC

GRIS (2018), for basically everything

Bloodborne (2015), but note it standing directly *on* Elden Ring

Minute of Islands (2021) for PC and consoles

The surrealist artbook "Codex Serafinianus" by Italian artist Luigi Serafini (originally published in 1981, but still added to by him occasionally with an updated 40th anniversary edition having been released in 2021.)

Gorogoa (2017), for basically everything again

Child of Light (2014), also, for basically everything, somehow

Flower (2009), available on PC (and I really cannot overstate how important 'Flower' is to me, I didn't even know games could *be* like that, before I played this)

And of course, my all-time favourite book "The Vine That Ate the South" by the band The Legendary Shack Shakers's basically only actual member, JD Wilkes. (A book that has all-but baked itself into my genome since I first read it in highschool, and the additional 29 times I've read it since. 'Cause I have been counting. I voraciously recommend the Audible-licensed Recorded Books and RB Digital audiobook version; the narrator T. Ryder Smith's voice is a trillion bucks for that book.)

And y'know what I think I'm wanting to mirror this answer directly into the Kinda-Monthly Newsletter itself. Not all my readers follow me on Tumblr, even fewer'll be online at the right time as to actually *see* this post this before it's buried under everything else I'll post afterwards, and I've just spent the last few hours enjoying the hell out of myself writing all 3100 words of it, gyahahahhahaha!!

So, for those who aren't reading this!

Look forward towards seeing it the first time, in Issue #1 of the T-L-G-T-W Official Fanclub Members-Only Kinda-Monthly Newsletter. (The Issue that'll be available for free.)

My reader, I also hope you don't mind your ask ending up inspiring me to do this. But you might be the first of more, too.

So for now, going forward for any questions and answers such as these asked to me (even anonymously) on Tumblr blog, that activate me like this one has; *they* might just end up in the *next* Issue of the Newsletter, too...!

I can't say for certain I'll announce every that do, ahead of time.

But, maybe... you'll just be able to just... tell. Somehow.

Hm

[hundredsspoons]

Looking to make a trade in Elden Ring. I'm on the pc.

I want the Staff of the Great Beyond.

In return, I can give you an Iris of Occultation, a Dark Moon Greatsword, an Eclipse Shotel, Morgott's Cursed Sword, a Moonveil+5, the Axe of Godrick, the Scepter of the All-Knowing, a Dragon Greatclaw, a Lion's Greatbow, a Carian Regal Scepter+9, 30500 in droppable runes, and 2 Great Ghost Gloveworts. I know nothing here is as rare as the Staff of the Great Beyond, so that's why you can have all of it.

Basically, I did a run of Elden Ring where I only got the stuff I needed for my build, so I could have a NG+ experience with the build I want to use. I wanted to explore the dlc as little as possible so I can enjoy it when I actually get there with the build that I have fun with, but I skipped the boss that gives you the Staff because I didn't realize it had a unique effect that would greatly improve my build. Of course I realized it after I already started a new game 😒

[ashinaisshin]

thought about my experience with some of the “souls-likes” i played recently and how my experience differed for each game. if i made time vs my git-gudness graphs for four games in particular (sekiro, elden ring, armored core vi, and sifu – i also played them in this order with some other games in between), they’d kinda look like this. explanation/rant about each game under cut…

sekiro: contrary to the common “it’s very hard at the start but once it clicks everything is a cakewalk” experience that i’ve heard many people had with sekiro, i felt like i was more in a loop of “i got gud - nope i didn’t - i got gud - nope” while i gradually improved in general over time during NG. then on NG+ i saw just how much easier everything became and went “wow i really got better at this game” (and proceeded to get clapped again by the difficulty of a charmless run on NG++)

elden ring: i had a slow start, not only about the combat itself but also just understanding all the stats and weapons and items etc.. but after stormveil i think i sorta got the hang of things and proceeded from there relatively smoothly, at least more smoothly than i expected (with some big bumps on hard bosses ofc), though i also felt like i never got as gud at ER as the other games by the end of NG, hence the flatter curve with a lower end point on my ER graph

armored core vi: i felt like i was honestly clueless about how to play ac6 for a VERY LONG TIME, maybe all the way till 1/2 or even 2/3 of NG, where i kept hitting walls after walls (though for some reason i still couldn’t put the game down lol), but then at some point things started to make sense. the more i played the easier things got, and in the end after NG++ i think ac6 is the “easiest” among these 4 games (only talking about pve) once you more or less master the mechanics. i think my initial trip up was probably mainly due to my unwillingness to understand the parts and builds, which imo is a lot more critical to a smooth progression through ac6 (especially during NG) compared to the other games. “banging head against bosses to learn patterns” was honestly a pretty viable strategy for the other games but less so for ac6

sifu: i think i was learning the game slowly but steadily at the start, a large part of it thanks to the extremely helpful training mode, but it was still a bumpy road, and kuroki especially was a big road block. i spent the most amount of time redoing the museum level and grinded XP there. but once i unlocked all the skills and got toward the end of NG/start of NG+, at one point i actually had a “click” where i just suddenly started playing the game a lot better, and i finished NG+ with wude ending much sooner than i thought. i’m still pretty clueless about how to combo and have yet to try master difficulty though, and i'm ready to get obliterated again lol

[jeeplethicar]

Some thoughts on the whole magic being easy mode thing because I like drama idk but before I begin I’m going to establish some things.

1. I’m not talking about minmaxing or ng+ neither of those are going to be balanced because they’re not intended to be

2. Magic is fun, I’ve used it before, and no I’m not a guts greatsword strength simp either I like halberds and pyromancy

That said, magic is really really easy and it’s not even kind of a competition and there’s a lot of reasons for why that is and it comes down to a few things safety, damage per hit, and adaptability

Even early game spells can easily put out far more damage per hit than any melee weapon can all while being really far from the target and any potential danger but more importantly it’s really easy to land this damage too. One of the biggest things people will show off is a mega buffed strength weapon (which btw they used spells to make the weapon do more damage) slamming something for a ridiculous amount of damage but right there in that argument is where they’re wrong

Melee weapons can do a lot of damage in one swing and can do a ton of damage. But the thing is that it’s significantly harder to land a charged heavy attack than it is to cast comet or Crystal soul spear across the room especially since you can cast multiple of those far faster than you can swing a charged heavy (or get the window large enough to do one)

Magic also lets you enjoy being able to just run away from the boss and keep casting, literally the only time as a spellcaster you’re in any danger is when the boss rushes at you and you have to dodge that one thing. Even better a lot of bosses straight up don’t rush at you if you run away meaning you can just run off and then keep casting and it’ll be a minute before they even get over to you.

Lastly magic has tons and tons of options which is awesome btw. Especially in Elden ring which is probably one of my favorite builds I’ve done just because I had so many choices available from spells to staves and rings boosting my damage and casting speed and charged spells it’s crazy. No matter what boss you’re coming up against as a spellcaster you will always have some tool that will work to make this boss go down so easy. Is your enemy really resistant to magic? Just use a spell that does physical damage, does your enemy have a ton of hp? Just use a spell that does damage based on how much health they have. Are resins and arrows just a bit too inconvenient? Don’t worry you can inflict any status effect in the game 10x faster than any non-magical method AND it’s a better version of it as well (not all poison is the same in case you didn’t know) You have tons of buffs at your disposal that can improve literally any build to do so much more damage

Sorcery,miracles,incantations,pyromancy doesn’t matter every single one of these are so ridiculously powerful that it’s actually laughable that anyone could try to say that it’s difficult or even harder than melee in any capacity. If you are genuinely incapable of winning without it then you are bad there is no other way to look at it. And that’s fine who cares play how you want, I’ve used magic too it’s a blast. But it’s definitely a significantly easier experience.

There’s a reason that in all my time of playing and I’m helping people fight bosses just because i feel like it. I hate it every time I’m summoned by a sorcerer (my friends can attest to this because I let them know every time) because they are consistently the worst players I have never seen a group of people try as hard as they possibly could to die when all they need to do is sit in the corner and cast their spells while the sunlight warrior does all the work for them. When I’m summoned by a melee character? Awesome man they probably know how to not die to really simple things and at the very least if they don’t they actually have the vigor to take a smack or two (seriously why do you guys not level vigor??) Just saying if I can beat the boss for you when I’m using a whip then maybe just maybe it’s a skill issue when you can’t beat them when you can do half their health in a few seconds

Before I’m done I want to say to all the guts greatsword strength only people quit acting like your way to play is the best as if it’s not one of the most boring builds possible and isn’t even that good.

Play how you want, use magic if you want to or need to I don’t care it’s a video game and if you die when you’re summoning it’s your embers you’re wasting not mine I don’t care we can try as many times as you need. But for the love of god stop acting like magic is even kind of comparable or complaining about how it’s actually really hard too.

P.S- in all fairness Elden ring is really easy in terms of broken options across the board but that’s an entirely different topic

[dany36]

the deed is done! after 84 hours, finally got through the true ending in dragon's dogma 2. as a new dragon's dogma fan, i gotta say...what an amazing game, loved almost every minute of it, and despite its many flaws, it's in my top favorite games for sure now that i saw the ending mostly did not disappoint and had some time now to think about it. there's been a few other open world games where i've spent 60+ hours playing them only for me to realize that wow, i did not have a good time at all with this and don't ever want to touch them again, but dd2 is definitely not of them. i honestly can't remember the last game i played that just had such a fucking grip on me, maybe horizon zero dawn which is like in my ultimate games ever: if i wasn't playing dd2, i was thinking of what i was going to do once the weekend came around and i'd be able to play it again. in fact, i was thinking of going back to granblue fantasy relink after this but i think i'm just gonna have to do ng+ to get some of the quests i missed + increase my pawn affinity (yes i know i'm a bad arisen lol).

i think i saw someone else say that it's hard to explain why they love this game because my god it has its flaws, but i'm gonna try to explain in my usual long-ass junk thoughts below, with endgame spoilers:

ok first of all, the gameplay and the vocations. holy shit. not gonna lie, i was at first a bit intimidated by this game because it seemed elden ring-ish and that game never really got my attention because of people saying how hard it is etc so i just never bothered to play it. it took a bit for me to get the hang of dd2's gameplay because i mostly just stick to jrpgs like tales, xenoblade or games like horizon, tomb raider which...aren't really hard games at all? so personally this was a pretty big switch for me. even if at first i was getting beat up by simple goblins, i was enjoying the hell out of it. i stuck with fighter for like...the first 45ish hours because i like being at the front of the fights and the use of the shield provided me a way to defend myself from attacks since there isn't really a dodge button here so it's what made me feel most comfortable. but man, exploring the other vocations and Seeing Number Go Up to maxing out your discipline in them is probably what kept the gameplay so fresh for me even though i pretty much went through the overworld twice: once normally, then another time when i realized i was close to the "first" ending and i was like oh shit better go back and do everything else that i might have missed.

but yeah, pretty much of the four vocations that i tried (fighter, archer, magick archer, mystic spearhand), the gameplay just felt so fluid and fun even when i was fighting my 10th griffin or my umpteenth goblin swarm. finding different ways to fight off enemies even as i was towards the end of the game is probably what made me not feel so bored with it. like, i remember i had just switched to MS and i ran into a drake, so even though i had defeated one as an archer and another time as a mystick archer, going against this one as a mystic spearhand felt like a new experience since i obviously couldn't do the same type of attacks i had done before! really glad i got out of my comfort zone of just sticking with fighter to explore some of the other vocations.

and speaking of the gameplay, i absolutely loved the pawn system. being able to have your own customizable companion that follows you along your journey and is loyal to you no matter what is just such a great concept, and on top of that, you get to also form bonds with other people's pawns as you're forming your own party! i'd get so sad when i'd have to dismiss a pawn that i had been traveling with for weeks in-game, and even more so that when i tried to rehire them, they completely changed vocations so i couldn't get them to rejoin my party since they were no longer what i'm looking for :( also, i had been wondering how people were getting their pawns to blush with them, which i mean for mine i didn't really mind because my main pawn was male and it seemed like some people wanted their pawns to be romanceable so i was like eh that's fine, that's not what i'm going for. HOWEVER it looks like if your pawn affinity is high enough, you get a slightly different speech from your pawn at the end when they help you kill the dragon! so that's also a really neat detail that the developers added, so i'm for sure gonna go for that since oof, when my main pawn was delivering his speech at the end....it was breaking my heart but i was so happy for him that he had gained some free will of his own, so hell yeah i wanna see what other things he says at the end with a high enough affinity!

the overworld exploration. ok, i don't know what it is about this overworld that made exploring every single corner and (almost) every single cave a joy to explore. having played botw/totk i hated the overworld so much because of how empty and unrewarding it felt, and how repetitive the caves got. i'm not saying that dd2's overworld is perfect, but seeing a golden trove beetle stuck to a tree of a ledge or finding a ferrystone at the end of a cave felt more rewarding than whatever the hell totk tried to do. i will say though that towards the end it was a bit disappointing how the treasure chests with weapons were containing equipment that was weaker than i already had, but i mean, considering i went through the overworld twice, i think that one is on me. i know some people complain how..."narrow" or "restricted" the exploration feels sometimes because at times you're just walking down a path and there's just huge cliffs on either side of you so you don't really get like to see an expansive view of the overworld, but honestly that never really crossed my mind. i actually didn't discover the elves' home until towards the game, even as i was making my way to it, i was just looking around taking in my surroundings because of how new and fresh it felt to me.

sidequests!!! ok this is another thing i've heard people complain about and how "shallow" they seem and i'm like....excuse me? did we play the same sidequests??? sidequests are like one of the things i love the most about any game (huge xenoblade x fan where the sidequests make the most content of the game), so having come from playing big games like granblue fantasy relink, botw/totk, xenoblade 2&3 where the sidequests are just soooo fucking boring, they make no attempt at getting me to care about the NPCs involved, have no interesting sidestories, or are just boring fetch quests, dd2's sidequests were a breath of fresh air.

like, are the people complaining about the sidequests just not care about daphne being abandoned as a child and now living in the slums but she actually has a twin rich brother (oh and seeing the maid that brought this all up now in the slums because she was fired for it?? oof!!), that one nun that was poisoning her patients at the giving hand under the guise of helping them, saving dorieann and then helping her save the sacred arbor (i'm sad i left this sidequest for last!), ulrika being fucking chased out of her village and being unjustly blamed for the dragon attacks (this part pissed me off soooo much and i was so happy to go back and kick all of their asses!!!), pawns being sold off to battahl via some weird human trafficking oxcart, helping hugo lead a more honest life after being imprisoned for having been part of that one desert gang, OH that one girl that wanted to learn magic and then loses control and almost kills her fucking grandma?? WILHELMINA'S SIDEQUEST??? (honestly one of my favorite sidequests in a game ever tbh, that end reveal was just too damn good) I mean i can go on and on!! SURE not all sidequests are winners and some are more shallow than others, but i'll be damned if the majority of these sidequests didn't have me invested in the NPCs and i'd be devastated if i were to mess them up somehow. so yeah, i mean i can maybe see them complaining that some characters' sidequests should have been more developed, but i think that takes me to my next point...

the story. i gotta say, the first part of the game's story just had me hooked and i couldn't wait to see what was going to happen. the whole thing with disa's plot and the false arisen and you trying to uncover the truth with captain brant's help so you could take your rightful place as the sovran, like...i was invested! but then like many people rightfully complain, once the coronation happens and you get to battahl, all of this kind of....falls off?? like it doesn't really matter anymore idk? i was so shocked when i opened that one door that phaseus goes through and the pathfinder was like "oh yeah go here and that's where you'll find your journey's end" i was like no way! over so soon? i mean, again, as an xcx fan, i'm fine with like, stories being interesting enough that keep you engaged but are not fully fleshed out, the gameplay and the sidequests in dd2 were enough to keep me playing. but like, it's kind of weird that nadinia takes like, a third of the game's coverart and i felt like we barely got to know her or that she was relevant enough for the story?? there were like what, two sidequests she was involved? the one where you find out who is trying to kill her, and then when you are guiding her in vernworth. i just loved her design and i was looking forward to seeing how else she would fit in all of this. same with ulrika, after you finish her sidequest, for someone i thought was going to be more important to the story, she really does disappear after you make her the chief of harve village. hell, apparently her whole quest is missable if you don't go back to melve to help out with the dragon fight! so i mean, yeah there's a lot of characters and story plots that i feel could have been more fleshed out, and the whole world lore didn't really click in for me until i got to....

the ending and the postgame world. man, that really made sense on how or why the pathfinder was able to change ambrosia's mind about handing over the godsbane sword so quickly. i was so confused by that and it honestly annoyed me cus i was like, what the hell, are the developers that lazy?? but no!! turns out we were just all characters in the pathfinder's little fan fiction world where everyone had a specific role and path to play in his little game!!!! fuck!!!! rothais my guy!!! this honestly just blew me away, no wonder all his victories and accomplishments felt empty after finding this out!! it was all a game to the pathfinder! defeating the dragon and becoming the sovran would have been a meaningless victory! i fucking LOVED how the pathfinder takes you back to your battle with the dragon to make you realize hey, you're stuck in a loop unless you do something different, which the dragon alludes to when you take too long to figure it out and he says "you're too late...!" and the fight begins again. damn, i just, love it when games do shit like this. i have to admit i had to look up what i had to do after fighting the dragon twice. i knew i had to do something while flying with the dragon because of the heartbeat, but i had completely forgotten i had the godsbane still with me (and thought it was weird how it only highlighted the item menu!).

and like the whole feeling of being in the postgame world just took me back to my majora's mask days, and i fucking loved it. the world is ending and you have to evacuate everyone from the major towns you've visited, and apparently you only have a limited time to get it done because the fog will slowly consume the towns if you rest for too long. and talking to some of the people trying to get them to evacuate as they're still going about their daily lives and they're like, no, i refuse to, let the world end i don't care!! so majora's mask, amazing. really liked the one where henrique didn't want to evacuate until you saved the enslaved pawns as well....ugh so good! apparently once you defeat the last dragon from the beams, the fog will no longer advance and you can explore the unmoored world freely, but honestly, since i had already gone through the overworld twice, i had no intention of grinding my equipment and trying to get "the best gear" because honestly, some of that endgame gear is kind of ugly lol.

really enjoyed the new dragon boss fights at the end though because being at lv 60 even without all of my gear leveled up or dragonforged, the giant bosses or the drakes weren't really as threatening as before and these new ones gave me something more challenging and interesting again! and don't get me started on how badass it was to see my pawn overtake the talos and kill a dragon for me...that moment really had me with my mouth agape and just made me go "wow, this game is amazing" for the nth time. i think in ng+ once i get to the unmoored world, now that i know that the timer kind of stops with the last dragon defeated, i'll explore a bit more and see how much tougher the new enemy varieties are. :)

one thing i didn't like though and i think it goes back to my story complaints from before is that like, ok you have to evacuate all of the leaders you've interacted with. i immediately warped to harve after talking with rothais because i was like ok ulrika my girl, let's get you and your people the hell out of here, do you not see the sky!! but....no...? she's supposedly one of the major romanceable characters but there's no quest to evacuate her and her people so...i guess just forget about the harve village? hello? she IS technically a leader so i don't know why this just wasn't a choice. oh wait, i guess because her whole sidequest is missable so they didn't want to make the true ending missable in case you couldn't evacuate harve...? ahhh who knows. but this really annoyed me lol.

also, not sure why everyone is saying or concluding that both the arisen and your pawn are dead as part of the true ending. i mean, ok, whatever, i'm used to bittersweet endings and i don't know enough about the dragon's dogma games lore to know more, but honestly i'm choosing to believe that my character and her pawn got washed up in a remote island but will come back and hence why your highest affinity character is looking off at the ocean :) or am i thinking about xcx again... either way, that ending cutscene of the old man sailing out seemed like dlc teaser or something so we'll see what comes out!

alright this is getting kinda long so just gonna finish it off with a couple of other things i didn't like about the game:

the music?? i mean, coming from gbf relink which has such a banger soundtrack, not sure there is much to say from the music department in dd2. the main theme though? fucking amazing. i get so pumped up when it plays when you choose the game in the ps5 main screen or in the proper title screen, and i even got a little teary eyed at the ending theme. but honestly, nothing much else to be impressed here. i might change my mind once i give the ost a proper listen but yeah, just some initial thoughts.

enemy variety. took me a while to notice but, for such a big overworld and where the world is just so dense with enemies, the enemy variety in this game is.....not so great. i think i saw someone say that there are like 26 enemies in total? with goblins, wolves, harpies, saurians, and bandits being the most common that you'll encounter during your travels. it really is annoying when you're trying to get from one place to another and you just keep getting ganged up by mobs that really will just not let up on you even if you run away from them. and apparently there weren't really any new enemies coming from dd1/da so...it's really baffling

the fast travel. with how much back and forth some of these quests require you do, people's complaints about the fast travel options in this game are valid. i wish they would give you an eternal ferrystone as part of the ng+ cus yeah, oxcarts aren't foolproof from being destroyed by enemies that attack you on your way to your destination, and honestly i'm glad i saved my ferrystones for the postgame world because i just was NOT going to be walking about everywhere in the unmoored world or w/e. i really do wonder how much time from my 84 hours was just spent walking to and from destinations. i read this comment elsewhere but this game really doesn't respect your time as a player so i'm glad i got to play a big part of it during my week off work.

romanceable companions. look, as a lesbian i can't complain that the two major romanceable companions are both women, but i do feel bad for people who wanted to romance captain brant or literally any other male NPC and have more fleshed out romance scenes like we got for ulrika and wilhelmina. even so, i mean, it really does suck that the game makes this choice not matter in the end? i got both ulrika's and wilhelmina's romance scenes and after wilhelmina disappears i was going for ulrika, but in the end neither of them ended up being my highest affinity character and instead i have gywndlr of all people looking out to the ocean in the ending cutscene. and that's really it i mean, your highest affinity character has no bearing whatsoever in the story except if they're there clutched by the dragon's hand and the ocean scene. i mean, not to talk about an early 2000s game, but tales of symphonia did such an amazing job with its affinity system that i still have not played another game that takes your choice for your highest affinity character matter so much in the main story plot. (haven't played bg3 so please don't come after me--although if you made it this far then thank you i guess???) so, while yes the ulrika/wilhelmina scenes are cool, the concept of romanceable/high affinity characters just felt underwhelming when compared to a 20 year old game.

whew!!! ok i didn't except this to be so long but considering how, yes despite all of the flaws regarding the enemies and the fast traveling and the overworld and the affinity system and the story and underused plot points and seemingly rushed content....i still fucking love this game and can't wait to do a ng+ run of it and just catch all of the references that i missed (at the very beginning the dragon already spells it out that you need to like kill your soul and body to break the curse and reveal the true world....love it!!!). i don't know if i'll ever play dd1/da considering i've heard people say that the gameplay is a bit rougher and the pawns not as....great?? idk but for now i can't wait to do some fanart of this game and will look forward to any updates/dlc that capcom releases for it. <3

[adeadphish]

Perfecting Bloodborne makes me a little sad. I have every trophy, collected every unique weapon, armor piece and other item, killed every boss and cleared the game up to ng+6. I have squeezed everything out of this masterpiece of a game and... that's all there is. While I can and do fresh replays, there is nothing new to find in the game. I want because it us so fucking good..... but, there is nothing else like it. Once it's gone, that's it.

Keep in mind, this is not a slight against Dark Souls or Elden Ring. They are also godly gaming experiences, but they are not quite the same as BB and they don't quite scratch the itch the same way. This is absolutely a game I wish I could erase from my brain and my Playstation account and experience from 0 all over again. I am praying Bluepoint Games is working on a ground up remake like they do so well or FromSoft is carving another Bloodborne but all I can do until then is wait

[kalina-c]

Part 3 of this extended rant about Split Damage in dark souls games lol. (forgot about how much a straight reblog makes it hard to scroll down to part 2, rip)

Part 1

Part 2 (ctrl-f "so let's count up the ways")

So anyway the really actually useful part of "split damage sucks," isn't really about split damage or even enemy defenses at all. It's about character builds and stat distributions.

Let's look at the Onyx Blade from Dark Souls 3. Split infusion between physical and dark damage, with fire on top when you use the weapon art; but that doesn't really make it a bad weapon when that's the exact same damage type as the pvp meta weapon, the Dark Lothric Knight Sword, and the fire buff on top is literally more of a damage increase than the Lightning Pine Bundle is.

What really makes it a hard pick is the four-way scaling distribution. This doesn't even make it a bad weapon on those terms, this just makes it an expensive weapon to get to its highest damage numbers and a stat distribution that's hard to fit into level limit metas or new game runs. Like at no-limit 99/99/99/99 you can, strictly speaking, get this weapon to high attack power, but it's hard to hit scaling caps in more than one stat at a time in the situations that most players would experience.

This is a build mismatch more than it is an indictment of split infusions or even multi-stat weapons. Like, again, Sword of Night and Flame in Elden Ring was one of the most broken weapons ever on the day one patch, and that's with also a four-way scaling split and three-way damage type split. It's the sheer motion value on the day one ash of war beam that made it cracked.

This isn't even a factor of elemental damage at all, really. The pure-physical quality build traditional in dark souls has actually been a sub-optimal build in Bloodborne for new players to take, with the linked endurance neglect being about the only practical way to fit it into a new game run/pvp level limit meta. Split-stat weapons are incredibly powerful in Bloodborne, with the first weapon on that list in particular (Ludwig's Holy Blade) being a popular favorite as the easy and obvious biggest AR in the realm. But the difficulty of fitting the blood levels in actually makes this pure physical build and weapon exemplify all the *actual* shortcomings behind the reaction of "split damage sucks".

And this is like kind of the reason I think the original reason for "split damage sucks" was trying an elemental weapon on the wrong build for its scaling and then blaming the weapon for it. Within Dark Souls 1, absolutely the context where the canard got popularized,

Velka's Rapier is one of the biggest ROI weapons in the history of this game design and easily the best new game sidearm for a sorcery build. (Its damage kind of falls off on latter NG+ cycles, as does twinkling titanite weapons generally in that game.)

Enchanted infusions are easily the best melee normal attack damage for a sorcery build. Great Scythe is above-average ROI, Claymore is universally good, Longsword is easy and safe, and Zweihander is one of the most fantastic weapons generally. Enchanted Rapier is probably the biggest riposte damage on a new game sorcerer.

Physical weapon + buff is kind of garbage for an all-in sorcerer and caster build. The *steep* drop-off in base damage on using a physical scaling weapon with a completely non-physical build is way more of a loss than you gain from the "superior" buff damage, if it isn't even already the case that the magic AR alone on a Magic or Enchanted Longsword just outscales anything you can get from Tin Crystallization Catalyst + Crystal Magic Weapon.

My first target goal weapon was the Moonlight Butterfly Horn, because it's one of the few 100% pure magic damage weapons in the entire series and I read that Split Damage Sucks. My friends, the purely Unsplit Damage Moonlight Butterfly Horn is one of the most mediocre weapons in the entire series. Its damage is meh and easily outclassed by a Magic Longsword; its moveset and motion values are weaker and redundant in the face of Velka's Rapier; Great Scythe is a far better mage weapon on multiple levels; etc.

So really, the common canards about Split Damage Sucks and Weapon Buffs Are Better really only make sense from the perspective of an all-in physical build with minimal dip into int for bare pre-requisites. Being a mage gender from the very beginning gave me the opposite possible experience of *checks notes* every character build common sense, take, and meta in the history of the world on Dark Souls and the Dark Souls cousin Elden Ring.

---

Addendum

One of the comments I've seen among the various Carian Grandeur one shot malenia videos is that Carian Grandeur is ironically one of the weakest ashes in the game on its own, which made no sense to me. It's a comment on a one shot demonstration video, so we're clearly talking about damage output and not the difficulty of landing a full charge, and the base motion value on Grandeur full charge is already among the stronger ones for ashes of war. The motion value on soul great swords in Elden Ring generally are very high — the Carian Greatsword spell and all three great sword ashes do really high burst damage that can one shot multiple field enemies at once, and the three stage charge on grandeur gives a big multiplier even before you apply a mountain of buffs. This common reaction to magic attacks being magic really isn't helping them beat the allegations that all dark souls build theory is pure physical builds expecting pure magic tools to do maximum damage on a pure physical build with zero int or magic investment, etc.

~

Somewhere else I've gotten a comment that I'm wrong about Split Damage, because sorcery builds in elden ring can use meteor spells to get around magic resistance, and,

My friends,

Elden Ring meteor spells are the most split damage in the world

Meteor spells are boosted by physical damage buffs and will do high damage on magic defensive enemies. They'll have that portion of their damage tanked by physically resistant enemies, so it's a confirmed physical damage spell school.

But also

Meteor spells are boosted by the terra magica spell and the magic scorpion charm and the magic cracked tear, all of which only boost magic elemental damage. And it's only part of the damage, as fextra likes to call the scorpion charm boost insignificant (hah).

Meteor spells are by definition fully split damage. And not only are they split damage, they are the best damage in the game. Rock Sling deletes bosses and enemies for free, Meteorite is pretty much the strongest sorcery until you get to the snow field, and Astel meteor is by design the strongest sorcery in the game and way more damage than most every other option with whatever build. Split damage is the very specifically best damage in elden ring.

[wisdomshoes]

alright, I read it... I don't really understand your take on Elden Ring, if it's just dark souls 3 but worse than it's still a good game also, why does it being overrated make it worse? one of them being music is really funny to me just because I've never met anyone who doesn't like music. all around you have pretty good taste 👍

have a great day :]

i KNOW, I'm so perfect in every aspect yet no one ever compliments me. i mean they do but i shrug it off with a joke or a bit and entirely forget about it. (anyways here comes a thorough explanation on why i fucking hate elden ring) (oh god i am so sorry if you're gonna read all of this) (to prefix this i wanna say you're wonderful and i hold no ill will towards you and i don't want you to feel bad about liking elden ring or fromsoft. i love you. personally. this is not parasocial)

also elden ring is shit. it being overrated is a problem because fromsoft might just get the idea to make more games unbalanced but also make them completely without challenge by adding super op items. then again fromsoft rarely ever listens to fans. they just do what the hell they wanna even if it's shit. part of the reason why i love and hate them. end game pve unbalanced as shit. having spent 60 points on vigor should stop me from dying in two hits. enemies have so much HP it's just not rewarding in any way to fight the lot of them. unless ofc you force yourself to use stupidly op starts and items. so you lose either way unless you ride past them. dungeons are unmemorable except a few actually interesting ones. the world is rather empty and besides blowing a massive hole in the ground and burning down a tree is not really affected by anything you do. all the open world is is spectacle. just a lot of sepctacle with very little gameplay. they made multiplayer unfun. not only invading. duels (rip) and arena are just a shitfest of people only using the most overpowered bullshit and when they're not, they're using fucking magic. which if you play your cards right makes you pretty much immortal. i only found one way to counter semi decent mages. it's being a mage. only time I had fun was this one time in like level 100 arena where this guy changed his entire set to mine including weapons and kicked my ass. besides that only fun in pvp is low level. mages aren't bullshit yet, people don't use the fucking rot (mostly), people are just having fun. actually not pvp, just arena, cause when you invade low level it's always going to be a gank of one regular character and two ng+7 assholes baiting invaders. but that's just part of fromsoft pvp i suppose. the 60 euro experience ladies and gentlemen. instead of balancing it, make it so unfun for one side people will just stop playing it! what else.. they added horses but no horse combat. way to go from. status effects are just taken too far. curse is still useless though except for cheaters. status effects apply through rolls and you can easily make an instaproc build. im not sure if that happened in their previous games. all of the enemies you fight are going to or have been reused. can't have sex with the fingers. 0/10 would probably play it for another 300 hours. I'm not proofreading any of that.

but the mods are great. im not buying the dlc though. it's just going to be more of the same. i mean maybe they could improve it to dark souls 3 standards but if i wanted that I'd just replay dark souls 3. im far too busy replaying Sekiro for the 50th time though aka THEIR BEST GAME BY FAR.

also ive met several people who "don't like" or "don't listen to" music. fucking lunatics, i didn't keep contact with them. also i don't just like music, I'd be dead without music. im beyond obsessed. that's why i felt the need to add it y'know. anyways love you.

[ablegaming]

Elden Ring Accessibility Review

Game title: Elden Ring

Platform(s): Windows (Steam), Steam Deck, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Playstation 4, Playstation 5

Languages: English, simplified and traditional Chinese, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai

Age rating: ESRB M, PEGI 16

Multiplayer: Yes; several types of multiplayer. Cooperative mode allows players to load into a party together. You can also leave summon signs near bosses so that online players can summon you for assistance with a boss battle, and likewise, you can call upon them when you discover their summon signs on the ground. As with the Dark Souls series, players can leave messages on the ground for other online players to read; some of these are helpful, some are funny, and some are intentionally misleading, so take their advice with apprehensive discretion.

There is also PVP (player-vs-player) mode in which you can challenge online players in combat. You can choose whether you want cross-region play open or restricted in the Settings menu. Voice chat can be turned on/off.

Genre/theme: Action RPG, open-world, epic dark fantasy story, boss battles, leveling up, and character customization. Elden Ring is the first game collaboration between FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro) and George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones), in which your character, a “Tarnished”, sets out to repair the Elden Ring and to become the new Elden Lord. There are several endings that can be achieved by completing different side quests.

Violence: Heavy; Elden Ring’s central focus is magic, sword, axe, hammer, spear, and bow combat, and enemies are often dismembered. There is quite a lot of blood, though blood can be turned off in the settings menu.

Maturity: Partial nudity, some foul language, and a lot of dialogue about killing and death. Many of the enemies and bosses are creepy and fairly unsettling to look at it, and a few of the characters on your side are as well (especially the Fingers and the Finger Crones). No sexuality, drugs, or alcohol.

Difficulty modes: None. Once the main story is completed you can start New Game+ mode, which raises the difficulty of enemies and the amount of experience points gained; this can be done as many times as wanted, to continue leveling up and to get different endings. All weapons, armor, and spells carry over into NG+.

Difficulty is one of the biggest accessibility barriers in Elden Ring, and all of the FromSoftware games. These games are difficult, so difficult that they’re not always fun for everyone; dying endlessly and not making any progress sucks, so I honestly don’t recommend this game series to anyone who isn’t looking for a challenge. It would be really awesome if an easier difficulty or story mode was included, but I do understand that these games are meant to be as challenging as old-school games like Castlevania and Mega Man.

Thankfully in addition to recruiting help from online players you have the ability to summon spirit ashes to fight alongside you, this is a huge help with aggroing and wearing down bossses, though spirit ashes generally have fairly low health. Leveling up your spirit ash companions (you can set 3 as your current choices) will make the game a bit less difficult, and it’s worth taking the time to hunt down the grave glovewort and ghost glovewort needed to improve them. Try to track down the ghost and grave glovewort bells, as these unlock the ability to buy an unlimited number of them from the merchant in the Roundtable Hold.

There's another way to approach these games which may appeal: cheesing. You can cheese many of the bossfights, there are ridiculously easy methods to taking them down. These can be fun to figure out on your own or you can reference the many YouTube videos on the subject. If the game is going to be so unfairly difficult at points then there’s absolutely no shame in exploiting its design flaws and intentional secrets to get past the bosses that you’re stuck on. If anyone gives you a hard time for it just ignore 'em, video games are meant to be fun.

Complexity: Medium-hard; Miyazaki is known for creating some pretty mysterious game worlds, so it wasn’t surprising that I had to look up how to find a few things online. You can fight the bosses in any order you like but they may overpower you, so knowing when to fight and when to run is a critical strategy, you can come back at any point to take them on. The main boss battles get progressively more difficult, with the last few being almost insurmountable; calling upon cooperative online help is immensely helpful.

Instructions, saving, story recap, menus, & waypoints: The tutorial section can be skipped or accidentally missed, be sure to head down to the right in the first area. Controls can be referenced in the Settings menu at any time. Menus are simple to navigate and find what you’re looking for. The game autosaves often, and also saves upon exiting the game.

Fast travel is available to several locations on the map. You have a spectral horse you can summon to ride on at any time, and it can double jump! The map is unlocked in sections, with each section containing a map piece to be collected. One of the biggest accessibility omissions was the choice not to include any sort of a journal or quest marking system, this means you have to keep track of where you are in a quest, where you need to go next, and where all of it is located on the map.

As is the case with Miyazaki’s previous games, the story isn’t very clearly or sequentially spelled out (intentionally) and has to be pieced together by the player (and by watching YouTube videos). George R.R. Martin’s literary voice and world lore add a rich fantasy quality to the well-established FromSoftware gameplay experience.

Subtitles: Yes; can also be turned off. The HUD (heads-up-display) can be turned off as well.

Text customization: None. Subtitles are fairly small white text on a dark gray background for contrast.

Voice acting: Fully voice-acted. There’s even an invisible character named Boc the Seamster that speaks to you in a few locations. He’ll give you a couple of helpful items if you find him.

Volume settings: Master Volume, Music, Sound Effects, and Voice can all be set from 0–10.

Photosensitivity: HDR can be turned on/off. Brightness, Maximum Brightness, and Saturation can all be adjusted in the Settings menu.

There are several lightning spells that are really hard on the eyes, so I focused on learning and using fire and comet magic instead. There's a species of flower called Fulgurbloom, small patches of these flowers attract lightning bolts from the sky, I definitely recommend steering clear of them.

These can be remedied a bit by playing in a well-lit room and adjusting screen brightness (TV & in-game), backlight (TV), contrast (TV & in-game), and color settings (TV). Additionally, wearing blue light lens glasses, tinted lens glasses, or even sunglasses may be helpful.

Motion-sickness and camera: Camera speed can be adjusted from 1–10. X and Y axis thumbstick pitches can be inverted, and Reset Camera Y-axis can be turned on/off. Auto-Target, Auto Lock-On, and Manual Attack Aiming can all be turned on/off. Camera Auto Rotation, Camera Auto Wall Recovery, and Cinematic Effects can all be turned on/off as well, turning some of these settings off may help significantly with motion-sickness. Camera Performance settings can be switched to Prioritize Framerate or Graphics.

The most dizzying thing in the game is locking on to enemies while on your spectral horse and riding in circles around them, thankfully changing some of these camera settings can resolve this, or you can also choose not to lock on to enemies while riding your spectral horse and control the camera manually.

Colorblindness mode: None, color settings can only be adjusted in TV settings.

Controller rumble: Yes; can be set from 0–10. Motion sensor functions can be turned on/off as well.

Remappable controls: Yes; all buttons can be remapped, I’ve read that there are a couple of remapping limitations on the Windows/Steam version.

Quick-time events: None

Physical impact: Medium-heavy; can vary depending on what type of weapons you choose to use. Daggers, short swords, and dual weapons require quick button pressing, whereas casting magic spells and fighting with heavier/stronger weapons is much easier on the hands and arms.

Adaptability and input: The default controls are mapped well, and can also be customized. A lot of the default controls are thumb input, so gamers with thumb or thumb joint struggles may have to customize their control scheme and/or set the controller on their lap to play using their fingers.

Can be played with Sony Dualshock 4 controller, Sony Playstation 5 Dualsense controller, Xbox One controller, Xbox X/S controller, mouse + keyboard, Steam controller, Steam Deck, and any controller that is compatible with Steam. The Steam version has full controller support. No touchscreen or voice control functionality.

Overall accessibility score: 3.6/5.0 (Please note that this score does not reflect the entertainment or enjoyment value of the game, it represents the range of accessibility for gamers who have specific limitations.)

A leap in the right direction (the first FromSoftware game to include jumping,) Elden Ring is the most accessible FromSoftware and Miyazaki game yet, but still has considerable room for improvement. There are definite photosensitivity concerns with lightning weapons, spells, and lightning in the environment, as well as some camera rotation motion-sickness concerns, but all of these can be adjusted and greatly improved within the game’s Settings menu and by adjusting your TVs brightness and contrast where needed. Elden Ring can be rough on the hands when using quick melee weapons, but opting for magic or slower heavy weapons can make a huge difference with pain and fatigue.

The lack of any quest markers or waypoints makes for a frustrating time trying to remember where you are in the main story and side quests, and almost requires referencing YouTube and Wiki pages to figure out where to go. The difficulty level creates the greatest barrier to enjoyment, and may be too much for anyone not looking to die and practice a bunch to overcome the insurmountable odds. Prepare to do a lot of leveling up (do the bird farm!) The ability to summon spirit ashes (and online players) into your game to assist you with battles is a nice addition to the Souls formula, and makes the game more approachable.

Elden Ring is the first fully voice-acted game from FromSoftware (with very talented voicework too), though unfortunately text settings are still unavailable, and the default text is pretty small. There’s a lot of mystery in this world, and you may find yourself getting lost sometimes, but exploring the beautifully desolate Lands Between is an experience in itself.

My review can also be read and listened to (text-to-speech) on my Medium page at: https://medium.com/@AbleGaming/elden-ring-accessibility-review-658bf70b7c79

[sevens-evan]

Video game question. I’ve seen some posts of you talking about the Dark souls series and I was wondering what your thoughts were on about Elden Ring if you played it? My very first souls type game was dark souls 3 then I played 2 and tried demon souls. Personally I don’t think I could have enjoyed/beat dark souls 2 and 3 if it wasn’t for my friends but I found Elden ring kinda easy? When Elden ring first came out I saw a lot of people complaining how hard it was and even though i only beat 2 dark souls game I found Elden Ring to be very fun yet somewhat easier as well.

yeah i played through elden ring twice, working on an ng+ playthrough now. my thoughts on it are sorta complicated. i think the tools exist in it to make it easier than any of the other souls games, summons obviously and even just some of the builds that are possible are utterly game breaking. however i play it like a souls game, melee only no summons, and doing that it’s much much harder than any of the souls games. the only souls boss i would say is at all comparable to, say, malenia would be slave knight gael who is probably the hardest boss in the trilogy imo.

that said, i think the existence of those tools makes the game kind of. worse? a lot of the late game elden ring bosses are designed for you to fight alongside the mimic tear. like very clearly designed to be fought with you and your super powered twin. and it really just degrades the experience in my opinion. it’s way less skill based that way, lot more rng. elden ring is an absolutely incredible open world action rpg but it’s kind of a shitty souls game. ds3 is still the absolute peak of that genre imo.

also if you’ve dragged yourself thru ds2 and tried demon souls you should def play dark souls 1. way better than both of those by far. and bloodborne if you’re on playstation dgdhdhdhdh