#why finish the games i should be playing when i could play bloodborne again

[paranoidgemsbok]

im in bloodborne mode once again

[oroborosdreadwalker]

Been seeing everyone making posts about quest progression in fromsoft games and about how you should have A quest log, if your that stuck just google it, i wont judge you. Let me tell you a story.

When I first played DS1 i finished the tutorial version of the undead asylum and beat the asylum demon with the nroken straight sword because thats what I thought you had to do, not avoid it and run to the doors at the top left. Got an item i could not use and didnt know how to get the stats to use it, if the boss didnt level me up what does. I find my actual weapon an Axe and the spider shield forgot its actual name(yes my first ever character was a pyromancer with the defult look) wondered why i couldmt of used that on the boss, got my sunny D and unlocked the shortcut back to the bonfire learning "oh this game has shortcuts" got my glove and beat all the enemys in the area, saw there was a door I couldn't get through and died because i forgot about one enemy and didnt heal because i didnt know what button to press. Respawned at the bonfire with no souls, questioned shit for a minute then went back to where i died and saw my souls where there, i have now learnt the punishment for dieing, and that i have one chance to grab them again, because i put 2 and 2 together with the souls i got on my way that id drop them and my other pile would despawn. Finally i get to that grand opening and realise "ooohhhh this was how i was suppost to fight it" so like a dumbfuck I RESTARTED MY FUCKING GAME TO DO IT THAT WAY" learnt about plunging attacks, and had an easier time beating him, but I didnt get the item he dropped before. SO I DELETED MY SAVE AGAIN AND DID IT THE WAY I DID BEFORE AGAIN WHY WAS 16 YEAR OLD ME SO FUCKING CONFUSING! Met the bird and got sent to firelink and finally learnt how to use my souls as they are used to level up, used what i had to boost my strength and vitality, wondered what to do so i talked to the first NPC i saw the crestfallen warrior, and got told theres two bells, ring'em thats its. Wasnt told where just one above one below. Thats was the starr of my DS adventures and taught myself "oh this game doesnt really care about you, you actually have to use your brain and remember this shit. Fuck. And that stayed with me through all the games DS2? Yup kept that in mind once i saw i wasnt going to be told absolutly anything at all until i saw my first lord soul acquired when beating the sinner. Ans realised oh i need more of these 3 kinda held your hand more i find but still got lost at some places and accidently summoned the dancer early because i accidently killed emma becuae i put my controller down for her diolouge and my right bumper got pressed enough to let lopse a heavy attack. Learnt of the consequences of killing friendly NPCs also during this i failed most NPC questlines in all the games, i failed to save solaire so he turned hostile when he found his sun, that one hurt the most, dont remember which on hurt the most in DS2, in 3 i failed greirats questline and got him killed loosing a merchant, and i failed Eileen's questline in bloodborne. Still havent played demon souls yet but want to. And in elden ring i failed Bocs questline, so yes you will fail, but you have to think, the games wont hold your hand want a quest log? Go fucking make one yourself a physical one you can put your finding in so if yoh get stuck or see something you can flip through it to see if its important. I do, ifni can find the ones i made for DS1 ill post a picture of it but im pretty sure I lost that when my second apartment burnt down.

[crazy-form]

omg in my playthru of ds1 right now i just rung the second bell and did i think the next two/three bosses after that but now i'm stuck again TT i would say that imo… having played all of them except demon souls.. perhaps a bit controversial!!! but i personally found dark souls 3 and elden ring to be the easiest! mostly in terms of like, most user friendly esp towards new players! 3 was the first one i actually finished finished, then i played bloodborne and i really love it sm that one is my fave and i think that one can be a bit easier if you like playing at a faster pace? if that makes sense? it's def more fast paced! but the hardest ones for me have been ds2 bc the mechanics are soo so different and then sekiro was a really steep learning curve for me!!

i've seen lots of rumors and theories going around that the dlc could be something like miq's dreamworld in his egg thingy and that godwyn could be involved SO im hopeful 👁️👁️

im doing a faith+elden beast greatsword run in my ng+ now to mix things up but im honestly a big big fan of the dex+arc builds hehe my first playthru i did rivers of blood!! i played like right on release so i didn't deal with all the patching and enemy scaling so when i did it, the weapon was a lot less op imo i dont know why they even patched it to begin with kkfddfkd but i really wanna try a moonveil playthru then i THINK i wanna try using a halberd bc i always have so much fun with those after i do my faith run but like you said the holy damage sucks so bad in this game that i'm not sure if i'll be able to stick to my plans 😭

it's funny bc in each game there's always one thing that kinda sucks… like in ds3 the bleed damage is like ULTRA trash bc they patched it to be worse but ds1 tbh has a good balance? i'm currently using a morningstar for bleed buildup in my playthru of that one and it's been going well for me so far!

no i agree with you!! especially elden ring really is very beginner friendly!! and i think that's kinda what fromsoft aimed for with this game 🥰 i have yet to play ds3 tho... and ALSO i have heard a lot of bad things about ds2... i try avoiding spoilers as much as i can, including game mechanics and such but even the little i heard about the game, i can confidently say i'm terrified of playing it 🧡

ohhh that's fun though!! yeah sorry to say dex+arc builds are easy mode sdjafkhlasdjfh but i respect it!!! seriously!! it feels higher paced and it's a nice change from strength builds! but personally i prefer feeling like i didn't cheese the boss with frost + bleed + god knows what else jdfhljdsaf i do that when helping someone kill a boss though jsdfhasjdfh can you believe i never in my life touched moonveil... i feel like i should have at LEAST tried it but... yeah... but i can only recommend using halberds!! the golden one from the limgrave tree sentinel is especially fun! and holy damage sucks but honestly unless you're on ng+3 or higher it doesn't make that much of a difference 🥰 i went for a holy build on ng+4... regrets......... so many regrets......... all the late game bosses have 80 resistance to it..... sdjfhsjdfhs

oh yeah i used morning star in ds1!! then i found claymore oops. but i'm definitely taking notes for when i play ds1 again 👀 but i love my claymore so much sjkafhljksfh

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again

the last fuckin one of the year. i posted one of these almost every week. you can find all 50 posts @tuesday-again and every tuesday again song on this spotify playlist. 

listening fictional aisle, by tall boy special. this is nonsensical and delightful. i don’t know that it’s particularly well produced or that the music video is especially good but it’s a song that does what it says on the tin. 

reading high crimes by christopher sebela. good premise! disgraced former snowboarding champ now moonlights as a grave robber when she’s guiding rich tourists up everest! stumbles across a dead spy! mystery unravels in a disappointing way and the ending made me yell OH COME ON so loud the dog upstairs barked in alarm!

i do appreciate how the male author and the male artist gave me a sort of fucked up woman who is not sexy at all in her breakdown(s) and there aren’t any weird Hurt but Sexy panels even though she does have full mascara and falsies on in every closeup. they drank like three quarters of their glass of respect women juice

watching the thing (1982, dir. Carpenter). every year i watch a non-traditional christmas movie bc honestly fuck this holiday. i have not seen this since high school when i was trying to impress someone. it is understandable why it was not a hit at first, bc the pacing is fucked and this movie expects me to tell twelve (a full dozen!) scruffy men apart. i could not tell you the timeline of infection or who infected who based on one viewing.

i think it only gets actually tense when it’s an interpersonal thriller- when everyone’s super paranoid and trying to figure out who is infected based on??? idk??? vibes??? interpersonal bullshit before they figure the blood test out??? it’s a solid movie. i think it would be a much more interesting weird short experimental film and it doesn’t really need to be two hours. or if it does give me more of everyone slowly turning on each other and factions forming. 

also, the last time i saw this i had not played fallout 4 (because it wasn’t out) and i had to pause the movie and sigh deeply at the introduction of kurt russell as rj macready. bethany esda could have a made an interesting parallel with the synths or done ANYTHING with it other than going “oh cool name we’re big john carpenter fans bc people seem to like him??? don’t you like all the REFERENCES to OTHER BETTER MEDIA in OUR PIECE OF MEDIA???” but ALAS.

idk if i’m ever going to watch it again but i appreciate what it’s trying to do and its use of practical effects. also more movies should have flamethrowers for no particular reason. i think kurt russell did a good job trying to save the planet

playing three different open world games

genshin impact, the game i actually want to play and am enjoying although the current event is stressing me out a little bit

the redder deader redemption, the game i really need to learn to use a controller for and is stressing me out in a different way bc i already know i will pour several hundred hours of my life into it when i could be doing things like replaying fallout to tighten up my fic more. this is probably the one most likely to get shoved to the back burner for later.

and monster hunter, my best friend’s favorite game, bc nothing would make her happier than being able to play it with me and yanno what this is the least i can fucking do for her even though this is not a flavor of game i tend to enjoy (trial-and-error learn how to beat difficult bosses, lots of prepwork and nesting menus, the same reasons i will never play bloodborne or dark souls)

also, thinking about video games all day at work makes me want to play them less. which makes sense but is still disappointing

making made a thing, framed it, framed two other things. not generally a fan of framing things in hoops yet here we are

top left: sewed a little felt strip on the back of the previously-featured scorpio piece so it hangs properly on my wall

bottom left: pattern from @roachpatrol , a line from the Imperial Radch trilogy. this 40x40 tiny thing took just under five hours start-to-finish not counting washing & drying time (stitching, backstitching, all the fiddly bits involved with framing) while i caught up on waypoint radio

right: this was a christmas gift from my sister that came rolled up in a little packet. i don’t have enough felt to properly back it but it is washed, hooped, and i cut the circles of matboard and batting to keep it from collapsing in on itself over time. i don’t know if i want to put it in my bathroom, bc that’s where my washer and dryer live and everything gets linty and weird real fast. maybe the outside of the door

[seekeroftruthpromestein]

Welp. Paradox time.It’s the Finale.

Yikes. Last campground....

That doesn’t bode well...

Here they are. All my friends. I’ve traveled with them for this long. We’re near the end of the game. Who knows what will happen... 

Promestein. You’ve been a very interesting character to see through this game. Seeing you young kind of shows you were always a fucked up kid. But, you have a good heart. And you now have a found family. You’re no longer a lone wolf salvaging through a dark world. You have us. And we’re happy to have you and alllow you to examine this bright new world.

Nuruko. I sadly didn’t get to know you too well and I’ll be sure to remedy that next game. But you were an interesting little thing. 

I wouldn’t have pegged you as a main character honestly but hey. I’m glad your here. You were another person that I’ll have to be sure to bring next time because I feel you probably have lots of interesting insight. 

Pope. You are DEF going to be in my next group. You were one of the most exciting twists i’ve ever seen and I am happy you were here. I am still angry for no sex scene. 

Hilde. Once again, another “I didn’t bring around enough” but you hey. Happy to have you.

These two were my favorite running joke. The not so wise senpai and the student. 

Not sure why YOU are here but you WERE the first boss of the game. So. Yeah. Welcome.

And you were the first recruited monster... I think.

This little exchange reminds me. Granberia was NOT at ALL a regular character in this entire exchange. Hardly any of the knights showed their faces. Alma I think was the most regular. 

The spirits play little purpose as well. In the orginal trilogy they were SUPER important as they were a constant ability you had to keep on or die.  Here. They’re not weak, they’re decent buffs.  But I rarely use them... I did use them actually in the battle against Blalice. Alice actually is a Spirit Summoner because I felt it was rather poetic all things considered. 

Wait are you a noble? Maybe you should put on pants. And a shirt. But okay. Vanilla! The most useful member that never see’s battle. She was BRIEFLY drafted in Black Alice when all of the other allies died but yeah. She has been a rock this entire time. Constantly producing MP for the party.  

I admit I never had a use for her. She mostly stayed around because she had the most Dialog from things. 

And ah. The MVP herself. Okay second MVP but we’ll get to her soon. Superb support. Valuable as hell. Sadly a lot of Angels have Auto-hit attacks. But I would have lost without her many times. 

I’m trying to do the whole sentimental thing but yeah. Don’t have a lot to say. Maybe one of these days I’ll have just the four of them on a team. 

I’m just WAITING for you to betray me. But it’s a bit late and you’re no longer important in the slightest so. 

Ah speak of the devil. Now. Time for the main course. 

Traveling with Black Alice has been a really facinating experience. She’s a lot of fun. If you know, a bit evil. It’s interesting that she played the Alice. Pretending to be something she’s not. It makes me wonder if it’s a tradition? I wonder if this experience will make her nicer. 

Ah Sonya. You sadly have a LOT of death flags... It was interesting the idea of Luka having a human friend, but from a writing perspective it makes sense as she suddenly got the tropes that were associated with Alice in the first game. 

Not a good sign.

This does bring a point though. Sonya I dropped out of the party for not being too useful. A healer in a game where healing is incredibly easy. And she didn’t exactly have a whole lot... Actually I could have turned her into a vampire funny enough. And a worm Villager. But yeah, besides that. She didn’t have a whole lot. I’m probably gonna try using her more in my Ilias file as I want to RP it as more of a Human/Angel Centric idea. The only overlap being Prom really. 

And Alice. I really wish there was more to you but I get it. The romance between Luka and her just isn’t  a focal point. Despite the fact that her and Luka’s children are in fact facing off. I kind of wish that was addressed more. 

And her mother... There’s actually a LOT of plot threads still not addressed. 

Was hoping for Elemental Giga. This would be a game where it could be theoretically useful though. With all the abilities and such.

Ilias prayer music in the background.

Now we have Opera music... Place has changed.

Less then steller. 

You bitch.

You know what. Fuck you. YOU are FOURTH! 

Alright gotta act quickly. Can’t... wait

WHAT??

SHE SAID IT

I’m not sure if gleefully killing an entire town counts. 

Never a nice thing to learn.

“Then the fanfiction writers started... There’s this ONE bitch. She runs a Promestein blog and if you LISTENED to the drivel she writes. She made up this nonsense with male monsters for drama’s sake”

“And don’t get me started on the Luka Situation. There were like 3 at one point.”

Wait... How many others from other worlds??

...Wait When??? I can go over level 60 now?? Must be when I updated.. Huh. Okay. Wish I did this earlier.

Too many... oh

See. I’m doing an RP with La Croix that takes place using this concept. But something both of us realized is that Luka actually very rarely DIED in most of his endings. Not right away. Many of them used him as a pleasure slave. Or married him. Or he just gave up adventuring. Some like the angels even used him for 1000′s of years. So. Theoretically. He would have had to live his entire life. Die of natural causes. And then wake up back at a fight he had years ago. 

But here it just says failed. 

Oh.... Is this...Which Ilias?

I forgot... You’re... the Real ilias. so you have been trying your best to keep things from going to shit huh?

Oops.

Yikes... So yeah. Makes sense. Fuck that Lukia (Which was us)

The...Remina labs??

Oh hey. It that bitch.

Yes Little Prom. Yes. Soon. You will meet. Yourself.

A better part of the whole. I remember there being an Angel/Monster hybrid who says she couldn’t  combine her dark and holy energy. This is probably why.

I wonder if this is a joke of some kind revolving around smoking becoming less allowed in Japan.

And they summoned.... Black..Alice. Is that how she was alive in the original Trilogy??

Oh no... This..... Is.... Original Trilogy Black Alice.

As creepy music plays. I am reminded. The White Rabbit is a universal Constant. Where was she then in the original Trilogy? Simple. She was here. Right here. In Black Alice... the drug created by Promestein. The fusion of Holy and Dark.

Those poor Scientist.

That Casualty of it.

Oh. Dear. Lord.

“So you finished the art for that Hentai game right?” “HENTAI GAME?? I thought we were making Bloodborne.”

That is terrifying. 

Oh dear lord.

Angels. Demons. Both are at her demand.

YOU SAID SHE COULD NOT REACH US.

Of course. Time Succubi from aother wordl

That. Is terrifying.

Yup. Zero.

She’s dying as the Villain again? The Pyrrha. 

Wait. What?

So... You.. Were killing them to.. Bring them into YOUR world??? So. They’re alive? 

So they’re killing people... to bring them into another?  This reminds me of a little bit of a Webcomic called Order of the Stick. Where the gods wondered briefly if they should destroy the world, in order to save the souls. Because the main monster, was a giant horrifying sould devouring creature.  So if the gods destroyed the world, they could save many from inhiliation, and bring them into the after life.  This begs a lot of question about after lives and existance beyond death and whether or not it truly is a death. 

Bloodying her hands so her daughter doesn’t have to.

Yeah I would like to know that as well.

I would like to know actually.

Wait why are you wearing clothes now?

I forgot you were a person.  Wait. So these are from another universe.... One where Ilias won...And therefor Eden got to wear clothes. 

The old Monster and Angel War, Fought in the foreground of the world we stand.

And the death flags come home to roost. 

Was she... one the entire time?

Or did she become one now?

Mhm. This looks familiar.

And the music begins. The  battle wasn’t too hard. But...

This isn’t good.

Not grand.

This battle music is though. ♪♫

Oh you bitch.

We beat both of them... or...

We did not.

That’s... really really not good.

...what?

HUH???

UMMM????

SHES A WHATR??

She’s the element of chaos....   Does that mean there’s a HOly and Dark Spirit too?

Fine. I’ll train you.

...What?

Oh.... shit.... Dad... Killed Alice’s Mom.

And. That. Is the end.... Welp. I guess we have to do the Ilias Route next.

[mrslittletall]

Prompt: Trapped in a burning Building Fandom: Bloodborne Characters: Vicar Amelia, Ludwig the Holy Blade Word Count: 2.712 AO3-Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18718291/chapters/52315414

Summary: It was a completely normal day for Amelia until she heard the scream and saw the flames... something was clearly wrong in the Healing Church.

(Author's note: This is pretty much my headcanon about Laurence' turning and death from the POV of Amelia. Enjoy!

I am not going to sugarcoat this, inspiration for this prompts has been rather low, so I will only write works for it when inspiration strikes. However, the prompts “Ambush” or “Selfharm” would earn me a bingo, so if you have ideas for them, feel free to shoot at them me.) Written for @badthingshappenbingo​

Lately Laurence didn't had much time for her and because she was still too young to act as a full time blood saint, Amelia spend quite a large portion of her free time at the orphanage, playing with the younger children.

This day, she had brought an easy to understand board game and once she had explained the rules, the children had caught on it quickly and greatly enjoyed the game. After the first few rounds they were ready to play on their own, so that Amelia could make room for another child and decided to watch them play, only chiming in when they asked her questions or she saw someone breaking the rules, though, it mostly were just honest mistakes.

It felt like the most average and normal day a fourteen year old girl could have and she leaned against the wall, getting drowsy as she watched the children play.

In the back of her mind, she worried about Laurence. He had been off the last few weeks. He barely had let anyone near him, not even Ludwig, and whenever she saw him he looked sick. Ludwig told her that he coughed a lot and though he tried to hide it, he apparently was barely able to keep any food down and vomited almost everything out he ate.

That Laurence, the Vicar of the Healing Church, the discoverer of the Holy Blood, was sick, was concerning her. She knew perfectly how well the Healing Blood worked, she had seen it at work countless times, the first time at herself, when Laurence had helped her getting rid of a condition named anemia. Apparently Laurence had suffered from the same condition as a child and he had often told her how glad he was that she didn't have to grow up with this condition, like he did.

When Amelia thought back to her teachings, there was only one sickness that the Holy Blood couldn't cure and that was the Beastly Scourge. She gasped at the thought. Could it be...? No, he was the Vicar of the Healing Church. He surely wouldn't be able to get such a lowly sickness mostly observed at the lower classes.

She snapped out of her thoughts as she heard the children around the board games get into a little fight. As she wanted to ask what was going on, she heard a scream that made her blood curdle.

The children heard it too.

“What was that?”

“Are we having the hunt..?”

“Sister Amelia, I am scared..”

“We shouldn't have a hunt... it's too early...”, Amelia murmured, pressing the girl that had expressed her fear, Evangeline, against her.

She didn't want to panic the little ones, but... this scream had been so close. Too close. It sounded like it had come from within, not from outside. Did that mean... had someone in the church turned? Her thoughts raced to Laurence.

She stood up and said: “Children, stay here. Don't go out. I will find a member of the choir to watch over you.”

“Sister Amelia, are you going to leave us?”, Evangeline asked, looking at her with big eyes.

“I will promise you that I come back.”, she smiled and straightened her long hair, snatched up her skirt and rushed out of the room.

Her first stop was the break room of the choir. Luckily, she found a few members gathered there. They were locked in a heated discussion and stopped once they saw Amelia enter.

“What are you doing here, St. Amelia?”, one of them asked, from the voice it was Yuria, their leader. “I thought you wanted to spend your time in the orphanage?”

“Something happened in the church.”, Amelia said. “And I need to check up on Vicar Laurence. He... he has looked terrible lately. I need to see if he is alright. I wanted to ask one of you to watch over the little ones.”

The three choir members looked to each other and then at her. “...It could be better if you stayed here.”, a male voice said, June, she thought.

“What, why?”, Amelia demanded to know. “I don't know if you are aware, but Vicar Laurence adopted me and therefore is my legitimate father. I need to know if he is alright.”

“Amelia, we only mean well...”, Yuria took up the word. “This morning Vicar Laurence was acting really strange. At the morning prayer he suddenly threw up and everyone who was close enough to witness it said that he had vomited up blood. After this, he had barricaded himself in his office and was sending everyone away, even Florence and Ludwig.” She sighed deeply before finishing: “He is suspected to have the beastly scourge and hidden it from everyone, which is against the rules he himself had laid down. And... judging from the sound we heard not too long ago....” She shook her head.

Amelia's hands were in front of her mouth, gasping. She couldn't believe what she heard. She didn't want to believe what she had heard.

They did imply that Laurence had turned and had been put down. The last fact however was made untrue by the fact that she heard the blood curdling scream again.

She turned around and ran, feeling how one of the choir members grabbed for her but she shook their hand off and ran, into the main building.

“Not Laurence, please don't let it be Laurence.”, she thought. As she scurried through the door that led to the main cathedral, she was hit by a wave of thick smoke and had to stop, a cough rose from her throat and she fell onto her knees, being sure that must have been the feeling when you coughed out your lungs.

That was also when she realized how hot it was. Far too hot. She grabbed for her headscarf and used it to cover her mouth and nose.

This room was on fire.

Amelia pulled herself together and stood up, squeezing her eyes shut as she felt the blazing heat of the flames. After she forced her eyes back open, what she saw was much worse than she could imagine.

The room was absolutely trashed and flames fed on the remaining furniture and ornaments. She could see several church hunters down there, some of them didn't move anymore... and one half of the rest seemed to be busy to try and heal up the injured ones with blood vials and the other half was running around like headless chicken trying to get rid of the flames.

Amelia didn't think twice and jumped over the gallery, sliding down a still intact beam and once she was near the Hunters, she shouted: “Take my blood, I am a blood saint.”

“St. Amelia, thank the blood that you are here to help out, but... it is dangerous here!”, one of the Hunters said as Amelia prepared a needle to let her special blood get drawn.

“You can tell me what happened while you draw my blood.”, she said. “I am your next Vicar after all. I should know what happened here and I also should help out my subjects!”

It annoyed Amelia when she was treated like a child. Sure, she was still young, but she did had to live most of her life on her own, growing up in an orphanage, and even when Laurence had adopted her and she greatly enjoyed spending time with him and later, Ludwig too, it couldn't be called happy family life. She knew she had been chosen to be a successor to his work.

Amelia winced as she put the needle into her hand and let her blood collect by a large blood vial.

“I am sorry to tell you this, but...”, the Hunter said, “It's Vicar Laurence. He... has been infected. And when we went to confront him about it, he... turned. In the largest beast I have ever seen. That was also on flames... Ludwig is... taking care of him right now.”

Amelia put her hand in front of her mouth in shock. “No, not Laurence...”, she said. “You... you are sure it is him? It can't be someone else?”

“I haven't seen him turn but several others have and there is no reason why they should lie. They are lucky they are still alive.”, the Hunter grew quiet as he pulled the needle from Amelia and went on to use her blood to tend to the wounded.

Amelia's wound closed on her own, the benefit of being a Blood Saint, little wounds healed practically on their own. But the words of the Hunter were still deep in her mind. Laurence turned... and Ludwig was the the one facing him. She... she had to get to them.

She wouldn't believe that it was Laurence until she saw it with her own eyes.

And so Amelia got up and ran. Out of the main hall and into the deeper parts of the church. It was so hot and there was so much smoke. She had to cover her mouth and nose again as she ran away from the chaotic screaming in the main cathedral and into the part of the church that burned even heavier.

If Laurence... the beast... was on flames, she probably would find it by following the flames.

Amelia barely knew how much time had passed since she had started to hurry through the corridors, but she started to hear the sounds of a fight. Screeching, something shattered, the swing of a sword. She probably was close.

As she arrived, she froze as she saw the largest beast she had ever witnessed, big antlers, long snout, a row of razor sharp teeth and a gigantic left hand with claws that looked as large as her own forearm. And she gasped, again, when she saw something glistening in the flames that the beast engulfed.

The gold pendant that only the Vicar was allowed to wear.

Before Amelia could process what she saw in front of her, she saw Ludwig facing the beast, his sword of the holy moon light in both hands, murmuring: “Forgive me, Laurence.” and the next thing she saw was blood (lava?) splattering, another ear piercing scream that made both of her hands flew up to her ears and then an earth shattering thud as the beast, Laurence, fell.

At the same time, behind her crashed a beam and she stumbled into the room, having to realize that the escape route was blocked.

“Ludwig!”, she cried, running over to the Holy Blade. “Ludwig, we have to get out of here.” She was pulling on his arm but the Hunter didn't make a move or seemed to even notice her.

He was hugging the lifeless head of the beast and thick tears streamed down his face.

The whole room was burning, the carpet got engulfed into flames, the curtains were burning to ashes and there was smoke, everywhere. Amelia started to cough as it reached her lungs and she noticed the same was true for Ludwig, who occasionally coughed too between his hiccups of crying.

Amelia looked around. There must have been another way. Surely there was another way out of there. She.. she knew that Laurence wouldn't have wanted for Ludwig to die here. He hadn't been himself. He had turned into something different. She knew that Lauence had been lost the moment he had transformed into a hideous beast.

It may have been the lack of oxygen but Amelia suddenly broke out in hysteric laughter when she realized that Laurence had become the very thing that he had loathed and fight for too long and she couldn't miss the irony of this.

No, she had to pull herself together. She and Ludwig were trapped in a room that was starting to burn down the ground. Amelia tried to find a way, another way out of the room , but...

...every other route she could have taken was littered with flames. She tried to find a path between them but had to step back once hot sparks hit her. The Holy Blood in herself made the minor burns heal after a short while, but it still hurt.

From her observations the only way they had a chance to get back was the one where she had come from, but there was a beam blocking the way and she surely wasn't strong enough to move it.

Ludwig would be. His Holy Moonlight Sword could cut anything. But...

She glanced at him. He was still hugging the beast's... Laurence'... head and she saw how his arms and face had turned red with burns.

But... she had to at least try. She ran over to him and cried, as good as she could because of the smoke: “Ludwig, snap out of it! This place is burning down. We have to get out of here! It's... it's over. He's GONE!”

The impact of her own words hit her hard. He was gone. Laurence was gone. He was dead and would never embrace her or talk to her or teach her anything again.

She fell on her knees as tears started to glistening in her eyes and then quickly streamed down her face. Laurence was dead, Ludwig was broken and she had run right into the danger she had been warned about and nobody of them would make it out alive. And even if, the church would be done for. When the masses would know about the tale that the Vicar had turned...

It felt hopeless, all felt so hopeless. Amelia crept closer to Ludwig and leaned against him, not minding the hotness anymore. If it had to end like this, at least she didn't want to be alone.

Just as she closed her eyes and accepted her fate, she heard frantic voices and the splashing of water as long as the sound of something large and heavy getting lifted out of the way.

“There they are!”, the voice cried out and Amelia could feel how someone scooped her up. As she opened her eyes, she recognized the same church hunter that had taken her blood earlier to heal the injured. “St. Amelia, are you alright? We will get you out of here and to the infirmary right away.”

“What about Ludwig?”, she said, suppressing a coughing fit.

As she turned around to look at him she saw that several hunters tried to get the large man to move.

“We are trying our best...”, the Hunter said and gently turned her around, making clear that he didn't want her to see this scene.

A few hours later Amelia had been treated with a blood ministration. Because of her nature as a blood saint it worked especially well with her and besides a few singed streaks of hair that would grow quick enough again, she was fine. What the blood couldn't heal however was the emotional turmoil she felt.

She sat at Ludwig's bed side. The big Hunter managed to get himself numerous bad burns, but not from fighting the flaming beast that Laurence had become but because he had refused to let go of him and it had taken five hunters to drag him from hugging the corpse and to the infirmary.

He was at his third blood ministration and still hadn't healed up. Or woken up. And Amelia waited.

She waited for a long time. She didn't knew for how long, but eventually Ludwig opened his eyes. As he noticed her he stared at her blankly.

“It wasn't a dream?”, he asked.

Amelia nodded as new tears glistened in her eyes.

“So I really killed him...”, Ludwig stated.

Amelia nodded again as she choked out: “You had no other choice...”

Ludwig pulled himself up and she could see the tears in his own eyes. “I know...”, he said. “My mind knows that I did the right thing but my heart...”

He pulled her in an embrace. “It just hurts so much.”

Amelia led her tears flow freely as she felt Ludwig's own drip on her head.

They made it out alive, but both of them had lost something truly valuable. (Author's note: I have a few headcanon about Blood Saints and these are mainly, that they took so well to the old blood that they pretty much adopted its healing features. I like to think that Amelia was also a Blood Saint and for someone who has blood that is similar to the Old Blood, it would be able to heal minor injuries without trouble. We even see her heal herself in her boss fight, so that headcanon isn't too farfetched.)

[general-grey]

Heyoooo, I am not active on Tumblr these days tbh, but. Lemme just hug you real tight, wish you the best, because I believe I have missed your birthday this time, but given there top something meme and your Bloodborne - what about top of the best memories related to the game or Souls series in general?

That is alright buddy, I really hope you’re having fun over whatever other platform you’ve migrated over to

Best memories... oh boy, that is. a Hard thing to explain, I had several absolutely unforgettable moments, both alone with only me and the game, and with others.

I don’t know how many I should list, but I’ll just start somewhere and hope to finish :’)

(Under a read-more because it got LONG)

1. My very first login to Dark Souls - So, I’ve actually found this game by pure dumb luck. I don’t actually remember how it came up, I think I maybe saw some memes about it online, bunch of ThePruld videos.

I didn’t think much of it, but at one point it came up in an IRL conversation, as a passing subject and I asked, “okay but what IS dark souls” and the friend just simply went “it’s just very hard”.

I’m NOT good at games. Idk why I wanted to try it though. I guess the dingy ruined castles ticked my mind just enough to be interested.

A friend on Steam shared it with me because they had it, and I didn’t, and so I gave it a little whirl... and I fell FAST and i fell HARD. I remember struggling with the keyboard for about an hour. I remember realizing that I do have a few controllers lying around in the house, and a wireless receiver because at one point my dad ordered some from AliExpress because he wanted to play old Star Wars games on controllers.

The rest is history, now.

2. Exploring the Undead Burg - as a small continuation of the first bit, but nobody warned me that this game would be so damn BREATHTAKINGLY beautiful. I struggled in the Burg for at least ten hours, for sure. I got used to carefully, very very carefully exploring. I firebombed a Black Knight to death from the top of a house’s roof. I did a LOT of Hellkite Drake soul farming. Y’all know the one.

It was so utterly special for the first time I don’t think I’ll ever feel as alive as I did when I was doing those dumb things. I remember the whole Undead Burg by heart. The way the warm sunlight touches down on the moss-covered stone walls.

3. First flight to Anor Londo - I cried, I legit cried, when I finally got there. I don’t remember if I was aware of what was to come, but when those gargoyles lifted my dingy little knight up, and took to the heavens.... and then rose above the golden Anor Londo?

I think I had to go for a little walk after that because it felt so good, so profoundly amazing, I could not concentrate to sit and progress.

4. Oolacile adventures with @abyss-wolf - I actually rambled to her for so long about this dumb amazing game that she actually got it for herself... and then we played a lot together and then these co-op sessions turned into actual dates, adn the rest is history now... but!

Oolacile was special. Because, I think I was getting her through it for the very first time. And I was trying to direct her towards some loot. There was one particular loot that I directed her towards, but I remembered there was a hole in front of it.

I told her so.

She went “yeah yeah I know I saw”

And then she proceeded to walk straight into the goddamn hole, and fell to her death.

I think I laughed at her for like 10 minutes straight, or at least until I ran all the way back so she could summon me again.

5. Oolacile adventures, round two -

Me: “I’m not very good at shooting tbh.”

Her: -pulling out a max upgraded Dragonslayer Greatbow- “why, it’s not so hard lol”

Her: -proceeds to headshot every single enemy in Oolacile garden- “like so”

Me: -at this point actively repressing the gay thoughts like the fucking dumbass i was, there is zero other explanation- “stop showing off your big dick bro”

6. Oolacile adventures, round three - That one time when she got herself a bunch of items from item editor and she gave my knight, Caspiron, Gwyndolin’s bow

and it was so fucking tiny

and SHE laughed at me for like 10 minutes straight because HER bow was bigger than her whole character

there were lots of dick jokes, and that’s how it was all well in life.

7. Dark Souls III adventures, still with @abyss-wolf - That ONE TIME.

When we were doing the Darkened Fireling Shrine.

And we walked into Champion Gundyr’s boss room, and the FUCKER immediately used the fucking grab attack on me and Y O T E me off the FUCKING cliff.

8. Dark Souls III adventures, round two - that one time when I was AFK because I was doing something for mom and when I came back she covered the area around me with shiny pebbles.

9. Exploring the Tomb of the Giants - Something with the atmospheric part - that area is completely, utterly pitch black. You can’t see anything at all, save for perhaps the ground immediately beneat your feet.

There are giant skeletons in the darkness. They are NOT nice. You can stumble blindly into them if you aren’t careful.

You can slip off the roads and fall to your death, or into places where you have to figure aout all over how to get back up, all semi-blind.

That was such good shit, holy fuck guys.

10. Finding the Kiln of the First Flame - The gate beyond the Lordvessel opens up. It reveals a staircase, leading just a little way down. As you walk upon it, spirits of Silver Knights walk past you, like wisps of memory.

You are standing in a giant space. A bleak, burnt up desert or nothing but ash and old, warped structures. There is light filtering in, but you cannot see from where.

It’s beautiful. It’s desolate and forbidding.

And it is the end.

You’ve made it. Only one thing left to do. And you know what it is.

.......

Shit this turned into a “favourite Dark Souls moments”, huh? I didn’t mean to, I just wanted to start from the beginning and I got carried away.

But it REALLY does show which is my favourite game of the whole FromSoft lineup, huh? Can’t really ever let go of the first one you’ve played.

I adore Bloodborne, but I’ve not had all the time to collect my thoughts on it. I’ll probably write good long rambles about it too, eventually, because holy shit i’m loving it with all my heart, indeed i do

[sealer-of-wenkamui]

WELL I DID IT I BEAT BLOODBORNE, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Well here’s how it went, continuing from last time....

So, having dealt with my brain friend, I pressed onward, and soon enough, came across a crying woman, that looks like the one after I defeated Rom...? I tried making contact, but nothing, so left her be and went up the elevator she was facing...the crying was now very loud, and a stroller was in the center of what was obviously a boss arena...

Mergo’s Wet Nurse descended upon it (I really like this design!) and two tries later it was down, staying close was best, despite what I initially thought, the only hard part was when it had the clones of itself.... there was a weird pause after beating it, which made me think there was something I still needed to do, but I just had to wait... and like with Kos, I got the NIGHTMARE SLAIN message...!

Ah, and this theme was a music box, and in fact.... the tiny music box plays part of it, I wonder why... I wish I would have tried using it now!

So I returned to the Dream, as usual... except the workshop was ON FIRE now, and the Doll told me dawn would soon break, and that Gehrman was waiting for me by the Great Tree... I knew I must be at the end now.... no longer at the risk of frenzy, and now in possession of “three third cords” like the note I found, I used them all!

Before ending things I checked around some places, the only one with changes was Cathedral Ward, the poor chapel dweller said that was all of the survivors, and that Yharnam was finished ;A; I don’t like seeing my friend sad, he’s the purest character in this game! The other concerning thing was Arianna was missing, and there was a blood trail.... she wasn’t doing well earlier too... so I followed it, and found her crying with a child of sorts, though certainly no human child... (I was told I could get a cord from it, but that felt mean? It wasn’t hostile, and I don’t want to upset Arianna any more.... I... hope things can work out....)

No longer able to put off the end, I went through the now open gate, and found Gehrman. I actually had a lot of things I wanted to ask him about, but he was just here to offer to end my life, and free me from the dream.... but..... that didn’t feel quite satisfying to me, so I decided to refuse this offer.... and Gehrman joined the hunt.

...for an old man in a wheelchair he was FAST AND STRONG.... though after Kos, it was no issue, and I defeated him on the second try as well.... I stayed farther back for him, using the whip form of my cane to my advantage... I staggered him several times, but missed the viscerals....

“The night and the dream were long....”

Immediately after, the moon presence descended, so this is how it ends, with “paleblood”..... It grabbed me and pulled me close.... and we fought... this also took two tries, the only bad attack being one that nearly oneshots me, but it doesn’t attack after....

And then... the ending... uHHHH?! I’m... a baby Great One now.... and the Doll picked me up..... and the credits rolled..... so she’ll care for me now or...? What happened in the waking world?! What will I do as a Great One?! I have a lot of questions?!!

The name though... “Childhood’s Beginning”.... that HAS to be a Childhood’s End reference, I was quite fond of that book, so I appreciated that a lot... well, I certainly did ascend, didn’t I, not into part of the Overmind, but a Great One... oh, but the name is a bit different, so maybe we’re not there yet... ah, the description says I’ll “lift humanity into its next childhood”, so will they ascend too....? There was also that note that gave me CE vibes, about “evolution without courage” being the doom of our race or something.... did... I succeed then...? I have a lot to think about ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

.....And at the end of it all, it begins again, I wake up after blood ministration..... except now with 99 insight, 200k echoes, and dressed in Lady Maria’s clothes! Interestingly enough, I can... still hear a baby.... and the dream is still playing the second song....

I’m IMMENSELY curious about the other endings now, one is sorta clear, submitting to Gehrman, but what if I don’t have “three third cords” and refuse...? Well I’ll have to find out.... I have NG+ now! And I should try other builds sometimes, but I love being Augustine.... 

I bought the burial blade, now I can use Gehrman’s weapon.... I don’t know what I’ll do going forward, maybe do some chalices? I don’t want to jump right into a NG+ fresh off my first playthrough though I don’t want to get too rusty either, and I’m really gonna miss this game........

Oh Bloodborne, I love you!! Honestly I can say it’s one of the best games I’ve played, perhaps right under EXA_PICO and Xenosaga....!

Now I don’t have to fear spoilers too except for the other endings...!

[mattgambler]

My thoughts on Sekiro - Shadows Die Twice

TLDR: I talk about what I liked and disliked about Sekiro and why it in my eyes is probably* the best game From Software has released to date. Which means I also compare it to Dark Souls a lot.

*I havent played Demon Souls or Bloodborne, so I cant really talk about those. As someone who played through all three Dark Souls games as well as several other soulslikes on stream, I always stood by the unpopular opinion that Dark Souls 1 is a good game, but also a vastly overrated one - with one of the most unbearable fanbases out there, right up there with Undertale, albeit for very different reasons. My opinion is of course strongly coloured by my interactions with diehard fans of Dark Souls, both on stream as well as everywhere else on the Internet, but at the end of the day I never hated Dark Souls. I wouldnt have played through all three games otherwise. I *did* hate smaller aspects, like the fact that I ended up entering the tomb of the giants without ever finding a lantern and therefore  being forced to crawl through that place in near complete darkness until I found the emergency lantern in there, simply because I was unlucky enough to have none of the necromancers drop one for me. Or how the curse mechanic in the sewers got me trapped in a place that i already struggled with, but now with only 50% of my original HP. Or the entire “Git Gud” mentality that is so grossly abused to defend poor game design that the travesty that is camera control in the Ornstein and Smough fight looks like a piece of art in comparison. Onionbro and Solaire would weep if they knew. There were other things that I didnt enjoy, like what the Souls games count as a story, but I have an easier time pinning that down as personal preference and something that just isnt for me. Vaatividya makes good videos. The tomb of the giants without a lantern however, that just shouldnt exist in any game, not to mention a game that is glorified to such an extent that it could get its dick sucked every day by a different dude without running out for centuries. Can you taste that sweaty salt yet? Along comes Sekiro, a game by the same dev studio, with the same feel, minus many of the things that I have hated and criticized for several years now. Guess what, I like it.    This isnt a review, Im not trying to tell you if you should buy, Im not telling you that there are no microtransactions in the game or what framerate it isnt capped at. There are tons of videos online that jump-attacked all over that on day 1 of release or earlier. Im telling you why, in my opinion, this game is so vastly superior to Dark Souls that it simply warms my heart. Let me start a list and then never finish it: - You can swim - You can jump - You can talk - You dont immediately die when you fall off a cliff - You cant accidentally walk over a cliff like a moron, at least most of the time. - You can’t simply rely on dodgerolls and invincibility frames all the time - You can understand the story without having to go to Youtube to have it explained to you by someone - You can’t kill strong enemies simply by chain parrying them over and over, or at least it is hell of a lot harder - You can’t simply kill strong enemies by knocking them off a cliff (I think) - You can’t abuse magic for an immediate easy mode - You can’t abuse coop for an immediate easy mode

... I’m getting a little unfair here, I know. I actually think coop is a cool feature, even though I personally never used it and even the multiplayer pvp invasions are an original and interesting concept, although I’m not personally into it. Magic is cool too, although poorly balanced and therefore in my opinion less interesting. The reason I added those last two points to my unfinished list is not because I dislike them, but because of the lately relevant “does Sekiro need an easy mode” controversy. Especially the most elitist diehard fans of the souls franchise strongly disagree with the addition of an easy mode, which is funny... ... given that Dark Souls 1 has several. Personally I dont think Sekiro NEEDS an easy mode, but it sure wouldnt hurt anyone. I personally wouldnt have minded playing on a lower difficulty, I had three or four bosses greatly overstay their welcome before I finally managed to smash their asslike faces in. ...but Im rambling. On a surface level, just looking at the feel of combat, movement and overall story coherence Sekiro is already miles ahead, but I can understand that it therefore feels less like a Souls game and that not everyone will like that. I can understand and respect that. DarkSouls 1, as well as 2 and maybe even 3, have a couple of features that I greatly appreciate and that partly even surpass Sekiro in my otherwise overly critical eyes. Dark Souls 1 has the best and most memorable map in my opinion. Dark Souls 2 has incredible DLCs, especially Frozen Eleum Loyce was awesome and beautiful, with the minor exception of that retarded snow zebra area and how you would respawn *before* the loading screen to get there again instead of after. I also liked the Pursuers concept a lot, as well as the idea of despawning mobs if you killed them often enough. I dont remember much about DS3, it was okay as far as Im concerned but I enjoyed it the least out of the three, probably because of burnout as I had played through all three (blind) in a row. Im mentioning all of this because I want to clarify that in my eyes Sekiro is not THE TIMELESS MASTERPIECE NOBODY WILL EVER SURPASS that Darksouls 1 is often celebrated as. But in many ways it is headed in a direction that makes more sense to me than “if you are not enjoying it then you are doing it wrong and you should maybe think for once”. (Not that Sekiro streamers werent told exactly that just the same) Let me tell you, there were many instances in Sekiro where I also didnt think, didnt consider every possible option the game had given me, honestly Im pretty sure I sucked most of the time, in the eyes of your usual GITGUD-Bro. But I struggled, I improved, I succeded, and I had a way better time during it all, even though I did the same shit in the Souls games as well. Just without falling off edges in waist-high water every 10 minutes, or being invaded by some bowing edgelord, or losing 50% of my max hp as punishment for dying to the wrong enemy. There is this myth going around online that Dark Souls might be a harsh mistress, but at least a fair one. The one spreading that rumour must have been the Bed of Chaos herself, because that is nothing but horseshit. Sekiro isnt exactly fair all the time either, there are many moments in the game that feel all too familiar in their GOTCHA nature. Like how the game conveniently places the key to one of the hardest areas of the early game in your path so you go check it out just to get crucified there by Lady Butterfly and a special drunkard, just for you to learn after finally breaking both of them that you would have had a way easier time if you had simply ignored that area and soldiered on on your original path. Sure, one could have simply abandoned that area and returned later, but how many of you did? I sure didnt. The game likes to oneshot-kill you if you fail to dodge the wrong attack, be it a giant carp, a giant snake, or a giant TERROR man. Even worse, in Sekiro you cant even get your souls back! You die, you lose 50%. ALso 50% of your cash. Suck it. Im not particularly happy about that myself and Im not sure what the motivation behind that design decision was, but you take the good with the bad, right? Another thing that Sekiro does that I dont understand is how the game has you collect loot. Every time you kill an enemy you need to hold a button to collect. You can kill several in an area and then grab everything at once if they arent too far apart, but at the end of the day it eludes me why From Software didnt simply go for autocollecting instead. It’s not a big deal (even though I would forget about picking up loot every now and then) but at the same time it isnt adding any enjoyment to the game either, no matter how hard I try and emphasize with whatever a gamer who likes this might possibly think. It is not hard, its is not really relevant,  and I cant think of a single advantage it has over autocollecting. Maybe holding that button is supposed to feel rewarding? I consider it meaningless at best and tedious busywork at worst. At the same time the game introduces a stealth system that actually means something, while at the same time keeping it both well integrated as well as completely optional. Im truly impressed by how that is even possible. I also like the immortality mechanic, that results in you only truly dying if you go down twice, and even refreshes that revive if you kill enough enemies inbetween deaths. It doesnt help that much, as it doesnt refill your estus fl.... healing gourds, but it allows for a little bit more practice against tough enemies before you die, a little bit more lenience while exploring in an area where it is easy to fall, a little bit more standing power in a world where a giant carp can simply eat you. I appreciate it and it is far from making the game anything close to easy. Its more like an extra gourding flask. I could keep going and praise this (surprisingly satisfying enemy style and variety given the setting) or criticize that (less replayability because of fewer possible weapons and builds), but at the end of the day my opinion is crystalclear - Sekiro is stunningly beautiful, very enjoyable, hard as fuck, and while I have heard people say that “it is not a true soulslike”, I have to shrug and agree. It is better.

[spacehologramcollection]

The clones and videogames.

So there is a lot here! More under the keep reading cut! :)

·         Fives; He is pretty dam good at them. He has spent far too many hours gaming. On shore leave it’s all he does. Plays video games in his underwear for a minimum of 6 hours a day whilst on shore leave. Please don’t challenge him you will lose. He’s the type of person that has memorised Mortal Kombat finishers, looks at you whilst punching the combo in before smirking and muttering the word “Fatality” and watching the life drain from Echo’s eyes as he realises, Fives has just beaten him for the 40th time today. He’s really good at them, possibly the best in the 501st at any game. Doesn’t matter if it’s a first a person shooter, a fighting or a RPG he’s great at it. He loves Mortal Kombat, it’s his go to game. Rex comments on how he’s confused at how Fives can gracefully and quickly enter a combo but cannot gracefully throw a punch.

·         Echo; He likes video games, wouldn’t say he was into them as much as Fives but he likes them. They keep him occupied and he does like to be kept busy. He isn’t as good as them as Fives but can easily beat Rex and Kix at something like Tekken. He’s really bad at online Shooters like Halo and Call of Duty. He’s good in war but he’s terrible at shooters online. He does like his RPGS, Dragon Quest definitely is his jam.  Sentinel of the starry skies is probably one of his favourite games of all times. It’s old he knows but he could still sit and play it till 3 in the morning. He’s really into Witcher and Skyrim, really long-winded games that have a lot of lore and a lot of story. He’s such a whore for lore and story in games.  Him and Fives can get really competitive. It usually ends with Echo regretting getting competitive as Fives can and will beat him. The one time Echo beat Fives was at Soul Calibur by button mashing and when Fives was playing as Voldo.

·         Hardcase; He loses the spur to carry on playing, his attention span will not let him play a long-winded game, unless the story is really good he’s not invested and will get really bored easily. He’s okay at multiplayer games, but he really isn’t the best. He likes games with colour and excitement that are fast paced. He is a pro at Mario Kart, but only on Rainbow road? Like everyone else is falling off the map but he’s like beating everyone. He’ll only play after a few drinks or when everyone else is playing. He once let go of a pad and it hit Echo in the face. He said he was sorry but he still laughed. Also, he can actually use Voldo on Soul Calibur really well, like everyone is confused but he just seems to be able to use him.

·         Jesse; He sucks at video games but he is a pro at one thing. Trolling. He’s a troll on multiplayer games and online. Once when on Monster Hunter, he shot a health ammo at a Jho and healed it because he thought it would be HILARIOUS. Echo’s eye twitched, Kix wanted to cry and Fives was heard screaming from the living room. He and Hardcase eventually just try to outdo each other on the annoying front. He sucks at them and instead opts to just be a massive pain in the arse. It starts off funny but then just ends up annoying Fives. He’s a camper. He lives to be irritating to make up for his lack of skill.

·         Kix; He never takes a day off from being a medic. This guy is a healer. On something like Overwatch he’s a Mercy main… when he’s on a team of ungratefuls who spam “I need healing” when they don’t or just don’t stay on the Payload and then complain that he didn’t heal them when they were on the other end of the map; he’ll switch to Moira and become a salty piece of shit. He’ll just mutter under his breath “Oh you need healing? Well tough shit should have stopped me from dying last round” SALTY. Echo and Fives always upvote him… not because of skill, but because if they don’t he’ll be even pettier next match.

·         Rex; He says he doesn’t have time and doesn’t like to play them. But secretly he loves playing them. He wouldn’t do it often by himself but with the others he gets really into it. He always aims to get on Five’s team. Why? Because Rex is competitive AF and doesn’t like to lose and Fives happens to be a king. He can’t drive so he sucks at Mario Kart but laughs about it. Usually plays it when a lil drunk so that explains why he’s laughing at losing. He once invited around members of Ghost and the Generals and they all got SLAUGHTERED. They put Hardcase (Who is the worst at it) on Dark souls and played the drinking game of it. Had to stop after 10 minutes. Rex is actually really good at Halo. Fives and he annihilate everyone else in it. Not graceful winners at all. Will rub it in your face.

·         Tup; Yeah, he doesn’t really like Videogames. He does play the Sims though. Why? Because a man needs a hobby, and if he wants to build extravagant houses he knows he’ll deffo not own after the war he can do! He made a house with Torrent in it. Fives was so happy with how his character looked… Tup accidentally killed him by letting him eat from the Jelly Bean tree… so now he’s just a ghost haunting everyone with his presence and keeping everyone awake at night by screaming. He’s still not told Fives and insists he’s away on dates and that’s why he’s not in the house. He’s actually envious his sim just gets to draw all day and gets paid for it. Lucky bastard.

·         Cody; He doesn’t do videogames. Except strategy games, stuff like Command and Conquer. He doesn’t let Kenobi know he plays them. Claims he’s working on strategies… which he sort of is. He’s really good at the Soul series and Bloodborne. Like he’s exceptionally good at them. He dies the least on them out of everybody. Watching him go through the game is like watching Bambi on a minefield. He garners quiet a crowd when playing it. Drinks are promised if he can beat Ornstein and Smough without dying. He tells Rex to make it a double before landing the finishing blow.

·         Wolffe; He hates playing videogames and finds them a waste of time… he’s just saying that because he sucks at them and that’s his cover. He doesn’t like losing and doesn’t want to risk losing to a shiny. He just doesn’t understand the appeal to them. He does play a little bit of a Skyrim though now and again. He totally did the companion quest line first and is totally still a werewolf. When the Wolf pack started playing Pokemon go his face was just a constant unimpressed glare. “Are you taking a photo of me?” “No there’s just a Haunter near you” He has no idea what that is and actually turns to see what’s near him. He just doesn’t understand. In a Games tournament to decide which Battalion is the best and a pointless and waste of time skill, he’d go with Sinker to try and save their pride… Fives is the reigning champion.

[aurimeanswind]

Your Greatest Gaming Binges & ExtraLife 2017—Sunday Chats (11-5-17)

There is a lot going on. And I mean a lot. Behind the scenes. In front of the scenes. All in preparation for this coming weekend, where we and my team of internet friends from all over the Continental United States will be participating in ExtraLife 2017, an event I have participated in for seven years, and this will be my eighth. 

First, some context.

I tell this story every year, so I apologize if its trite to you, but its the truth. In 2009 I was diagnosed with a more ethereal-type disease called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It plagued my life for about seven months, causing me to be homeschooled during my Junior Year of High School, drop all of my Advanced Placement classes, and stop seeing my friends for weeks on end. It through off my college plan. It ruined my life. It made me miserable and unhappy. And I lost hope until I started seeing a specialist, Dr. Rowe, at John Hopkin’s Medical Center in Baltimore Maryland. With physical therapy, medication, and exercise, I was able to finish my Junior year of High School, and live a normal life until I relapsed in my Senior Year of High School, and had to retread old ground again, more frustrated, and more determined this time.

In 2012 i fell into a deep depression. Scared, alone, and as I slowly coiled up into my room and stopped seeing my friends, going to school, going to work, or doing anything, I had no one to turn to. Until I reached out to Dr. Rowe. He was a Chronic Fatigue specialist, but I remembered part of CFS is depression, something that I didn’t have to experience at the time. He gave me the depression test that I had passed with flying colors every other time I had seen him, and, stunned at the change, helped me start a path on a better and less mental-illness-plagued life without depression.

Every year, my team donates to John Hopkin’s Medical Center. It’s a place that irrevocably changed my life. It gave me hope when I had none, and set me on a better, healthier path. This is my way to give back.

So join us, this coming Saturday starting at 12pm Eastern Standard Time, at http://twitch.tv/IrrationalPassions, and donate to a cause that has helped me and countless others. All the details of who is coming, what we’re doing, and what you can do to help are or will be live soon at http://IrrationalPassions.com/ExtraLife.

Thank you, for all your support, and I hope to see you there helping us stay up and keeping us jolly.

It’s also with massive pride that I can fully announce that Greg Miller, Gen Miller, and Joey Takagami will be joining us from San Francisco California, and Greg is bringing Portillo too! Check out this video Roger Pokorny and I made to convince him to come:

I’m excited to see you all there, in spirit, for our wacky shenanigans!

Now... I onto the entrée.

Your Greatest Gaming Binges

Today, as is now customary for the first Sunday of each month, I asked YOU ALL a question, and it was about the most intense gaming marathons you all have gone on. Specifically single-session, and specifically why.

Now, I’ll say, full disclosure, you should always remember to consume the average amount of calories, vitamins, and minerals in your diet everyday, and take care of yourself: sleep when you need to, drink plenty of water, and listen to the recommendations of the FDA and USDA (here in the states) to better understand what your body needs, to live a better, and more fulfilling life. But I aside from the self-destructive aspects of binging gaming sessions, I love a game that gets its hooks in you so hard that you just can’t. Stop. Playing.

I have had countless 12-hour+ gaming sessions that have left me bleary-eyed, but still bushy tailed from the amazing stories that have come from them, and with a year like this year, I think there are many out there from this year alone. I wanted to hear your stories!

First, one of mine.

Danganronpa 1. Boy oh boy. I think I’ve infamously talked about it at this point. But when that came out I was so incredibly obsessed with it. It was all I played for days, and I’d roll out of bed, grab my Vita, and keep playing, until I rolled into bed, played until I felt asleep, rinse and repeat. It was an incredible few days of gaming, and it was what got me back into visual novels.

Now, to the audience!

See, I love the classic gaming sessions. I think that was a totally different era of playing games too. Hearing times of people playing Street Fighter 2 and just going were the best. And shoutout to Super Techmo Bowl, because that game is fucking rad.

I can’t get into Minecraft, but I like the multiplayer love. Scott, Evan and Tony, my cohosts on IP, helped run a big Minecraft Server for over a year. The stories to come out of those play sessions are magnificent, and I was into the jolly cooperation.

MGS4 is fucking crazy. Luckily there is plenty of movie time to go get snacks in that game. I think I beat that game in three or so sessions, so I get it.

BUT HELL YEAH JAK 3 AND SLY COOPER. Those games are so rad. Well deserving of massive play sessions. I remember going out and buying Red/Blue 3D glasses because I rented Sly 3 from GameFly and didn’t get them. I ended up steeling them out of a display box in a Blockbuster (DON’T TELL ANYONE) so i could have the cool Sly Cooper branded ones.

But boy. Jak 3 in one day. That’s a tall ask.

See, I wish I played MGS at all in the era of when you only played one game because it’s all you had. I only ever really experimented with multiple play throughs when it came to MGS4, and that was still a ton of fun, but I wish I could have done it with something like MGS2 or 3.

The different styles of play are what make those games so hard to put down too, even though I just played the same way the whole time. Like a loser.

Get a better game Plankfan, because I can’t do this Garden Warfare bullshit.

Kidding, but yeah I think of the multiplayer bingers, Overwatch has taken the cake, and that’s the most class-based of all, considering each character is their own cup of tea.

Very much so! Game rhythm is super important to how hard you can binge it. Especially with single player stuff. Like, Rocket League has tons of ups and downs and variety therein, so the rhythm is changing all the time. Single player games need a good loop, and facing off against the next villain really pulls you through Akrham Asylum. Especially with the Metroidvania-esque format.

I’m curious to what you thought of it, ultimately, because I like that game a great deal, but nothing in Deus Ex really blew me away. I think it was just a very good “one of those” with no unique hooks really. I know a lot of people have different feelings about that, but any immersive sim really makes me never want to put it down, so I get it.

You should do the same with Dishonored 2, because it’s v good.

FUCK YEAH.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of those games I spent 14 hours straight playing during ExtraLife 2010 and never looked back on. I love it. I could play that game all day.

Oh my god yes. Just like the Minecraft love I love this too. And the loop of that is great.

I have never really had a LAN party for anything, but ExtraLife is the closest I’ve come to that. I really like the loop of all that too. I played Halo 2 with my brother and his friends when I was younger and it was a blast. Boy... This sounds like it’d still be rad today.

Another Arkham game. I really jive with this one too, but City has just enough Open World in it to keep me fully immersed. I started playing that game after a midnight launch and just didn’t stop. It’s the same idea of wanting to see the next villain, especially after Freeze shows up. Whoooooo boy.

Oh boy. My recent trip back to Skyrim has brought me back here, because good lord do I just want to grab everything everywhere forever. And my inventory limit simply does not agree with my life choices on that front.

I think Skyrim was the game that got me to break away from my completionist tendencies too, because It’s just a game that I don’t think would be fun to fully complete after a while. It’d just burn thin too soon.

Hell yeah! That’s a game I played a ton of when I first started it. I think my second session with that game was somewhere around eight hours, but then Zelda came out and I just stopped. I want to finish that game before the end of the year, if anything to see the story through, but those open world games just bring the most out of all of us.

BRING IT BACK.

BRING IT BACK.

BRING IT BACK.

Bloodborne is just so incredible. I love just letting myself go in that world too, because that truly is a game I could sit down with for an entire ExtraLife. I know it wasn’t your cup of tea, but I love it. The same has been true of all my other Souls experiences, because those are games that get their hooks in and just don’t let go. I think those are the games best suited to playing across multiple sessions too, since some time away is usually what you need to get past a boss you’re stuck on.

The ultimate binge game: The Witcher 3. That’s a game that I couldn't really podcast with either, because every snippet of every conversation was just so compelling for me. But of course, the monster dens and boss fights were where the podcasts came in anyway. Boy. What a fucking game.

Thank you all for writing in your answers! I hope folks still like this format, and I’m excited to do more of these. Been thinking of ways to spice up Sunday Chats going forward, and while I have some soft ideas in the pipeline, we’ll see what I ultimately end up on.

As I said last week, I currently have no intention of doing a Sunday Chats next week as it’ll be as we wrap on ExtraLife 2017, and I’ll preferably be dead. But we’ll see! Just don’t expect one, and certainly won’t be taking questions.

Regardless, I’d love it if you tuned in next week, Saturday, starting at Noon Eastern Time, to watch us play games and do dumb stuff!

http://twitch.tv/irrationalpassions

Be there

And keep it real.

[lettersofsky]

I don't get all the hate towards FFXV? While FFIX is still my favorite and also my favorite game in general I also like XV? I haven't finished yet but it's not bad and I definatly enjoy playing it...

Before I go into detail over the reasons why I don’t like FFXV, I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with liking XV. If you enjoy it then that’s great, enjoy it! It’s great that you found something you can enjoy in it, everyone has different things they like and if XV’s giving you what you like then keep on enjoying it!

Now that that’s out of the way, on to the other stuff. This is long.

I don’t know if there’s a uniform reason behind XV’s hate, I played the game, didn’t enjoy it and abandoned the discussions on it soon after. I think it’s safe to say though that the second half of the game isn’t held in high regards and the final chapter and ending are generally regarded as terrible within the context of the game itself.

The fact that the game was released half-finished and their still adding story content and will continue to release story updates into 2018 is also a factor to that. That news soured the neutral space XV’d been in up to that point for me.

I don’t particularly hate it, I don’t really hate anything really, and I really only at angry at it a few times during my first and final play-through. Of those times, only 1 or 2 were due to an extremely unbalanced enemy type that may have since been patched out. Most of those were because of character/story reasons, because I personally hold characters above everything when it comes to storytelling, I can handle terrible and difficult gameplay because I want to discover where these characters’ stories end (only reason I’ve completed KH2).

So it makes sense to me that my main issues with the game come from Characters, Story and how Square Enix is handling XV and it’s ‘universe’. It’s really hard to talk about two of those because you haven’t finished and I’ve got no idea how far in you are so this will be interesting.

Expect comparisons to other JRPGs, ok? ok.

Characters:

All the characters felt flat and one-dimensional to me. 

There was no development of anyone outside of the main four and even they didn’t get much character development or growth (besides Ignis, he has an arch), I can probably say the bare bone basics of their characters right off the top of my head but I doubt I could give you much more than that and I finished it in February of this year. Comparing that to Persona 3 and 4 which I played over 2 years ago and I can remember conversations, character motivations, their growth, the scenes that made me cry; quite a bit considering each of those games has a much larger cast of characters they focus on than XV does.

But I’ve enjoyed games with next to no characters before (hello Bloodborne) so though disappointing I was looking to look past the awful characters, my anger over how one in particular was treated (Ravus) and try to find something else in the game to enjoy. Unfortunately that thing turned out to be the in game night sky and I didn’t have a reason to go back to it after I’d gotten a pretty screen shot.

Story (This is going to be very difficult to put into words without spoilers):

The story’s a mess, plain and simple. A lot of character motivations aren’t explored or explained and a lot of the time I was left wondering why this is happening. 

Final Boss’s motivations are never explained. Why did he help Niflheim? Why is he the final boss? How did he come into being? Who the feck is he? Nothing. Final Giant Enemy Boss also doesn’t make sense, because we’re never given any reason for him to be there. Why is he in Insomnia? Why do the other Astrals hate him? Why is he helping Ardyn? Also nothing.Persona’s final bosses make sense because we spend time building up to them in each game and they’re very clear about what they want to do and why they want to do so. It’s all there in the buildup to their boss fight and even in their in-battle dialogue.

But three scenes in particular made me so mad that I turned off the game and walked away for a while.One’s a completely hollow scene that tries to cash in on feelings inspired by a previous game but doesn’t get there because the character in question has maybe 10 minutes of screen time before it happens. Really the only ‘moving’ thing in that scene, for me, was the music and that’s mostly because I’m very easily influenced by music (I almost had a panic attack on the way home because Soothing Hymn came on and I didn’t realise). But once the music was finished I got pissed because the scene felt hollow and I ignored the game for a while.The last two are in the final chapter and they just destroyed the theme that XV’s supposedly built around and saying anymore is more spoilers than I’m comfortable talking about.

There’s also the small fact that I can’t remember anything from that game beside a general timeline of sorts, whereas I can still remember a good chunk of things from Dark Souls 3 despite the fact that I barely finished it once and never want to play it again.

The Issue With Square:

This game was released incomplete. Plain and simple. It’s supposed to be getting Additional Story updates well into next year along with it’s paid DLCs that have important story points and character motivations that should have been in the main game. You actively need to buy the DLCs if you want to get more substance from these characters. What are Persona 5′s paid DLCs? They’re purely aesthetics things that won’t affect your understanding of the game at all. I didn’t need to buy anything other than the game to understand the characters in the game or story of the game, I only had to pay for the Dancing All Night gear which gave my favourite character galaxy pants.

There’s also the issue of FFXV’s universe, which unlike in series such as KH and the Compilation of FFVII each piece of it has important pieces that make XV make more sense. KH, for all the confusion and twists, works as it’s own game. Each game works as their own game and you don’t need to play each of them to understand what’s happening in the game you’re playing. You don’t need to play CoM or Days to understand KH2, they only add a bit more context to side characters. While with XV, you need to watch Kingsglaive if you want to know anything about why Luna and Ravus are being kept as political hostages by the Empire, you need to watch it if you want to know how Luna got out of Insomnia. You need to watch a separate movie to get any decent amount of screen time from a character integral to the plot.

*shrug* I don’t tend to tolerate games that have ‘pay to unlock story’ features. I’m more in the lane of ‘If I buy this game I can have the whole experience for one easy payment and never have to worry about having to spend anything else on it unless it’s cool aesthetic stuff’, so this has just been progressively making me angrier and the tiniest bit terrified that this might let other companies think they can release a game unfinished and slowly add on story content once it’s out.

I just noticed that I’ve been writing this for over two hours, so I’m sorry if I couldn’t answer you’re question. It mostly comes down to long time fans of the Final Fantasy series being insulted by such a terrible addition to the franchise and the general lack of the things that make good JRPG a good JRPG (characters and story). But if you enjoy it Anon than go keep on enjoying it, I’m gonna go back to ignoring it’s existence.

[daydream-gaming]

Evaluation

Ellika’s Watcher is a personality driven game, or so I wanted it to be, I say wanted it to be because It really isn’t that much of a personality driven game but rather more of a pixel hack and slash. Starting my project, I tried to stay to time management, however I while progressing my project I found out that I was not good at this skill. Therefore, in my finally product I have changed a few things, from making a impossible to complete research schedule to making my production way too short and giving myself way too long to make pre-production. My final product is still the same has it was going to be but with less content. I acknowledge these flaws and I am glad I made them, it allowed me to grow as a developer and made me learn major lessons. Things also went well in my project such as my research and getting feedback from my own target audience helping me out on my decisions.

The original idea of Ellika’s Watcher was kept and much research went into games that I wanted it to be like, a game that is most referenced is Titan Souls, I wanted it to be open environment, for retro style gamers to explore. Keeping it kid friendly but also appealing to the wider audience. The idea originally came from the first two mini games I created the theme of them was good, then I looked into the Final Fantasy games where the games are the same but with different characters with games slowly starting to change it up. Me just finishing my last game “Ellika Flyers” made me come up with an idea of making a sequel to the game, but changing up the actual game and making new characters just using the same world. This is done by keeping the “Ellika” part but adding a new word to it that would have to do with the game. I later planned and made the narrative for the game by using Scott Rogers guide. It was important to get the narrative before I get the second part of the name because it would have to do with the main part of the game. So, when I decided that the main character Chester was a former Watchmen and an Eye monster killed his town and family it made sense to call it Ellika’s Watcher referring to both the creature as that is what it is known by, and the main character’s former guard position. This is smart and makes it a play on the word.

In my pre-production and planning stages I planned on 3 levels, a starting room, a cave room and a cave boss room. This would be major change in my game, I did not have enough time to be able to debug the game where you couldn’t go into the last room due to a bug, I had to scrap the 3rd room and make it into the second room, this means the player only has 2 rooms to explore.  This makes the content of the game lack in some ways and doesn’t give the player a full experience. The player also doesn’t have the ending I originally wanted, a ending where when you pick up a certain item you get to see some dialogue pop up and after that you return to the menu however now it just returns to the menu without the dialogue.

Somethings that did however go well was when I added mechanics like saving the game in and adding new enemies and making a boss. They all worked super good, the progression of the game also felt good. You never feel like you are at an unfair disadvantage, you also don’t feel like you are too overpowered. The game progresses you by giving you XP by leveling up, this will give you damage, Hp and stamina. This helps you in the game especially if you decide to kill all the enemies you will feel the benefits with the game. The style of the game and the target audience I was going for was also a neat leash I could easily find and use. As many of these old lost types of retro gamers exist and only have recently been found again by games such as Titan Souls, Bloodborne, Dark Souls, etc. Games that make the concept of a game harder than it should be creating a sense of achievement for every little thing thy do. Another reason why games such as Titan Souls got so much recognition by these gamers was because of the of its style and I really tried to capitalise on that genre of 2D top down games with a challenge.

Time management was a problem as stating it earlier, this is good though, I knew it would be a problem as I took way too much on my hand and couldn’t keep up. At times, I asked myself to do up to 3 different blogs at a week which I wasn’t even thinking about all of the research and planning that goes into each one of my blog posts. I also underestimated the time I would take creating my game. It ended up with a lot of bugs and unfinished making it not a pleasant experience. You can tell that I definitely spent a lot more time on Room 1 than I did on Room 2. This is due to making my sprites and then coding the entire room and making the mechanics and Gameplay. This took me around 3 weeks to do, so when the last week of production came up, bearing in mind I still was doing research, had a social life and other life events going on I was not able to finish the game to my satisfactory level. This was all not considered when I made my Gant chart and I have learned that I should for the next project I do. I thought I would be able to do work all the time which turned out I couldn’t.

The gripping tale of Chester White a man that has varies of talents making his way into the cavernous caves of the Watchers cave to get revenge for his family after the watcher unmercifully killed them all in an all scale battle. The monster attacked on a night where Chester was out of the village and he had to watch from a distance as his village got burnt to cinders. The whole story has a bigger meaning behind it such as don’t do drugs or abuse subscription drugs and don’t take your loved ones for granted as you don’t know when your last moment is with them.

The Narrative theory I followed is a simple yet in-depth model, it makes you pity the main character and sympathize with him, this will help you relate with the character and but also make you angry at Chester because he lays and pitys himself drugged up on anti-depressants and alcohol. Abusing them. I made this so you go on a roller coaster ride, it is a similar narrative for to what the 2000 Gladiator movie used. However you never feel angry towards him. You also know. Gladiator was a huge inspiration during the writing of the narrative. I used the narrative Scott Rogers provided in his book Level up! I found this the easiest one to use but also made me think the most giving a challenge at the end where you have to make Chester have a bad streak 7 times in a row and justify why he does. I did it because we all feel like we have had everything go wrong in one day right? well this shows that but a bad luck strand over the past 15 years. Making the character relatable in someway to everyone. 

Overall having to adapt to the time wasn’t really my thing for this project and I will definitely try to follow my plan next time a lot better and make it a lot more humanly possible. This will stop me from having to sacrifice Gameplay, research time and make the overall final product a lot better. I am glad I was able to try this style, next time I will try to assure myself that I will follow the deadlines a lot more by doing more research into those weeks of planning and I will also try to make sure I have time for myself and not make 3-4 blog posts a week that are bad quality compared to 1 good quality post. The style of the game stayed the same at the end, with some minor tweaks in room 2 as there wasn’t enough time making it look incomplete or like an early version of the game. I really liked out the narrative finally worked out, I got the story down how I wanted to make you root for the “underdog” which is Chester after the story shows how much bad luck he has had in the past. This adds to his personality and shows why he has such an abuse for drugs. 

I have been heavily influenced by Titan Souls and Gladiator I liked the the atmosphere they create in emotional scenes but also make the an action pact experience. The Game and movie really made me think about design choices. Gameplay, and Storyline these are most important parts of the whole project because it influenced the final game for better or for worse. 

[recentanimenews]

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Video Games of 2019

Welcome to the second part of our annual “Staff Picks,” in which the Ani-Gamers team selects some of our favorite anime, manga, and video games of the past year. This time we’re talking video games!

As usual there are a lot of games to cover, and between our two contributors we weren’t able to play nearly as many of them as we’d like. This year saw two standout first-party Nintendo RPGs, including the first-ever original core-series Pok��mon games on a home console, the long-awaited release of Hideo Kojima’s inscrutable Death Stranding, a new AAA Star Wars action game (Jedi: Fallen Order), and both Outer Worlds and Outer Wilds. Meanwhile, last year’s big story of game industry unionization has continued to make headlines, notably at the Game Developer’s Conference in the spring, where major industry figures publically expressed their support for unionization. And that’s not the only area where politics had a big impact on gaming in 2019 — Blizzard’s suspension of Blitzchung over his support for the Hong Kong protests highlighted the contradiction between the values held by game industry workers (including pro players) and their bosses. As uncomfortable as these conversations are, they’re vital for building a more ethical industry.

In terms of the games themselves, many of them didn’t make it out of our piles of shame in time for the Staff Picks, but the ones that made the cut cover a wide range of genres, including complex action games, extremely anime JRPGs, and obtuse puzzlers. Enjoy, and feel free to chime in with your own 2019 picks in the comments.

David Estrella

#3: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

The hardest part about Sekiro was mending my relationship with my podcast co-host after debating the ethical conundrum of difficult video games and being made to look like a prick on tape. I’m completely making up what happened so don’t ban me from the site, Evan. Levity aside, the irony is that I never actually finished Sekiro and gave up at an endgame optional boss. A far departure from both Dark Souls and Bloodborne, From Software’s katana-focused revenge story did a Shinobi Execution to my hundreds of hours of experience and I was forced to learn everything over again. Some people really got on board with the action-focused gameplay whereas I flunked out of samurai school, so Sekiro is only the third-best pick from me on my list. If there had been more lore to pick up off the ground, I probably would have finished it, but I think everyone’s favorite fantasy author, George R.R. Martin, has me covered with Elden Ring, which will definitely be closer to what I expect from Hidetaka Miyazaki than what I got from Sekiro.

#2: Resident Evil 2

I originally wrote in Fire Emblem: Three Houses in here but I never finished that game in 2019. Resident Evil 2 (2019) on the other hand is a game I beat again and again throughout the year when I should have been focusing on other games (like Fire Emblem). First released on PlayStation over 20 years ago, the RE2 remake takes every great bit from that classic and reimagines it in the new engine used for Resident Evil 7. Fighting to survive Raccoon City’s zombie apocalypse again with Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield in a game rebuilt for modern standards is not something I expected to see, but I suppose Capcom didn’t want to be shown up by Square Enix reviving the 32-bit era with the upcoming episodic Final Fantasy VII remakes. Conveniently enough, now that I’ve played RE2 inside out, we’re already getting the Resident Evil 3 remake in April, so now I’ve got one more good reason to put off finishing a single run of Fire Emblem in my lifetime.

#1: Pokémon Sword & Shield

No one should be surprised that I would call Pokémon Sword and Shield my top pick of the year. The only purpose for me doing this is to get it in writing but otherwise, yes, I really loved this iteration of the series. The reasons why I enjoyed it so much have practically nothing to do with the hyped-up gimmicks like Dynamax battles or the shift to console. On the one hand, things like story and environment design could have been much better, and on the other hand, I never want to go back to the old games after experiencing all of the quality-of-life changes made in Sword and Shield. Details that casual players won’t care about or ever become aware of like paying for max EVs with vitamins or using mints to change Natures have completely changed the game for anyone serious about raising Pokémon. If I were asked if these improvements were worth losing over 400 Pokémon from the roster, I would probably cry. Maybe. Maybe it was worth it.

Evan Minto

#3: Katana Zero

I played Superhot on a VR rig once, and it was the closest I ever felt to being a real-life action hero. In that game, “time moves when you do,” allowing you to plan out elaborate, perfectly executed lethal maneuvers in Matrix-esque bullet time. Katana Zero applies a similar concept to the 2-D action-platformer. You play as a samurai assassin in a dystopian cyberpunk future, equipped with a power that allows you to rewind time when you die and slow it down while in combat. The former is mostly experienced as a simple respawn mechanic, but the latter is what turns Katana Zero into a unique hybrid of a puzzle and action game. Each room is filled with bad guys who can one-hit kill you, sometimes so many that defeating them all would be impossible using standard action game timing. Slowing things down, however, turns the game into a sort of puzzle, and allows you to link up dashes, wall jumps, sword slashes, and projectile throws in the span of a second or two. When the game plays the room back in real time, you really do feel like some kind of superhero. It doesn’t hurt that the whole thing is wrapped up in an impeccable audiovisual package, featuring intricately animated pixel art, pulsing electronic music, and a clever dialogue display system that combines animated and colored text. The story is pretty standard stuff for the genre, but the surprisingly funny dialogue does a great job cutting the melodrama. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but Katana Zero is a clever, well-crafted little action game.

#2: Baba Is You

I tried Baba Is You for the first time at a friend’s place, and was instantly sold. After just a few levels, I told him, “this is a game for game designers.” The core mechanic is deceptively, deviously simple: the rules defining how the game world operates are blocks within the world, and you can rearrange them. The early levels are straightforward, if abstract, plays on this concept. Form the sentence “Flag is win” and you’ve got a win condition. Break up the sentence “Wall is stop” and voila: walls are no longer an obstacle. It’s when Baba Is You takes the core mechanic and folds it in on itself repeatedly, however, that this puzzler reaches the realm of obtuse, mind-bending complexity. You can change which sprite represents the player character, or even control multiple players at once. You can separate sprites into layers that prevent them from intersecting with each other. Even the words that form the sentences themselves can be modified! Baba Is You sometimes reaches nearly impossible levels of difficulty, but since you can choose the order in which to try the puzzles, the game will never stop you dead in your tracks. This kind of bizarre, postmodern weirdness is exactly what I come to indie games for.

#1: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I never even finished the easiest half of Fire Emblem: Fates (Birthright), but I was glued to Awakening on the DS, my introduction to the franchise. In Three Houses Nintendo and Intelligent Systems aren’t even pretending that Fire Emblem is anything but a dating sim; you play as a part-time professor, part-time general, and the tactical RPG battles are interlaced with segments where you have to run around your home base talking to all of your students/units (fully voiced this time). At first this cumbersome back-and-forth, combined with a bevy of new combat mechanics, can make Three Houses feel like a game trapped between two conflicting identities, but after a few hours it clicked for me. All of the game’s seemingly mismatched systems, from the battalions to the tea parties, talk to and reinforce each other. Building relationships between your units boosts their stats and opens up opportunities to train them in new skills, all of which make them more effective in battle. Then their battle experience alongside their comrades feeds right back into their relationships. These mechanics have been around in some form since at least Awakening, but here they meld together like never before. Three Houses is a bewildering and sometimes overcomplicated successor to the Fire Emblem legacy, but the whole mess somehow comes together into a spellbinding experience.

Check out our 2019 Manga Staff Picks as well!

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Video Games of 2019 originally appeared on Ani-Gamers on January 8, 2020 at 4:58 PM.

By: David Estrella