Video Games

I kinda want it and my only souls game consisted of me dying repeated on the second guy I kept finding at the bottom of a tower, then dying more often on the first guy for a while then not playing anymore.

Still can't decide on Elden Ring. I get a limited amount of time to game nowadays and whilst I do/used to enjoy being severely tested by a souls-like game, I just don't know if this is a good/sensible use of what is meant to be my leisure time.

I recently bought DL2 - tiny learning curve, but immensely fun to spend 45 mins leaping around and bashing dome zombies about. I guess that's the kind of experience I need nowadays?

Tldr - different games for different folks.

Just over 3 hours in to Elden Ring, just found upgrade materials and have a heavy +2 sword.
Still took 3 goes to beat Margit.

Got brapped by an eagle with swords in its talons. Did lol.

Loving elden ring. Didn't appreciate how big the world is - its massive. Took a lift in a pretty innocuous looking building, and it opened up a whole new layer under the regular map.
Beat my first dragon down there too.

I've only encountered one dragon, shit it and ran, ended up in a very Demons Souls-esque mine.

Tonight I'll be off to find a Zweihander

the dragon near the start? I noped out of that fight straight away.

I still feel all that toxic masculinity shit about it being super tough is born out of lazy design choices rather than any inspired game development beliefs as nothing about any of these style games should require such reliance on gimmicks to increase the difficulty artificially.

Souls games have always been thought of as fair, in that enemies follow patterns and players can learn these, with practice to defeat them. I suppose having a degree of dexterity is necessary which limits who can access the games.

As you know the debate about whether these games should have an easy mode rages still.

The design choices in any Souls games are not lazy. The difficulty isn't increased by gimmicks. (You're creeping along the edge of a mountain on a narrow ledge in the dark you fall down a broken bit, you die, get another. You go and bring a torch this time -)

the dragon near the start? I noped out of that fight straight away.

me too. I'd spotted a giant crab that thought it was slick hiding a short way away while i was killing those poison sack things, when all of a sudden the cunt was right behind me, I ran away and then the fucking dragon just appeared right next to me and I very nearly shit my pants.

on my wanders I found a suspicious "thing" and after what sumo said about the trap chest that puts you in a tough dungeon with no fast travel out, I googled it so i didnt fuck myself up, it zips you to an endgame area and advice was go through if you want as theres an npc worth talking to but dont be dumb enough to fight anything.

spent a couple hours running like hell from all the scary things, all I'll say is you'll have plenty of chance to fight dragons in this game. I focuses a bit on opening up some sites of grace which should make it easier for me later and accidentally found an excellent spot to farm some runes by kiting some massive beasts a short distance away into a tough group of soliders right next to it and then trying to get a few hits on everyone while running in massive circles on the horse until they kill each other. given it was in a tough area was getting 600-1000 runes per big kill and if i died the enemies weren't aggro enough that i couldn't just run over and grab the runes again. did it a couple of times to boost a few levels but sure I'll be back.

up to level 18ish now playing a brigand so have dumped it all into dex and vit with a point or two in strength just to help if weapons need a bit more oomph.

thing is because i'm not doing the main story with all the bosses yet drops have been pretty lacking and I've only managed one upgrade to my knife (i have quite a few more powerful smithing stones but no low level ones) but that's the only improved bit of kit i have yet that works for this class as all the drops have been for strength build warriors it seems.

I just witnessed my 9 year old win his first Victory Royale in Fortnite. He's been playing for a couple of months and has finished second a few times. Console controls too.

I need a moment. Bit dusty in here.

nice. gg little aroogah!

Nice! Well done!

Nice, my mind is to slow to build/move/shoot now but did enjoy Fortnite bitd!

I was level 30 with a +3 weapon and summoned someone to help and still only just beat Margit. Beat the second story boss first time. I'm running a str + dex build with a scyth and it's great fun.

I have never played a Soul’s game but I completed Cuphead so this game ain’t got shit on me!

Kidding. It does look enjoyable. Maybe it’s finally time to dip my toes.

Just created a level 1 hobbit burglar in lotro - about 15 years after I got clean from a fairly hardcore lotro habit. I couldn't get into my old account (with tons of gold/weapons/high level characters) which sort of sucked but actually I just had a hankering to play around the shire.

Sounds like it'll run better than Elden Ring anyway.

Also just bought No Man's Sky which is half price on steam atm.

the fucking dragon just appeared right next to me and I very nearly shit my pants.

Me too. Hit the sack thing and it came. I ran away till the dragon health bar disappeared then encountered a large colourful cauldron of bats who killed me. Lovely fiery coloured wings.

This is so much more accessible than the other Souls Games. You can have such fun just dicking around fighting smaller things and exploring. No game ending sticky points so far. Game is also absolutely gorgeous. Reminiscent of Ico. The colour pallet is so much more varied and less dank than the other games too.

Worth playing even if you don't like the challenge of the other games. I played the original DS for years. The only game I played (which helped get me through a bad patch). I can see this being the only game I'll play for the foreseeable

I'm liking open world named bosses that you can run away from until you are ready.

Only had 1 boss fog wall (Margit) which cost me a thousand souls or so when I flounced due to being under-levelled.

In the castle (Stormveil?) i got locked in a room with a dude but old school strats of smacking them on the arse still works well.

Over all, enjoying the game.
Hope to git gud at some point, but seems unlikely

I'm really enjoying having the horse too, not just for getting around quickly but being able to exit fights that would otherwise be too hard or doing hit-and-runs to take on tougher ones.

I enjoyed Stormveil castle, it felt like classic Dark Souls, now I'm back outside and exploring aimlessly again. There's so much I feel like I've missed or looked past, I with there was a 100% guide but it's so big there aren't any out yet.

Also VaatyVidya who provided superb guidance and lore commentary for the Dark Souls games, is back. He's been commissioned by Bandai Namco to create this material for ES.

I get that, the feeling of have i missed stuff, but much prefer going through completely blind for first run. Getting all the things is for subsequent runs

For anyone having trouble with Margit
https://twitter.com/SunhiLegend/status/1497689012668088325

Same, usually just look up the list of stuff that's possible to find and if anything sounds cool then look how to get it. Also NPC quests because I'm sure there's going to be lots of finding specific people in specific places in a specific order which I'll totally miss otherwise.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/t3anlr/well_that_just_happened/

I'm really on the edge here. Is there anything that drives you forward beyond just exploring story wise?

I feel even the sniff of a story's going to get me downloading it!