Video Games

Decided to give Elden Ring a go. Still in the starting area, beat my first mini boss which was some stone cat thing. Took about 3 goes...

Then got absolutely clarted by a tree sentinel or something massive.

elden ring is my first souls game, i picked the wretch thinking i would find stuff along the way

it has been 15 hours of playing and i've only just stopped hating my life, im about as strong as a starting class now.

i cannot stress enough, how awful it was for those 15 hours

lmao

Elden Ring also my first souls game, about 7 hours in, spend about 2-3 of them trying to beat margit on soul level 15 or so, went and explored a bit and then spent another hour trying him on soul level 20, with a +2 longsword. Getting him down to 1/4 health consistently now but think I'll need to level up a bit more to beat him. Finding the process of fighting him very enjoyable though, and really nice that if I want to go level up I can actually go explore rather than grind. Learning the patterns of blocking and rolling is pretty fun, though the rng of what he does first is defining how far I'm getting in the fight so far.

I thought I'd messed up by picking the bandit (pretty much every item i find is useless for the type of build it is) but the thought of going with the wretch makes my (elden) ring clench. fair play for sticking with it.

I managed to lose 20k runes last night pissing about trying to jump down a massive cliff edge in an overpowered area to find a picture location. thought it'd put them at the top of the cliff if i died but it left them halfway down a series of very tight jumps and i slipped off again jumping down to them. wouldn't have mattered though, when i finally got down there there was no visible way back up and a massive stone golem that i hit about 10 times and didn't see him lose any health off his health bar and one of his magic attacks took 90% of my health off in one hit and it hit me about 15 times. lol

apart from a bit of sekiro, this is my first game of this type

i'm awful at it but still kinda of enjoying it? Hoping I can buy/find a weapon to make horseback fighting a little more... tactile? Crunchy? I feel like charging full speed at a human NPC and hitting them with a weapon should have some more impact.

Yeah Wretch bros. I had to farm the guys in armour near the beginning for ages to get a full set. My reasoning was it starts with equal stats but level 1 and all the other classes start at level 7-9

It doesn't though... wretch starts with 6 points less than a level 7 starter class

unless I couldn't count when I was looking at the same thing

Wretch has 80 points total. Hero is level 7 and has 86, Bandit is level 5 and has 84. I couldn't be bothered to count the rest. So I guess it's equal yeah. Oh well.

the rennala boss fight is everything I hate about souls games. they've literally abandoned all of the QoL changes for this one fight. long run to the boss, elevator, boring unnecessary first phase and then boss that just spams ranged attacks non-stop across the arena when their health is below half so it's instakill if you make one misstep and another 5 minutes of your life wasted to get to the point you can try it again.

if this was the overall elden ring experience i would have been playing dying light for the past week instead.

actually winds me up that they still seem to be insistent on this nonsense being good game design. it would be less shit if they just locked the boss door for 5 minutes instead and let you spawn there. least then I can go have a piss and grab a snack from the kitchen while you waste my time unnecessarily

Theres a path to the left of the stairs that skips the giant meaning you only have to fight the wolf. Also do a summon, there's always a bunch of people summoning at the entrance to her fight.

I think that's a different boss. anyways I beat her on about my 7 or 8th try by using a bleed based special attack on my twinblade which got me through her second phase without her summoning once as i just slashed massive chunks off her health bar over and over and kept her staggered.

they still seem to be insistent on this nonsense being good game design.

Ha, so many articles atm about Elden Rings apparent design 'misteps' such as having to drop into a dodgy looking pit for the tutorial at the start. "Why not make it clear that this will be really helpful for new players.?"

I respect their lack of compromise though as any Souls veteran will agree this game is full of accommodations for noobs, which is good.

Remember that the huge reputation garnered by the Souls series was built on the games that wasted way more than 5 minutes of games previous time to get back to where you'd reached pre dying (Sen's fortress lols)

These games evolve a stoic approach to life.

There is also much written about how DS games have offered help for people with mental health issues.

I am rather enjoying my bearded brethren's dislike, yet still pumping in the hours!

I have found a couple of evergaols and only beat one (dude gave me a monstrous bleed sword, but I haven't the arcane to use it)
Other one is just after the monkey troll thing that drops down with the archers early game.

Need to rethink my build strat, was going full strength sword and board, (sword is now a battle hammer) but not sure it is going to work for me long term.
Unless I unlock a colossal sword soon...

just because they did it a lot before still doesn't make it a good decision. you can find the same criticism of boss run backs all the way through the series. it's never been a good feature. it's there to artificially increase the amount of play time with rote repetition of an incredibly boring part of the game play. the games are a success because of the tough combat a boss run-back does nothing for that.

with elden ring they've shown that boss fights can be soul-crushingly tough without the need for these cheap tricks. it's current success is testament to that.

If your enjoyment of the game is dependent on an innate feeling of overcoming pointless hardships outside of the actual gameplay to prove something bigger to yourself then you can just spawn further away and give yourself a nice pat on the back.

I've taken down at least three evergaols now. git gud scrub (am I doing it right?).

I'm pumping in the hours because they took the shit bits out or at least mitigated them so that when I'm playing it's actually possible to enjoy the gameplay, it's no coincidence I've had fun at pretty much every moment (including many failures) so far except for the one fight where they went right back to their old ways.

Elden Ring to me is basically Witcher 3 exploration with a pared back storyline and much tougher boss fights which puts it in a very high tier of all time games for me. I will never ever have any desire to play the previous games though.

Having just unlocked the ability to respec I desperately need to rethink my build as I definitely went too broad with how i've spread out my levels. and I have a chest full of cool shit I wanna try out now.

That boss could definitely have done with a stake of marika at the top of the lift. The boss fight itself was fine though.

I've gone full strength, with a tad of int to use some basic spells. Doing me ok so far - think i'm mid game? Went with the heavy brick hammer for most of it, but playing around with starscourage greatsword at the moment

I went rogue at lunch time & tried steering using the controller motion controls, not the analogue stick - it's actually not terrible. I don't think I'll stick with it but nice as a change.

People with steering wheels; do you get feedback like you do driving a car (gets heavier the tighter the corner until you lose it & the steering goes light) or is it just an input like the controller analogue sticks?

Elden Ring or GTFO.

I will never ever have any desire to play the previous games though.

demons souls remake is really good

You get feedback. Everything from bumps on the roads / curbs to the feel of wheels locking or sliding.

Aside from the smoothness of input, the feedback is a major step in being able to drive ‘on the edge’ with a car.

Lol I had noticed you'd stopped going for gold on your licenses. I suppose in a way they're similar games; repeatedly trying & failing at something that, from the outside, doesn't look or sound particularly fun!

Ha!
Did the B golds, struggled with a couple of A golds so sacked it off.
Will dig my G29 wheel out at some point and put a bit effort into getting good.

Did read the motion controls on the dual sense are really fun for rallying, so will give it a whirl at some point

Interesting, if I'm still playing in 6 months (and haven't fallen back into the mire of CoD) I might upgrade - they look quite pricey for someone that's not fully committed yet, but good to know you get the feedback.