Superharman

The big one for me is Dark Souls, I thought I had no interest in it as everything said about it completely turned me off. It wasn't till Patrick started to talk strongly about it in early 2014 at about the same time that it was on sale for $7 that I decided to give it a go. It's now my favourite game of all time.

I also decided to play Final Fantasy VII in 2017, 20 years after its initial release and really enjoyed the experience and it pushed me to go on to play all the games in the series, it's now a series I feel pretty strongly about.

Here is the blog entry after I locked my rankings:

https://www.giantbomb.com/profile/superharman/blog/game-of-the-year-2022/268463/

I still re-watch the various "This is the Run" seasons. A lot of that is the chemistry between Dan and Vinny, but I think you could get a different fun feel from Dan and Grubb doing it. That said, being in the same room was also a big part of what made it great.

Some Elden Ring discussions have generally annoyed me. I’m not overly against Souls games having an easy mode, so I won’t complain about that, but hearing people think they can just jump in blind and not get any guidance when they’re having a hard time just gets to me for some reason. There are tools to help you get through these games, especially Elden Ring.

Game length has also been mentioned, I only have issues with it when the story or game design doesn’t warrant it, I thought The Last of Us II was too long for example despite liking it. But, this complaint on podcasts is the modern version of podcasters complaining that friends lists were limited back in the day, games being too long is a non issue for most players.

I could be mistaken but I’m almost positive it was the Mass Effect Bring Down the Sky DLC on the 360.

Of those I’ve owned, PS3 - I skipped release and was a student the next year with a 360. Ended up grabbing one in 2011 just after I got a full time job.

After that, OG Xbox was 2003 so 2 years, 360 was early 2007, hopefully getting a PS5 soon. Everything else has been launch (N64, Xbox one, Switch, Series X) or launch window (PS2 and PS4).

@efesell: the wolf really bummed me out. I generally like to solo bosses but I went in the first two times and he basically 2 shotted me both times without me landing a hit. Because the run was so long I decided to bring in spirits to get a feel for him and see where my damage was at. They ganked him and it was over pretty quick.

I'm not entirely sure how far I am through the game (at 65 hours, 3 lords down) but the only "brick wall" bosses I've really run into are Margit and Radhan, that took a Rune Arc with Godrick's Great Rune to get over the line. Godrick wasn't too much of a problem for me personally but seeing the number of people who fall off that fight, I guess it just matched my style.

As for is it more or less fair? In a sense, I personally hate the hidden health bar fights, particularly in DS3 where that felt like their only trick in the late game and DLC. I feel like the hidden second health bar lost its impact after the Guardian Ape in Sekiro made it a great moment...though I knew it was coming in ER with Renalla. Speaking of, I actually thought Renalla (and the wolf for that matter) was a bit "unfair" just for the run up...in theory I could have beaten both without using spirits but I just got annoyed with how long it was taking me to get back to the fights, dodging enemies etc. It's a bizarre choice given how well they checkpointed so many of the other big bosses in the game (so far anyway). It didn't help that my character was super weak to sorcery at that point.

I just can’t bring myself to kill the tortoises. I love tortoises and have a small figure of one on my des that looks exactly like the ones in Elden Ring.

For some reason, The Order: 1866 is sticking out. It might have been the excitement of the Sony press conference that year but I remember people getting really hyped for the CG trailer of that one.