dijidiji

@peffy: I think it's a fair criticism. Gerstmann is generally more focused on the gameplay side of things rather than narrative stuff. I totally understand him seeing a game with a cat as the protagonist and expecting the gameplay to "make you feel like a cat", y'know?

This one went the way of FTL for me: liked it up to the point where I could never beat it. There's something immensely dissatisfying about that. Still, I had no idea this was released. I might try it again and probably run into the same issue but hey, it's a free update.

The hourglass was a life saver for me. I had no problem with most of the bosses throughout the game except for the Librarian which I think I fluked... apparently you can parry their projectiles to melt their health bar which I wish I had figured out and I think there should be a hint in the booklet for this (or did I miss it?). But once I reached the Heir I was thoroughly stumped until I figured out that the combo of hourglass to slow time and the card that increases the parry window is incredibly potent. A handful of attempts learning the attack timings in the very generous slow mo and I had it done.

I do think the Souls-like elements feel a little out of place but the path I found through the game was gentle enough that I never really hit any walls like I did with Elden Ring. I think that shows the big downfall of games with non-linear progression, since I can tell some people are having a miserable time due to finding the "wrong" path through the game, as I did with Elden Ring. It can really sour your experience and view on the game as a whole.

Combat is definitely not the game's strong suit but I can't say I had as big an issue with it as many people seem to. It's possible that I unknowingly overlevelled myself to the point where it was a breeze because I didn't have any real challenge fighting enemies until your powers are taken away in ghost form.

I enjoyed the puzzles for the most part, though I think the big one would have been better if it were split into parts so you could figure out where you messed up. With one clue I had to look it up and even having done so I don't really see the logic behind it. At some point I did get a bit of fatigue considering that most of the puzzling is in finding the thing you need to do and the execution afterwards is mostly the same. I also tried my hand at translating the language with a few hints once I had finished the game but there was no way that I was going to translate the whole booklet so I just ended up reading through a translated booklet afterwards.

All in all, I really liked the game and it's a perfect game pass game since I don't think I would have picked up the game based on its "Zelda-like" look but the genre bending with the manual and puzzling was really cool. Honestly I would say even if I had just stopped at the first ending I'd recommend the game. The feeling of figuring things out from the manual and being like "I could do that this whole time?" is a unique enough experience on its own, the more hidden puzzles afterwards for the second ending and easter eggs feel kind of like they're there if you like puzzles and if you don't then you've experienced most of the game anyway. Makes me think that something like Inscryption would be a great fit for a subscription service since you sidestep the problem where people buy a game for one thing and get what's essentially a different game.

This idea leads to the next question: what is the purpose of a review? Is it to inform and judge a product, or is it to speak of the experience I had with the game? The answer should be both, but that leads to another set of questions.

I think where I stand on that issue now is I only read reviews for the author's experience. I'm not sure when it started or if it was just always this way and I never noticed (or because you didn't have much of a choice pre-internet) but I've found that trying to rely on a reviewer to give an assessment of a game's qualities, both good and bad, is super troublesome.

When I read reviews and compare them to my own experience with the game, and I wonder why this and those issues weren't mentioned, it makes me wonder why I would read a review with the idea of getting a qualitative judgement when the focus is so often on the author's experience; "is it fun?", rather than "is it good?". Though they are of course inextricably linked, there's definitely a different feel about reviews who aim for the latter but it's one of those "I know it when I see it" things rather than something I can put to words.

But really, is it a big deal? Not really. It's a whole lot easier these days to find and watch someone playing the game and judge it for yourself, so if reviews are all about the author's personal experiences and preferences rather than trying to lay down what's good and what's bad about a game, that's totally fine.

Also, even though you're not calling this a review, I found it a lot more informative than many actual reviews. I might actually check this game out since the solo stealth thing sounds like something I might enjoy for a few hours.

Yeah seriously, the amount of rune arcs I have now would probably be wasted on a single boss fight. I realise they're not doing any good being left unused but I think it would just agitate me if I were to keep losing them on bosses. Kinda deflates the importance they try to give to the great runes.

@av_gamer: IMO Sekiro is the only game From has made since Demon's that doesn't have the same Souls feel. Even Bloodborne, for all its differences, feels like a Souls game at heart. While Sekiro definitely has some identifiable Souls DNA, it's perhaps to its detriment since the game otherwise plays very different and I think a lot of people (myself included) are set up with certain expectations when they encounter some of those Souls mechanics. At its core there is one way to play which is a dance of timed blocks and parries. While there are the prosthetics, they are generally used to exploit weaknesses in a foe rather than being something akin to creating a spellcaster build in the Souls games. I think that focus on a single defined style of play afforded From the chance to hone it and polish it... I think I just convinced myself to replay Sekiro!

To get back to the topic at hand, I recently respecced my character to remove the points in strength and dex that weren't contributing a large amount given I've ended up using a holy affinity weapon. I funnelled those points into mind so my FP is a lot higher and I'm having a lot more fun since it gives me ample opportunity to throw lightning bolts at an enemy if I can't or don't want to deal with their move set in close range. I still use my melee weapons (a holy mace and a newly upgraded fire sword so that I have another damage type) to deal with lesser enemies and to get hits in where a spell might take too long to cast, but having the ranged options has 100% improved my enjoyment of the game. There are so many enemies where, due to my lack of skill, I simply could not time the dodges and their chains would use up all my stamina if trying to block. Previously I was being hard headed and forcing myself to kill these things in melee, now I just fall back on my large FP pool and throw some lightning around.

Side note: the decision to not have a lightning affinity that scales with faith upsets me, given my choice of spells are holy and lightning.

Edit: and before I forget, I still think there's a better balance between guiding and not guiding the player. One of my favourite things in Elden Ring are the notes you can buy or sometimes find that offer up hints. Like the one that mentions where you can get the physick. More of these would've been welcome to cut down on some of the aimlessness while still giving that feeling of discovering something. In particular, I'm thinking of things like the bell bearings which let you buy smithing stones instead of having to farm enemies for them. Hints to semi-critical items like that, which feel like in-world rumours, are always really cool to me when it happens in games.

Also we have a dude in the hub called "the all knowing". This would've been a great opportunity to allow players to ask for some hints. He does sometimes offer up information but it's not at all consistent. I could see this character being great for some context sensitive hints, like if a player has died in Caelid a billion times then you might be able to ask him what he knows from his studies about Caelid and he might say something to hint at the fact that the Aeonia swamp area and the barrows to the north are far harder than things on the way to Sellia. Or perhaps if you haven't completed Liurnia yet he might point you in that direction.

This kind of "soft direction" would be helpful without just being a big labelled level range on the map. I do wonder how much of this is deliberate design and how much is inexperience on From's part. It's hard to tell since From and Miyazaki don't seem to talk about development and design a lot. I would love a documentary on the development of Demon's Souls.

@spacemanspiff00: It's funny because something that made me think I would be able to avoid the fatigue that generally comes with open world games was hearing about how it's not an Ubisoft brand open world where your map is full of activities to tick off but I think if anything those games allow you more freedom to skip the repeated activities than Elden Ring. Rather, it seems as if the thing pushing you to do those activities is being under-levelled rather than the simple desire to clear your map. So it's kind of six of one, half a dozen of another.

While I prefer Elden Ring over Sekiro, I oddly feel that Sekiro is a more deliberately and dare I say more well designed game then Elden Ring. That might just be the amount of polish and love that can be afforded to every element that can't be when you're developing a sprawling open world, I dunno.

I don't mean to endlessly rag on the game though, I'm still having a lot of fun playing the game purely co-op.

I feel like Elden Ring is ridiculously bloated. I've been sticking to the main path (I have 90-something map markers for dungeons I've found and haven't completed) and the amount of times I've hit hard walls where a boss will wipe the floor with me or the amount of damage I do chips away an almost unnoticeable amount of health off their bar is staggering. And yet I've sunk over a hundred hours in the game! I always liked how From's previous games were pretty succinct but afforded you more playtime if you really wanted to. Armored Core and the Souls games both let you play through again and clean up any content you missed or just muck around with build ideas. I rarely played the new game plus modes and the length of those games were perfect for me.

After defeating the Fire Giant and feeling like I was about to finally finish the game I've once again hit a hard wall of not being able to do any meaningful amount of damage. I'm not particularly interested in doing side content since it tends to be uninteresting dungeons and repeats of bosses I've faced before.

And here I am still experiencing the same problems Demons' Souls had, where the camera is not up to snuff when fighting giant or fast enemies (or fast giant enemies for that matter). Often the best way to fight a boss is to not use lock on and just have a screen full of feet. Having to repeatedly tap the D-pad to select items and spells still sucks in the middle of combat if you have more than 3 or 4 of them and the addition of the pouch, while helpful, does not solve the issue. I really wish From would devote some resources to this aspect of their games.

There's a lot I have enjoyed in my time playing Elden Ring but it's also been a frustrating experience where I was doing things just because I need those levels rather than because I was actually interested in exploring an area and now I've reached the point where I've had my fill of the gameplay and just want to see the end. The game telling me that I can't until I sink a few dozen more hours into the game makes me want to put it down and this might just be the first Souls game I don't bother to finish (not counting Bloodborne since that was more about being fed up with the load times on a base PS4). Or maybe I'll just fire up Cheat Engine to give myself a billion souls and finish the game on my terms.

Was this recorded? I'd be bummed if timezone differences meant I missed out on this completely.

Having played a handful of hours of each via Game Pass, I've found I prefer 4. Somehow I've run into a bunch of bugs in 5 (console version). Also the AI drivers in 5 are insanely aggressive and defy physics a lot whereas in 4 they seem a lot calmer, if a lot easier.

I am, however, disappointed with multiplayer in both games. Or perhaps just how they surface it. I have no idea how to play races that I want. I understand how to join one of those random free roam lobbies and that's about it. How do I play class B off road races? I am absolutely clueless and I haven't encountered a single tutorial so far on how to do that.