Written by ylside on 25.10.2024 at 00:28


So, which is best of all these souls-like ? Elden Ring ?

Toss up between Elden Ring or Bloodborne

Elden Ring (with or without DLC) as it's huge, engrossing and has multiple options to improve if you hit a wall with a boss, swell for people like me.

Bloodborne (with or without DLC) ... my first, so some sentiment there, but the atmosphere and story is what dragged me in to deal with a notoriously hard game. Once I got past the first (albeit optional) boss, Cleric Beast, by the skin of my teeth but on my first attempt I thought "I can do this" and was sucked in until the end. Ruined most games for me, honestly. It's a more concise and curated story.

The next two:

Dark Souls - Slower, more methodical. The first 2/3 the game are flat out amazing, the way the world folded in around itself is just astounding. Seems a bit rushed and unfinished at the end, including some cut and paste mobs and more frustrating zones.

Dark Souls III - Mixes OG Dark Souls with Bloodborne's speed. Weird one. Beat it, but in a lot of zones I endure/survive them whereas in DS I or Bloodborne I've mastered them. Fun, challenging, but for the most part the world doesn't match up to the original. The high point zones are awesome, but a lot of them are drudgery.


The rest:

Demons's's Souls Remake - I like this one, but hit a wall and it doesn't intrigue me as much as the above, or inspire the "Fuck You, I"m going to annihilate all of you!" fury of the below. SO i guess this could be bottom. Is a song-to-song decent metal album better than one with a couple great songs and a lot of filler? Same with this and below.

Dark Souls II, Scholar version - Easily the most "meh". A good to very good game, but because it's Dark Souls, the bar is a lot higher. Seems more DS fan fiction than DS. A lot of problems I've listed above in prior entries. Felt WAAAAY to ganksquad-y to me, where the difficulty was just tossing more shit in your face rather than being well crafted like the others in this series. Limited number of enemy spawns means limited chances to earn Souls to repair or restock. In order to maximize my Soul returns, and out of frustration with the game in general, my play through has been genocidal. I have wiped out every single hostile mob in something like 12 to 15 zones. Maybe more.



Sekiro is it's own thing, different from the above. Curated story with extremely limited options to build your character compared to the above. Combat has not clicked with me (I suck at parries in almost all these games aside from Bloodborne) ... I've not gotten far in it.

If you do get the parries right though, Sekiro's story and gameplay unfolds beautifully. The game is really long but really optimised and perfected. If Sekiro is to be ranked amongst the rest it would take place 3 for me.

Written by InnerSelf on 07.11.2024 at 10:59

If you do get the parries right though, Sekiro's story and gameplay unfolds beautifully. The game is really long but really optimised and perfected. If Sekiro is to be ranked amongst the rest it would take place 3 for me.

At some point I want to proceed with it, but it just never clicked. And the game has my terrified of Dragon Rot or whatever where my dying repeatedly has repercussions with NPCs in the world. I don't want to fuck their shit up while trying to master the parry and dance of combat. BB was dodge dodge chop chop chop, DS was initially block block block poke poke until I got better. If anything has helped me mildly improve my shield parries it's ER:SotE and the winter lantern monsters or whatever. I've still died a bunch, best showing was nailing the timing on two consecutive encounters... but those foes, once they are gone they stay gone, were worth the frustration.

Written by BitterCOld on 07.11.2024 at 16:41

At some point I want to proceed with it, but it just never clicked. And the game has my terrified of Dragon Rot or whatever where my dying repeatedly has repercussions with NPCs in the world. I don't want to fuck their shit up while trying to master the parry and dance of combat. BB was dodge dodge chop chop chop, DS was initially block block block poke poke until I got better. If anything has helped me mildly improve my shield parries it's ER:SotE and the winter lantern monsters or whatever. I've still died a bunch, best showing was nailing the timing on two consecutive encounters... but those foes, once they are gone they stay gone, were worth the frustration.

I found dodging in Sekiro not that bad tbh, you still have to parry a lot of things but you can do a balance between them. I will say this without spoiling, but the repercussions of the dragon rot are not game ruining, I died a LOT of times my first playthrough and I still felt that the ending came out ok.

Written by BitterCOld on 07.11.2024 at 09:41

Written by ylside on 25.10.2024 at 00:28


So, which is best of all these souls-like ? Elden Ring ?

Toss up between Elden Ring or Bloodborne

Elden Ring it is then !
Now, to gather the will and the focus necessary...

Playing Dragon Age 2 again. Mage named Tuah. Never got far with a mage before.

Planning on building (well, getting built) a new PC after Christmas. Or maybe if there are no good deals at the time, maybe in spring once Nvidia's new 50-series has been released. Hoping to snatch either something new low-mid-range with good VRAM, or something older-gen that's maybe a bit cheaper than now (even second-hand is fine). From the current gen, 7800XT would probably more than suffice for years to come (not sure I'll even move to 1440p and certainly not 4k). Budget is around 1400e, because I also want a nice mATX-case.

Sooo anyway, what I mean to say is: Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3 and (I guess with the wife, sigh) Hogwarts Legacy, here I come. I didn't want to sully the long-awaited BG3 experience, especially, with poor performance. (Current rig is about 9 years old, though I upgraded the GPU at one point.)

Been playing Persona 5 for the past few months. Long time since I last played a JRPG. It's good, although it gets a bit stale: the combat is too easy and not very tactical, and I think pacing is a bit awkward. There are really long periods of just daily activities, then pretty long palaces/Mementos runs. (I always finish everything I can in one visit.) I am always bored of one by the time the other comes around.

Made me want to get Metaphor and maybe start some other JRPG too, though. (Got Ni No Kuni II in my library.)

Written by IronAngel on 11.12.2024 at 12:28

Been playing Persona 5 for the past few months. Long time since I last played a JRPG. It's good, although it gets a bit stale: the combat is too easy and not very tactical, and I think pacing is a bit awkward. There are really long periods of just daily activities, then pretty long palaces/Mementos runs. (I always finish everything I can in one visit.) I am always bored of one by the time the other comes around.

Rather enjoyed it, when in the right mood. Gave up after I got lost in one of the "dungeons", went away on a holiday with my wife, came back and had zero clue about any of it. Loved the soundtrack.

Liked it enough to buy Metaphor: Re-Fantazio during the "black Friday" digital sale. Waiting until after holidays to start this one.

Mafia , The Old Country trailer was reveled
A bit RDR2 and RDR, New Austin style, desert style, II saw early car hmm old Ford, I saw host racing, I saw cool graphics, a lot of knifing, bold action carabine , revolver.
Looks good, I hope it will be open world, whit some eastern eggs, collectives and good story and 60h game time.
Can not wait to see new game play soon.
I hope they can fix games, before GTA6 (if even it will come next year) be out.

I have thought about re-starting Jagged Alliance 3 on commando difficulty and hiring only the cheapest mercs, you know starting from the cheapest and keeping that line up for the rest of the game. In games I prefer to live dangerously as I do in real life. My current rating for this game is 4,5/5, I think it's really good come back since Jagged Alliance 2 -- you know those Back In Action and whatever else were in between were not so good with combat mechanics and I tried playing it and it was impossible to finish these games, it needed turn based combat and what they offered instead was too random and ended up too frustrating.