@“treefroggy”#p104434 I found it to be really cathartic because in every other fight you kind of feel bad about being so mean to your enemies and then there's this dude acting like a complete scumbag and you just start poisoning him and igniting him with oil fire and using all your cheapest tricks and spammy moves and it turns out to be really effective and the fact that it hurts him honestly makes it better.
@“IncompatibleKaiser”#p104464 it‘s still definitively an emotionally conflicting fight, he’s your adopted father who taught you everything you know, betraying your master and asking you to come along on the basis of being your father. His humanity comes out during the fight when you see he has all the same cheap tricks you do. Very sad when he makes the dishonorable move of >!feigning begging for mercy!<, makes you feel some kind of way to see the man you once respected stoop that low.
@“treefroggy”#p104466 Why would you respect someone who treats you like an object?
I think the story establishes Sekiro‘s respect for his father. then it’s subverted prior to the fight. Not really interested elaborating on that or discussing issues outside of the context of the way the battle with Owl made me feel in the moment. Yes IMHO I felt Owl was a sympathetic character who I felt sorry for and disappointed that he turned.
holy crap!
https://twitter.com/ELDENRING/status/1628273414354894848
i could probably work this out myself but is that, like, 20 million unique players, or are we talking 20 million accounts
anyway, good for fromsoft, they deserve it as much as anyone can in this twisted fucked up capitalist hellscape
I interpreted it as 20 million units sold. That’s awesome. Love to see animal crossing sell 39 mil and elden ring sell 20 mil. The kids are gonna be alright.
I‘ve only played Bloodborne to completion and a few hours of Demon’s, Dark and Sekiro Souls so I've been avoiding this thread and now I have to catch up!!!
Has this been posted??
https://twitter.com/6yoojell6/status/1591421660934332417
Demon‘s souls rules. I’m almost 20 hours in and having a blast. This is my first fromsoft game and I‘m all the way in, I’ll play all these souls games. I‘m pleased that it’s not the “dude, so hard” status that goes around (I might eat my words when I‘m further in/I try the other games). It does one of my favorite approaches to difficulty where if one thing is too hard, I can turn around and try another path, repeat until I’m strong enough to try the first path again. That's just good gaming there.
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@“kyleprocrastinations”#p109994 (I might eat my words when I’m further in/I try the other games).
Personally, I think if you can manage one of them, you can manage all of them. _Bloodborne_ and _Sekiro_ are sometimes perceived as being strictly harder, when I think it's really more that they are less flexible and have different overall difficulty curves, rather than that they have especially higher skill checks. _Sekiro_ might stretch that more tautly than _Bloodborne,_ but in some ways it is almost like it's the least hard of the collection of games... provided you can learn its idiosyncrasies and meet its steep initial demands.
The skills you acquire from each game compound upon each other. Then when you have to switch gears for bb/Sekiro, if you’re stubborn it can be difficult to switch gears after playing these games nonstop for years. But since all the games are out now, there’s no need to hang on one for 1000 hours like we did before lol.
@"kyleprocrastinations"#p109994
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@“treefroggy”#p110168 The skills you acquire from each game compound upon each other.
Yes, absolutely. Some From Softwarian game engine-y gameplay design idiosyncracies are similar if not identical between games, so lots of skills are totally transferable too. The general shape of their control schemes are roughly the same, for a simple example... you can be certain your primary attack is mapped to R1, your items and especially your healing are mapped to the left and/or top face buttons, etc. _Elden Ring_ even still has the same (bad but let's not get into it) fall damage mechanics as _Dark Souls_ if not _Demons's Souls's._
More cerebral aspects of playing the games are also the same. The way exploration and the game worlds are laid out on a micro level are quite reminiscent of each other, even if they definitely can be thought of as being arranged into a few at least sort of distinct macro phases, with _Demons's Souls's_ and _Dark Souls_ representing one more labyrinthine naturalistic phase, _Dark Souls II, Bloodborne, Dark Souls III,_ and _Sekiro_ representing a somewhat simplified Series of Tubes macro world design, and _Elden Ring_ incorporating elements of all of that into a world that is simply Huge.
If anything, though, the main barrier to getting into these games for many people seem to be just believing they personally can do it, and just trying to get through their first one. They're not not hard games but they're certainly not purposefully trying to create some kind of upward trajectory of difficulty in any sense. That's why I feel if you can get through one you can get through all of them, with the exception of less so _Bloodborne_ and more so _Sekiro_ because the combat and character progression is so purposefully different from the rest of the games.
I just want to add while this thread is bumped, and not bump another elden ring thread: The recent Ray Tracing update is getting a lot of negative press, because yeah, it could be more significant, there are also other problems that could have been prioritized, and the difference isn‘t totally apparent at first glance.
HOWEVER, in my opinion it is a good change, playing on PC, it makes everything much prettier and fills in the gaps, the game before was looking a bit flat. The fact it’s so subtle and conservative means that my 3060 laptop can run it without much performance decrease, and I can tell the difference. Though my main criticisms would be that this is how the game could have looked day 1, and that yeah, the lantern/torch not casting shadows is sad, and yeah, the fact Dark Souls II prerelease builds had RT shadows in 2012, and we still don't have them, is sad.
@“tomjonjon”#p110182 Nice, all the stuff I've been saying in this thread about Armored Core having a lot more influence on souls than people seem to realize, and it being misattributed solely to miyazaki.
I finished Demon‘s Souls! That apostrophe is hilarious, considering npcs say “demon souls” as frequently as the possessive variant. And there are more than one demon, so why not Demons’ Souls? All praise to the level design. I was very impressed by how I could always keep the space in my head and know where I came from, where I‘m going, and where I could go. And top notch exploration, one of my favorite game actions period done very well. The Valley of Defilment was a big dumb toilet full of turds, though. I played it mostly like a jrpg, relying on my equipment and stats to survive harder encounters. My character was pretty much just one of those slimes from the early game: slow moving, big shield, spear. I wonder if the design of those slimes was intentionally signalling noobs, “hey, you can do it like this.” Playing on a PS3 was miserable, but I don’t have a nice PC or any newer PlayStations. With that in mind, I'm gonna play the switch port of Dark Souls when the time comes (unless a PS5 or something comes into my life before then). Very looking forward to the next games, what a great first souls experience.
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@“kyleprocrastinations”#p111258 I wonder if the design of those slimes was intentionally signalling noobs, “hey, you can do it like this.”
They 100% were! In the first game more than ever, but all later games would have spear turtlin’ basic mobs to teach you how to kick, and also starting in demons souls, patches is exemplary of the later evolution of a build that relies on the same crutch!! He even has a shield that heals him over time, what a slime ball!
The switch port of dark souls is amazing, if you can hack your switch I recommend doing so, because that game deserves to be played at 60fps if possible! But unmodded, I imagine would be fun to invade: the Nintendo babies that must be on the switch version are probably easy to frighten. Speaking of, did you play on the secret fan server that is now accessible on hardware? There’s no shame in playing on PS3! It’s either PS3 or PC if you wanna play the original!
@“treefroggy”#p111260
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@“treefroggy”#p111260 did you play on the secret fan server that is now accessible on hardware?
I did! It was very cool to play somewhat as originally intended. I say somewhat because I did use the selectable world tendency to check out some of the locked white world stuff. I only got invaded once and it was heart pounding. I forget which user suggested the archstones, but thank you. I would've just played offline otherwise and yurt would've killed all my friends (there were many helpful messages surrounding him)