In my last post, I was talking about how you are playing Dark Souls wrong. It doesn’t matter how you play it–you’re wrong. You’re a caster? WRONG. You’re Haveling it up? WRONG. You’re so dex, you’re rolling all over the place? WRONG. Drake sword? Wrong. Zwei? Wrong. Over-leveling? Wrong. The only right way to play it, apparently, is to one-bro it up. That is, starting as the Pyro (level one) and never leveling up. Not your character nor your armor nor your weapon. Wait. I’m not sure it’s verboten to level up your armor. Huh. At any rate, though, not your character or your weapon.
I have never done a one-bro because I need my magic tricks (literally) to get the job done. I was fighting an NPC in PvP in Elden Ring (for a quest) who drops my favorite talisman (Crepus’s Vial, muffles your footsteps) much earlier than I normally do. I did not have my powerful magicks, so it was a chore because this particular NPC (Rileigh the Idle) is a quick assassin-type who will Scarlet Rot you to death with successive jabs of their dagger. They also have a crossbow with scarlet rot bolts.
I never had a problem with them in my other playthroughs because I foughtthem near the end of the playthrough. That mean I had powerful magicks that could kill them in a few zaps. THis early on, I needed four flasks of cerulean tears along with one measly flask of crimson tears (flasks get halved when you invade) just to get them deaded. Ginstone Stars fired off with the aid of Radagon Icon, a talisman that shortens casting time. A time before the last time, I had them down to a pixel, but ran out of blue juice. I could not get one measly melee hit on them.
I called them several bad names on my way to killing them (well, actually one bad name several times), and now I have to go fetch the Hidden Body spell (called Unseen Form in this game) in order to have my beloved Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring/Hidden Body combo.
As I was looking up Dark Souls trailers, I came across the one below which I had never seen. Or at least, I don’t remember ever having seen it. It could be because I truly have not seen it, but it could also be that my brain damage wiped it from my memory. I love that I can blame everything on my brain damage! In actuality, there was very little that was actually damaged during my medical crisis–which makes it more surprising when something actually is because of it.
I feel like it’s something I shouldn’t talk about becasue I’m so goddamn lucky to be alive. But, it’s a hard fact that there have been some small issues such as my reflexes are complete shit now. They were never good, but they have gone past bad straight to terrible.
It’s frustrating when people don’t take into account that disabilities exist. I’ve always known this was the case in terms of being different, but specifically disability issues have not affected me that much before. Like I said, yes, I have bad reflexes and a shitty sense of direction, but I didn’t think it reached disability status.
Now, however, it’s marked. I still have not finished the game, Stray by BlueTwelve Studio. I was looking forward to the game so much because you get to play as a cat! Cats never get their day in the sun (heh), so I was stoked when this game was announced. But, then, there were the dreaded Zerg rush sections. They’re actually called Zurks, but I call them Zergs. They are little enemies that chase you en masse and then swarm you until you can’t move. You have to repeatedly hammer the…B button? A button? One of the buttons to shake them off. I had to do the sections repeatedly because I could not hammer the button fast enough. As Rob from Playstation Access said, not every game needs to have you fighting someone. Ash countered that it was an important part of the game to get a sense of the danger the cat and the citizens of the world was in, but it didn’t have to be a QTE in order to portary that danger.
Someone suggested that they could just have you hold the button instead, which, yes, if you have to keep in that part of the game, then that would be an acceptible solution. But, they could also have it so you just have to avoid the Zurks. No that would not have been as thrilling, but it still would have conveyed the danger.
The point is, thouugh, that no one ever talks about accessibility issues except in the broadest sense. It’s the same with the From games. There’s the boring question of difficulty modes, which, however you feel about it, it’s never going to happen. From has made it clear that they’re not going to put in difficulty modes.
I’ve said this a million times, but I put Sekiro at the bottom of my list because there is no way to get around the inherent obstacles in the game for people who do not have good reflexes. You have to play the game the way it wants to be played, no ifs, ands, or buts. You cannot over-level the way you can in the other games. You can’t turtle up and greatsword your way through a situation. In addition, I made things harder for myself by skipping the optional bosses. Killing them gives you prayer beads or gourd seeds. The latter gives you more sips of your healing juice. The former, when you get four of them, makes you stronger. I did not realize this so I was rocking 1 Gourd sip when I went to fight Madame Butterfly. That was very bad times for me.
One thing I love about Elden Ring is that you can succeed with any build. This is the way of the Souls games, too, but it’s especially true with ER. They made it so that it was fairly easy to level up. I was 145 by the time I reached the final boss. And that was considered fairly low.
And I still had to dump points into Vigor to get to 30 by thatt point. This is FromSoft 101. Never skimp on Vigor. All the basic tips videos mention this. Put points into your Vigor. It’s a very good tip, but…there are always other stats I need to level up. I spent a hundred hours at 18 Vigor. That is not much Vigor at all.
I really think Elden Ring is the most newb-friendly of the From games. If you deign to avail yourself of all the tricks and tips (SPIRIT SUMMONS. I’m talking about Spirit Summons–which a lot of the hardcore fans loathe), you can play it fairly comfortably. You can over-level as much as you want, and you can summon humans left and right. I mean, you can summon in all the games except Sekiro (another problem with that game), but given that Elden Ring is the current game, it’s easier to summon people.
I’m kind of curious how I would find Dark Souls now that I’ve played and platinumed Elden Ring. I have to fix the glitch that makes online impossible, though. I am not soloing all the bosses again.