I have not played Monster Hunter Rise (Capcom) today and I’m pretty sure I’m done. I have no desire to play it, which is a pretty drastic change for me because I was all about it just yesterday. Even then, though, the bloom was off the rose. Truly, I jumped into it enthusiastically, charmed by the graphics. It has a smaller scope than MHW, of course, which I actually appreciate. There was too much in MHW and it got overwhelming. Actually, I think it’s more that I’m just annoyed. There’s a ton to do in MHW, which, fine and dandy, but it always felt like I never was done with it. Which, yeah, I know that’s the purpose of many games these days. To get the gamer to play that one game forever. One way to do that is to have endless amounts of content. Which, again, I’m not opposed to. I mean, it’s not as if I have to do the arena quests if I don’t want to. And I really don’t want to. I hated the arena quests in the last game because they are so contrived. I mean, yes, the whole game is contrived as there is no such things as monsters, but at least in the world of monster hunting, they have environments with flora and, indeed, fauna. They interact with each other and said environments, which I appreciate about the games. In MHW, there were bespoke turf war animations that were really fucking cool. At least the first ten or so times.
All of this is taken away in the arena quests. In those, you just…kill the monster. Which, ironically, is my least-favorite part of the games. I know, I know, that’s a hot and unpopular take, but it’s how I really feel. I love tootling around and exploring. I love prepping for the quests. I love crafting armor and weapons. I love petting the Poogie and to a lesser extent, sending the Cahoot flying. I like talking to the NPCS, well, at least in the last game. I find them less charming in this one. I don’t think it’s the fault of the NPCs, but that I’m not as into the game.
I did not play the game at all yesterday and so far today. It’s two in the afternoon and normally, I would have put in an hour or two by this point. But I have no desire to boot it up (old lingo). Yesterday, I went back to Dark Souls III, where I’m currently on NG+4. I’ve gone up to NG+5 before, which is just silly to me. It’s just comfort gaming at this point–except when I have to fight certain bosses solo. I can do most of them on my own and there are NPC summons for several of the bosses, but there are a few that get me. Like the Nameless King. Who does not have an NPC summon. I’ve been fortunate to get real summons for each cycle this playthrough, but that’s not the case. He’s optional, though, so I can skip him if need be. Same with the DLCs , obvs, but I don’t like skipping them.
It’s a month until Elden Ring. It’s really hard to believe that it’s that soon–hopefully. Meaning I hope there’s not another delay. It was supposed to come out right around now, but it was not to be. That’s why I’m wary about the new release date. FromSoft is usually good at releasing their games on time–let’s not talk about bugs. Or the fact that when the first DLC was released, those of us who had the season pass couldn’t play it. That was unfortunate, but review-bombing Steam saying how horrible the DLC was because they couldn’t play it minutes after the release time was not the answer. I just waited and within a few hours, I could play it. I mean, I understand being upset about it, but shit happens.
It’s funny how the first DLC is considered subpar because it’s short (still took me dozens of hours to do) and only had two bosses–one of them was optional. You had to do it if you wanted to get to play in the official PvP arena, but other than that, you could ignore it. The one true boss of the DLC was fucking epic, though. I hated her at the time because she was really hard–like even harder than Dark Souls hard hard. She was the first time there was a three-phase boss, which was not indicated in any way before the third phase started. I could not kill her on my own (with Gael, the NPC summon, because he’s part of the story) the first time around. I did eventually get her, but that was many playthroughs later. I don’t think I summoned Gael for that run, but I can’t remember.
I was up to the Crystal Sage, he of my favorite hat in the game. A disciple of Big Hat Logan (which might give you a hint as to the size of the hat), he’s one of my easier bosses in the game. For whatever reason, I’ve never had too much difficulty with him, even when I’ve fought him solo (there’s an NPC summon for this boss). There’s a miracle called Vow of Silence that takes away all magicks from everyone in the area of effect–including the caster. It works on Aldrich, the devourer of gods. I decided to see if it worked on the Crystal Sage. It did not. Or rather, it prevented him from transporting, but not from shooting off magicks. So I gave up and beat him the old-fashioned way–bashing him and his clones to death.
I love cheesing the bosses when I can. I love that I’m comfortable enough with the game to cheese bosses. I’m sad that Vow of Silence does not work on the Crystal Sage, tbh. The fact that it works on Aldrich makes me wonder why it doesn’t work on the Crystal Sage as well. Maybe it’ll work on his twin, the mini-boss in Lothric Castle later on.
I’m also still laboring away on the Cozy Grove (Spry Fox) plat. I have one trophy that I haven’t gotten for nearly a year and I’ve recently decided to get serious about it. I have to break 140 tools to get the elite tool user badge in-game, which will give me the coveted trophy. You’d think it’d be easy enough to do, but with all the tools I have being the master version of them (gold-plated), they break on average once every two weeks or so. After playing the game for ten months, I was roughly 48% on my way to the trophy. After ten months! I Googled the trophy and learned that two of the new tools, the camera and the accordion, are more reliably breakable. The camera ‘breaks’ when you use up the film (it counts as breaking, anyway) and you can buy a new roll of film from Mr. Kit once a day. The accordion is used to harvest fruits/nuts/flowers, which respawn every few days. I have hundreds of flowers/bushes/trees. The accordion breaks after fifteen uses (according to Google). I have all my trees/bushes/flowers bunched together, which makes it easier to harvest them, but for the purpose of breaking the accordion, is not ideal. So, I’m experimenting with moving each individual resource and playing the accordion for it alone to see if that is doable. It is, but it takes some work. I’ll see if I get impatient enough to do that with hundreds of resources in a few days. For now, just playing the accordion when I see a few sprouts is the route I’m taking. Since I’ve read that the camera and accordion count, I’ve jumped up to 55.7% on the trophy! I also buy all the resources in those categories every day, plant them one by one, and play the accordion for each plant.
Is this tedious? Yes. Is it fun? No. Is it cheesing? Probably, but I don’t give a shit at this point. A plat shouldn’t be about this kind of thing–but all too often, it is. So I’m going to get it any way I can and then be glad it’s over.