It’s funny. I’m not a holdiay person or a traditional person by any means, but I cannot escape the trappings of societal beliefs surrounding certain days. New Year’s Day is one of those. I don’t know why as intellectually, I know January 1st is just another day. I don’t feel like a birthday is a big day, so why do I put so much importance on the first day of the new year? It’s just the same as the old year, really. It’s not as if there is some big change on the day itself.
Saying this, I do want to do the goal a month thing. It has to be big enough that I’m not going to shrug it off, but it can’t be so big, it’ll be impossible for me to complete.
Before I get to it, let’s talk about Elden Ring a bit more. That’s what I ended the last post on, and, let’s face it–it’s the game I obsessed over for much of last year. I probably will play it more this year as there are a few things I had’nt done before, but not much. I am looking forward to Armored Core 6, but I’m curious to see what FromSoft will be doing with it.
Let’s talk about Malenia some more. She is in an optional section that is really difficult to access in the first place. You have to light these three beacons or something like that in an optional ‘town’–which, in and of itself isn’t that bad. But, this is the town of the Black Knife Assassins, and–a little-known fact: the BLack Knife Assassins are all women. I love this. There is always a faction in the From games that is made of women. In the Souls series, it’s the butchers. In Bloodborne, it’s….ah….OK, this is not a thing in BB, apparently. Of course I looked it up. In Sekiro, it’s the Sunken Valley Clan. They are all women, including the two mini-bosses, Snake Eyes Shirafuji and Snake Eyes Shirahagi. They are badass shooters who are really hard. The enemies, I mean. The mini-bosses are…not fun. And also optional.
In Elden Ring, it’s the Black Knife Assassins. They are insanely hard, and they are invisible until you’re right up in their grill. There is a torch that can reveal them, but that means not having a shield. I mean, you can equip it in your weapon hand, but then you can’t attack them, obviously. Or maybe you can, but it’s not going to do that much damage. They do an incredible amount of damage themselves, and they do bleed, which will quickly build up and take a chunk of health at a go. One weapon I used for a time was the Black Knife, it’s a dagger that does bleed damage and you have to beat a really difficult Black Knife Assassin in the Altus Plateau to get it. It’s fast and does loads of damage, though.