I am a negative person. I will always see the flaws in something, no matter what. It can be the best idea on earth, but I’ll see the cracks in the foundation. Let’s take Elden Ring for example. Because of course I would want to talk more about it; it’s constantly on my mind. It’s a fantastic game, but it’s not perfect. By the way, it quickly rose on my list of favorite FromSoft games. Here’s the list as it currently stands. Demon’s Souls is not on the list because I have not played it. I wish it would come to the PC already!
- Dark Souls III
- Elden Ring
- Dark Souls
- Dark Souls II (SotFS)
- Bloodborne
- Sekiro
When I started Elden Ring, it was immediately ahead of Bloodborne and Sekiro in terms of games I’d rather play. It’s not a list of the best From games because I don’t do that kind of ranking, but of my favorites. I’m more a Souls person than a Sekiroborne person. I think Sekiro and Bloodborne are both fantastic games, but they just do not lend themselves to my style of play. Souls games don’t, really, either, but at least I can cobble something together in those.
Anyway, the more I play Elden Ring, the more I appreciate it and obsess over it. I’m still not done with the second legacy dungeon. Apparently, I’ve stumbled over a few other main story bosses who are in the field; I haven’t beaten either one.
Still. There are issues. The technical issues have mostly smoothed out for me. There is micro-stuttering once in awhile and the game takes a few seconds to shut down, but other than that, it runs great. I don’t notice pop-ins, though, so that may be happening under my nose. But with my higher-end graphics card, it’s running well.
One of the issues is that when things get too hard, I fuck off and do something else. I know that’s the purpose of the open world, but it means that my brain goes, “I never have to go back to that main area again!”. That’s a me problem, but it’s also an open world problem. I had a similar issue with Sekiro, though. I was fighting Genichiro, who was roundly kicking my ass. I went exploring and found three other mini-bosses. They were all kicking my asses as well. It was a sad time for me.
The way I beat these games, however, is by repeatedly fighting the same boss over and over again. In this game, I simply am not willing to put in the effort. I’m not sure why. I think it’s partly because there are SO many bosses. But then I could have just said that I was going to fight the main bosses solo–which I did say before I started the game. That didn’t even last one boss! But, as I mentioned before, the first legacy dungeon boss is roughly equal to the sixth or seventh boss in DS III, so I don’t feel bad about using my spirit summon or my spirit summon and the NPC summon for the second legacy dungeon boss.
So what are some actual negatives about the game? One, repeat bosses. There are some that are there for thematic reasons, but it’s still annoying. I’ve already fought two of this kind of boss–please don’t make me fight it again. This has always been an issue with From games, though, and it was bound to happen in this game. It’s not filler, exactly, but it’s not exactly non-filler, either.
The fondness for multiple bosses in the same boss fight. Look. I know Ornstein & Smough is one of the most iconic From boss fights of all time. And I know there is at least one multiple-boss fights in all the games. However, there are so many in this games. Multiple bosses in the same fight along with boss plus minions. I understand that it’s a way to mix it up, but I find these fights annoying and tedious. It feels like an artificial way to pump up the difficulty rather than make it intrinsic to the fight with the boss itself.
Platforming. Oh my god. I’ve railed about this ad nauseam. Non-platforming games usually suck at platforming and From is notorious for this. They love platforming. They put it in all their games. They are bad at it. Sure, you can throw something on the ground to see if you’re going to survive a fall or not, but who wants to do that every two seconds in a game that has so much verticality? Just make it really clear where you can jump and where you can’t. This is one area I don’t like obscurity.
Back to people and flaws. I don’t care for people who seem to have it all together. That’s boring to me. Which, yes, I know is my issue. It’s also why I have a hard time dating, but that’s another post for another day. I think, though, it’s also because it’s our flaws that makes us so interesting. We’re all fucked up in one way or another; it’s the difference in our fucked-up-ness that intrigues me.
In my defense, that’s partly my psychology background. I’m always fascinated by the whys and the hows of the situation so the more I can dig into that, the more engaged I’ll be. I think it’s also because I don’t trust a happy sheen. I can feel people’s emotions and it’s very rare when a person doesn’t exude some kind of negativity. In other words, there are very few people I’ve med that didn’t make me put up my shield, even if it’s just a little bit.
Therefore, it’s my bias that all people have dark sides–even if they try to hide them. I think I also don’t trust anyone who insists that they don’t have any negative thoughts; we all do. And it’s important to recognize that. Anyone who denies their own negativity makes me nervous because it’ll come out in some other way. I knew someone who insisted that she was the most gentle person in the world who just wanted peace and quiet. That was far from the truth, and it horrified me that she couldn’t see it. She was in a relationship and was very abusive to her partner. Another thing she couldn’t see, and I quietly faded from the relationship.
Before I ended up in the hospital, I was all about my negative traits. I could list them easily and refused to consider my positive traits. There are many reasons for that, which all dissipated once I was in the hospital. Now, while I acknowledge my flaws (they did not disappear while I was experiencing my medical trauma), I also have no problem talking about my positive traits as well. It’s about balance, something that I was sorely lacking before. It’s a strange, but welcome change.