In the last post, I rambled all over the place about Elden Ring in general because that’s my style. I know that the DLC is going to be over-the-top in terms of difficulty because that has become FromSoft’s trademark, but I really hope it doesn’t. Starting with Sekiro, I was hitting the top of my ability. Actually, starting with Dark Souls II DLC, really. You know what? No. It’s just every goddamn game. But I will say that the DLC of Dark Souls III was when I really noticed it. Then, with Sekiro, it just became very obvious that I sucked at the game. “When it clicks–” oh shut the fuck up. It never clicked with me, and I went trhough the game, stony-faced and teeth set, grimly beating each boss by whittling down their health. My nibling’s spouse messaged me (after I said that the combat hadn’t clicked with me) to say, “I didn’t think it was possible to beat this boss (Genichiro) without deflecting. I wrote back and said, “It’s possible, but it’s not fun.”
I will just say it. I disliked playing that game and now, I can’t play it at all. Again, not will not, but cannot. I am simply not able. I mean, I may be able to whittle down every boss’s health again, but I don’t want to do that. And I’m not even sure I could do that, actually. After my medical crisis (months later), I tried to fight my nemesis, Father (Owl), and he just handed my ass to me over and over again. And again. I cheesed him the first time I fought him, but I couldn’t even do that. And I know that I could not beat the last boss again without a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. If I could even do it!
I love the FromSoft games. I’m sure I’ve said that a time or twenty. But I do not love how they inevitably buy their own hype so that the last quarter of every game is just tears. Actually, in this game, it’s the second half of the game. Starting with the (oh, obviously, *SPOILER WARNING* for the whole game and the whole post) Mountaintop of the Giants until the end of the game, it just…
How do I explain it?
Part of it is my fault. A big part. I get obsessed with these games and keep on playing. It’s all Ido in my spare time and then I get into that love-hate relationship with the game. I keep playing because I want to see and do everything, but I’m sick to my stomach at how hard it is. Grueling is a good word for it. When I went to grab a talisman I didn’t have with my first character (yes, there are still things I apparently haven’t seen), it was in the last new area, Which I hated with this character because I suck so bad the first time I play any of these games. I know why it is, and I will never change.
Rory from RKG gets a lot of flak for leveling up whatever catches his fancy. When he gets a cool new weapon or spell, he wants to use it. So he’ll put a few points into that stat, then promptly forget about it. At various points in the first series, he wanted to use the turtle shield (strength), dragon incantations (faith/arcane), a legendary spirit summon (mind), and a psychic sword (arcane). There were other things he wanted to use, but those didn’t even last a minute. By the way, at the beginning, he started as the Prisoner, and focused mostly on dex and intelligence.
I have so much empathy for him beacuse there are so many cool things in the game. You want to do everything, which is why respec is a thing. I only did it because you have to at one point if you don’t have enough intelligience to do a certain thing (and I did not with some of my characters). I don’t respec for funsies, though I really should.
I could never do what he does. He gets shit from all sides, and he’s actually really good at the gimes. If he optimized a build (probably dex), he would just destroy the games–more so than he already is. They’ve had to put restrictions on him to make some bosses hard. Which has been annoying and aggravating when he didn’t want it to happen. I know they’re doing it for their Retry series, which is supposed to be for hard games (mostly From games), but that’s not why I watch them, honestly.
Anyway, ideally, when you play one of these games, you’ll focus on one or two stats–three at the most. I kinda did that on my first playthrough, except the stats I focused on were Mind, Intelligence, and Faith. Notice what is missing from that. I always skimp on Vigor (or whatever health is called in each game), but I usually get it over 20. Not this time. 18. For the first 100+ hours. That’s very inadvisable, and I had to double it in the last quarter of the game just not to get one-shot.
The problem is that I’m not good enough to fuck around–and I found out. It was amazing that I made it through the first half of the game with 18 Vigor. It actually gave me a perverse amount of glee to read the comments (to Rory) saying he had to level uphis Vigor because he would get destroyed with that little Vigor! And this was when he had more than I did at that point. Granted, he skimped on the Vigor for the first dozen or so hours, but he also did Margit in two attempts. Then Goddrick in one. With the help of his spirit summon and Nepheli Loux.
I really should do the DLC with my strength character if I want it to be easier. Every fucking time I used my first character, and the DLCs kicked my ass. Every. Fucking. Time. I don’t expect it to be different with this game, but I’m hoping it will be.