Fuck NPC invaders. Fuck them all the way to hell and back. I hate invaders with a passion and the NPC invaders in this game are souped up to a hundred. And you can’t use Torrent or your spirit summons in fighting them. For one, there was an NPC who came to help me, but that hasn’t happen with the others. The current one I’m fighting is basically a reskin of a boss and NPC from Dark Souls III, but much harder. It is set in a similar area as well (FromSoft loves themselves some archives/research halls). This guy constantly spams magic and summons spectral sorcerers who also shoot magic at me. I got him down to about a quarter once, but could not finish it off. Oh, and he has fast melee attacks as well.
I want his hat, though. It’s a big hat and that’s my favorite hat in all of DS III–the Sage’s Big Hat. Note from the future: if it’s the one I’m thinking of, it’s a woman, and she suuuuuuucks. So much sucks.
You can run by the NPC invaders, of course, but my pride! Also, in the case of this one, he continues to zip magic at you as you run around the area, which is annoying as fuck. That’s also the same as in DS III–along with moving to different parts of the area, moving with you as it were.
I’m also annoyed at my self for giving the Assassin’s Playbook to the prophet rather than to my bae, the actual assassin. Ugh. This is Irina/Karla all over again. But I do want one of the incantations. It’s called Darkness and it shrouds the caster (per the description). That sounds an awful lot like Hidden Body to me. I could actually have my Hidden/Body Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring combo again if you can stack incantations. But I only have three memory slots because you can’t get more by leveling up Mind, this game’s version of Attunement. You have to buy the Memory Slots and I’ve only found one thus far. So I have three Memory Slots and using two of them for my beloved combo is a bit uncomfortable.
It’s still early days, I know, but I want all my end-game shit now. I always forget how fragile you are at the beginning of a From game. I recently started yet another Dark Souls III NG because there are no cloud saves for the game, which means I can’t play my current character on my desktop. I started a new character, a Pyromancer, of course, and blew through the tutorial boss no prob. But my health bar and stamina bar were both so tiny! There are certain things I have to do in the beginning of the game that take a lot of resources so I run with very little health for basically the whole NG cycle.
I feel like I’m still in that stage in this game. Yes, I’ve played 30+ hours of Elden Ring, but I still haven’t made it much further past the first boss in the first legacy dungeon. One thing I was worried about before the game came out was that I would spend infinite time on the edges, not bothering to make progress in the main storyline. It’s how I play open world games and then I get tired of them at some point. I rarely finish them, either. I played Skyrim and loved it for the first 50 hours, then hated it for the next 25. I rushed to cram in everything so that by the time I was done (after those last 25 hours), I was D-O-N-E.
I played AssCreed The Twins and thoroughly enjoyed myself for the first 50% or so ( I was 100%ing all the areas as I went). Evie was my everything and I ignored Jacob as best I could. It’s mindless and repetitive, but it was fun. Until I discovered a whole new area set in a different time with a different protag. I had already started to weary of the formula and once this extra content was revealed, I quit on the spot.
Then, there was The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I love me some Geralt and was perfectly happy to romp around as him. The Bloody Baron was a brilliant story quest, one of the best I’d ever played. Roughly two-thirds into the game, I ran into a quest that got me so hopelessly lost in a cave, I nearly quit on the spot. It was a mainline quest so I couldn’t just ignore it. I stumbled around inside the quest and then couldn’t make my way out. It really soured me on the experience and the final episode of the game was very underwhelming. I bought the first DLC and hated it so much, I didn’t finish it. I found the main antagonist repulsive and gross, and the fact that I had to fight him (surprisingly hard) and kill him, only to find out *spoiler* that he’s immortal? Yeah, no. I quit and have not looked back. I have not even touched the second DLC, no matter how glowing the reviews. Hell, the reviews for the first DLC were also raving.
That brings us back to Elden Ring. I absolutely love this game. I have poured an average of 6 hours a day into it for almost a week. It’s not perfect, obviously, and the flaws of a From game are still there. But I’m obsessed with it in that way I get with these games. It’s all I want to do. I’m playing it as much as possible and when I’m not playing it, I’m thinking about it.
The performance issues are still there, but it’s nothing that really gets in the way of my enjoyment in playing the game. Would I like it to be better? Yes. Should FromSoft update their aging engine and put more time into performance? Also, yes. But for me, personally, it hasn’t been a massive issue.
I have to be aware of my pacing, though, because I can feel myself becoming a little overwhelmed by all the content. I haven’t touched the first legacy dungeon in a few days because at the first whiff of danger, I nope out of there and do something else. The legacy dungeon is just as hard as any Souls level and it’s not easy to get into that mindset when I’m spending most of my time just exploring the different environs. It’s great that I can hop from here to there and anywhere in between, but it also makes it easier to ignore whatever is in front of me. Right now, I have made ingress into three or four different places, not including the first legacy dungeon and I jump from one to another.
In addition, I’ve been looking up certain things after seeing them in vids. I’m trying to avoid spoilers, but it’s nearly impossible to do. Even if I watch videos from areas in which I’ve been, there’s bound to be something I’ve missed. And then I want to go there, which is not a bad thing, but it contributes to me feeling like I’m a chicken with my head cut off, running around and mindlessly squawking.
None of this is to say that I’m falling off the game any time soon; I’m not. I just want to play more and more until I have Elden Ring bursting out of my ears. I know it’s up to me to take breaks when I need it and not allow myself to be overwhelmed. It won’t be easy, but it’s well worth a try.