It’s not a secret that I love FromSoft games. Or, more specifically, Dark Souls games. However, I have long since maintained that they don’t love me back and that the relationship between me and From games is abusive. From will never love me back (or make games that I can comfortably play). That’s just a fact of life. Ian and I have an ongoing argument about it. He thinks I’m exactly the kind of player From wants to play their games.
I vehemently disagree. Or rather, yes, they want people like me to play their games, obviously. They have sold over 10,000,000 copies of Elden Ring, which has to be a dream come true for them. So, yeah, they want anyone they can get to play their games to, well, play their games.
I’m nearly 200 hours into the game and have reached the point of no return. In true me fashion, I’ve promptly ignored that choice and gone off to do other things. To be fair to me, I read in the Wikis that you should be sure to do all the side quests for the different endings before going past this point. And, yes, I am not above reading things on the Wiki because I’m 200 hours into the game.
Am I going to plat the game? Doubtful. But, if I do, I want to make sure I have everything lined up ahead of time. One of the reasons I didn’t plat Sekiro is because I simply cannot fight Owl (Father) again. Had I saved before the final choice, I could have done all the endings at once. At least 3 of the 4 endings that all follow one path. The other ending goes down a completely different path. No, I don’t plan on platting Elden Ring, but I didn’t plan on platting the Souls games, either.
In addition, on one of the side quests, there is a point where you can accidentally kill the quest giver by falling on her head, thus shutting you out of that ending. Luke from Outsidextra had it happen to him and he managed to unplug his Xbox in time. I went and looked it up. There are people who could not bring her back to life ,which is egregious. That definitely should be patched, but it hasn’t thus far.
So I don’t have any shame in saving. I don’t like the grindy bits of doing a plat so whatever I can do to alleviate it is worth it for me. And I know me. As much as I say I’m not going to plat the game or that I’m tired of the game (which I am at the moment), I know that it’ll come up at some point. It’s funny, though, because one of the channels I watch, PlayStation Access, they say that the first thing they do is look at the plat trophies when they start a new game. They frame it as the default, which I don’t think it is. I mean, it might be for PlayStation Access because platinum comes from PlayStation, but I don’t even look at the trophies when I start a game. I will admit I looked at the list around a hundred hours into the game? Something like that. I still don’t know them all, but I will look them up soon. In fact, I’ll look them up now. Hm. Ok. There are a few that are going to be pains in the ass. Not the different endings because, as I said, I’m save-scumming for those. Bot a few of the ‘get all the legendary blah-di-blahs’ that suck. One in particular is the legendary summons. I have them all but one and that one means beating the alive version of it in an evergaol. From what I’ve read, she’s the hardest by far and just a long, tedious fight.
That’s actually my issue with several of the late-game bosses. The fights are so grueling. Oh, warning. I’m going to be talking about late-game bosses and such, so there will be spoilers from here on out. I’ll put the big red spoiler warning down now.
*SPOILERS*
Fucking Fire Giant is everything I hate in the game in one boss. Which is too bad because he’s pretty cool in and of himself. I like his design and the fact that he’s fire, of course. But, he’s huge. I mean, duh. He’s a fucking giant. You can lock on to his chest, his head, and one of his feet. Only one. No idea why not the other. And he has anklets that you can smash off and supposedly do more damage to the flesh beneath the anklets. I say supposedly because I couldn’t tell if that was true or not as I was too busy trying to suss out how to fight him to pay attention. There were messages that said to use horseback, but that didn’t really work. One shockwave of his shield could nearly kill me and one hit DID kill me. I could not avoid the shockwave on the horse (probably jumping. I didn’t try that. You just could not sidestep it) so I decided to do it on foot. With the Mimic Tear spirit summon, I could get him roughly halfway done. I could not even get him to his second form, though, and I was getting frustrated after ten or so solid tries. I watched a few cheese videos, but even they seemed to have too much fiddling involved.
So I said fuck it and summoned two people. That did it nicely and I was able to move on. There was a huge chain I had to ride up and then jump upon the edge of a giant chalice. Then….I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I galloped to where there was a crevice in the chalice and tried to gingerly make my way down. I promptly died. I sighed and swore loudly before looking up what to do. I went the other way and sat down at the Site of Grace there and listened to Melina tell me that it was time to make a choice. I told her not now, I’ll be back, kbai.
Since then, I’ve been cleaning up content. I don’t want to be locked out of anything so I’m finishing up one major side quest and getting all the stuff I need to get in case I want to do the plat. That means all the legendary incantations and sorceries, legendary armaments (already missed one that I can now only get in NG+, deep sigh (but at least it’s at the beginning), legendary spirit summons (I only have one left), and legendary talismans. One boss I missed in an area I deeply dislike. I just don’t know if I want to bother because I’m already resenting the hell out of the game right now.
For whatever reason, From likes to make everything insanely difficult at the end of the game and in the DLCs. It’s frustrating because I’m already struggling my way through the rest of the game. I don’t need it to double down in difficulty later on.
This is not a perfect game for me. It has too many of the classic FromSoft flaws for me to call it perfect. And it’s just grinding me down now that I’m nearing the end. I’m back at the games. I have maintained this for as long as I’ve played them. I love them despite myself, which says something about my personality and why I’m bad in romantic relationships.
I know that there are some of the hardest bosses in the game coming up, which does not fill me with joy. At all. I just want it to be done at this point, which is sad. It’s how I get at the end of From games, and it’s doubly so this time around. We’ll see if I can bounce back from it.