Underneath my yellow skin

Random Elden Ring thoughts

Ever since I got out of the hospital, a weird thing has been happening. I get my tight eight every night (which is strange in and of itself), but once a month or so, I have a few days in which I have difficulty sleeping. Then, on the fourth or fifth night of this, I sleep for ten hours. There is no rhyme nor reason for this. I’m not complaining because before my medical trauma, I slept maybe six/six-and-a-half hours a night. Ten hours was for when I was sick. Anyway, last night was one of the ten-hour nights, for what reason, I do not know.

Anyway, I’ve been cleaning up some odds and ends in Elden Ring. I have to admit that I really enjoy being able to absolutely crush things that were beating the hell out of me on the regular before. There’s an end-game field boss–oh yeah. Spoilers, end game, blah blah blah–the Black Blade Kindred (gargoyle). It is found in two places, but the one I’m referring to is the one in front of the Beast Sanctum in Caelid. I came upon it fairly early in the game and tried to take it on. That went very much not well for me. I don’t think I took an inch off its health bar. I just looked up how much health it has. 12,500!! I will point out once again that Gwyn, the final boss of Dark Souls, had 4,250 HP. A third of the gargoyle’s health, who is a repeat boss. Yes, there is another of it, which, as we all know, is one of my biggest issues in the game.

Anyway. The Black Blade Kindred haunted me for the entire game. Every fifty hours or so, I’d try it out to see how I’d do. Badly, as it were. So, of course, at the end of the game, I was curious to see how I did against my stalwart nemesis. To my astonishment, I got it in two goes and I only died once because I got caught up in some rocks. It was a piece of cake! Its kin in the Grand Lift of Rold, on the other hand, cause me more difficulty–but not much. I got it in seven or eight tries.


I’ve been cleaning up with impunity. The only thing to give me any difficulty is the–shit. I have more of them. Sigh. The Death Rite Bird. I just found out that there are these and then there are the Deathbirds. Similar in that they only come out at night and inflict the death status, but different in that, er, I’m not exactly sure. I think the Death Rite Bird is a more badass version of the Deathbird, but that might just be because I had such a frustrating experience with the Death Rite Bird in the Mountaintop of Giants. By the way, the Deathbirds only come out at night so I thought the Death Rite Bird was the same until this last time fighting it.

It’s frustrating as fuck because it leaves trails of Ghostflame that inflicts the Death Status. If you get caught in it, it can kill you in seconds. Plus, it hits HARD. It could kill me in two swipes of its weapon. I hadn’t felt that fragile in quite some time.

Side Note: I watch a bunch of Brits on YouTube. That means that some of their vernacular has slipped into my vocab. That includes the c-bomb, which is not something I say on the regular. Somehow, though, it comes out when I’m fighting bosses in Elden Ring. My go-to seems to be ‘you absolute c-bomb’ as a boss tears me to shreds. I want to cut it out, though, because I don’t want it to cross over into my regular vocab.

The second or third time I faced the Death Rite Bird, I got it down to about an inch of health and then it killed me. Then I didn’t get close for another dozen tries. Even with my badass Mimic Tear Spirit Summon.

Side Note II: Very few things annoy me more as a FromSoft fan than the gatekeepers. “Using the Mimic Tear is cheating.” My god. I am so tired of  hearing what is cheating in a From game. If. It’s. In. The. Game. It’s. Not. Cheating. Now, I don’t agree with any of the things people consider cheating, but I ESPECIALLY don’t agree with using a Spirit Summon as being cheating. This is something that was added to this game (spirit summoning). How the hell is that cheating? This drives me nuts. If you (generic you) want to do things to hamstring yourself, that’s one thing. You wanna be a naked wretch who never levels up anything and never uses a Spirit Summon? You go on with your bad self! I will be duly impressed and give you all the kudos. But no, someone who uses Spirit Summons, NPC summons, and/or human summons is not cheating. I don’t understand why we still need to have this conversation.

The Death Rite Bird is just frustrating as fuck because if the death status bar fills up, you instantly die. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s not like the other statuses that just continually tick away at your health. Yes, I have an incantation that clears death build-up, but it’s not always possible to get  to that spell slot quick enough to stop the result.

I will say that traipsing around and cleaning up has made me appreciate this game even more. No matter my frustrations with the game (copy-and-paste bosses, too many catacombs/caves, platforming, etc.), just how casually FromSoft kicked it up several levels blows my mind. There is no other game that has done what this one does and is so innovative.

Take Torrent for example. I still don’t like horse combat. It’s more like, circle around the enemy, make sure to get on the left side (from my point of view) of the enemy so I can hit them with RB/RT, even though you can hit them with LB/LT, and if they’re on horseback, then it’s just us endlessly circling each other. But, he’s a lifesaver in allowing me to gallop effortlessly across the map without breaking my stride. There is no stamina management while traversing, which is a blessing. And, yeah, this isn’t revolutionary in and of itself, but in a From game? Absolutely.

Then let’s talk about the map. This was one of my worries before the game came out, honestly–how FromSoft would handle the inclusion of a map. They’ve only had one joke map in Sekiro before, but they clearly had to have one in this game. You cannot have such an expansive game without a map. I mean, you could, but it would have been miserable. It’s hard enough now sometimes to remember where things are. Imagine not having a map! And being able to search by Site of Grace in the map is brilliant. I love everything about the map system, honestly. And I’ve always been a fan of fast travel.

Right now, I’m putting Elden Ring at a 9.7 and my favorite game of all time. Dark Souls III is JUST behind it at a 9.6. 5. 9.65. It’s that close, but the scope of what Elden Ring has done cannot be denied.

The hype was immense before the game came out. Then, it turned into worry when a lengthy amount of time went on and nothing was heard about it. In part because of the pandemic, of course. There were fears that the game was cancelled without a word. There was a sweet Reddit in which people came up with different areas in the game and acted as if they were real.

Then, the trailer dropped at the very end of the summer games fest last year and the hype was lit. There was the demo that the games journalists got to play, right before the Closed Network Testing. Then, another ten hours for an even more select group of games journalists before the game dropped.

Then the embargo, then the reviews–which were outstanding. Nearly all 10s across the board. Talk of it being a game-changer, one-of-a-kind, and other almost hyperbolic reviews. Murmurs of GOTY if not GOAT. Nothing below a 9 that I could see (and funnily enough, one of the 9 reviews I read felt like a 4 review).

When I got my hands on the game, my heart was beating as I embarked on a new adventure. It met and effortlessly exceeded my expectations. I said before it was released that if it was ‘just’ open world Dark Souls IV, I would have been perfectly happy. I can report that it’s that and so much more. It is, indeed, a game of a lifetime.

 

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