I want to talk more about remasters, remakes, and sequels. I talked about it a bit in the past post beacuse I was ranting about PlayStation closing Bluepoint Games. I did not think it got enough ink because of what happened the next day (Phil Spencer ‘retiring’ and Sarah Bond ‘resigning’–from Xbox.) It never fails. Every time PlayStation fucks up, Xbox is determined to one up them. It’s as if Xbox could not stand to give up the limelight for a second, even if it’s for a negative reason.
I’m tired. It’s hard being a ‘gamer’ these days. I put that in quotes beacuse I have never really concerned myself a gamer. I mean, I play games, yes, but I don’t like the whole gamer life. Come to think of it, I don’t like any fandom. It’s not a Groucho Marx thing (does anyone know who he is these days?), but just that I don’t like to conform to other people. I don’t like people telling me what to do, and I certainly don’t like people telling me what to think.
In addition, I can usually see all sides to things, which makes it hard for me to be a team player. Some people say I’m contrary. Some people would be right. Though I’m not contrary on purpose. What I mean is that I’m not doing it to be a dick. I’m not doing it just to be contrary. I just see things differently. I try to keep it to myself most of the time because I know it’s not welcome in polite company.
Side note: I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that I learned at a very young age to hide my true feelings. I buried that shit deep because the reaction if I didn’t was very negative. It’s one reason I live alone. I can’t let my mask down if there is anyone else around. Even online. I put it on so automatically, it’s just a part of me by now. It’s only when I’m at home alone that I can be myself. Or when I had my cat/s. They accepted me as I was (as long as I fed them and gave them love, obviously).
I had never felt as accepted as I did by my cats. They were very different, but they both had positive feelings about me. In fact, I lived with both Raven and Shadow for nine years and with Shadow for an additional seven+ years. I lived with Shadow longer than I have with anyone else. I used to say Raven was my heart and Shadow was my soul.
It’s only in the last few months that I’ve even thought of adopting another cat, but every time, I start casually looking, my heart squeezes and says no. I know some people adopt new animal friends soon after losing one, but I just can’t. I wish I could because I think I would like to share my space again, but I just can’t.
More FromSoft NPC realness. Yesterday, I outlined my faves in Dark Souls II (Scholar of the First Sin). Today, I’m going to mash together Sekiro and Bloodborne because I’m pretty sure I cannot do a post each even if I don’t give a targeted number for each. I have played each of the Dark Souls games a dozen times, but I’ve only played through Bloodborne completely twice and Sekiro once. I’m very close to the end of NG+ on Sekiro, but that will not happen.
Let’s start with Sekiro as it’s my least-favorite From game for reasons I have enumerated several times in the past. Honestly, when I think of it, I can’t remember very many NPCs at all. My favorite is someone who is a boss if you go for the bad ending. Let’s get to it.
1. Emma. Emma is the equivalent of your level up lady in the game. Not that you can level up. But she’s the one you give your gourd seeds to in order to strengthen your gourd. Which is your Estus Flask in this game. She’s the adoptive daughter of a doctor and learned from him.
I will say thatt the story is much more straightforward in this game, probably because Activision was the publisher. It’s also probably why there is a hidden shitty map in the game because they insisted there be one (not a shitty one, but a map). Everything about the game is streamlined in a way that I did not appreciate.
Emma is interesting in that she’s loyal to Isshin. She’s his doctor, but she was also rescued by him on the battlefield. I think. She’s the one who drops a letter to you so that you’ll come save Kuro. She knows secrets that she’s not telling you, but you can eavesdrop and overhear her talking about them with the Sculptor.
It seems as if everyone but you know what is happening. That’s another thing that I dont really like about the game. You’re just the pawn. I mean, it’s true in all the game,s but it’s so blatant in this one that you’re being manipulated and used.
Here’s one thing about Emma that sets her (and Isshin) apart from other NPCs (I mentioned it earlier). If you choose to go for the Shura ending, which means to forsake Kuro and follow Owl, then Emma becomes a boss fight, followed by Isshin. She turs from Emma the doctor and gourd lady to Emma, the Gentle Blade. And she’s pretty badass. Oh, wait. There’s a third NPC who becomes a boss. The Sculptor. He’s an on optional boss, the Demon of Hatred, and one whom many people consider the hardest boss in the game. I’m not sure if I’d call him the hardest, but he’s certainly one of the most tedious. Wait! Owl is like this as well. So there are four in this game that go from NPCs to bosses!
I love the FromSoft games. This is something most people know about me. We have an unhealthy relationship in which they repeatedly kiss my ass, and I go back for more. I’m a sub, yes, but this is taking it to the extreme. Just kidding! I used to be a sub, but now I’m a switch.
Anyway, back to FromSoft games.
I had the list of my favorites from before Elden Ring. Once I finished Elden Ring, I wanted to rank where I would put it, but I couldn’t. Why? Because I was overwhelmed by what I had experienced. 225+ hours for one playthrough. I had seen everything the game had to be seen (I hadn’t, but I thougth I had), and I didn’t know what to do with it.
Now, nearly a year-and-a-half laater, I have put over five hundred hours into the game. I’ve completed it three times for the plat (hundo chievo), and have four total characters. By the way, no matter what kind of character I make in the beginning, they end up being a strengthcaster. My current charracter started as a samurai and now is a strengthcaster with two grave scythes.
But, I’m ready to rank the games. I think. There are six that I have played (not Demon’s Souls), and I will rank them from least-favorite to most-favorite, with my perennial reminder that favorite doesn’t mean best.
6. Sekiro. I never clicked with the combat. This is the most restrictive of the games, and you either get it or you don’t. I didn’t. I have never been able to parry with consistency, and that’s all you can do in this game. Or rather, it’s the best way to play the game. I could get the deflect once every four or five times, which meant that I had to whittle down the health of each boss. Which was not fun. At all. I’ve watched people play it, those who can do the deflect with ease. It’s a completely different game when you can master the main combat mechanic than when you can (I assume).
In addition, you can’t level up. Well, you can, but not each individual stat. There is no customization in this game besides what you can attach to your prosthetic arm, and that seemed very underbaked. You had one sword and one ‘armor’, which I put in quotes because there were no stats for it. You had to play the game on its terms, which meant that you actually had to git gud. This is the least accessible of the From games, and it’s a shame because it’s a brilliant game. Really. I think it’s an amazing game–but it’s the least player-friendly and the one I probably will never get the plat in–unless they add co-op.
Yesterday, I wrote about Bloodborne and about different aspects of accessibility. Today, I want to write more about Bloodborne, but let’s talk about the plat this time. This is my first actual plat (given that PlayStation is the only platform to give actual plats), but it’s not my first time 100%ing a game. Which in itself is a misnomer because it’s about getting all the achievements, not doing everything in the game.
Side Note: There is a debate in the RKG Discord about calling anything other than the plat on PS a plat. Some people believe it is Not To Be Done, while others don’t think it’s a big deal. I normally call what I’m doing the not-plat, though not for that reason, but I don’t think it’s a big deal either way.
I am two trophies away from the plat (two endings) plus the Bloodborne trophy, which is the trophy for getting all the other trophies. I just did Mergo’s Wet Nurse last night on NG+ by myself with the Tonitrus, Executioner’s Gloves, and the last few swipes with my Hunter Axe. Shoutout to the Hunter Axe, which is a starting weapon, but it’s been my main all along. It’s a basic bitch, yes, but it does WORK. Plus, it’s got reach, which the Tonitrus is sadly lacking.
Side Note to the Side Note: There is a notorious boss in the Chalice Dungeons who is a plat stopper. Amygdala. She is also in the main game, but this is in an arena with limited room in which to run. Oh, and you have half-health is this whole dungeon. The Defiled Pthumeru Dungeon. So she’s not-so-affectionately known as Defiled Amy. I’ve watched people try to kill her and not have any success. She can one-shot you, and it’s such a slog of a fight. Supposedly, she doesn’t have much health, but it can seem like it takes forever.
There is a cheese, though, and I picked it up very quickly as I was just trying to do this as fast as possible. Which, by the way, made me upset when I realized that you don’t have to do all the Chalice Dungeons for the plat.
Anyway. The cheese is that you stand by Amy’s tail in a certain spot and she’ll jump straight up in the air. Your impulse will be to run away, but you need to stand as still as possible. She will land with her head right next to you (but 180 from where you are facing), and you can hit it a few times or with one heavy R2 attack before you’ll want to run back to her tail again.
I love FromSoft games. They are amazing and Miyazaki is a genius. I think Sekiro is brilliant and an incredible stand-alone game. It’s also my least-favorite of the games with Bloodborne just above it. This is a controversial opinion in the community as most people worship at the altar of Bloodborne.
Before I continue, I have to address the elephant in the room. There has been a lot of debate about the accessibility of the games. Usually, this breaks down to the question of modes and the advocation of adding an easy mode. I don’t believe that’s the answer, but it’s also not an interest of mine because it’s clear that FromSoft will never do that.
I am more interested in the other things they have and have not done in order to make the games more accessible to people, but that’s also not something I’ll really be discussing this post. My interest right now is how much should FromSoft have to adapt in order to be accessible and in what areas?
For example, I’m terrible at platforming because I have depth and spatial issues. Add a horse to that and, well, I cannot tell you how many times I plunged Torrent into the deep abyss of nothing. It doesn’t help that he’s not very precise and FromSoft continues to insist that you can turn on a dime while jumping–even on a horse.
In the RKG Discord, there is a Soulsborne channel, of course. People were gushing about how great the game is and how when it clicks, it just clicks. Which is what many people who love that game say. But here’s the thing. It doesn’t click with everyone. I found ways to get around my issues with Bloodborne, but I never actually liked the game. Yes, I found a way to beat it, but I was never any good at it. Not having a shield is such a handicap to me, that I will do what I can to mitigate it. In the case of Bloodborne, using my Hunter Tools including the Augur of Ebreitas to TENTACLES TO THE FACE! helped, but did not wholly negate the damage of not having a shield.
I’m still thinking about societal norms and the dictum to listen to other people’s opinions. I wrote a post about it yesterday, but it was still percolating in my brain. I didn’t feel as if I had really gotten to the root of the issue, and then it hit me. I’m a minority in almost every way. In the big things–gender, race, age, religion, and sexual identity. Also in the daily things such as marriage status, having children status, what popular media I like, and even in more niche ways.
I like Taiji and Taiji weapons. That in itself is weird for Americans. Then, let’s talk FromSoft games. Before Elden Ring, it was a very niche genre of games. Yes, influential in many ways and much beloved as a concept, but the actual number of people who have played the game isn’t that big. As a comparison, Call of Duty has sold 425 million copies collectively. Before Elden Ring, the numbers for the games sold as far as I could find in a quick Google search: The Souls games (plus Demon’s) is 27 million. Bloodborne is 2 million. Sekiro is 5 million. Elden Ring sold 13.4 million copies in the first month. So, pre-ER, the From games sold roughly 34 million copies. ER sold roughly half the total amount of Souls games sold in its (ER) first month.
That’s such a small fraction of the Collar Duties games sold, that I think I can comfortably call it niche. Even within the niche, however, I am even more niche. I cannot parry for shit, and I struggle with the main combat convention of every game (save ER in which the parry wasn’t that important). It took me quite some time to realize that it’s because I have spatial issues and reflex issues. It’s the reason I like the Souls games/Elden Ring better than BB and Sekiro: I can make up for my deficiencies and cobble together a way to make things work.
I’m currently poking at the Bloodborne plat (true plat because I can only play it on my PS4), and I’m being reminded of why I did not enjoy playing that game. I’m in the Defiled Chalice Dungeon, in which I have half-health. that’s the gimmick of this chalice dungeon, which, honestly is horseshit.
I fucking hate the Chalice Dungeons. I’ll just say it. That puts me in the minority because everyone loves Bloodborne and some people think you can’t say you beat Bloodborne if you don’t do the Chalice Dungeons. To which I say, fuck off, gatekeepers! There is a literal ending in the game (three of them, actually)! Fuck alllll the way off with that bullshit.
I hate the Chalice Dungeons (CDs) and have been grimly plodding through them with nary a moment of enjoyment. Before I decided to do the plat, I had done two or three of the CDs. I quit because I loathed them. They’re all the same and they’re so utterly boring. Plus, I keep getting lost in them, and it’s just not fun. But
I dealt with it until the Defiled Chalice. Oh my god. It’s such utter bullshit for someone who has shitty reflexes. I’m on the Watchdog of the Old Lords (boss for the second level) and there is one move that keeps getting me. And because I only have half-health, it kills me every time. The RKG Discord is eager to help me out, but I’ve been trying to do it on my own. Why? Because I don’t like asking for help. I’ve tried to summon the regular way, but I can’t get anyone. Just the NPCs, which is not good enough for this boss.
I can put out that call, but this just makes me not want to do it at all. I don’t get the point of this, honestly. And this isn’t even the hard boss. That would be Amygdala on the next level. I took a break form the CDs and went to the main game because I have to see the other two endings as well. I have only played this game once all the way through and twice halfway through (once on NG+ and once with a new character). Or maybe a bit further with my new character. I went to do the Forbidden Woods which is such a slog of an area. I made it to the Shadows of Yharnam and summoned Old Hunter Henryk to help me out on my second try. He died halfway through, but I managed to squeak it out with my Tonitrus +9 and TENTACLES TO THE FACE. I wanted to make some blood bullets, but forgot how.
I raced through Byrgenwerth and summoned Damien of Mensis to take care of the Church Hunter before facing Rom. And we got her in one. Easily. Damien ended up with almost full health. It was a breeze! I mean, I’ve never had much trouble with Rom, but this was E-A-S-Y. Granted, Damien was a badass who did WORK, but still.
I’m hoping I can do save-scumming if I choose to continue with the plat. But I HATE the CDs so much. I really don’t understand why that’s a part of the FromSoft plats. Same with the covenant grinding, but way worse because I have to actually be good at killing bosses. Which I most emphatically am not.
Good lord. Look at me going off on a tangent, per yooz. get me started on a FromSoft game, and you will NOt get me to stop.
My point is that I always have to decide when I can bring up my opinion/idea/point of view and when I can’t. I don’t have the luxury of assuming my opinion is the norm because it’s most emphatically is not. Ever. In fact, my brother and I have this running joke. When he does marketing for his job, he’ll ask me what I think. Then he knows to do the opposite. It’s a joke, but it’s not a joke. If you want to have a marketing idea that would work, just do exactly opposite of what I would like.
That’s why I have such a negative reaction to ‘talk with people with opposing ideas or you’re just living in a vacuum/echo chamber’. I already have to hear/see/read opposing ideas all. the. goddamn. fucking. time. if I were to go around spouting what I believed at the drop of a hat, I would be ostracized. Not necessarily because my opinions are vile (though some may consider them so), but just because they are so outside the norm. It took me a long time to realize just how incredibly weird I am and how to act like I’m semi-normal. It took me even longer to recognize that I think differently and on many different levels in comparison to most people.
This is what bothers me the most about the smug admonishment to think about opposing points of view: It’s never reciprocal. I understand in an advice column, you can only give advice to the person writing in, but still. Maybe take into consideration that the person DID look at other points of view (as proven later when the LW wrote a comment, adding more context). People in the comments were grumping that she should have included the clarification in the original letter, which, fair, I guess, but I understand what the LW wrote from the initial letter and thought the commenters were being unnecessarily harsh.
But, again, that comes back to my ability to read people exceedingly well. I get that not everyone can do that, but it would make my life so much easier if they could.
I have said for some time that if Bloodborne was on the PC, I would play it more. Then I played Sekiro, which is on the PC, and it turned out not to be true. I’ve played it through nearly two times, and I have no desire to play it any longer. I like Bloodborne better than Sekiro, but it’s still below all the Dark Souls games (and now Elden Ring) for me in terms of how much I enjoy the game.
When Bloodborne first came out, I didn’t think I would ever play it because I don’t do consoles. I could not justify buying a PS4 just to play BB, so I sadly accepted that it would not be a thing. Just like I will not play Deracine because it’s only VR. Then, my niece’s husband offered me his at a really good price because he was getting the PS Pro, and I happily accepted.
And I hated the PS4. It was so alien to me, including the fact that you had to pay to be online. I mean, what? I got that for free on my PC. It’s an issue now, but not for monetary reasons. I begrudgingly paid for PS+, but I wasn’t happy about it.
Side Note: They make it really difficult to cancel your auto-renew on the subscription. When you try to end the auto-renew, an error message pops up. I Googled it and it’s been a problem for several years. They could have fixed it by now, but they obviously would prefer to get the money from people who just shrug and vow to take care of it later. What you have to do is delete your credit card info completely, which, fine, but it makes me less likely to rejoin at any time because they made it such a pain in the ass.
Side Note to the Side Note: I’m considering re-upping for one month because Krupa is continuing his plat run in DS III next week and he’ll want to summon slugs (name for the RKG community members) to help him out. I was bad the one time I got summoned because stream lag and because there was an invader and because I got ganked. There’s a weird pressure to hurry when you’re a summon in a way there wouldn’t be when I’m soloing. Plus, less health and less flasks.
Anyway, I hate the DualShock. I don’t know why as it’s similar to the Xbox One controller, which I love. It’s probably because it’s just different enough that I can’t adjust to it as I rarely use it. I think it’s also psychological as it runs on batteries which means theoretically, it can run out at any time. My Xboner (as I affectionately call it0 is just perfect for me.
FromSoft released Demon’s Souls in 2009. This was before I was into video games and I wouldn’t have been able to play it, anyway, because I don’t have a PS3. Now it’s because I don’t have a PS5, but we’ll get to that later.
Dark Souls was released in 2011. That’s over ten years ago. I had started to play video games by then, but nothing hard. I heard about the game from Ian because his brother mentioned it to him. For years, I joked that I owed Ian’s brother a kick in the shins (or a punch) for mentioning the game to Ian.
I started playing it a year or so later (probably longer than that because I got the Prepare to Try edition, which was released in late 2012), and I was immediately lost. Not physically, but mentally. Up until that point, I had played games like Borderlands and the sequel, Torchlight, and Diablo III. Trying Dark Souls with only those games under my belt was an exercise in frustration.
I started as the Pyromancer because I love fire, which is unwittingly the most newbie-friendly class. I did everything wrong in that first playthrough because I wanted it to be pure. I didn’t want to look anything up, which was to my detriment.
Side Note: Many people say you should go in raw to a FromSoft game. No videos, no trailers, no articles, no nothing. That’s the way to get a true experience, they insist. If you can’t tell by how I’ve worded that, I don’t agree. When you land at Firelink Shrine, there are three ways you can go. The graveyard, down to New Londo Ruins, and to the Undead Burg.
The right way to go is the Undead Burg, but it’s the most hidden of the paths. The staircase down to New Londo Ruins is right by the bonfire. The path to the graveyard is fairly open and straightforward, but you do have to go through an empty room. The path to Undead Burg is a bit more bendy, but you’ll get there eventually.
When I first played, I went to the graveyard and got ganked immediately. Many fans say, “You’re supposed to see how hard it is and go another way.” It’s fucking Dark Souls! Their tagline is ‘Prepare to Die’! Their whole thing is being hard. For someone who has never played the game before, what is the meaning of ‘too hard’? So, no. I don’t think that’s a brilliant move of Miyazaki’s (and don’t get me wrong. He’s definitely brilliant). What is ‘too hard’? If you’ve never played a From game before, you have no barometer. Yes, OK, the Northern Undead Asylum is the tutorial and not as difficult as either the graveyard or New Londo, but there’s nothing to indicate that the jump up is unreasonable.
Many people quit at this point. Some people looked up what they were supposed to do. I’m fairly sure I was one of them, and isn’t that the better answer? In the first case, you have people who quit the game and never look back. In the second group, you have people who actually play and finish the game.
I look shit up all the time now. I try to be as pure as possible, but I’m not above looking up tips on beating a boss I’ve been fighting for hours, for example. Or how to make sure I don’t fuck up an NPC questline. In addition, the community coming together to find secrets in the games has become an integral part of the experience itself. There’s something thrilling with dishing about the current From game with hundreds if not thousands of other people who are just as enraptured by the game.
If there’s something that drives me absolutely batty as a Dark Souls fan, it’s all the hardcore fans who bleat about what is or isn’t cheating in the game. I’ve written about this before, but I’m doubly annoyed as we make our way to the release of Elden Ring. Here are just some of the ways you’re playing Dark Souls wrong, according to the hardest of hard Souls fans (who insist the games aren’t that hard, anyway). It’s a bit different with Sekiro because you’re very limited in how you can play the game, but there are still some things that are considered cheating. There are definitely cheeses for the bosses and the propensity to say such-and-such boss isn’t that hard, anyway. Git gud, n00b! And so on. And there’s always the flex that the game in general isn’t that hard; you just have to learn the rhythm of the game. Anyone can do it!
Side note: I’ve thought about this a lot because I’m so terrible at the games. I heartily disagree that anyone can play the games for a variety of reasons, whether it’s simply they don’t want to put in the time, disabilities, or any other reason. It’s really frustrating when Souls fans* refuse to acknowledge that the games are hard and not for everyone. “Anyone can play them!” Stop saying that!
I went back to Sekiro recently because I needed a game and it’s one I feel like I never really gelled with. I wanted to give it another chance because I could see what a brilliant game it is. An I’ll admit that I had a gander at what I needed to not-plat it. Because of what I’d have to do to get the not-plat, the smart thing to do would be to continue the NG+ playthrough (of my first game) that I had going. The problem with that was that I was stuck at Owl (Father), one of the top three hardest bosses in the game for me. It took me many hours to beat him and I didn’t think I could do it again. Going right back to him was not smart so I did a few other things first, like grinding for skill points. Why? Because one of the trophies is to get all the skills in the game. That takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r so I did some grinding. then I tried Father (Owl and…it didn’t go well at all. Not only that, I was too impatient to want to do it the way I hid it the last time (the long way. By baiting out one attack and ignoring the others). It brought back how I was done with him after five tries the first time I fought him, which was not a good sign.
Dark Souls III is my favorite FromSoft game. I probably don’t need to say that by now, but it’s worth repeating. By the way, I’m in NG+4 at the moment and was playing a bit for funsies. One of my favorite things to do is break everything once I’m this far in the game. I just cheesed the Curse-rotted Greatwood with Pestilent Mist which is the shit. It eats away at the humanity of any non-dead creature–including the caster. So ,with the Curse-rotted Greatwood, it is, indeed, a big tree. It has, ah, shall we say, danglies between its legs. In other words, great big balls. And you’re supposed to hit it in the balls. Pustules. There are clusters on its back and limbs as well. You can break any or all of the cluster of pustules. Once you break a certain amount of them, the tree breaks the floor and we both fall down to our death–no, of course not. We just fall down to a level below and continue the fight.
Here’s the thing, though. With Pestilent Mist (which taken 30 Intelligence and used to be massively OP when it was Pestilent Mercury. So much so, they nerfed it), the tree doesn’t break the floor. No idea why, but my guess is because you’re not actually breaking the pustules with it. But, the thing is, you can do the same thing with pyromancy. With the Chaos Bed Vestiges pyromancy, I’ve managed to also have the tree not break the floor. But Pestilent Mist is funny because you’re not actually attacking the enemy–you’re engulfing them (and you) in a mist that eats away at them over time.
Anyway, I decided I might want to try killing–*spoilers*–the Dancer because why not sequence break? But I also didn’t want to fight her alone even though I rarely have trouble with her. So I went online to see if I could summon someone. The second I went online, i was invaded. I let a tough-ish regular enemy kill me because I like robbing the invaders of their kill (even though they still reap the rewards) and went about my business. I have many many humanities so I don’t mind wasting one now and again. But I hate invaders. But I’m impressed that people are still playing this much later. And I love that I can get human summons with regularity, especially on weekends. Anyone who’s still playing at this point is very good. Me? Not so good, but I’m a decent summon for a few bosses.