Underneath my yellow skin

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A talk about difficulty, part four

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Back with part four about the difficulty in FromSoft games. In the last post, I ended by rambling on about fun and how *gasp* different people find *double gasp* different things fun.

*SPOILER WARNING*

The people who are ‘disappointed’ in Rory using the Mimic Tear say it’s not fun to watch the Mimic Tear do all the work. Which is fine as an opinion. But they tend to state it as if it’s facts. As if no one in their right mind would ever enjoy watching that!

Several months ago, there was one guy who declared proudly in the Discord that ‘we’ had won when Gav implemented the ‘no summons for the gold fog gated bosses’. As if this was a good thing. As if everyone would agree with him. Which, much to his dismay, probably, most people most emphatically did not agree with him.

Within this current discussion, someone mentioned that it didn’t seem like a lot of hardcore From fans actually enjoyed the games. They talked about beating the bosses and how hard they are, but not about the actual games themselves. Which was really good insight. It’s about how much of a badass they are and how they are better than everyone else because they did it the right way. The pure way. The only way. The one true way, you might say.

I fear that this is the fork in the road for the two camps beacuse there really is no middle ground. Well, there is, but I don’t think it would satisfy anyone, really. Although some of the dissenters said begrudgingly that they would be ok with it. It’s that Rory be able to summon anywhere but the main bosses. Someone else suggested that Mimic Tear not be allowed because it’s too powerful.

This is a microcosm of the community at large, sadly. I thought the RKG community would be devoid of it, but I was wrong. They are not nearly as plentiful or as rude as in the general FromSoft community at large, but it’s becoming more of a problem every week. It’s funny because my brother was over today to help me with my phone. I described the situation to him, and he was so puzzled.

“It’s in the game,” he said. “How is it cheating?”

How, indeed.


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A talk about difficulty, part three

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Hello! Today I want to jump into the topic of sexism. It will tie in with my main topic of difficulty in FromSoft games, though I can’t guarantee I’ll get there today. The reason I’m bringing it up is because it factors into the whole tiresome difficulty debate. Here’s a link to the last post I wrote about this topic.

Over at the RKG Patreon, there are several more people who commented about how disappointed they are with the summoning situation. They say it’s not fun to watch

*SPOILER WARNING*

Mimic Tear beat the bosses. And that part of what they liked about Retry/Prepare To Try was Rory beating his head against a boss over and over again. They mention the Laurence boss fight more often than not (which I dropped below), and it was notorious for taking Rory 15 hours to beat. It’s an epic fight in which the guys pretty much stopped speaking by the end of it just because they had nothing left to say. People still consider it one of the best episodes of all time.

The thing is, though, it was one episode out of twenty. That’s how many episodes there were in the Bloodborne playthrough. Most of them an hour or less. The first series of Retry Elden Ring was thirty episodes with several of them being around two hours. Or at least an hour and a half. We are on episode 42 and not even halfway through the second series. Of three. There are going to be three series in total, not including the DLC. It’s really disheartening to read the comments on Patreon (I don’t dare read the YouTube comments) from all the guys (and, yes, it’s almost all guys) who are so stuck on the summoning thing) when the boys put so much work into the series.

Here’s the thing that really grates on me. There are literally thousands of people doing no-summons runs. That’s kind of the thing for the FromSoft content creators. Not using summons. That’s, like, the base for a FromSoft content creator these days. No shield is also the norm. No magicks because that shit is for pussies, yo. I’m being sarcastic, of course, but that is truly how people in the community feel.

Sometimes, I wonder why I play games with such a toxic fanbase. I mean, there probably is this much bitterness in all fanbases because people are shortsighted no matter what, but there is something about the FromSoft games that bring out the worst in some people. There are a lot of great people in the community, of course, but, boy, the toxic people are so fucking unpleasant.


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A talk about difficulty, part two

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First of all, I got my shingles shot on Thrusday (it’s Saturday now), and I was fine for the first ten hours or so. I mean, my arm swelled up and was hot and sore to the touch, but that was a given. Then, the exhaustion hit, and I could barely keep my eyes open.

I was exhausted and my arm was feverish all day yesterday. I could barely keep my eyes open, and I had no energy at all. I’m better today, but still ready to sleep. I attended the first half hour of my Taiji class to do the stretches, but that’s it. I was getting hot and sweaty, which is the time to quit. My teacher has told me that if you have a light sweat, you can keep going. If you break out in a hard sweat, you stop. I was somewhere between a light sweat and a hard sweat, but did not want to overdo it.

*SPOILER WARNING*

Back to the topic at hand–difficulty. It’s coming up in the Retry episodes because Rory has been using the Mimic Tear on the regular. Which has made some people very mad. One person unsubbed because of it. At the end of the last season, Gav laid out some rules as to when they would use the spirit summons. This caused a spirited debate in the Discord with most people wanting Rory to summon whenever he wanted. There were a few who wanted it so that he could only summon out in the field (and not for bosses).

This season, it seems the rule is gone, which makes me happy. However, more than one person has commented that it’s no fun when Rory immediately pulls out the Mimic Tear–which is the best summon in the game. It’s you with all your abilities and whatever consumables you have equipped.

This is the tension with these games, especially Elden Ring. Oh, by the way, it amuses me how much I was pinging back and forth at the end of the last post. My brain was not in any shape to concentrate. I’m a bit better today, but still so tired. I’ll try my best, though.

There are two camps of FromSoft watchers (meaning fans who like to watch other people play the games). One is filled with those of us who just like watching people have a fun time playing the games. Weird, I know. The other camp is filled with people who are VERY LOUD about how someone should be playing the game. I’ve seen content creators apologize for something that is perceived as being cheese or saying they don’t want to be known as a cheeser, and I just shake my head. I’ve seen YouTubers shamed out of their personal preferences, which annoys me to no end.

Games are meant to be fun. At the end of the day, I mean. I know this is hard to believe, but different people have fun in different ways. I don’t like that people think if they are a patreon or a subscriber, they get to dictate what the content creator does. I’m not saying they have to support someone they no longer like, but that’s different than trying to demand the content creator does exactly what you want them to do.


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When does ‘hard, but fair’ turns into ‘too fucking difficult’?

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I’m taking a break from reviewing the Shadow of the Erdtree so I can talk about difficulty. Why? Because it’s fucking FromSoft, and people want to talk about it ad nauseam. The difficulty, I mean. Mostly the hardcore onebros who have way too much of their egos tied up in beating the games in the exact way they deem most pure. And correct.

I have said ad nauseam that the rotten core of the FromSoft community needs to STFU already. Maybe not in that exact way, but I am stalwart in my belief that they are a detriment to the community at large. Not because they play the games the way they do–but because they are so vocal and adamant that it’s the only way to play. Whether it’s without a shield or without armor or without leveling up or without magicks or without summons or–there are a lot of things they insist make you a pussy if you do or use–YOU HAVE TO PLAY THE GAME THIS WAY, NOOB GIT GUD ONEBRO FOR LYFE!!!!!!

It’s been happening since the first game, and it’s only gotten worse. I think that Elden Ring being more for the general public just exacerbated the toxic fans because how dare FromSoft try to pander to the masses?

FromSoft is a company. Their goal is to sell games. I mean, creative vision and all that, but it makes sense that they would want to get more eyes on their games. That’s the whole point–make the game you envision and hope that a lot of people like and buy it. I know that people want the thing they love to never change, but that’s not how life works. In fact, none of the games are exactly the same as the one before. This is as it should be. Otherwise, you could just play the same game over and over again. Which, I mean, FromSoft fans do that, anyway. I always have a From game on the go. Currently, that’s Elden Ring, but it was Dark Souls III for a long time before that. I play mostly From games with indie games sprinkled throughout. Mostly cozy games, but also roguelike/lites.

I am so tired of the difficulty debate, but I think it’s only going to get worse. Why? Because FromSoft has dared to tell it’s most rabid fans that maybe, just maybe, they had to change how they played the games if they wanted to have fun with them. You see, so many people who pride themselves on soloing the bosses, are mad that the bosses of Elden Ring were designed around the spirit summons. It meant that soloing some of the bosses was nigh on impossible, especially with all the other restrictions these players put upon themselves. Not using a shield for one. Or magicks. Or or or.

This is what it means to be a Western white dude, writ large, quite frankly. Not the no shield thing, but the ‘this should be made exactly for me, otherwise it’s bad and wrong’ thing. Everything is pretty much calibrated to that ‘normal’ white dude, so it’s jarring to them when something isn’t. Especially something as beloved by the ‘git gud’ crowd as FromSoft games. They are the same people who were quick to point out that Miyazaki should be allowed to make the games the way he wanted whenever the question of an easy mode came up, but now, he should not be allowed to make the bosses center around spirit summons.


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It’s all about soul(s), part two

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In the last post, I was musing about what makes a good soulslike along with why i’m fine with Elden Ring being open world Dark Souls IV. I think that FromSoft is now in an interesting time because for a decade, they were flying under the radar and considered a genre-defining developer. They were never considered AAA, even though their games were all published by big name publishers. They seemed to be guns for hire, and basically willing to go with any publisher who would have them.

That comes with both positives and negatives. Positive: They got their games published. This is just speculation, but back in the day, that was probably their highest priority. Just getting their games out there, I mean. And this is total speculation on my part, but I think they like working with Bandai Namco the best. Why do I think that ? Well, first, they have not done sequels to Bloodborne or Sekiro, both of which were published by other publishers (Sony and Activision respectively).

There was one DLC for Bloodborne, and it was massive. FromSoft also did a weird VR game called Deracine for the PS4. Nobody talks about it, and I bet most people don’t even know it exists.

Hm. I just checked sales because I thought maybe the two games didn’t sell as well. Bloodborne has sold the least (around eight million worldwide), but that’s to be expected because it’s it was a PS4 exclusive.

Oh. I forgot about Armored Core VIFires of Rubicon, but so has everyone else. That sold nearly three million copies, so that’s by far the least-sold of the games. I don’t count it in the canon, though, because I’m talking about their action-adventure games.

It really felt like FromSoft was more restricted when working with Activision. No one talked about it, but there were things in the game that I felt were begrudging additions handed down from the men on high. I will not be swayed from the opinion that they put a map in because Activision made them. They have never had a map in one of their games before that and I would wager that most people didn’t even know there is one in Sekiro. It’s in options and then something else not named map (if I remember correctly). Plus, the map is just of the overworld and nothing detailed. It felt very much like a fuck you from From or them doing it under duress.

Not to get into the weeds, but I’m going to get into the weeds. Activision is American whereas FromSoft is Japanese. Bamco (what Bandai Namco is also known as) is Japanese as is Sony. I could see some culture clash at work with Activision as well. In general, Americans are more straightforward and prize honesty and bluntness. That has both positives and negatives, but that’s not the point of this post. In games, Americans want directions. Tell me what to do and how exactly to do it. Japanese people seem to be more ok with not being led around by the nose.


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It’s all about soul(s)

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I want to talk about soulslikes in general beacuse I just tried two that fell short of what I’m looking for in one. Those are Another Crab’s Treasure (Aggro Crab), also known as SeKrilo (at least in my head) and Tails of Iron (Odd Bug Studio). Both were heavily influenced by From games, specifically Sekiro. Both had their pluses and minuses, but neither really scratched that itch. I would say that overall, Another Crab’s Treasure is the better game.

Here’s the thing. Most soulslikes make me just want to go back to tthe source material, and I always have at least one From game on the go. currently, I have a finished playthrough of Dark Souls III plus DLCs because we did Return to Lothric this year in the RKG Discord. In February. I’m halfway through Dark Souls Remastered, but probably won’t go back as the quality of the game sharply drops in the second half. And I have a few playthroughs in Elden Ring at various points, including one that is loosely based on Rory’s playthrough.

I wasn’t enjoying my dex run so I’ll probably leave it be. Or I could do Rennala and respect, but why bother? The DLC is coming out in a month-and-a-half, and I have a hunch that it’ll be meaty enough for me to be obsessed with it for several months after it releases.

I want to talk about what makes the From games so special–especially the Dark Souls trilogy and Elden Ring. Every time I play a soulslike, I am left dissatisfied, and I end up going back to an actual From game.

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first. The difficulty is not the point. In fact, I think From gets tripped up when they try to make the difficulty the point (i.e., the DLCs).

This is where so many of the soulslikes get tripped up. They try to make their games hard, and it detracts from the experience. Let me give you an example from each of the games I recently tried. InAnother Crab’s Treasure, they throw so many mobs at you. SO many. And even though they are shit enemies, each one can two-shot you. I’m guessing if I was better at parrying, I would not be two or three-shot nearly as much. But it gets old to just race through an area, trying desperately to get away from a mob of enemies who can easily swarm you.

Another thing the game did that was like FromSoft, but not done as well was having an enemy behind every corner. I don’t like it in From games, but at least they don’t do it every two feet. In this game, it was all the fucking time, and it just made me sigh in exasperation. That’s not playing fair, especially when I literally cannot see around the corners. The camera was wonky in this game, and that was frustrating as well.


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Me and From games, part three

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In the last post, I was talking about why I think I’m nearing the end of my relationship with From games (it’s them, not me. But it’s me. But it’s also them). I don’t play the games because they are difficult, and I have the feeling that the Elden Ring DLC is going to be above my station.

Once, when I was watching Ian stream Elden Ring, his brother, Z, was in the chat. We were talking about how great the game is, and he (Z) said that he wished there was an exploration mode in Sekiro because he had friends he would love to see the game, but they would never be able/want to play it because of how hard it is.

I laughed. Not at him, but because From will never ever do something like that. I love their games, but they don’t care about traditional accessibility. I  will say that with Elden Ring, they have done things to make it accessible, but not in the obvious ways. I actually thought they tried to be more accessible for Sekiro, and my completely un-thought-out opinion of why was because they were working with Activision–and the latter demanded that they do things in the more traditional way.

To that extent, there was a sort of aim-assist, big red kanji that tells you when the enemy is doing an unblockable attack, and an actual map! I include the last as a joke because it was clearly forced upon FromSoft. It’s buried in the options menu, three layers deep. Plus the map is a blurry image of the overworld and nothing else. It’s not useful in the least, and it’s obvious that From made it as minimal as possible.

This is one reason I don’t care for Bloodborne and Sekiro. There is very little accessibility in any of the games, but you have so much more flexibility in the Souls trilogy and in Elden Ring. Quite frankly, I’m astonished that I finished Sekiro. It’s because I’m stubborn, but there is no way I could do it now. The last time I tried the game, I went back to Father (Owl) in the Hirata Estate. He is my nemesis, and I went at him for hours. I got to his second phase maybe three times, but had nothing at that point. I gave up and never went back.

This game has no give. I have heard so many times, “Once you click with the game, it’s easy!” I’ve also heard, “It’s like a rhythm game (or a fighting game)!” I’m also shit at both of those, by the way. I have rhythm in real life, but I don’t have game rhythm. I can feel music in my body, but I can’t intellectually parse when I need to deflect, for example.


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FromSoft games and me–more musings

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I’ve been rambling about FromSoft games for the past several posts, and I’m currently musing about what they mean to me. I’m also deciding whether or not I’m going to continue  playing them after Elden Ring.

As to the latter, it’s not a question of whether I want to continue playing them or not, but of whether my abilities will allow me ta play them much longer. I already can’t play some of them, well, one of them for sure (Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon) and one I’m pretty sure I can only play with great difficulty (Sekiro). I may not be able to play it at all. I could list all my issues with it, but I’ve done plenty of posts about that. (And remember, I still rate it above a 9 if I had to give it a number.)

Here’s my latest post about my time with the original Dark Souls. I’m musing about it because I’m playing the remaster again for the first time in a while. I play it the same way every time, and I marvel at how much easier it is now. I can traipse through it fairly easily, and I get indignant if scrubs kill me (because it’s embarrassing when it used to be just normal).

You’ll never guess how much easier it is when you know the game like the back of your hand. Orders of magnitude easier. It’s funny to watch people play these games with people who don’t play these games because the people who don’t play the games are always amazed at how much the people who do play the games know said games. In the video I included below, Rosie (the one guiding) is the resident FromSoft expert. She is guiding Ash (under ridiculous circumstances) and Robert S. Pearson (the host of the series) is pompous, grandiose, and comes up with difficult tasks for the others to do in various video games.

The main gist of this challenge was for Ash to make it to the first boss, Phalanx, in a certain amount of time on a fresh save. If she saw an enemy, she had to fight them. If she ate a grass, she had to put on a jumper (sweater), and there were nine of them. If she died, a minute was taken off the time (which I think was 45 minutes).

She hadn’t played the game because she was told not to (probably for this challenge). It was going to be her Christmas game, so she found it especially painful that she had to play it for this challenge.

It was hilarious beacuse by the end, she was wearing all nine jumpers. She looked like she should have been rolled out of the studio because she was so round.


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Maybe time to move on?

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Before my medical crisis, I was very much into FromSoft games, in part for the difficulty and pride in beating the games. When I heard Elden Ring was coming out, I had this elaborate plan about how I would have two different characters. One would be for my solo run and the other would be for co-op. Then, I had my medical crisis and all that went out the window. The only thing I wanted was another Miyazaki world to explore. Lovely, bleak, tense, gruesome, and achingly heartbreaking at the same time.

I got all that and more with the game. It’s incredible; it really is. However (and you knew there was going to be a ‘however/but’ after that statement), I have been havinng a problem with the difficulty since Sekiro in 2019. Actually, since the DLc of Dark Souls III a few years earlier, but Sekiro really underscored that the games were going in a direction I wasn’t comfortable with.

I was relieved when they went back to Souls combat in Elden Ring, but the brutality in the last quarter of the game really drained the enjoyment for me. I’ve talked many times about how From has bought its own hype and makes the end of their games way too hard. Yeah, I said it. They are too hard at the end.

Well, let me rephrase that. They are too hard for me because that’s not why I play the games. Not back then and doubly so now. And I am tired of feeling like I suck at the games. Whether I do or not. (I do, but maybe not sa much as I think I do.)

Side note: The new thing in soulslikes is making the parry/deflect king–like in Sekiro. I. Fucking. Hate. This. I can’t parry. I have never been able to parry. I don’t mean ‘won’t’; I mean can’t. I spent hours trying to parry the Silver Knights in Anor Londo. I got to the point where I could parry the sword guys 75% of the time. The spear guys? Maybe 15% of the time. 20% if I was feeling lucky.


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FromSoft and me, part whatever (six)

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Back with more chatter about FromSoft games, difficulty, and me. In the last post, I wrote about whether or not I had imposter syndrome when it came to these games. A friend on the RKG Discord suggested this, and Ian has said something similar. Well, not exactly. He has argued that I am the exact target demo for the games. Miyazaki has said that he wants players to feel the struggle, but to ultimately overcome.

There is a debate that has raged in the FromSoft community (at large), which I doubt will ever be settled. One side believes that Miyazaki loves the player and wants them to do well. He is encouraging them to overcome the obstacles he’s placed in their way. Then, he’s happy and proud when they do.

In other words, he’s like a proud papa. That’s the one side of the argument.

The other side maintained that Miyazaki hated the palyer and wanted them to be miserable. To be honest, there was a lot of evidence on this side–mainly, everything in all of the games. Plus the fact thta the environments were grim and depressing. There was little joy to be found, and the NPC most people consider the best and most joyful lost his mind in the last third of the game.

Side note: I understand why people are so into Solaire (that NPC). I get why he inspires passion. In a world that is unrelentingly bleak, he is an almost literal ray of sunshine. He does the iconic ‘Praise the Sun’ emote, which I’ve shortened to ‘Praise it!’.

Here’s the thing, though. For me, he’s just….fine. But there is a tendency in these games to have the male NPCs that people care about be these bluff, useless dudes. To be fair, Solaire can hold his own in a fight–if you can actually get him in. But Siegmeyeris a total waste of space (as adorable as he may be)–not that you can summon him in a fight.

But even though Solaire is fine in a fight, he mostly runs arond looking for his sun and getting increasingly depressed when he can’t find it. I relate to that, but it just doesn’t hit me hard.

Anyway. My hot take is that Miyazaki is supremely indifferent to the player. He doesn’t love them; he doesn’t hate them. He doesn’t care about them one whit. He has created these exquisite worlds that are teeming with life.

One thing that caught people off-guard in the game was that the NPCs move. They don’t stay where you met them, and they have their own agendas. If you did not catch them when you saw them, well, you might not see them again for quite some time.


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