I have been a FromSoft fan for over a decade. I hated the first Dark Souls game when I finished it (Prepare to Try Edition, which included the DLC, and I vowed never to have anything to do with it again. Even playing it was fraught as I almost-quit several time and rage-quit once. I didn’t play it for a year, and then went back to it when I decided I wanted to try to play the sequel.
I know I could have played the sequel without playing the first game, but that’s not my style. I would have felt weird the entire time, so I went back to start the first game over and trudged my way through. I managed to do it plus the DLC in 150 hours. Yes, it took me that long because I am that shit at the games.
But I fucking did it. And I vowed never to play the game again.
That’s a joke as I’ve played the first game at least a dozen times. I’ve started it more than that, but I usually quit halfway through. I have the plat, and when the remaster came out, I sailed through it. I went from struggling with every area and every boss to one-or-two-shotting all the bosses. I played most of the game offline because on launch day, there was a PC hacker who invaded people’s worlds and killed Andre, the first and very important blacksmith. He (and let’s face it. It was overwhelmingly likely the hacker was a he) had done it to several people, and when I found that out, I immediately quit out of that game and started a new one.
Why? Because Andre is very important, and, yes, there is a way to bring him back, but it was laborious and would take some time.I decided it would be easier to start another game and race my way to where I was, playing off line so I could not be invaded.
That’s when it struck me that I was actually decent at the games because that was my conclusion rather than raging about it. I was irked, yes, and thinking nasty thoughts about the hacker, but I knew I could get back there quickly. I felt bad for anyone he did it to who was playing the game for the first time, but I knew that it would not be an issue for me. And it wasn’t. I got back there in about an hour. The first time, it probably took me ten hours to get there.
I’m bringing this up for two reasons. One, to establish how shit I was at the games and still am, actually. At least on a first playthrough. I take at least twice as long as other people to play a new From game, and not just because I’m very thorough in my exploration–which I am, by the way. In the main game, I finished my first playthrough in 225+ hours. I didn’t miss any caves or catacombs (without looking shit up), and I’ve only seen a few minor new things watching RKG play the game.
Let’s talk a bit more about soulslikes. I brought up WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers (LEENZEE) yesterday beacuse it’s coming out soon, and the RKG Discord is going mad over it. Supposedly, a games journalist said that it’s to Dark Souls what Lies of P did for Bloodborne, and several people in the Discord were so hyped about it.
Once again, I felt as if I were a weirdo in a weird world. I have heard enough good things about it that I’m mildly curious, but I also know what’s going to happen. If I have any hope in my heart, it’ll be ruthlessly stomped on as I play the game.
Side note: The game is on Game Pass. Aaaargh. That makes it way too easy to try it out. In fact, that’s how I played Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ)–yes, the whole game. And Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sanfall Interactive).
This game has been universally praised as one of the best (if not the best) soulslikes to date. That is quite high praise, indeed. The Backlogs, a channel I watch sporadically, did a video on whether he could beat the game with magic. Since I heard from another YouTuber that the magic gets less useful as you go along, I am keen to hear what The Backlogs has to say. But, the video is over an hour long, and he was asked by the developer to break the game. And he could show everything but the ending.
I’ve included the video below. I’m about fifteen minutes in, but I don’t know how much I’ll watch. If I am going to play the game, I don’t want to spoil myself too much. In fact, if I do play it, I have watched more than I normally would before playing a game.
I’m installing it. Yes, even someone as jaded as I am can still have hope, apparently. Even though I have been disappointed countless times before, I still want to believe that the next game will be different.
I will say that I’m glad there’s transmogrification beacuse I just cannot with the ridiculous armor. It makes me angry that this is still a thing in 20 fucking 25.
I think, though, that my time with soulslikes is coming to an end. I have not enjoyed a single one since Salt and Sanctuary (Ska Studio), and I only finished Lies of P because of my stubborn pride. I cheesed my way through it, and I did not feel a sense of accomplishment at the end. I have no desire to try the DLC, and a large part of that is because i would have to play the game again in order to get there. Roughly two-thirds of the game, at any rate. And, yes, they put in different modes, but still. Also, I would have to pay for it because it’s not on Game Pass any longer.
I’m at the end game of Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works), and as is true for most games, I play, I’m rushing to get to the end of it. Oh, by the way, this is the post from yesterday. I started Act 3…yesterday? The day before? Something like that, but then I promptly put it on the back burner and tootled around cleaning up all the side quests.
Speaking of which, I am even more a believer in trimming the fat. My god. The amount of side quests/mini-games that are available is mind-boggling. I know it’s that way in the Yakuza series, too, and I found out a fun fact. It’s in the trailer I included in the post yesterday, and I’ll whack it in this post as well.
The main character, Michi, is voiced by Takaya Kuroda, who is the voice of Kazuma Kiryu in the Yakuza series. It’s a testament to Takaya Kuroda that I did not sus that out. Granted, I don’t play the Yakuza games, but I have heard his voice often enough that I could have put it together. Michi and Kazuma are similar men. They’re yakuza, obviously. Both are honorable men who took a dive for their families. They are bottled up and anxious to do the right thing. They are repressed, diffident and distant, and they are goddamn hot.
I don’t know Kiryu very well, but Michi has wormed his way into my heart. He’s compassionate in that he cares about the people around him, and he wants to do the right thing. In addition, he’s encouraging to his friends and truly wants to help them realize their dreams.
The characters are the best thing about the game. Each mascot has a distinct personality and is memorable. The art work is impeccable in the game, and I love the use of color. Music is appropriate and really adds to the environment. Most of the time, the game looks like an anime/manga in style, but then once in a while, they throw out the chibi version of the characters–who are adorable.
I have my favorites, of course. Of the mascots, I mean. To-Fu is the first mascot I recruited, and he holds a soft (heh) spot in my heart. I just recruited the 20th and last mascot, and he’s adorably charming, too. Even the ones who are creepy, though, are so in a lovably quirky way. I can’t think of a single one that I don’t at least mildly like, and I truly adore most of them.
That said, I don’t love the busy work of sending them out on jobs. I know! That’s ironic given the name of the game, but I have twenty mascots that I have to send out on jobs. I have roughly 80 available jobs now, which is way too many. In the beginning, I would carefully match the mascots to the jobs when I had three mascots and maybe ten jobs available. Now, I just go down to the ones that pay the best (I have them listed from least lucrative to most) and rapidly assign jobs as quickly as possible.
And, because I still have to participate in the grand prix mascot regionals even though I’m number one, that means I have to keep one mascot held back so they are ready to go when need be. I think at some point, this should just be automated. I know the name is Promise Mascot Agency, but it is honestly one of my least-favorite parts of the game.
I’m thinking about my brand loyalty to FromSoft and how it’s wavering. I ended the last post by saying about how it’s not me–it’s them. What do I mean by this? I mean they are spreading their wings, which is their absolute right, but it’s not what I’m interested in.
It’s interesting. Many people think that Nightreign was a cash grab. Even people who who like the game think it’s a calculated move to bring in th money. It’s an asset flip with no real new content except for the Nightlords and the nightfarers. And as it stands right now, there really isn’t any replayability once you beat all the bosses. Unless you want to play as the other nightfarers, of course.
I have to admit that I’m a bit bored with the runs themselves. Yes, making it to the third boss has added events and different enemies/bosses to the world. By the way, one map is not enough. Yes, the events change the map somewhat, but it’s still Lim…veld? I think that’s it? Based on Limgrave from the base game.
And because of the breakneck speed, you have to know what you’re doing before you’re even dropped int o the world.
Anyway. The prevalent feeling is that it’s fun with your friends for a few runs, but it’s probably not going to have a lasting impact on the genre.
Some people even think it’s the worst game From has made. It’s been interesting because usually, the people who love From games REALLY love From games. This time, it’s been decidedly mixed. Which makes sense because many people like the games because of the slow and deliberate pace, the exploration, and the unfolding lore. Nightreign has none of that. I mean, there is some lore, but so far, it’s not as compelling (to me), while retaining the frustrating obtuseness of how to uncover it.
I think I mentioned yesterday that if it had been made by someone else, I would not even have looked twice at it. It’s only because FromSoft made it that I bought it. Even then, I hesitated. I knew it was not going to be for me, and I was right.
Not only is it that I don’t have friends who play it so I have to rely on randos (which is very dicy), but I am not enjoying the game as I play it. If I’m going to be brutally honest, it’s missing something for me. Not even the hectic speed of it or the multiplayer aspect. There’s just something missing that makes a From game special.
I don’t think it’s a pure cash grab. Miyazaki said that one of his team members expressed an interest in doing an idea like this, and Miyazaki told him to go for it. I’m not saying money wasn’t a part of it (because let’s face it, money is a part of everything), but I do think Miyazki is interested in exploring games that aren’t in his wheelhouse. No one remembers Déraciné, a game they made for the PS4 in VR. That was, ah, very different, shall we say. I didn’t play it because I didn’t have a PS4, and I can’t do VR.
I’m not writing about Nightreign (FromSoft) today. At least not directly. Well, I’ll probably end up going in that direction, but this is about brand loyalty in general. Here’s the post from yesterday just because it’s tangentially related.
I wanted to talk about brand loyalty because it’s been on my mind. Why? Well, it lingers in the back of my mind now and again, and with the Stwitch 2 releasing yesterday, I had to marvel at how bonkers people went.
Full disclosure: I don’t have a Switch. I had no intention of buying a Switch 2. Then, it was revealed that FromSoft had an exclusive release that was going to be on Switch 2 (The Duskbloods), and I was so disappointed when I heard about it. Then I found out that it was yet another multiplayer game, and I was even sadder. Why? Because I hate multiplayer games. Which is one of the reason I am not having a good time with Nightreign.
I have been feeling since Dark Souls III: The Ringed City (second DLC) that FromSoft games were getting further and further away from me. I mean, the first game was a miserable experience the first time through, and I have always been painfully aware that I’m on borrowed time with the games.
I started feeling it while playing The Ringed City, and it’s only increased with each gome (save base game Elden Ring). Sekiro was a miserable experience for me, and I don’t think I could even finish it now after my medical crisis. This is not me being a downer or hating on myself; this is me being pragmatic.
Side note: I am really tired of From fans now doubling down on ‘the games are not hard’. I don’t know where this retconning is coming from, but it’s bullshit. No, they are not the hardest games in the world, but they are not NOT hard, either. At least for 90% of gamers. And it’s irritating to hear hardcore From fans pooh-pooh that.
Side note to the side note: This is just another kind of gatekeeping. Years ago, it was people taking pride in the fact they finished Dark Souls. You weren’t a real gamer if you didn’t! That was unpleasant, too, even more so, but that doesn’t mean the current ‘the games are SO easy LOL’ is any better.
I only played one or two rounds of Nightreign (FromSoft) today, and it’s for a prosaic reason. The Switch 2 dropped, and I have had a devil of a time trying to matchmake. Now, the systems are down for maintenance and for a patch that improves Remembrance matchmaking. Before I go on, here is the post from yesterday.
Brief explanation. There are eight classes in Nightreign (called Nightfarers). Each class has a personal questline that you have to do Remembrances for. In order to do them, only one person in the party, the host, will get credit for doing the Remembrance. I think that meant that if you were trying to do a Remembrance, you could not get matched with other people also trying to do a Remembrance. You can probably see the issue with this.
Mainly, everyone in the first week will be working towards their Remembrance. And it would feel like a waste to do a run and NOT get credit for whatever Remembrance you’re working towards. For the Recluse, I’m working on (I think) the last part of her Remembrance–which is beating four Nightlords (simplified. No one seems really sure what exactly you need to do, but that’s the basic gist).
I’m hoping that they’re going to make it so everyone in the party can be working on a Remembrance at the same time. I can see why they might not want to do that (I know nothing about coding. I have the vague idea that something something mutter mutter cross-purposes of the Remembrances, but whatever. It’s a frustrating restriction).
In the one run I acutally played today, I was taking on the third boss. I had gone into the third world once before (yesterday), and I could tell that it was going to be much harder. I got a good duo, and again, they were working in harmony. We had a raid event, which I didn’t even know was a thing. Apparently, its’ one of the Nightlords in a simplied version or something? Or maybe not a simplified version. I don’t know. I have tried to avoid spoilers about the bosses, but when I looked up Augur to see what it was, I found out it was one of the Nightlords.
There are signs where the event is happening. I’m not entirely sure how you’re supposed to know when it happens because people are contradictory on it, but I got an achievement for it. I also read that this particular one is really rare. I found the Augur itself really easy, which was nice.
We cruised through the first two days/nights, honestly. I will say that we took on a field boss we probably shouldn’t have, and I lost two levels. At least I think it was that run. At any rate, it wasn’t as good a run as when I beat the second Nightlord, but I wasn’t expecting it to be great because it was my first real run towards the third Nightlord.
In yesterday’s post, I was talking about how I had made no progress in two days. I was dispirited, and I felt as if my time with the game was coming to an end. One of the biggest problems with the game is that for someone as bad as I am at it, I’m not going to make it to the final boss every run. In fact, I’ve seen the second boss four or five times. Maybe six. And the best I’d done was a quarter health left.
Today, I had three or four really bad runs. Bad runs are mostly when my teammates decide to take on a difficult field boss on the first day (you should usually wait until the second day), then stubbornly continue to try after dying time and time again. One person either got disconnected or left the game, and there was one run in which a Duchess single-handedly killed the second night boss on her own when both the other teammate and I were downed. The boss had roughly a quarter of their health left. The Duchess had revived our other teammate and me more than once, and–by the way, this is such a terrible mechanic in the game.
The revival system, I mean. My god. I really liked the idea of it hitting your teammates in order to revive them. However, in practice, it’s awful. I’ve explained it before, but quickly, it’s a circle made of three segments. When you die once, the first segment fills with purple. As your teammates hit you, the purple goes down and once it’s all gone, you can get up again.
Oh, and about that. If you’re anywhere near the enemy/boss who downed you, they can hit you again before you can stagger away. And kill you again. So that’s cool, too. I have screamed to my teammates to leave me before because I knew it was futile to try to revive me. And, I’ve sometimes ignored a downed teammate if I and my other teammate were close to downing the boss. It doesn’t feel good, but it’s better than futilely hitting my teammate and watching the bar fill back up.
People have said that if one of the bars is depleted, it should stay that way for that round of revival. I agree. I know that From likes to make things hard, but this is ridiculous. Especially since the hitbox for hitting a teammate is bullshit. It’s so hard to actually hit them, and it’s fucking frustrating. Let me reiterate that I like the concept of the revive, but it was horribly implemented.
Back to that one run–the Duchess manaaged to down the Ancient Dragon on her own. I was feeling pretty good as we went to meet the Nightlord. Could this be the run? In short, no. We got barely halfway before we wiped. I was the last person standing, which, as I’ve said before, is never a good thing. And it was so dispiriting.
I am bad at FromSoft games. I have said this from the beginning, and it only gets worse the older
I get. I hated Dark Souls by the time I finished it, and sometimes, I wish that I had ended my FromSoft journey there. I’m not being snarky;I think I might have been happier overall because my god, these games push me to my very limits.
I’m mostly kidding. Mostly. I think? I’m not really sure sometimes. I have more to muse about Nightreign, and here is the post I wrote about it yesterday. I am still frustrated with this game, and I think I need to admit to myself that beating it (defeating all the Night Lords) is just not going to happen–especially since I don’t have a squad to roll with. I got lucky on my second run ever to have two great rando teammates who carried me to a win against the first boss. I have joked ruefully that it’s the worst thing to happen to me because it gave me unrealistic expectations as to how it would be to deal with other bosses. I mean, I never thought they would be easy because it’s FromSoft, but I did think it would be reasonable to do in this time-frame. I’ve gotten the second boss down to about a quarter-health, but then I was the last one alive. That is never good.
It’s hard because I see other people cleaning out bosses like it was nothing (in the Discord). Some are even first-timing the bosses (together on PS5. That’s what most people are playing on). I have envy, but I know that even if I were playing with the top-tier players, I would not be able to do that because I am the weakest link. Not always, but usually.
I have some hard decisions to make. One is whether I want to continue playing the game at all. This is where the meat of this post was going to be (we’ll see if I stick to that or not), so let’s get to it.
Am I having fun playing this game? No. In fact, I’m pretty miserable as I’m playing. Here’s the thing. I play From games for the exploration, which is slow and deliberate. At least when I do it. In my first playthrough of Elden Ring, I did not make it to the first story boss until after ten hours of exploration. That was not a smart idea because the first time you meet the first story boss and don’t beat him, Melina comes to say she was taking your measure. Would you like to go to the Roundtable Hold?
I’m stuck on the second boss. This is partly my fault and partly not. Which is the theme of this game, really. Or rather, my reaction to this game.I am stuck on the second boss, and it’s frustrating as fuck. I’ve only actually seen the boss three times. At least I think it’s three. Maybe two? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s three. I was lucky enough to be carried for a win on the first boss on the first night by two beasts of players. We demolished the boss in a rather quick fashion, too. Even though it wsa three or four hours after the game dropped, they were pros.
Here is my post from yesterday.
The problem for me is that I’m following one or both of my teammates because I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. Still. I mean, I know to hit the churches and the sites of graces, but that’s about it. Some people seem to prefer fighting all the field-bosses to get the perks for that while others just run through all the dungeons to get the perks from that (which includes a field boss at the end).
I have to note that a patch came out today, and one thing they focused on was making solo more balanced. Someone in the Discord posted a pic of their first solo win (after patch) and said it was much more reasonable now. I tried it, and I still didn’t make it past the first night. And this is with my main character. So solo will not be for me.
I had a few runs today on the second boss. Here’s the frustrating thing. Each of my teammates seem to know what they are doing. Then, on the first or second night boss, it all falls apart. To be fair, some of it is my fault because I die to the goddamn ring. This is because oftentimes, my teammates like to fight something that is in the ring, get the rewards, and then hurriedly get out of the ring. Because I don’t know/can’t navigate the map, have difficulty with spatial observation and reflexes, that means I can’t cut it as close to the line as they can.
At this point, I think I need to watch videos on how to optimize if I want to continue playing. Which is no fun for me! I hate all that shit, and it’s antithetical to how I play From games. Other people in the Discord are making it to the third and fourth bosses, and it’s making me sad. I don’t think I’m going to roll credits (I think that’s killing five Night Lords). I can’t even see a way to kill the second Night Lord, let alone the last.
It’s really frustrating to have a really good team that demolishes the first night boss and even the second, but then falls to the Night Lord on the third night. The three times I’ve seen the Night Lord, we did the best on our first run. We got it down to a quarter of its health. The other two times, we got it to the second phase, but just.