Elden Ring. I’m back to playing it instead of Dark Souls II (Scholar of the First Sin). Why? Because I miss it and because I’m at the DLC for SotFS. I am in the minority, but I think the DLCs are too try-hard with too much emphasis on being HARD. Also, as a very squishy caster, I had a really bad time the first time I ventured through them. So many deaths. So. Many. Deaths. I hated it. I hated it so much. I don’t hate it now, but I still don’t like it, either. I think the idea of three distinct DLCs with a different king/story to each one is neat. I love leading a squad into the Ivory King fight.
But. I hated the gank runs in each DLC. I did them with the NPCs because I just didn’t care. Watching Rory from RKG take them on solo was amazing, but I know when something is above my abilities, and more to the point, I know when I don’t want to try to push that limit. Especially when the runs are clearly meant to be co-oped.
So, yeah. My SotFS playthrough is on the hold right now. I’ll probably get back to it at some point, but I need a break from it right now. I decided to dip back into Elden Ring because it’s been a few weeks, and it was my life for months. I ate, slept, and breathed that game, and I was happy to do so.
Even when I stopped, it wasn’t because I was sick of the game. I just wanted to get back to the other ones for a bit. And, man, but SotFS suffers in comparison. I wrote many posts about this, but I’m shocked at how much my mindset about that game has shifted. I was one of the people who thought it was a good game, even if not a good Souls game. In my personal ranking, it was before Bloodborne and Sekiro in terms of From games I liked to play.
Side Note: I always rank the games in terms of how much I enjoy them because I don’t believe in objective rankings. Mostly because rankings are never completely objective. I mean, we can say objectively that the first Dark Souls is a better game than the second, but there are qualifiers to that. Also, up until a certain point in time, I would say that I enjoyed playing the second game more than the first because of fast travel from the start. Yes, that’s the whole reason I preferred to play the second game over the first.
I went into my replay of SotFS with low expectations and because I had just rewatched the RKG lads’ series on it (their first as an independent company). I played as a sorcerer because it was the closest to a pyro that I could be. I still have no idea why they took away the pyro as a character class. It’s in every other Souls game and Elden Ring, so why not this one? I can’t help but think it’s solely to differentiate them from the first game.
Ed. Note: This is Minna from the future. There isn’t actually a Pyro class in Elden Ring, but you can get the first two basic pyros as soon as you get to the Roundtable Hold. And the seal for casting them. So that’s a slight negative because it took me ten hours to get to the Roundtable Hold.
The first time I played this game, I hated the first few hours. As a sorcerer, you have a crap shield and a itty-bitty stabby dagger that is useless. In this game, too, the durability of the weapons is shite. There is one area in which you pretty much cannot make it through with just one weapon unless you use a Repair Powder. That’s not fun. No one is playing the game in order to worry about the durability of weapons–no one.