Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: Shadow of the Erdtree

Mental health and more

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I am really working on my sleep, which has gone haywire since changing the time. THis is one of my pet rants, but can we please stop changing the time? I don’t care which we choose, but let’s just leave it the same all year round. My god. We have fake lighting. We don’t need to be beholden to the whims of the sun any longer. For fuck’s sake.

On the bright side, I’ve been getting a decent amount of sleep. On the not-so-bright side, it’s been at all hours of the day/night/morning. I am concerned. I am trying to drag my sleep schedule back to going to bed by 2 a.m. and getting up at 10. It’s not happening, though, and I’m just not happy with myself.

Let’s talk Taiji a bit. And Bagua. I’m focusing on those because they are my lifeline. Without them, I don’t know if I could .

Side note: There’s a new game out called The First Berserker: Khazan (Neople). It’s a soulslike, though the combat is likened more to Sekiro. I tried the demo for an hour, and I quit before even getting to the first boss. Hm. There’s an easy mode (someone mentioned it in the Discord), which I had not known. But I did play the demo, and I presume there was an easy mode in the demo? If so, wouldn’t I have chosen that? I don’t know.

Anyway. I am so sick and tired of soulslike relying on the parry and having bosses taht are brutal. It’s like they took the least-interesting thing from From games (to me) and made them the focus of the game. When I tried the demo, the scrubs could kill me in three hits or so. It took three hits to kill a scrub. This is actually something  people mentioned about the game–that the enemy difficulty is badly calibrated. Andy Cortez from Kinda Funny said that he dumped all his points into Strength to get the max with as little health as he could get away with, but it still took him two or three hits to kill the scrubs.

I found the combat to be grueling and not satisfying. I think I went with the greatsword because the other options are dual-daggers and dex. As we all know by now, I don’t do either. So it’s greatsword by default. I don’t know if there is any kind of magic in the game, but my hunch is no.

Every fucking review talks about how brutal the bosses are, but how they came to love the drutality. Here’s one from IGN that typifies that sentiment. Meanwhile, I’m summoning humans for Shadow of the Erdtree because I do not want to struggle for hours with a boss. I did that with the final boss of the DLC the first time around. Five hours over two days after getting the boss down four or five hits on my second try. Did I feel exhilirated after beating the boss? Yes. But it was so fleeting and then exhaustion set in. I was so numb by that point, I was mostly just glad it was over.


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I lied. More on why SotE is my GOTY, part five

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I have more to say on Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoft). Yes, I said that yesterday’s post would be the last, but it’s not. Why? Because I started watching RKG’s Retry Dark Souls II/Scholar of the First Sin (the first series they did after starting their own company), which led to me starting my own playthrough. I chose the same starting class they did (knight), and I vowed to follow their path. Which I have, but I quickly remembered that I simply cannot play the game without a ranged option. Yes, they added a bow, but, ah, let’s just say Rory and bows do not get along.

Side note: It’s incredhible that people are still playing this game. When I got to the second bonfire in the Forest of Fallen Giants, there were so many summoning signs! Also, I forgot that you can’t play offline (without a lot of fuss) with this game. Anyway, I summoned Kanye West for

*SPOILERS*

The Last Giant, and that was a lot of fun. Later, I summoned someone for The Pursuer, and I was able to use the ballistas to make quick work of The Pursuer (my summon knew to jump out of the way). Then, in Heide’s Tower of Flame, I summoned a human to do the Old Dragonslayer (I had already killed the dragon along the way), and they died three times before even reaching the boss. I kept running back to summon them without resting first, so by the time we got to the boss, they had all their stuff. They were a sorceror.

This game is pretty generous with NPC summons for boss fights, which is nice, but it’s even nicer to be able to summon humans. More fun, too! I love that there are still people dedicated to this game as with all the other From games.

Back to Elden Ring in general and Shadow of the Erdtree in particular. There were complaints about Elden Ring (and Dark Souls III before it) not being innovative enough. I’m not going to get into that because I’ve written about it before, but my belief is that they were endlessly tweaking their formula and in some games, the tweaks were significant, but not game-changing. Yes, in Bloodborne and Sekiro, they completely changed the combat (notably, my two least-favorite From games), but in Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III, and Elden Ring, it was more about polishing and adding things that made life significantly better to an already-existing formula.

It’s tinkering with the engine rather than adding spinning rims. It’s nowhere near as flashy, but it’s much needed.

I have often thought that the more popular FromSoft gets, the less credit they get for what they do. It’s become expected that they will do amazing things. So much so, many people don’t even bat an eye any longer. Or they think that From should be doing more.


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Last post appreciating Shadow of the Erdtree, part four

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I haven’t played Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoft, Elden Ring DLC) in a hot sec, so it’s been great to be able to revisit it. The more I write about it, the more I remember how truly breathtaking it was. Watching Krupa (of RKG) go through it in Lore Masterclass (additional show to their Elden Ring Retry series) makes me want to get back to it. Even though–I’ll get to that later. And, of course,

*SPOILERS*

I think we take for granted somewhat how consistently excellent FromSoft is. I’m not calling out anyone because that’s just the way it goes. It’s human nature to become used to whatever the current situation is.

Side note: This is what happened with my medical crisis, for example. It was so shocking and it was such a miracle that I survived, and I thought about it every day for a year. Every fucking day. It was that big a deal, and I think I can be excused for thinking that. Then, slowly, over time, it became less and less of a big deal. And this is fine! It should be that way because it’s not good for the brain to go around thinking that any one event is A Big Deal all the time. It’s still something that is important to me, obviously, because I would not be here if I had died permanently. But, and I don’t know how to put this delicately, there’s no way to feel it every minute of the day. I’m still going to be angry, upset, or pissed off. Hell, I’m going to be bored or even just waste hours playing Balatro (LocalThunk). Ahem.

Side note redux: I think I’m going to quit Balatro. I just can’t quit playing it, and it’s detrimental to–well, my life. Plus, I’m in the grinding time in which I have to play tons of meaningless games in order to unlock two legendary jokers I don’t yet have. There is only one way to get them, and that’s to open packs of cards. Arcana packs or Spectral packs. At least that’s what the internet has deemed to be the one true way, and there is not a consensus about it.

Here is the deal. You need The Soul card in order to get a Legendary Joker. I did not know this as I was originally playing, and I came across three The Souls cards naturally. Just because it was so different (and immediately special), I chose it. I got three different Legendary Jokers, and now I can’t find the other two for love nor money. I have come across The Soul two or three more times, but it’s only had a dupe.

I looked up for the quickest way to get the Legendary Jokers, and it’s tedious farming. Basically opening up pack upon pack upo,n pack in the vain hope of hitting the .3% chance of getting The Soul. It makes it more irritating when I get a dupe, obviously.

This is not fun. I hate playing the game this way. I don’t have to get these jokers, obviously, but they are suposed to be really good. There’s also one other joker I have not unlocked. It’s a Rare Joker, and you have to get 100,000,000 chips in one hand to unlock it. The only way to do  that is to use the Plasma Deck (for reasons I’m not going to get into here). I haven’t been able to do that, either, because I’m shaky on making the most of that deck.

I’m not as annoyed by that, however, because at least you can math it (if you can math properly). With the Legendary Jokers, it’s all a matter of luck. It’s enraging, honestly, and it’s sucked the fun out of the game for me. As well as having to do the increasingly more difficult stakes with the different decks.


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Why SotE is my GOTY, part three

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In yesterday’s post, I talked about what I liked about Shadow of the Erdtree (Elden Ring DLC, FromSoft, my GOTY), and one thing that I really didn’t like. The latter was how easy it was to fuck up the NPC questlines, which was somewhat my fault, but also the fault of the strength of the game, too. The intricacy of the level design. It spins me around, which is great for grandeur and epicness, buut not great for my sense of direction.

Since I want to talke about the whole DLC, there will be

*SPOILERS*

When I reached Shadow Keep, I was already turned around and disoriented. Because of the ladder I mentioned in the last post, I approached from the back. This is not especially hidden, and I’m sure thatt many people went in the back way.

Shadow Keep is both amazing and frustrating as fuck. The two entrances lead to different floors, though you can get to one of the floors you reach from the front by jumping down to it from one of the floors you reach from the back. This legacy dungeon is so labyrinthian, I was constantly turned around. This is where two of the NPCs are, and I completely missed one of them (Ansbach) in his hidey hole. I found the other one, Redmane Freyja, near the Site of Grace on the seventh floor. She was trying to puzzle something out and said she should talk to Sir Ansbach.

This is where I fucked up. What you’re supposed to do is go back to Ansbach and tell him what Freyja had said. He’ll give you a letter to give to her, but the wikis warn not to give Ansbach the Secret Rite Scroll you find in the keep BEFORE getting the letter to give to Freyja because it might block the progress in her questline. If you do things in the wrong order, you won’t be able to give her the letter–and she just stays stuck in the same place for the rest of the game. You can get her shit at the end of the game, but you can’t finish her questline.

The NPC questlines are off the charts difficult to follow in the DLC. I mean, they’re never easy to follow, but From definitely kicked it up a notch for this DLC. The only NPC questline I did right was Igon’s, and that’s because it’s ok to miss one step in his questline AND he’s literally on the road where you’re going. You can’t miss him the first time, and I will admit that I looked up where to find him later on.


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Shadow of the Erdtree is worthy, part two

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Yesterday, I revealed my actual Game of the Year, and I’m sure it was a huge surprise to exactly no one. Most of the time, I have to make up a game of the year award that I can bestow upon FromSoft because it’s not as if they have a game releasing every year. This year, however, is one of the blessed years in which they released a new game. Well, at least a new DLC. I will admit that it feels like a lifetime ago, but it was definitely released within this year.

I shan’t go into why this year was so difficult for me because I did it in the last post. Suffice to say, I’m ready to throw 2024 away and not think about it any further.

There was such a big brouhaha about Shadow of the Erdtrree being nominated for Game of the Year. It’s funny. Now that FromSoft has entered the mainstream (somewhat), people are beginning to turn on them. It’s the weird thing when an indie band gets popular, then half of their hardcore fans don’t like them any longer. Or accuse them of selling out. That happened to Liz Phair when she released an album that she admitted was meant to be more popular than her previous works. Oh, the gnashing of the teeth by her older fans! Oh, the calls of ‘sellout’. I never got it because that old stuff was still there, and you could still enjoy it. Also, if more people bought her new album and listened to her older stuff, they might like that as well. And even if you didn’t like her new album, why would you be against her trying something different?

This was actually one of the issues with the second Dark Souls game. There were way too many expectations for it, and some of them were diametrically opposite. People wanted it to be like the first game, and yet, they wanted it to iterate as well. They did not like the things that were different–like losing health every time you died until you had half-health. There were ways to mitigate it, but it was pretty brutal in the beginning of the game.

And yet. That was similar to Demon’s Souls, which many people didn’t realize. You only had half-health when you were in soul form, but it was better for world tendency (never mind). This meant that people would jump off a high point in the Nexus after beating a boss and ending up in body form. There was a ring that mitigated that, which you could find in the first area. If you wore the ring, then you were able to have three-quarters health. There was a similar ring in Dark Souls II, so it was clearly a nod to Demon’s Souls.


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My actual game of the year for 2024

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Alright. I have been dilly-dallying long enough. I have stretched out my games of the year in my usual fashion. Yesterday, I talked about two indie games that are on my top five non-From games of all time list, and today, I am finally going to announce my game of the year. As if I need to. I’ll do it, anyway, just in case it needs to be said.

My game of the year (GOTY) for 2024 beyond a shadow of a doubt despite the controversy it stirred up for even being nominated

Shadow of the Erdtree (Elden Ring, DLC, FromSoft)

Man. It’s been quite the year. It flew by, and yet, at the same time, it’s dragged out because of a personal tragedy. When the Shadow of the Erdtree trailer was surprise-released back on February 21st, my personal tragedy started. I was not able to really participate in the joyous celebration on that day or the next, when the real tragedy struck.

By the time the DLC rolled around four months later, I was ready to play it. I was still in pain and sorrow because of what happened four months earlier. I can’t think about that time without tearing up, still, nearly a year later. Even while I was rejoicing about a new Miyazaki world in which to roam, a part of my heart was still quietly breaking. The fact that the name of the DLC included the name of my beloved who is no longer with me made it even more bittersweet.

Before my medical crisis, I had so many plans for Elden Ring. I saw the first real trailer for it at GeoffCon in summer of 2021, and I lost my shit. Another Miyazaki world in which I could wander  endlessly? Yes, please! I had all these grandiose ideas about what I would do in the game. I would have one solo play chaarcter and another for co-op. I was going to get the plat, of course, because apparently, that ws a thing with me now (except Sekiro. Ain’t no way in hell that’s happening).

Then, the medical crisis happened, and all that was wiped from my brain. Once it was established that I was fine, more or less, after what happened to me, all I cared about was that I had another Miyazaki game to play. Any ideas of soloing or playing in a certain way was wiped from my brain. None of that mattered, and it seemed silly that it ever had. I even wrote an article about it for a gaming website, and it really crystalized for me what the From games meant to me.


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Leading up to my GOTY 2024 award

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I’m back for my (probably) last post about my game of the year (GOTY). I say probably because we all know I have the tendency to go off the rails. I have every intention of making this the last post, but who knows what I might think of along the way?

Here’s an interesting thing about my memory since my medical crisis. It’s completely gone. Well, not completely, but it’s a fraction of what it used to be. Before my medical crisis, I had an excellent memory. Now, it’s completely gone. Or rather, it’s very spotty. When I first got out of the hospital, I had such a hard time with names. Granted, I was high as a kite so that probably had more to do with it.

Now, I can remember names. But dates? No. Things that were planned? No. Before my medical crisis, I had no issues remembering which days I had Taiji private lessons, for example. Now, if I’m doing something engrossing before the time, I have to put a sticky on my monitor to remind me. I’ll be real. It’s just if I’m playing a game at the time, and it’s only fairly recently. I have a hunch it’s more to do with me not bothering to remember than me actually forgetting.

I took a quick look at my Steam library, and there are a few games that I had fun with, but nothing really memorable. Many of them are based around cat restaurants, which was a big theme for me this year.

I will say that as is my wont, I mostly play three or four big (big meaning games that truly engross me) games and a half-dozen smaller ones intermittently. I have a few cozy games I play late at night when I just want to relax and unwind.

Here’s the way I do my GOTY. As everyone knows, I am a huge FromSoft fan. Basically, I split things up between From games and non-From games. The latter includes mostly indie games, mostly cozy games, and mostly quirky games that others may or may not have heard of. I have my list of top FromSoft games of all time and a list of my top five favorite non-FromSoft games.

A quick recap of my lists.

My favorite FromSoft games of all time

6. Sekiro
5. Bloodborne
4. Dark Souls
3. Dark Souls II

We need to talk here. I have gotten so much shit ovre this part of my list because I place Sekiro at the bottom. No matter how many carefully I phrase it, people get mad. Most people think either Sekiro and/or Bloodborne is the best FromSoft game with Dark Souls (OG) in the mix as well.


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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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