Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: Shadow of the Erdtree

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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Shadow of the Erdtree, a review, part ten

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Ok, this is the last post in my series of posts of reviewing Shadow of the Erdtree, the DLC for Elden Ring (FromSoft). For now, anyway. I have to say that I get so frustrated with reviews in general beacuse they tend to be THIS GAME IS THE BEST THING EVER NO NOTES or THIS GAME IS THE WORST THING EVER AND HOW DID IT GET MADE???? There is very little in-between, and I get why. Nuance doesn’t sell. You need all the clickbait you can get as a content creator. There has to be an audience for it, too (hyperbole), otherwise content creators wouldn’t do it so much.

And the discourse is frustratingly shallow much of the time. I know that’s because many people don’t think in layers the way I do, but still. I have to really seek out thoughtful dissections that aren’t just superficial. I’m tired of the difficulty debate because it’s so narrow and not fruitful. Also, From is going to do what From is going to do. From an accessibility standpoint, they will never have a coventional easy mode. I’m not sure I would want one, to be honest, or what that would actually entail. I’ve had this discussion with rational people before, and it’s hard to say what that would actually mean.

I mean, they could give the bosses simplified moves. Have a Nice Death (Magic Design Studios) did that with their easy mode, along with fewer enemies and everyone having less health/doing less damage. I had to knock it down to easy fairly early on and that’s how I played the whole game. I still couldn’t do the true end boss, in part because of the horrible platforming in the last area (having to jump through spiky crevices and then falling back if you can’t do it. Which I couldn’t). Also in part because you have to do the whole area and the boss without filling up on health. Oh, and it’s not just one boss, it’s two plus a mini-boss. And an increase in difficulty (because that’s part of how you reach the secret end boss).

Am I sad that I can’t do the true last boss? Yes. Will I go back and try it again? I don’t know. I put so much into that game, only to fall short time and time again. I can’t even beat the fake last boss that often–or get there. I think I’ve beaten him…three times? Maybe?

I don’t know if that would be possible in a From game. I mean, it would be, but I highly doubt they would ever do it. In the last post, I rambled about many things, really. I was tired, upset,  and didn’t have myself gathered.


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Shadow of the Erdtree, a review, part nine

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Yes, I’m back with another post about Shadow of the Erdtree, the DLC for Elden Ring (FromSoft). At the end of the last post, I was talking about summoning in the DLC the second time through (human summons) because I did it a few times in the second half of the DLC the second time I played through it.

*SPOILER WARNING*

I have to say, I took very vicious satisfaction in killing the Blackgaol Knight on my second try in NG+. This is the first field boss I fought in the DLC, and with 38 Vigor, he was really fucking hard for me to fight. He has poise for days and his weapon skill is a slice of light that never ends up where I think it will.

Side note: this is one of my issues with the bosses in general in the DLC. It happened in the base game as well, but moreso in the DLC. The bosses had combos for days and were really hard to stagger. I was able to mitigate that with my second character, but my first character was not poise-forward, shall we say.

The Blackgaol Knight made me question whether I was ready for the DLC or not. One thing that constantly frustrates me about the DLCs for the From games is how they turn it up to a hundo every time. I know I’m in the minority when I say that thde DLCs are not my favorite part of any From game because everyone else loves them so much.

I died to the BGK over and over again. I went at him for an hour and was getting increasingly frustrated. I had to do all sorts of shenanigans in order to beat him, including dumping 20 points into Vigor. In cantrast, I one-shot him in my second playthrough and two-shot him in NG+. I wonder if FromSoft nerfed him because he was so fucknig hard the first time around. Then again, I waited a bit before tackling him in my second playthrough, and I’m full scadded up for my NG+ playthrough. That means that I was buffed as much as I was going to be to take on this dude. And it went so much better.

This, of course, is to be expected. I am better than I was before, and I knew what I was doing (kind of). On the other hand, he was harder, stronger, and buffed up himself. I expected it to be a dozen or so tries–maybe more. But, I got him in two, and it wasn’t even that close. Blasphemous Blade Ash of War for the win! Which is what I did the first time around as well. That particular Ash of War got nerfed, but it’s still pretty OP.


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Shadow of the Erdtree, a review, part eight

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I’m back with more to say about the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC (FromSoft) for Elden Ring. I started on my first character’s NG+ playthrough of the DLC, and I noticed something that bothered me. It’s the same thing that bothered me with the main game and with most of the From games in general. the second Dark Souls is the exception.

One of the issues with NG+ and beyond is that the important items you gather in NG don’t have the same meaning in another playthrough if you retain them from NG to NG+.

*SPOILER WARNING*

One example in the base game are the rises. They are towers that often have puzzles to unlock them (finding and killing three ghost turtles; using a gesture to get a ladder to drop; jumping up a spirit spring to land on a balcony. These are all real examples of how to solve different rises), and the reward was often a Memory Stone. Each of these gives you a new spell slot, so it’s easy to see why I wanted every one I could get. You start with 2 slots, and you get 8 more throughout the game. There’s also a talisman that can give you an extra two. Ten is usually plenty, though, and I rock with ten the vast majority of the time.

On NG+, however, you get nothing. You lose! Good day, sir! Which, I gotta say, is quite the letdown. In the DLC, it’s the same with key items such as various cookbooks. You keep them from NG to NG+, which is a good thing, but it’s a bit disappointing to not get anything in its place. In the video I included below, Noah talks about one thing that was a letdown in the DLC was how there was so many shit items to be found. He put it more eloquently, but that’s essentially what he meant.

I agree. I understand why there were so many smithing stones. It’s for the people who have not played the game for two years and don’t have all the bell bearings turned in. I can buy any smithing stone I need, regular and somber, up to the final one (there is no bell bearing for those). It really is a disappointment to get a bunch of smithing stones whenever I went exploring. Yesterday, I talked at the end of the post about what I loved in the DLC. Today, I guess I’m starting with what frustrates me.

I will say I’m happy that the Scadooooo level and Revered Spirit Ash level carries over. I only needed one ScadFrag and two Revered Spirit Ashes to get to the top. Now, however, I have no use for the rest that I find. That means that I don’t really have much need to explore. I still will as that is my wvay, but my joy in doing so is admittedly a little bit muted.


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Shadow of the Erdtree, a review, part seven

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Welcome to my week-long review of Shadow of the Erdtree, the DLC for Elden Ring (FromSoft). This might be the last post in the series, but then again, it might not be. In the last post, I ended by talking about how I have accessed the DLC yet again. I could have done it sooner, but I am a tad bit compulsive and had to do certain things in the main storyline, despite them not being necessary to access the DLC.

*SPOILER WARNING*

I never did Nepheli Loux’s storyline on this character, so I wanted to set that up. And I was curious as to why Hyetta didn’t show up where she was supposed to (outside Godrick’s castle once you defeat him, I thought). Since I was doing things in a weird way, I had skipped Godrick and did Rennala first. I thought maybe you had to kill Godrick to get her, so I did that. For funsies. And to see if that got Hyetta where she needed to be.

Nope. It did not. So, of course, I Googled it.

Before I tell you what you need to do, I have to tell you about another NPC, Irina. You meet her outside Castle Morne, and then she is brutally slaughtered. Presumably, by the Misbegotten who are rioting in Castle Morne (of which Irina’s father is the castellan). One of their cleavers is found by Irina’s dead body. There are a few other steps, but that’s the main bit.

I went back to where Hyetta was supposed to be, and, lo and behold, she was there! It seems the theory that the two of them are the same person is real! They have the same character model and the same voice actor. And both can’t see. The theory is that Hyetta is a reincarnation of Irina. But, and hear me out, what if Hyetta killed Irina and took over her body? It’s as good a theory as the other one in the bleak world of Elden Ring. Anyway, Hyetta is back and where she needs to be.

In the DLC, the NPC questlines are both the highlight and the lowlight. I think that it’s too tightly knit and it’s too easy to miss things. Again, that might just be me, but it was really frustrating to feel like I fucked things up completely and could not do all the NPC quests on my first playthrough. My first character is always my favorite, regardless of how trash the character is. Yes, I do everything wrong in building the character, but they are MY trash character, damn it.

I have several characters in Elden Ring, of course. And, like my mythical children, I love them all for–no, you know what? No. I don’t. I love my first character the best. I love my strength character second best. The others are all fair-to-middling. That’s just the way it goes. This is one reason I didn’t have children.


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Shadow of the Erdtree, a review, part six

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Back at it again to talk more about the lore of the DLC.

*SPOILER WARNING*

I should say, lore AND story of the DLC. I don’t care about Miquella. To me, he is an uninteresting character because he’s a manipulative charmer. I have had enough of those in my real life, and they do not interest me at all. Why? Because there is no true empathy. And, yes, this is partly because I have my own issues with empathy. As a child, I was made my mother’s comfort/support human into which she could dump all her emotional angst. People marvel at how empathetic I am, but it’s only because I was forced to be so. Would I be this empathetic if my mother hadn’t made me? I don’t know. There’s no way of knowing, and I don’t think it’s a fruitful thing to think about. It is, as the kids say, what it is.

As a result, I am chary of people who are charming and manipulative. The latter doesn’t necessarily follow the former, but too often it does. Why? Because when you can sway people to do what you want, it’s way too easy to do it. And it’s easy to justify doing it for their benefit if you feel you need to do that. Charm is easy mode, and it’s too tempting to use it for things that you shouldn’t. I know because I have that same charm. I can sway people fairly easily, too, and I try to keep it under control.

So, yeah. I was not happy that Miquella was going to be the main character of the DLC. That was what I was talking about at the end of my last post. There are so many more interesting characters–such as Godwyn, Ranni, Rykard, and even Radahn himself. The latter held back the fucking stars! How cool is that? Or we could have talked about the Radagon/Marika split and were they two distinct personalities, or was Radagon just a part of Marika? Even learning more about Marika herself would have been great. I mean, we did learn more about her and her tragic past, but it was just the background for a small part of the story.

I heard someone say that they’re convinced that From came up with the story first and then retconned it to fit the existing lore. Unfortunately, it feels that way. And it makes Mohg a more sympathetic character than he was. And it means we need to throw out everything we knew about him. Which is fine. I’m ok with not knowing anything. Or with what I thought I know not being what I actually knew. But…I kind of feel like they didn’t like that he was being considered a child molester (because Miquella is eternally young when Mohg stole him and put him in an egg), and so they retconned it to Miquella charming Mohg rather than Mohg just taking him. Then again, there were a few hints in the main game that Miquella was more in control than we thought. Mostly that he could make people do whatever he wanted.


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Shadow of the Erdtree, a review, part five

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Today, I was talking with Ian about how great it is when games have choices that you can make which will influence things later on. He’s playing Horizon Forbidden West right now and mentioned something in the first game that happened in that way.

*SPOILER WARNING*

Consider this a blanket spoiler warning because I’m going to spoil something in HZD, even though I never played it. You can do side quests in which you bring settlements to your cause. Then, the leaders will help you with the final battle later on. Obviously, I could not tell him that there was something similar in the Elden Ring DLC (he has not played it yet). Depending on what you do with the NPC questlines, you will have a different next-to-last boss fight. I mentioned in a past post that Needle Knight Leda’s fight can be drastically different depending on which NPC questlines you do. First time, I fucked everything up and had me and the rando Sanguine Noble against Leda and Dryleaf Dane. It was pretty pathetic for what was supposed to be an epic fight.

On my second playthrough, I did almost everything right. So in that fight, I got Thiollier and Ansbach on my side, and we had to fight Dryleaf Dane, Redmane Freyja, Sir Moore, and Leda. I didn’t invite Hornsent to the party, but I may do so in the future–just to have everyone in the mix. It wasn’t hard, but it was so much more fun and chaotic with the whole gang there.

I go back and forth about how esoteric the NPC questlines are. Because of how twisty and turny Shadow Keep is, I fucked up all the questlines. Also, because I inexplicably ignored one of the three ways to go at the three-way site of grace. It’s called something pretty close to that. My memory sucks, though, and I should have put a marker the way I didn’t go. Because of that, I did not find Thiollier until it was too late to actually move his questline forward.

The latter was completely on me. The former, though, was not. I have seen other people get hopelessly lost in Shadow Keep as well. There are two ways to get into Shadow Keep, and then it’s just so fucking twisty and turny. I’m sure I missed a bunch even when I went back to look it over. Plus, I hate when they do the ‘traverse the rafters’ bullshit and put enemies on said rafters. And in this case,

I was talking about the incantations of the DLC in the last post. There are a few that are clearly S-Tier (Knight’s Lightning Spear. It’s the best incantation in the whole game, overall.), but there are more that are either meh or out-and-out terrible. And with my first character who I play as almost a pure caster, it was a letdown that I did not get much cool stuff to play with. I understand why so many of the finds were smithing stones, but that’s not as interesting as a cool new incanation or weapon.


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