Underneath my yellow skin

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My criteria for ranking FromSoft games, part two

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I wrote a post yesterday listing some of the criteria I use to rank my favorite FromSoft games. I talked a lot about the map in Elden Ring, which I thought was a brilliant way to handle their first real map in a game. I mentioned in the last post that I should never doubt Miyazaki, and I want to elaborate on that.

The mark of a true genius is how he tackles things in such different ways. As I said in the last post, I was one of the people who was doubtful that they would be able to add a map in at thoughtful and seamless way. I was thinking about how other open world games do it, and I hate it with all my heart. I played about an hour of Horizon Zero Dawn (well after it released), and within five minutes, the map was giving me heart palpitations.

Guerrilla Games is the developer of HZD, and one of their develapers (and developers for Ubisoft) tweeted criticisms about Elden Ring’s UI and map quests (or lack thereof). Interesting, a lot of these tweets and posts about it have been disappeared into a black hole. The guy from Guerilla Games is the one who dissed the quest design for not having the quest flags littering the map. Which, I mean. The UX does have issues. That’s not a strong point of FromSoft. The UI/UX. Oh wait. I’m confusing UI and UX. UI is what FromSoft needs to work on. UX is what it is. It’s not great, but it’s not as terrible as the criticism suggests.

Also, the fact that the dev from Ubisoft sounded really salty and bitter about Elden Ring (which, I’m guessing he might not even have played) without acknowledging and/or realizing that different people want different things from their games. I hate the Ubisoft formula, even though I’ve only started a few of them and nearly finished one. It’s. Fucking. Boring. But I would hastened to add, to me. I know plenty of people like that formula and find it comforting.

Elden Ring, on the other hand, was such a breath of fresh air. No map markers. It was up to you to see what was in the world–or not. This has been a hallmark of every game they’ve made. They have huge optional areas that you can skip entirely if you want. In the first season of Prepare To Try, they did a secrets episode in which Krupa showed Gav and Rory a few things you most likely will not stumble on in your first playthrough–at least not without following a guide.

The one that sticks in my mind is Ash Lake. In order to find Ash Lake, you have to go to the Blighttown swamp and find the great tree in the middle of it. You have to go up the tree branch and hit the wall to make it disappear. There’s a chest, but then again, you have to hit the wall behind it to get to a bonfire (save point). Then, you have to descend down a huge tree with so many traps along the way. And if you don’t have the Lord Vessel, if you die after lighting the bonfire in Ash Lake, you have to climb your way back up.


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How I rank the FromSoft games

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Before I get to 1 and 2 on my favorite FromSoft games list, I want to explain the criteria I used to rank the games. I don’t know if I ever have, and even if I have, I am going to do it again.

First of all, there’s vibes. Yes, vibes. Vibes include atmosphere, environment, level design, and just the overall feel of things. FromSoft is beyond compare when it comes to atmosphere and level design. You can’t help but gasp in awe and amazement. When they are at their best, the level design is true art.

I remember a time in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC where I  had been exploring for what seemed like ages. The DLC is brutal, and I had to dump 20+ points into Vigor at the beginning of the DLC in order to stand a chance (and not get one-hit). It’s recommended in the base game and beyond to have 60 Vigor points. I played the first 100 hours with 18 Vigor. I only added pointts in Vigor when I got the Mimic Tear beacuse it takes health and not FP. You need 660 HP in order to summon the Mimic. 18 Vigor is 598. 21 is 680, which, obviously, leaves you with very little HP if you use Mini-Me.

The thing is, though, once you use Mini-Me, you’re not going to stop. For the most part. It’s by far the best spirit summon out of the thirty or so that are available. Every playthrough, I think I’m going to try a different spirit ash, and every time, I d othe same thing. Lone wolves and jellyfish are my two main ones. Until I get Mini-Me. Then it’s me and Mini-Me until the end. Except in my intelligent playthrough. Mini-Me not quite as good for whatever reason. I still used Mini-Me quite a bit, but I also used Tiche, which is the second-best spirit ash (and the hardest to get). Oh, and Tay-Tay frem the DLC (that’s a nickname so I won’t spoil it). That spirit ash is a tank and can take out some bosses by itself.

I can get lost in the weeds with all the games. I can talk forever about them, but I’ll try to rein myself in.

Another thing I judge on is innovation. But, I will be honest. It’s not the biggest part of my ranking. I mean, I value it. I’m blown away by the innovations big and small that From has made. The perfect example is the map in Elden Ring. See, FromSoft does not do maps. At all. There’s a joke one in Sekiro*, but no one even knows it’s there. Their belief is that you should traverse the areas enough to memorize them rather than rely on a map.

And, for the most part, FromSoft fans adapted to them (as usual). We accepted that we would have to die a million times to learn the differerent areas. And, boy, did we. We parroted what they said and kept falling down over and over until we knew every nook and cranny of those games. Map? We didn’t need no stinking map!


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The art of the review, part five

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Let’s talk reviews some more. In the last post, I touched upon how I have different standards when I review indie games, especially those that are made by devs with less than twenty-five people. I know I put a lower number on it yesterday, but I do think anything up to twenty-five is very small. Even more so when it’s less that five. The game I was discussing at the end of the post was Galaxy Burgers (Galaxy Workshop) which is made by two people. Two people! So of course I’m going to be way more generous with this game than with, say, Red Dead 2 (Rockstar Games)–or even Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ). That’s not to say that I won’t point out my issues with it, but it is to say that I will keep in mind that there are only two people making the game.

Just like the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series is only one guy–David Galindo (chubigans). This is really impressive given the scope of the games–especially for the first one. The food he designed looked absolutely mouth-watering, and I wanted to eat it as I was making the recipes. Each recipe included ingredients in which you had to tap a letter for each ingredient as quickly as you could. It’s hard as nails as evidenced in the trailer before. I only heard about it beacuse a content creator I was watching at the time, Northernlion, gave it a shot and quickly fell in love with it. So did Ryan Davis of Giant Bomb. In fact, the latter touted it so much, chubigans named a burger after him in the game–and Ryan Davis died roughly eight months after that.

The first Cook, Serve, Delicious! became a cult hit, and chubigans has always given credit to Ryan Davis. Chubigans went on to make two sequels and is now working on Cook, Serve, Forever! which is a more casual version of the formula. It’s still in Early Access, and while it’s not my thing, I’m still glad it exists. (I bought it and tried it out. I will keep trying it out. And I’m not mad at it.)

I love that I can play a game that is about cats and cafes/coffee shops/etc. There are a ton of games about cats and cafes these days, which pleases me. Even the ones that are the most basic don’t get me mad Like I said, I am not expecting AAA quality from a small indie game. I am incredibly generous/patient with small devs because I know that game development is hard, and I know that it’s even harder for small/indie devs.


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The art of the review, part four

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I’m writing even more about how I review things, specifically games. Here is the post I wrote about it yesterday. Today, I want to talk about how I have different criteria for different games. I don’t think that’s controversial, but what do I know? I’m sure there are plenty of people who think you should review all games in exactly the same way. Those people would be wrong.

I mean, honestly, you would not be as harsh on a game that had two people working on it as you would a triple A game, would you? I would not be, for sure. That’s not gonig easy on the small indies, but being realistic. Two people doing it on a tight budget do not have the same resources as, say, an EA. That’s just life, yo. Expecting the former to make a game in the manner of the latter is folly and not fair.

This is why I have different unofficial tiers of review. One is for AAA games, which, to be completely honest, I rarely play. Then, there are mid-tier games such as the aforementioned (and much maligned by me) Lies of P. Then there are the cozy and/or indie games that I play when I’m not playing FromSoft games, and, of course, we have to talk about From games. They are in a class by themselves and I rate them basically in accordance with each other. I assume that they will be at least a 9, and then I just judge them mostly with each other.

In other words, they are a class in and of themselves. I review them on their own without relating them to anything else. In other words, they are a class in and of themself. They are beyond compare, and I refuse to countenance that they are on par with any other game. That is just me, of course, and not something I would hold other reviewers to. Then again, many From fans are sickos like me and probably feel the same way about the games.

This is one of the problems with reviewing the games. Most sites give those reviews to the biggest From fan in the office. It makes sense, but it also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those of us who are From fans have become versed in the language and worlds of FromSoft (duh). This is how fandom works, but it’s especially true for From games. People are rabid about the games to the point that when Elden Ring was delayed beacuse of the pandemic and From went radio silent about it (oh, the dark, dark days), the community started making the game on their own.

I don’t mean the actual game, mind, but, well, let me put it like this. There was a Reddit thread in which they created different areas in the game, replete with enemies, NPCs, environments, and bosses. In a community that can be toxic and unwelcoming at times, it was a breath of fresh air to see people come together in this way. It was actually heart-warming, and I loved every moment of it. However, it’s indicative as to how beloved these games are to the community and to what lengths members will go for them.


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The art of a review, part three

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I’m still talking about reviews because I can. And because I find it an interesting topic. I detoured into what I disliked about Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ)  in yesterday’s post. It wasn’t completely on topic, but it wasn’t completely off it, either. The part that wasn’t off topic was that reviewing is so subjctive. I think most people would agree that Lies of P was a really good first game for a developer. I also think most people would agree that it’s pretty iterative, though it did bring a few new things to the table. I would go further to say that many people were questioning if it’s too much like Bloodborne with a Sekiro mechanic tossed in for good measure.

I knew that most people loved the game, but the question of accessibility is still pretty woeful. That’s not just for the game, but also in general. The thing is, though, that even aside from the combat, I found this game seriously lacking in several areas. I will say that it’s stylish and looks really good. The designs are slick, but they fell falt for me for several reasons.

This is not a review of that game, though, so I will tear myself away from it with difficulty. My point with hapring on that game is that reviews are objective to a certain point, but it’s more subjective than objective. Yes, there are things that can be ojectively judged, but at least to me, they are not nearly as important as the subjective criteria.

One of the debates that raged about Elden Ring when it came out was whether it was innovative enough or not. Many people, even those who really enjoyed the game, said it wsa basically an open world Dark Souls. By the way, I never understood why that was a bad thing even if that really was all the game turned out to be (which it wasn’t). Even that in and of itself is new and ecxting. Yes, some people have gotten a bit bored with the Dark Souls formula, but marrying it almost seamlessly with an open world setting is incredible. I think people don’t give it enough credit because they did it with relative ease.

One thing that I don’t think they got enough kudos for is the map. I have heard that Breath of the Wild had a similar map, but I never played that game. I was so skeptical of tnhe map before the game came out. FromSoft did not do maps except the joke map in Sekiro which was worse than meaningless. My theory on that based on nothing was that Activison was insistent on a map so FromSoft threw in a shitty one to get Activision off their back.


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The art of a review, part deux

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This is the second post on how I review things. Here is the first post I wrote about it yesterday. I really want to make it clear that when I review something, it’s more with the eye of what I like and don1’t like than what I think is objectively ‘good’. One of the funniest things I can remember (when it comes to reviewing) was in an RKG chat once for a livestream. Can’t remember the game, but the chat started talking about the best soulslike game. Almost everyone was in agreement that it was Nioh (Team Ninja). I very carefully stated that I had the most fun with Junkyard Souls, er, The Surge (Deck13).

I will be honest. I knew what I was doing. I knew that I would cause a kerfuffle, even though I stated it the way I did (and did not say that The Surge was the best soulslike). I didn’t realize how big a stir I would casue, but I also wouldn’t have cared if I had known in advance. I played roughly a third of Nioh, and I struggled every step of the way. One of the things I love about the Dark Souls series and Elden Ring is that you can play them is so many different ways. You can’t say the same about Sekiro at all, and Bloodborne is somewhere in the middle (but closer to Sekiro than the others).

When I played Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ), I felt a disconnect with other FromSoft fans. Almost everyone else gushed about it as if it was the second coming whereas the game left me cold. The deflect (or whatever it’s called in the game) was front and center in the combat, and I could not get the hang of it. I never can, and I usually give up fairly early in any of these games because it’s just not worth it for me. In the first Dark Souls game, I practiced on the Silver Knights of Anor Londo until I could get it roughly 75% of the time. Which, fine for them, but every enemy has a different parry window.

Each Dark Souls game has its own parry window as well, which doesn’t help. I didn’t even bother trying for the second or third game.

In Elden Ring, I skipped over the parry again. FromSoft added two things that greatly mitigated the need for a parry. Or rather, one thing that mitigated the need to parry and another to augment the lack of need for parrying. The former is the guard counter–which is a godsend. You block an attack and then hit the enemy with an RT. You get the ‘ching’ sound and break the enemy’s poise, then if you quickly follow up with an RB, you can do huge damage. In other words, it’s very much like a parry/riposte.


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The art of a review

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Let’s talk about reviews. Or rather, how I review things. I tihnk reviews in general should not be taken too seriously because oftentimes (maybe most of the time?), it comes down to a question of taste. Let’s be real. There are a glut of games out there. So many games. All the games! In the RKG Discord I’m in, we constantly joke about our backlogs and how we can never whittle them down to zero. I mean, hell, I can’t whittle mine down to a hundred, let alone zero.

Side note: The raging discourse about whether Shadow of the Erdtree should be able to win the Game of the Year or not is amusing to me. Despite it being my GOTY (obviously), I don’t really have strong feelings about it. That is, until I hear the majority of the arguments about why it shouldn’t be considered. The fact that you have to play a fair chunk of the base game to get there? Fair. But the ‘it’s just more of the same?’ Uh, look at all the remakes and remasters that are not being debated in the same way. Final Fantasy VII Re…birth? I think? The second one. It’s up for GOTY as well, and–ok, maybe that wasn’t the best example because it has innovated in significant ways. But it’s builtl on something that was there before.

I think the part that annoys me is that if FromSoft had said this was the sequel or Part 1.5, sold it for the same price (forty bucks) and called it a day, no one would even question it. But because they called it a DLC of the first game, then it’s suddenly not up for consideration? Again, taking into consideration how you access the DLC because I think that’s a fair point. But I was watching the IGN discussion about how the base game won the award so why should the DLC? Why not let someone else have that spot? And someone else on the panel said that the DLC ‘only’ got 4 other nominations as opposed, to say Silent Hill 2, which got 5. Is this really how we want to do this?

I’m with Kinda Funny in that whoever hosts the awards show gets to decide. The Golden Joysticks were earlier, and they had a category for DLC so that’s where Shadow of the Erdtree was placed. Therefore, they did not put it in the GOTY category. I’m actually more in the camp of it doesn’t matter, but I’m just astounded how adamant people are against it. Especially the “they already won GOTY! for Elden Ring!” So?


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