In yesterday’s post, I was going to try to pair weapons with From games. I did not get there because I meandered all over the place as is my wont. In addition, there really isn’t a one-to-one comparison. Dark Souls III is my favorite From game, and the Double Saber Form is my favorite weapons form (sorry, Sword Form!). Could I make a tortured analogy between the two? Proboably. Am I going to? Probably. Does it make it right? Nope.
Here’s the thing. I have terrible reflexes and spatial issues. Both these things cause me problems in From games. They insist on putting platforming in their games, which makes me deeply unhappy. I haev banged that drum for a long time, but I’ll do it again. If you are not making a platforming game, for the love of all that is beautiful and holy, please do not put platforming in your game. Yes, I am a huge From fan, but this enrages me every time. Platforming is a precise thing that takes very talented people to do correctly. From is good at a lot of things, but platforming is not one of them. And yet. They put platforming in every fucking game. Like poison swamps, but that’s another subject for another day.
The thing is that I simply do not have the reflexes to do the perfect deflect in Sekiro, for example. I tried for hours after my medical crisis, and I could not do it. It’s not a question of try harder or better. I. Cannot. Do. It. Despite what Westerners have been told, you cannot do anything you set your mind to. Nobody can! It makes sense when you exaggerate it. I will never bin in the WNBA. I will never be a rocket scientist. These are things I cannot do because of the capped nature of my abilities. At this point of my life, I could not be a gold-winning medalist in gymnastics. I could not be a supermodel. I’m using extreme examples to just prove my general point–I literally cannot be anything I want to be. (No, I don’t want to be any of those things, but you get my main point.)
Now. In real life, reflexes don’t mean lightning-quick. When I was in a minor car crash, I saw the car coming at me at a high speed. I realized I was going to get hit. I even said it in my head–I’m going to gct hit. I instantly relaxed, and walked away with nothing but a huge bruise on my stomach. That was a real life instance in which my reflexes served me well. There was no way I could have avoided the crash, so I did the next best thing–came out of it unscathed.
I can’t draw a dircet line from my Taiji training to me being alive, but I feel it in my heart. I would not be here without my Taiji training. Would I be here without my FromSoft training? Probably. But would I have enjoyed my first year post-death without it? Nope! I poured 500+ hours into Elden Ring. I’ve also jumped back into other From games. I always have a From game on the go. I tried a onebro run in the OG Dark Souls (Remastered). I made it almost halfway through and then quit. I knew I had reached the end of my abilities. Could I have eked out a few more bosses? Yeah, sure. Did I want to? Nope. My goal in trying it out was to have fun with it. Which I did! Until I hit Quelaag. I managed to beat her, but I was pretty much done after that. I’ll be honest. The fact that my least-favorite bit of the game was up next (Sen’s Fortress) and then getting into Biggie & Smalls’ castle were two factors that led me to put down my controller.
Here’s the thing. I know that for me, playing the games are the most fun when I’m tricked out to the max. I need my bells and whistles because I’m just not good enough to beat the games fair and square. This is the hardest thing to explain to normies (and to die-hard From fans who are better-than-average in terms of reflexes)–I can’t do it. It’s not negative energy. It’s not me being hard on myself. It’s my self-evaluation without flair, color, or delusion.
I will be the first to admit that I am hard on myself. But in this case, it’s hard with a reason. In the first game, I could have excused myself because I had never played a game like that before, but it was clear by the third game that my difficulties were not just the typical, “Oh, this is a hard game and I’m struggling withit.” It was very clear that I was having troubles with the games that other people who played them didn’t.
I don’t know if it reaches the legal definition of a disability, but it’s genuinely a hindrance to me. And, since my medical crisis, it’s gotten worse. I’d like to reiterate than in the bigger picture, I’ll take that trade-off every time. But in terms of my gaming, it’s a problem. It means I have to make even more adjustments than I had before.
I don’t know how this would play in Taiji, tbh. I want to do sparring at some point in this year, which would check my reflexes in a way that solo practice does not. My teacher and I do a bit of sparring, and my reflexes are better in real life than when I’m playing video games.
It’s funny. I get really tense when I’m playing From games, obviously. I never get tense doing Taiji. That’s why I view them as the yin and the yang of my life. I love them both, even though they give me such different energy. Or maybe especially since they give me different energies. I’m not saying that Taiji is easy; it’s not. I’m not saynig it’s not frustrating at times; it is. But in general, it’s several degrees easier (in a meta sense of the word) than a From game. Easy to learn the forms, I hasten to add. Not to master. That’s very different. I would not say I have mastered anything, even though I’ve been studying for seventeen years.
I love both. I am hyped for Armored Core VI Fires of the Rubicon, the next From game. It’s not a soulslike, but it’s From–and that’s good enough for me. I’m also hyped about learning the next Taiji weapon–which will be the Guandao. In the meantime, I’m learning Bagua and loving it. Life is, as they say, good.