i can say this is not true with other traps. for the one you’re taking about there is a site of grace before the golem, and the area you went there from is called the tower of return so i think that one specifically isn’t supposed to be much of a trap.
2 Likes
Ah, that makes sense. I totally forgot about that site of grace there. Well then, I’m looking forward to hitting more dangerous traps and getting owned!
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this game can be so ridiculous
at some point patches told me about sneaking my way into somewhere, I had no idea where, by finding a living iron maiden and carefully inserting myself into it. heh heh, maybe it’ll work, maybe you’ll die? heh heh, I’m cryptic series quasi villain patches and this is the developer equivalent of a “jump here” message at the top of a giant cliff.
except, inexplicably, he was telling the truth, which I found out on accident by dying to the iron maiden robot enemy, which promptly ate me and teleported me from the dungeon I was in into an entirely different fire world dungeon preposterously named VOLCANO MANOR (also I already had a damn invite to VOLCANO MANOR and did not not to sneak my way in via teleport torture suicide). ok, sure, why not, let’s go, time to conquer the volcano
6 Likes
My impression of this game is like… ok imagine there’s two bosses—the first one is Accursed World Ender Punished Sorem the Conqueror. He’s 50 feet tall and his body is build into a siege engine. His arm is another entire guy who’s constantly waving two gigantic swords and screaming. He has a whole backstory about how he used to be a good king before he became obsessed with his kingdom’s security and made himself into a monster to protect it only to find that in his new form he no longer cared if his subjects lived or died. He hangs out at the end of a castle full of disgusting guys who hide around corners and in the rafters to jump out and make Halloween sounds at you. When he kills you he says something like “oh Renata, the song of the moon is so sweet” and it’s never explained why.
The second is Gardener Terry, who lives in a shed behind the castle and is very slightly bigger than a normal guy. You can only fight him if you go to the shed at 2:24 p.m. when he takes his coffee break and say you don’t like his azaleas. Sorem is a tough but challenging fight with a compelling backstory that fits into the overall context of the game’s story. Terry is the toughest motherfucker who has ever lived. He can shoot lasers from every pore of his body that can hit you through walls. He has a two hundred hit combo with his trowel with randomized timings. He has a teleporting command grab that one shots you which he can use from anywhere, including heaven (like after he is dead), at any time if he just remembers that you exist. Terry is an optional boss but unlocks the ability to use the bathroom, without which your character constantly complains they have to pee and makes annoying noises for literally the entire game. Killing Terry nets you 200 runes.
27 Likes
I swear I woke up today hearing the faint jinglings of a magic dung beetle somewhere nearby.
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I found the magic dung beetle hat in Ray Liota Academy. It’s bad, but also you get to have a beetle on your head
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i’m glad that the phrase “teleport torture suicide” can be used in a sentence about this game
4 Likes
So I normally try and fall off FROM games. I’ve pushed a lot harder into Elden Ring than pretty much any other, though I got a decent way into Bloodborne.
I problem with these games is usually the bosses. Their design tends to just hit me as frustrating and stupid or stupidly easy.
Doubly frustrating for SOULS games is that I wanna try something but I lack the levels or tools to attempt… say using a spear after trying for a single spell or whatever. It’s frustrating because I want to play around and try things and these games want you to lock into some build based on weapons/gear you will find later, and I find that frankly to be really shitty game design. IDK what fucking weildable wedges there are later, as I HAVEN’T GOTTEN THERE YET, duh.
Elden Ring fixes that and other problems by letting you tackle smaller bosses and explore an ok world.
I’m pretty absorbed into this game despite being, terrible at it. The combat is still, weirdly limited with some inexcusable lack of clarity, all of which Nioh has addressed so IDK why FROM won’t just steal from their betters in this regard, or have… understandable hit boxes rather than the patchwork polka dot system they seem to be using.
OH ALSO HAVE FUCKING GROUND POUND ATTACKS CENTER ON WHERE THE WEAPON HITS THE GROUND NOT THE ENEMY’S ASS! I SHOULD BE SAFE YET CLOSE IF I" M BEHIND THE ENEMY, WHAT IN THE EVER-LOVING HELL, HOW DO PEOPLE NOT FLAY THESE DESIGNERS FOR THIS CLEARLY WRONG DECISION.
Sigh
So I’m playing the samurai. I just wanna find some new katanas or upgrade my armor. I have to cheat to find anything. I honestly don’t really get the classes in this game. It’s just like a starting point? Stupid. I’m a Samurai, in this case a weirdo outsider from the Land of Reeds. Give me some shit with that. I’ve met ONE OTHER Samaurai dude this whole time, and he helped me kill some in-game planned invader that I didn’t need any help with, but I want he sword and armor which I assume are better than mine (as it’s starting gear) but the game doesn’t really help me. He just says (after having to look around for his sorry ass again) that we’ll meet again! WHERE!? WHEN? IT’s A QUEST LINE. GIVE ME SOMETHING TO FUCKING QUEST FOR.
No no, from is SO GREAT AT DESIGN that I have to go look this shit up. How is it so thoroughly documented a week after release? IDK But there’s a whole ass quest across the document. Cool. WOULD BE GREAT IF I GOT ANY FUCKING INDICATION OF THAT IN THE GAME, INSTEAD OF LITERALLY PULLING OUT OF THE GODAMN EXPERIENCE TO HAVE TO LOOK IT UP BECAUSE THEY COULDN’T GIVE ME LIKE A COORDIANT, CONTEXT CLUE, OR FUCKING ANYTHING.
I get people don’t want a ubisoft checklist, belive me I do get it. But this is waaaaaaaaaaay too pulled back. I would like to do things, but I need things to do, and too much of this game is like oh you poor soul go find a cave and kill whatever. Don’t get me wrong the sense of discovery and wonder is great, but sometimes I need SOME direction. I doesn’t have to be a Waypoint, nobody likes Austin Walker anyways, but give me a bearing, a scrap, something to get me there other than me having to look it the hell up.
Ultimately I think this is a cool niche game. But the fans and praise of this game needs to take a steep nosedive. It’s good, it’s different, glad it exists. It’s not some flawless masterpiece. It’s a hodgepodge of other games that came before it, very jack of all trades master of literally none, and with some… more fucking text, not even much, just some actual grounded definitive text, and possibly a memory feature to replay what certain people say it could grow leaps and bounds.
nice
1 Like
I’m fifty levels into this game and I’m still using my starting spear. Tbh I don’t know what I’d do if I found a “better” spear. The small differences would probably make me go crazy. And respecing for it? Oof.
Re questlines: some are clear and some aren’t.
Mild spoilers: I took on a quest to retake a castle and later found a refugee who sent me back to the castle to find their family and then when visiting back again the refugee was dead and the family vowed revenge. It wasn’t until much much later that I found that family member alone in the woods with a bunch of dead castle invaders and then he invaded me. For the most part the questlines was pretty straightforward until the end when lol they broke bad and then invaded me.
It wasn’t the best questlines. It was actually kinda boring. But I really appreciate the subtle story telling.
2 Likes
I’ve mained the weapon you get ever since.
1 Like
I’ve long held that the gear upgrade system in From games is a mistake. I also think the souls-style stat system is a mistake for this game specifically, but good for Souls games.
My problem is that if you have a limited opportunity to invest in early weapons to make them viable AND weapon and gear collection is a huge part of the game, the two systems fight each other and usually either growing existing weapons is worse or picking up new weapons is worse. For Souls it’s usually the latter so all you do is find cool new weapons called like “Lord Cairalan’s Blood Catapult of Infinite Power” that are worse than “Practice Spear +6” and you can’t get the materials to upgrade anymore.
The stat thing is good in Souls games because they’re honestly small and if you get good at them they’re under ten hours, so you can replay them and try a lot of stuff. ER is something I probably won’t just play one time, but it’s absurdly huge even if you kind of know where things are I think, so I’m not sure blocking off huge parts of the game works as well. I think they’ve recognized this in letting you respec, but of course you can only do it a handful of times and you need an item (I haven’t found any yet).
Both the good and bad thing about From, and what gives their games an old-school feel is that they’re not made to be “good” in the way most other games are now. Like they’re not constantly trying to hack your brain to get you to engage more with more loops and more strategies so you play for a billion hours and buy stuff from their real money store. And I genuinely appreciate that in the same way that if I consumed nothing but Big Macs and heroin and went to live with a group of monks I might come to appreciate their simple life of vegan eating, hard work and contemplation, and like I know in my heart of hearts it is better, but I’m so habituated to be the little rat pressing the burger’n’drugs button in my cage that on some level I resent this much better alternative
10 Likes
You don’t gotta look anything up, just relax and let things happen, like do you freak out when you meet a new character in a book and it doesn’t tell you what page they’ll appear on next
17 Likes
i enjoyed demon’s souls so much and have been so hungry for dopamine that i went ahead and bought this game. it’s fun! it’s pretty! the stuttering on PC is annoying but i’ll live! i have killed exactly one boss and am still whatever level the astrologer starts at, but still having fun lol
8 Likes
beloved by gamers worldwide
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We were trying to find out why I didn’t find the guy: like I did the quest, found the dead family member (alone) and that was it and it looks like probably I just didn’t talk to the guy enough times haha
3 Likes
yeah i’ve been using the samurai’s starting uchigatana the entire game and feel too invested in it w/ stones and stats to switch to anything else, in a way i don’t really in other souls games even on a first playthrough and it’s a kinda dull playstyle i’ve already rinsed in previous games, though stacking bleed bonuses from the weapon itself and bloodflame blade definitely works
maybe if i find a respec item i’ll dump some points into int and grab the moonveil and some spells
1 Like
The only quest I can think of that I’ve actually completed so far is the sewing guy, whose tools I retrieved and now every so often he appears and offers to alter my clothes. But after who knows how many hours in the game I have never once picked up anything that can be altered.
Most of the time when I come across something that seems related to a scripted quest, I have no idea where to start and I just go exploring somewhere else. There have been several NPCs who have made specific requests, but I typically don’t give much thought to what they say and instead just head to a part of the map that I don’t think I’ve seen yet, assuming some of these things will eventually come together.
I’ve defeated a lot of minibosses. I assume the major bosses are all tied to trophies, and the only two of those I have so far are Leonine Misbegotten and the deer. I guess at some point I should try to enter Stormveil Castle, but I keep forgetting to gain any levels before I die holding tons of runes or spend everything at a merchant.
3 Likes
Yeah, I’m hoping to respec because I made a lot of mistakes in my build, primarily remembering that “arcane” in BB is magic, so I invested heavily into that not realizing Arcane in ER is luck and Int is actually Arcane. But also I think I’ve just been a little unfocused. I was trying to go for dex/magic and I wound up with a lot of dex but my magic still seems bad.
I’m kind of wondering how balanced (i.e., one weapon scaling stat and one type of magic) builds work in this game and whether I’m just at an awkward phase or if it’s not good. I’m using Reduvia (the blood dagger you get from an invasion early) with 28 dex and it completely owns, but I have 18 int and even my best magic like rock throw does equivalent to like 1-2 knife hits and I run out of FP super fast. It feels like every kind of build has a lot of extra stats you have to pump (endurance for melee, mind for magic, vigor for everything) and so I don’t know what I can treat as a dump stat. Dex also seems… less good since there are very few dex weapons (that i’ve found) and almost everything scales equally with dex and str, so I’m constantly finding stuff I can’t use and I feel like I could really have just ignored dex
1 Like
offensive magic is really only good in the early game then it becomes primarily a utility unless you have like 50 int