`$= '.image + ')'` ![[ELDEN RING (2022)-20240224092656873.png]] [[Games]] ## 02242024 ### Playtime: 12.5 Hours Okay, so. I'm playing *Elden Ring* again. If you know me, you know that I have a tumultous relationship with FromSoft games. Not much of it is based in logic, I'd suspect, or minor aspects that cause me to massively prefer one game over another - I love *Bloodborne's* aggression and Demon Soul's level-based structure, as some examples. But I've never finished a Dark Souls game, I...**tolerated** *Sekiro*, and would much rather play [[ARMORED CORE™ VI FIRES OF RUBICON™ (2023)|Armored Core]] before any of the previously mentioned, to be honest. But if you know me, you also know that I hate it when I'm not part of the cultural zeitgeist. There's a [[Very Important Rule]] to remember, and when I don't understand why people like something so much, I get petulant. So with the announcement of the new DLC, I figured: why not? Lucy can take a shot at me with the football. Let's give it one more try. I'm now twelve and a half hours into a new run and...my feelings are mostly the same, I guess? Let's go through them. --- ## The Good ### Oh, it's a fighting game I decided to do my start of the run on [stream](https://www.twitch.tv/mintplaysthings)[^1] and noted something about halfway through: > Oh. It's a fighting game. I usually call Souls games "Punch Out in 3D" because I'm a shit-stirrer and it's funny. "Dark Souls is a fighting game" is probably a more positive connotation to describe essentially the same thing. Once I began to see things in plus and minus-frames, whiff punishes, start-ups and corner pressure, things began to click for me a bit more, and I found myself winning most encounters in a try or two. I'm actually having fun! With FromSoft combat that isn't *Bloodborne* or *Armored Core*! Wow! ### See that mountain? You can - The exploration in *Elden Ring* is probably the most engaging part of the game to me. I like running around. I like that it cribs from *Breath of the Wild's* method of having you be drawn to natural points of interest by creating enticing topography and landmarks. You truly feel like you're on a grand journey, and the sense of scale adds to the game's sense of wonder. On top of this, the open map serves to help with one of the Souls series' biggest pitfalls: hardstops. If I get my ass beat by a boss in *Elden Ring*, I can just wander somewhere else and still feel like I'm making progress. This is important because I am getting old, and I have constant anxiety about [[Time Tiering|wasting time]]. Souls games that make me die over and over again make me feel terrible as a result. ### Samurai Build Sorry, I'm stuck at an eternal 12 years old. Katanas are cool, bleed is a nice option that helps reduce the time I have to spend fighting annoying enemies, and it's a relatively simple build to put together. I might also try a Heavy Knight build or a Swordspell build when I can respec, because I like knocking down poise. ## The Meh ### Another catacomb, how original... I mentioned I love exploring in *Elden Ring*, but damn if I feel like it repeats itself way too often. So many similar catacombs and caves that it makes encountering them a slog as time goes on. The overworld exploration is signifcantly more interesting to me. It's not a **deal-breaker** by any means but if I see one more of those stupid bleed-gargoyles I'm going to piss my own ass[^2]. ### Quests are terrible. Sorry, they are, and that's why I don't care about them. "Oh but Mint don't kill patches you can get a-" too late he's bleeding out on my katana as we speak. Every quest guide looks like this: > "To talk to Blawg learn the piss emote and piss in front of his garden, then he'll jump down from the tower of who-gives-fuck to fight you UNLESS you already fought four-fingered-fuck-boy, in which case he'll be in an entirely different area. If you already went to that area first then Blawg will be dead and you'll need to engage with him in NG+." Yeah, okay. Nah, I'm good. Whenever I see an NPC, I pull them up online and see if they give a quest reward I'd care about. If they do I'll follow the tedium along. But if they don't, I'll half-heartedly try and see how far I get naturally. ## The Bad ### Unfair or Not Unfair *Elden Ring* is still just as frustrating as any other Souls game a lot of the time. Sometimes it's my fault - maybe I shouldn't have just swung all over the place on a bunch of skeletons, that one's my bad. But sometimes it feels like it isn't. Take for example, my adventure in graverobbing: I go through the poison swamp, then get killed by a giant contraption that spins on me. Okay, fine. I do what I'm supposed to: run the path, sticking to gaps in the walls so the giant contraption can't kill me. Then I find out it can turn and kill me. Then I find out it can go over a narrow bridge and kill me again. And again. And again. I guess for me, "death is a source of learning" is not interesting to me outside of rougelikes as a game mechanic. Especially because in a rougelike, you still get some meta-progression when you die in most games of that type. But this was one of those hard-blocks. I didn't feel accomplished after learning this Hollow Knight, "path of pain"-ass sequence. I was just happy it was over. This is what I dislike most about Souls games. Not hard bosses - I've dealt with that. But sitting in front of a loading screen after I fall down a pit, or get blown up by some guy with a giant bow and arrow from halfway cross the map...that's the kind of thing that makes my mouse hover over the uninstall button. ## To Conclude: it's fine so far I won't uninstall it. Yet. And I'll mod it if it annoys me. But so far I'm reinvested in *Elden Ring*. We'll see if I stick with it post-*Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth's* release, and I still don't get why so many people call this their favorite game ever made. But I'm enjoying it at least! --- ## Resources [[Knight Build]] [^1]: Always be plugging [^2]: *Resets the "Mint doesn't make a Snapcube reference" incident sign back to zero.