The normal turtle talisman doesn’t tempt me.

The two headed on the other hand ◝(ᵔᗜᵔ)◜

The first hours of a game are so important. Many companies front load fancy cutscenes interspersed with tutorial bites, when it’s so important to actually get to the gameplay to get the player hooked. I stand by my 5 hour estimate to get a grasp on the gameplay, not a firm grasp, but in that time you get a feel for it. That would be about the time it took me to get to the Scrapped Watchman in LoP, and that feels about right. Real insidious gets it when you actually completed 2+ playthroughs and mastery feels ever further away because you have now such a firm understanding of the gameplay.

Person of Interest. It’s a decent show with a very 2010s outlook on surveillance and AI. The show has it’s ups and downs, some better than I remember and some a bit worse.

Fun and Time.

With these two almost anyone can beat a Souls game. To actually get into a Souls game, you first need time to actually get comfortable with the gameplay feeling. This isn’t like clicking through a 2 hour tutorial section. You actually need, in my opinion, probably ~5 hours of actually gameplay and that simply needs time. And later in a game you need time to progress your gameplay ability, even if you don’t progress your in-game RPG character.
But no person would actually take that time if they didn’t have fun during it. Now you could probably pressure people into playing it and they maybe would complete it. But we play video games first and foremost to have fun!

Another factor in completing a Souls game is game knowledge. On the one hand, that’s in-game paying attention and learning from the enemies, trying out different gameplay elements (weapons, items, spells etc.) and reading (item descriptions, dialogue etc.). On the other hand that’s knowledge from outside the game. If you get frustrated, have no fun anymore, or if you simply like to look things up in a wiki while you play, then you might research in the internet how to defeat an obstacle in the game or even how to play it in a more general sense. And this is okay! No judgment! Play the game how you enjoy it! For some, Souls games are about discovery and exploration in the game of both locations and mechanics and it can be a bit of a balancing act to keep the fun of exploration alive while not get frustrated and also not ruining your fun by looking stuff up.

Where game knowledge can help, is of course time. If you know the or a solution then you can progress faster through the game. I could probably guide someone who never played a 3D game through the whole of Elden Ring. But would that be fun for them? Just the other day on Lemmy, I asked someone who couldn’t beat the final Bosses of Elden Ring (DLC and base game), if I could help them by for example suggesting some good strategies and they said no, they said “it’s more of a “Ok, I’ve seen the game, this is a slog, I’m moving on to something else.””; they didn’t have fun anymore (Happy ending in this case, since they have now fun re-playing Demon Souls on the PS5).

I don’t know how to conclude my ramblings… Have fun while playing Soulslikes?

I also lost track of time and suddenly it was Sunday (⌒_⌒;)

I didn’t really play anything or really do anything this weekend… Just kinda lay on my sofa and re-watched a tv series.

Ah, the taste of hopium.

Thanks (ㅅ´ ˘ `)

After properly reading this article and neowiz’s website, 2. I’m worried and confused.

The PR person that answered PC Gamer says something completely different from the joblisting:

GenAI tools are only used in preliminary stage work to improve efficiency of repetitive, foundational tasks.

So says the PR person.

In the job listing it sound more like they want an digital artist with allaround understand of AI based image generation, but also someone who can rework entire workflows for a team/multiple teams and teach other people how to use these technologies.
That doesn’t seem like only “preliminary stage work”.

Also they say, they are gonna:

The intent is to build a proprietary visual library trained exclusively on assets for which Neowiz and ROUND8 hold full legal rights.
(PR person)

So why the fuck are you naming Midjourney, twice! You can’t do that with Midjourney. You can’t get access to their models no matter how much money you give them. They have no enterprise solution. Meaning you can not train with their models. You can only give them your artwork as reference when generating new images and at their higher tiers they pinky promise that you have the rights to it and can use it commercially.

But okay, the person writing the job application doesn’t quite get the technology and they want to hire an expert who uses the right tools to train them proprietary weights. Yeah, no. After the PC gamer article was published, they changed their job listing subtly and now there is no longer any mention of training anything or creating a library. Now it’s all about “workflows” and “trends”. You can compare here in the wayback machine yourself (12 May vs 15 May).

What does this all means? My theory: the C-Suite in Neowiz want to go with the “times” and want to remain “relevant” with new technologies. So they force their Art2 team in Round 8 to add an AI person. (I hope Art1 is LoP and they barely have contact).

My hope: There’s a 3 months probationary period for the job. They are gonna try it out, realize that it’s not for them and move on. Don’t they realize that they hit a gold mine by making a traditional video game, a straight forward action RPG with max 2 payments? Fans are happy, prizes were won. These days in the Korean game development is all about mobile games, gacha, live service, sometimes all together. Lies of P is simple straight forward. You just need to let creatives do what they do best: create art.

It’s even a Korean Studio (Novaflare). I wonder where they got the idea from •ᴗ<

I’m decently interested.

Project Rabbit is an Extraction Soulslike Action RPG

What does “Extraction” mean in this context?

Also I wonder how pushed the multiplayer is gonna be? There is a couple of seconds of multiple player in the trailer near the end. The Steam page says “alone, or alongside your allies”. Is this gonna be multiplayer, but you can technically play alone or you play alone and sometimes you team up. The language in the Steam page makes me think this gonna be hub based. I just hope it’s actually designed areas and not randomized.

Memory: 16 MB RAM

Damn, that’s an efficient modern game.

If your are asking about the underlying image: Here is the Know Your Meme page: Pengiun and Goth Girl

tl;dr: It’s an AI image from a 2024 Tweet.

I must admit it got me at first and I assumed it’s a frame from an anime and used trace.moe first. btw here is a nice list of reverse image search engines.

You didn’t feel drained by […]

Nah, each new game start is different for me. I might just bum-rush Stormveil with a +0 weapon. Or when I’m playing “optimally” I might pick up the Soreseal and the medallion half, but I also might not. On an Int build I might just pick up the Gravity Staff and ignore that and then go through the Volcano Manor to Altus. I don’t need to pick up the Bell Bearing +3/+4 when using somber weapons and even if I pick this up, I can get the remaining stones from a variety of places. And this all ignores more things, which I would do for a specific weapon/build. Maybe rush Radahn and DLC or Radahn and underground. For none of these do I need upgrades, okay maybe for Mogh.

Sorry I’m rambling, but even the early game has so many split paths that I’m even now getting excited for my next playthrough ;)

Lies of P

Oh, didn’t make that quite clear: I have already played LoP. Thanks for your answer!
I for one really enjoyed the gameplay feel and the visual design of the game. The linearity of Lies of P put me of a bit (there’s only one real fork: the DLC), but for me on my playthrough it was almost always the right boss difficulty: challenging but I never got stuck. Deflecting was lots of fun and was always a nice rhythm, which brings me to my next point:

The parry system is not nearly as good as sekiro.

I bounce of hard of Sekiro, but that was a while a ago, long before I played LoP. I really should give Sekiro another serious try. Now that I like deflecting, which I feel is a bit different than Dark Souls like parry, quite a bit more.

Elden Ring is magnificent, but sort of counter intuitively I find replaying it less appealing.

Wow, we are polar opposites. I actually had more fun in a lot of ways on my many, many replays of Elden Ring, then I did on my first playthrough.

Out of pure interest, have you played Lies of P? If so, what are your thoughts on it? (I enjoyed your rapid-fire list of opinions above.)

I adore Fromsoft’s storytelling. Bloodborne is one of my favorite video games and my favorite part about that game is the lore, the world, the vibe.

Fromsoft can make games in the future with a clearer main narrative and I will probably play them, since the gameplay still hooks me again and again. Other people here have said that they simply want a clearer main story supplemented with vague lore. For me a game lacking a clear main narrative and only revealing it’s world building through the entirety of the video game medium - visuals, audio, descriptions, dialogue, gameplay – is what makes FS games so appealing and what makes Bloodborne such a masterpiece.

Where I diverge a bit from the general FS community is that I actually don’t want the lore “explained” in like a youtube video or post or 100 page doc. Since all of that is just what might have happened. Nobody can truly explain Bloodborne; the vagueness that you can only know, what might have happened, what maybe is, is what makes it so magnificent.

Please, Fromsoft, make Bloodborne 2 or a spiritual successor or something (No, your vampire game doesn’t count).

Still no Soulslikes for me this weekend. I’m still addicted to Slay the Spire 2 and through that I’m absolutely certain, that I should never get into a Gacha game.

Edit: Added never which somehow got lost… I hate Gacha games….

Elden Ring quests

I actually like how FS did quests in Elden Ring. I think, they did quests way better than in Dark Souls. They have so many redundancy and quests can easily progress if you missed apart - most people don’t encounter Alexander at every location and many still complete his quest. Most NPC are also near the path you would usually take through the area and are not (very) out of the way. Also many quests are interconnected - Ranni’s quest is connected to like half the questlines, but you don’t have to do the other questlines to do Ranni’s quest - you just get pointed in the direction; you get given a reason to go somewhere, to care about something and this I find more satisfying than a quest marker. I like that in Elden Ring there is only Grace and the markers that you set yourself.

In Lies of P the markers are quite nice, since LoP is super linear and you really don’t have a reason to go back other than to the hub. I would have liked it, if they only added the marker after the chapter if I had missed it and not during the current chapter, but that’s just personal preference.

Thanks for the advise!

That yt channel looks interesting and informative. It’s a bit difficult to find good and reliable information on StS2 especially in text form there is a lot of AI slop out there.

Hell is Us

I have never in my life heard of that game. Usually I’m at least aware of releases like that. Your descriptions and the screenshots look intriguing; I’m definitely bookmarking that game.

Gotta get that VDex up somehow.

I had a caster character in higher new game cycles, who had 70 Dex purely for the casting speed.

Nonetheless Int/Dex is an awesome combo. Most Int somber weapons have decent Dex Scaling and Cold is a really powerful infusion especially at high level.

On my Int builds I always pump Int up to at least 57 before I level anything else.

Have fun :)

Don’t discount Death Sorceries entirely! 4 of those sorceries, 50%, are actually pretty decent: Ancient Death Rancor, Rings of Spectral Light, Mass of Putrescence and Vortex of Putrescence. Small problem: 3 of those are in the DLC, and they have all Faith requirements, which is pretty inconvenient at lower levels. The other 4 death sorceries are really bad.

If you want a death themed weapon you can use the Death’s Poker. It’s the weapon of the Deathbirds. On 80% of enemies it’s broken af. You can pick the Poker up almost immediately after starting the game. Sacred blade destroys the bird that drops it or you could cheese it (but that takes longer).

Anyway, just experiment and have fun •ᴗ•

INT is by far my favorite build in ER. Half the reason for an RL1 run for me is so that I have to do something else.

Spells in ER are so much fun. Carian Slicer, Shard Spiral, and Night Comet are the 3 best sorceries and you can kill 99% of enemies with it comfortably (and the remaining 1% if you really want to). But there are many more awesome spells and it’s so much fun to experiment :)

Also if you miss melee: Carian Slicer is better than 90% of melee weapons. It even has jumping and running attacks.

Tl;dr Go for it!

Edit: Also if you have questions about ER mage builds just ask me. I have an unhealthy amount of knowledge ;)

Ah, now I remember. You talked about it in the Open World discussion a couple of months ago a bit. I adore the Open World. Mostly because you can actually see something and then not only go there but see and traverse the entire way there; plus the sheer interconnectedness it provides. Also without Torrent, I wouldn’t like it nearly as much. Torrent is so insanely fast.
About the rewards, I see it like that, to bring it full circle: almost no reward in Elden Ring is meaningless; many are just meaningless right now, but in the next replay ;) Seriously you can find use for just about anything in Elden Ring, which is the beauty of it.
You are a big fan of deflecting, if I remember correctly. That’s not really in Elden Ring. There is the Deflecting Hard Tear in the DLC, but you didn’t really mesh with that iirc. I’m more of a dodging Souls player myself, but I’ve come around a bit on deflecting after LoP.
What exactly do you miss from Bloodborne? I find the pace of the combat has caught up in ER. The weapon design is more like Dark Souls, but I find the sheer variety makes more than up for it, but that might be a matter of taste. About the spammy bosses: you really need to get into the tempo of the bosses in ER. In LoP most Bosses have a kind of similar tempo (you eventually get a feel for when the 5 meter Puppets/flesh-monsters do their swing). Anything Margit sized can have a vastly different tempo. For example: Margit, Morgott, and Messmer have a completely different tempo despite being of similar size and build. And then the building sized bosses are another thing entirely; i adore Bayle, but he cost me hours of my life to really get into his tempo.

Sorry for the long ramble ;) I can just write about ER for ages. Also this just reflects my opinion and experiences and I meant in no way to undermine you opinion or experience. I just like to hear the opinions of other people about a game I love.

Oh, I need to watch a couple of videos about Watcher, she looks interesting. Maybe they are gonna add her later. I read somewhere that MegaCrit are gonna add another one or two characters.

Maybe you could give me a couple of tips about Defect since he’s your favorite?
I did a Claw run in Custom - Sealed Deck, I think - and came to the conclusion that I’m never attempting a Claw run in normal mode unless the first 5-ish rewards are specifically geared towards that.

I find it wild that there is only one tutor for the Sovereign Blade. If they tweaked the numbers a bit, maybe the Sovereign Blade could always be added to your hand, if you forge, even if it’s already been played? That would definitely help with consistency.

End of Days is currently my favorite Necrobinder card. It’s such a unique AoE attack which bypasses many defensive effects. Also I never got into Magic the Gathering – probably better for my wallet. I only occasionally look at the really cool artwork.

You said multiple times that you didn’t quite mesh with Elden Ring, but I don’t remember ever reading what specifically didn’t mesh with you?

My favorite StS2 character for now is definitely Necrobinder. I love her ;) What ever random nonsense I put to together as a deck somehow always works with her. The different archetypes in her synergize quite nicely Osty, Soul, Doom etc… It’s probably because of the insane draw power of Souls and which card player doesn’t like drawing cards.

For the other characters:

• Ironclad: A bit to straightforward; I want something quirky.
• Silent: Draft and Sealed runs have ruined her for me; you can make a Sly OTK deck so easily in Custom and that’s just not possible (for me) in normal runs.
• Regent: Sovereign Blade is quite fun, but for me it’s not quite consistent and the archetypes don’t synergize like with the Necrobinder.
• Defect: I really don’t quite get it(?). I don’t really know what cards to choose to make the Orb generation and defense consistently work. (Barely beat Act 3 with him; it was mostly Creative AI beating it for me.)

What’s your favorite character in StS2?

Variety. That’s the biggest reason for me to replay a game. I want to be able to approach a new playthrough in a different, varied way. It’s not only about different weapons and builds, but also about taking a different progression path through the game. And the way these gameplay systems interact with each other.

^{[Warning long ramble]}
For these reasons, Elden Ring is by far my most replayed Souslike game. So much fun can be had in each playthrough. If I want to do a sorcery build I might go to Raya Lucaria, but to beat the Academy early I should go to Caelid for Gravity Sorceries and when I’m there I might as well kill Radahn, but the festival hasn’t started yet; should I go to Altus? or maybe go to Ranni since there awesome spells in her questline? These are just a few decisions you can make in a playthrough. In a different playthrough I might set myself a restriction like not leveling, which the forces a whole lot of other decisions: Early Godskin Noble or rushing the capital etc.? Maybe I just want to take a totally insane path through the game: did you know that you don’t have to visit Altus a single time to beat the game, no glitches required?
In each playthrough you can make a whole lot of different decisions and have as a consequence a whole other game. This sheer variety draws me in again and again.

No Soulslikes for me this weekend. Still addicted to Slay the Spire 2 (I’m now so good at the game that I realize just how bad I am at the game.)