kensei

Every single dungeon here isn't a legacy dungeon. Zelda had those too - they were the Devine Beasts. They were evolved because everyone said they missed big spatial puzzles rather than room based puzzles but they are the way they are because of design choice. The shrines are Nintendo's answer to "What makes this world enticing to explore?". Bespoke Zelda puzzles are more work than Souls combat, however well designed and placed. I'd also be careful of "this is so much more accessible". It's Souls combat. If you hate it you will absolutely hate Elden Ring. You are just less likely to bounce straight off it here.

What the fuck is up with fucking mage enemies spamming hadoken all the fucking time. If I let two start they'll kill me almost instantly. The worst are the centipede spearmen things, that have an insanely annoying homing spell that stops my ability to move forward but any common or garden bighead can have the same effect.

It's the open world enhances all of that. Dark Souls has a beautiful, diaroma interlocking world. But in many cases you'll hit a roadblock and you have no choice to go through it. Here you'll have about 10 different places you can go. It reduces frustration greatly. Until you do what I did tonight and die everywhere. Getting through Undead Burg in Dark Souls took me endless hours first time round. Here, you can nope out of a lot of stuff just by bombing past on your horse. Crafting stops you being stuck places with no resources and a difficult boss or encounter ahead. The open world meshes really really well with the gameplay. I don't think this was obvious before the game came out.

First up, Souls combat is painfully better than jank like Skyrim and Zelda's toolbox is fun but it's not the focus of the game the way it is here and placing it in an open world is a revelation. Souls always strategically used gaps in combat to build tension bit here it comes out organically. There's huge enemy variety, not just in bog standard enemies but also in bosses. There's an imagination and variety most games miss and the environments are used cleverly too. The scale of it is something else. You have expectations at the start and it just keeps surpassing them. I am only half way through and it's already bigger than I thought. Some new areas open and it's a shock. The environments themselves are varied and imaginative. I thought they'd drunk the Souls style well dry. I was very wrong. The risk / reward is meaningful. Every dungeon, ruin or catacomb brings something potentially useful. It's worth running into harder areas of the map to see what you can find. All the clutter and cruft of open world games have been stripped away, even more so than Breath of the Wilds. It's done to just what's necessary. The traditional Souls NPC side quests fit really well. The open world adds to the mystery of it. It has giant enemy crabs.

First day I've been really annoyed with it. Calvalcade of bullshit

It's almost like pulling attacking players off to replace them with defensive ones nvites pressure, particularly if you've squandered a hatful of chances. If you attack, you keep the other team under pressure and you can score. Anyone know any coaches wedded to this idea? Jesus Christ I am too old for this. I think preferred being resigned to it

They are fundamentally different games with superficial similarities. The archetypal piece of Elden Ring so far is jousting with a housed sized dude in some sort of poison swamp. Sorry that's a lie. The archetypal Elden Ring experience so far is rolling off a cliff while being chased by bats that one will one shot me in a grab. For all the incredible areas and secrets, it's a combat heavy game and the mass of the game is directed toward it. If it was a colour it'd be red. The archetypal Zelda experience is climbing to the top of the hill to see your next goal, spying something else that you just have to see, so gliding off in that direction for a gander and picking up a seed or a weapon and heading off for something else. Actually this is a lie. The archetypal game is a trial of strength with the same three enemies. For all the terror of early game encounters with Lynels or Guardians, the game is much more focused on experimentation with systems, exploration and the little puzzle rooms than combat. You can generally avoid most combat if you want. If it was a colour it'd be blue. While they share some DNA. I think the key thing is - if I knew you were a fan of one, I'd not necessarily recommend the other. I have preferred Zelda so far. It felt much more like the shock of the new. But not by much.

25k Souls down the memory hole. Still about a levels worth. It's the stupidity that burns more than anything else.

Leeds have been unable to put two good halves of football together all season. We've just had a good half in a must win game. Deep breaths.

Mopping up a lot tonight A lot of that was because I simply do not like being in Caelid. It's a horribly oppressive area.

Thought a draw would have been best for us - Brentford look pretty clear now but best B option was Burnley refusing to nudge ahead of us. We have to win tomorrow. In my gut I think we won't.

As per previous in the thread - shields are situational tools. That situation may well be "I've no idea where I am and need a clutch option". They've been improved in two ways this time Barricade gives tower shield guard for normal shields this time. Enemies can be interuptted by bouncing off shield Guard Counter - slightly faster and heavier hit from a block I am on the fence on heavy armour here though. Has anyone done how the damage reduction works for this? The armour doesn't seem to be making a huge difference.

I think Rodrigo could be forgiven. He's been unlucky - at the tail end of last season he had a run of good games and looked like he was going to settle. He has been unlucky with injuries both to himself and the team stopping him getting settled. Reckon he'll go back to Spain or to Italy and we'll lament why he was never that good for us. Last summer was risky. January was suicidal. The two against United? Luck has been terrible though, if we'd put away half of the chances we made Bielsa would still be manager. Defense is still appalling but being up in a few would have stopped the heads dropping.

There's not a lot of evidence that anyone is worse than us. Feeling confident about Norwich?

I am starting to think that Bielsa fellow may have vastly overachieved with a group of players that are Championship level. Who knew, eh? Also that changing managers when Leeds have been playing a defined system for three and a half years was an insane gamble. Where is the Championship thread?

Nah. You know when Nintendo are like "Seriously we perfected the formula in the last one, what the hell else do you want?". That's this for Souls. There's no way to top it. You can vary the formula a la Bloodborne or Sekiro. But straight up Souls, we're done for a decade until technology opens new possibilities. There'll be DLC for this though, which is mind boggling.

It's horrifying. They couldn't. Thinks of Discovery. Oh God, they could

There's a guy looking one

Caelid is pure nightmare fuel and even at level 58 I seem pretty underlevelled for it and it I stray into dragon town I'm boned. So I am definitely pottering about here because the alternative is dealing with finger spiders in Caria and that is next level nightmare.

Is that the Grand Inquisitor?

I cheesed a challenge for an awesome talisman in Caleid after following some excellent advice. I am very pleased.

Yes and no. Unless you are absurdly overleveled it's hard to tank through without understanding patterns. However, it's all about how many mistakes you can make and survive. You might understand the pattern perfectly, but you still have to execute. A boss that can one shot you for not executing perfectly will be hard. A boss that requires you to execute well for a long time because your damage output is so low will be hard. This is no different from other games. When Nintendo want to up the difficulty for Mario games for champion road challenges etc, they require you to execute for long periods without a mistake and require you to restart if you do. Execution challenge might be modified by power ups to give you a floater jump or others assists. Anyway Summoning help is how you beat the game Cheesing every cheesy strategy possible is how you beat the game Going to look up fextralife is how you beat the game Overlevelling so your Zweihander takes a quarter of the boss health bar us how you beat the game There's a lot of git gud but when Sekiro required you to actually git gud a lot of people bounced hard.

Levelling up absolutely matters. Everyone is focusing on scaling and weapon requirements and while that stuff is really helpful there have always been workarounds to get you sufficient damage on low stats. If we are talking survivability, the things that matter are 1. Every level gives you increased defence. 2. Vigor: a longer health bar will stop you being killed as quickly 3. Endurance: longer stamina bar let's you tank hits more readily, roll away for longer, get that last hit in. It also ups equip load which means heavier armour, which is more defense equivalent to more health. It probably remains king stat. It certainly was in Dark Souls. Each individual level isn't dramatic but cumulatively they build up; I could survive two hits, now I can survive three so I lived long enough to estus. Mad speed runners Dan level 1 this stuff, but for your average pleb levelling is key