#difficulty spike is actually vertical

[francois1030]

Librarians be like "I have my whole act in front of me". No you don't, the 5-10/8-13/11-16 0 light card is coming!

[binah-beloved]

;3

you.

[texasthoughtsaboutnothing]

RR3 not really having a gimmick is terrifying actually because they have free reign to make the difficulty spike vertical. The ability to freely swap your team comp at rest stops should put the fear of God in you. If you're a Limbus only you have no idea what these devs are capable of.

[julijbee]

Id love to hear your review of the dlc and your alternate plot ideas if youre willing to share! The plot seemed. questionable

i am so glad you asked (evil smile). so i'm going to spoil the whole dlc, even irrelevant things that aren't "main story" plot that you'll probably want to experience on your own if you're still playing so proceed with caution. also this is entirely opinionated and you'll likely have a different opinion from me and that's fine. my opinions aren't objective fact they're just how i feel.

also if you are familiar with the plot of elden ring, particularly to do with miquella, as well as the plot of the dlc, you know what content to expect. if you are new to this content and have no idea- first of all what are you doing here? second of all i'll be discussing incest and sexual assault. peace and love, enjoy my 5,920 word review.

I played the dlc as a NG+, FAI/DEX build using vyke's spear, godskin peeler, and bloodhound's fang, and used my incantations for both buffs and attacks and switched them often. summoned mimic, always wore pot on my head, and favored light/med carry weight.

:D

GAMEPLAY (not story, just scroll if you only care about story)

so i'm going to start with reviewing the gameplay first because unlike the story section this is more positive, and while less people probably care about this, I DO!! i've been playing fromsoft's games for years and its because i enjoy them and think playing them is fun, that the stories they tell have resonated with me and i liked (most of... .. .) them has been a happy bonus. my honest opinions about the gameplay difficulty is that at this point in my souls playing hobby i think i've finally become one of those really annoying people who has no real idea of how hard the game actually is. with the exception of a few bosses, i thought the dlc was easier than expected, and i sometimes found myself wishing i found some of the earlier bosses more challenging, because those were objectively more fun fights than the later ones. i think the scadutree fragments are a really interesting way to both:

a: help players control the difficulty of the dlc, collecting more if they are stuck somewhere, or abstaining from use if they want more of a challenge

b: encourage exploration of their very vertically dense dlc map

it both maintains that idea thats vital to elden ring's formula, that the open map allows for you to explore and level up before attempting a boss again, but also ensures that you can find those levels you need without having to grind too hard in a smaller dlc area, and aren't kept from the main story for too long. i really enjoyed this, and honestly the side stories were the only things keeping me playing once i realized what the main story was doing, and all the life was slowly sapped from my body.

i am pretty sure at this point in time that i have completed most of the bosses- i think i am missing one of the four mausoleum bosses and i think i skipped one of the dragons on the way to bayle because i was sick of fighting so many dragons in a row, and i'm sure i've missed some mini bosses or areas, especially in the rauh area which i am guilty of sprinting through at a certain point.

with the exception of the final boss and bayle, i enjoyed the bosses in this dlc. the thing with the difficulty of these games is that in the past a lot of the difficulty spikes between games comes down to movement speed of player and bosses, and the effects this quicker and quicker timing has on the gameplay. they've also introduced some combat enhancements or tried out some ideas like weapons arts in ds3. (in non-souls games you have a lot more variations on the formula, with bloodborne's parry mechanics and less of a reliance on the character builds and armors, sekiro's systems being something that almost felt like you had to relearn how to play their games)

elden ring complicates this formula even further by introducing an expanded and much more practical system for weapon arts, a shit ton more weapons and armors, faith and int builds that are finally viable, and consistent boss summons with the spirit ashes. i'm both impressed that the game maintains the challenge of prior titles and even has some bosses that well outdo their difficulty, and also remains fun to play. the dlc maintained this FOR THE MOST PART, but with bayle and the final boss this kind of stumbled.

the problem i was shocked elden ring didn't already have was that when you're already going as fast as seems feasible, how do you augment the difficulty to give new challenges, and how do you make something fresh within this old formula. their bosses are difficult, but for the most part they're fun, and you can get to a point where you make that call of okay, this is hard but this is possible, or no this isn't possible right now, i need to change my strategy or level up or something else. the dlc was very fun to me because i was able to utilize the full arsenal of things id acquired over the course of my two prior playthroughs of the base game. if i had trouble with a boss, i realized at some point that i had plenty of viable builds i could apply to my character that better suited the boss. i switched between weapons, swapped out miracles, did some experimentation with the talismans and armor, and it felt a lot like fun trial and error to see which build would work, and very rewarding when it finally did!

bayle and the final boss felt kind of like they knew they were obligated to be crazy difficult, but they couldn't quite iron out how to do that without it being ridiculous. bayle less so than the final boss, but i feel like the warning for the final boss was there in bayle. he was whispering to me hey, hey, watch out. you know i cant be the worst, you know that final boss will be worse. also bayle gets a bit of a pass because he was a side story boss (i appreciated that the main story was a little bit easier than the side stories, because obviously you want your players to be able to get through the main stuff, with the side stuff being the extra. i personally liked that. anyways.) i did not have fun playing the final boss and it wasnt just the psychological damage (though that made me want to stop trying way more than the difficulty did tbf.) so far as gameplay is concerned i really enjoyed the dlc and i had a lot of fun exploring and fighting my way through it, there were some beautiful areas that made me excited to look at the concept art, and the weapons and new systems they added were a lot of fun when i tested them out. if it were just this gameplay i would be happy with the dlc and would probably still be playing it now.

THE STORY REVIEW. (hell.)

what makes me mad is that to some extent they gave me what i wanted. if you look back through my old posts or have the displeasure of knowing me in real life and heard me gushing about this, you already know some of my dlc wishes came true!

some of my dlc wishes:

i wanted new flowers to pick (small fish all things considered)

i wanted a boss with a large spear to skewer me in the air like a kebab

i wanted more frenzy content

i wanted some kind of resolution or at least some mention of godwyn's situation

i wanted miquella's gender to be unambiguously weird

i wanted miquella to be evil

i wanted more explanation for marika's whole "deal"

i wanted dumb melodramatic dlc npcs that are doomed to die horrible dlc deaths but one of them must be unspeakably snatched while doing so.

let sword freak (denoted by a line i heard from one of the dlc trailers) be a woman

please let the bewitching branch item description not imply what i think it implies about miquella and mohg

so. if you know the story you will already notice some red flags. i'll start with some positives

i really enjoyed my little dlc npcs, hornsent was the only thing carrying me through the middle-end section of the main story as i was buffeted on all sides with the terrible realization that they were going the exact direction that i begged and pleaded they would not go. i loved the heightened role the npcs played in the story, how frequently i was able to check in with them and have new little dialogues or tidbits, and i love that there are absolutely batshit unhinged women in this dlc and i am so happy there are more than one. in no particular order, things i really liked about the npcs:

hornsent is my sweet cheese he is my guy. i was really rooting for him and as someone who went into this dlc as an attached weepy miquella fan, i was on his side before the dlc killed my hopes and dreams and dashed them against the rocks. character who abandons all sense of self and personhood to become the embodiment of their hurt and rage? faceless formless gnarled twig of a character with desiccated bugs all over his face? character who i can feed soup to? character who somewhat hates me? character who made me laugh following the messmer fight by calling him "your ugliness"?? his death was inevitable and i accepted it, because i agree with him. miquella should not take his revenge from him, there will be no forced absolution nor "gentle kindness" imposed upon him. this was the evil miquella i wanted, the god so compassionate that no discord nor hate could exist under his rule, and all will be enveloped in kindness. it is horrifying to discard the self when the self is entirely made of hurt, and it is horrifying to be robbed of personal agency. anyways i love hornsent.

freyja is so gleefully ready to commit unspeakable acts of violence and so genuinely happy and excited about it that it makes me squeal. i love a character that is so excited to punch things that they cant keep it to themselves. they are happy and thrilled to be in the dimension of violence and strife. and she's so nice! usually you see these people falling into the edgelord stereotype which i am not particularly fond of unless they're especially pathetic and camp about it, but she was just a joy to interact with. when she told me not to worry if we were to fight on opposing sides, she would gleefully meet my blade and it would be an honor to do so, i wasnt even sad! yeah! it will be fun freyja, thank you. little bit soured to her towards the end there where she learned about the incest plot and had no other reaction to that other than to be excited radahn would be back, but to be fair to her why would she give a shit about this. sure, freyja. i'm happy for you, glad you're enjoying this dlc.

speaking of unhinged women, leda is despicable. i love her. the point that she sees nothing wrong with herself or her actions is integrated into even the most inane little dialogues, the one that stuck with me was her explanation of the war with the hornsent- she said they were the losing side of a war, and it was a terrible shame what happened to them, but they were no victims. (they had it coming. further than that, it was right that they were the ones to lose, winning holds significance in terms of showing divine favor and justice. its a terrible shame what "happened" to them (passive word), but they were not victims, the actions of marika and messmer's army were somehow vindicated in their actions). she's another look at what i had hoped for with my evil miquella point. i will expand on this when i start ranting about miquella so put a pin in this for now.

moore. another point into the miquella as a refuge category, or miquella as the water that washes away, and provides absolution. outside of that though i'm always somewhat on my guard with a character who has a speech impediment and seems to have some kind of cognitive disability, but he made me happy to talk to. i don't know if what i'm feeling is unsure about how he's written, or just wishing for more from him, but the exchanges you have with him where its clear his motivations are intensely people-pleasing, and that he is honestly very sad as a person made me sad :( hes a big guy, and dangerous in a fight (as i figured out pretty fast after he downed me with scarlet rot) so its difficult to minimize this outward appearance to keep oneself a: safe and b: friendly or pitiable enough to others that they offer the sort of protection necessary in numbers in the situation he finds himself in. i think he makes sense as a character, and i think hes very concerned with the opinions of others and his helpfulness to them and his perception. and while i think the kindness and generosity is learned and a necessity, i also think he's just genuinely a kind person, which is why he's relying on his strengths like this. anyways, sorry moore. :(

igon is way too much and i'm so glad he's real. i genuinely cracked up when i summoned him for the bayle fight and cackling at him got me killed. i wasn't expecting him to scream his little heart out and then keep going. and then keep going again. he won't stop it's spectacular. another thing of note is that he didn't get a single hit off that entire fight for me, drawing his bow took too long, and he spent most of that fight flat on his back with the damage counter going up. it just made his shouting even funnier, i wasn't even mad he was awful as a summon, he was so funny i was just glad he was there as a morale boost. also appreciate that dragon priestess seemed pretty done with him. i hope everyone else can appreciate his autistic charm with me.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT MIQUELLA NOW.

so i want to set the context for my dlc experience properly so everyone can understand where i'm coming from, because miquella was already a delicate character to like, and how they're a radioactive trash fire that's trying to kill me.

(also dlc confirms he/them miquella alongside he/him base game and she/her trina so you'll note the pronouns shift around. it's a little complicated given the whole trina splicing and diverging of identities thing so it'll be inconsistent, but hopefully everyone can tell who i'm talking about as i'm talking about them.)

having a character who is unspeakably old, but also has the physical appearance of an 8 year old is a red flag so large that anyone could see it, and i knew this from the moment i started picking up their lore in earnest. IN THEORY this could be a very compelling character, it has been done a couple times before well, and countless times before very poorly. i was not optimistic, and already in the base game his character was not treated as well as i would have preferred, but i was coping.

having someone who is trapped by their own body, or confined by both the perceptions of- and the realities of their body can be a compelling character. having someone who's life is impacted by perceptions of, judgements upon, limitations thereof of their body tends to be a character that i gravitate towards because surprise, this can be relatable for a lot of people- and a lot of different types of people. whatever allegory you're applying to this narrative of the disconnect between the body's presence in the world and the world's treatment and expectation of the body, i'm sure you can tell there's a broad scope of applications there. and then you add on this element where they're present in the realm of dreams. the implications of a god who walks dreams, the realm of the subconscious free of expectation and limitation, and then also is trapped by both a cursed body and the weight of duty, faith, and expectation, i enjoy these dynamics, i really do. it only helped that their gender was weird, and he walked dreams as a girl.

and the thing is, i've wanted him to be evil, i wanted him to be evil so bad you have no idea. not just because (by base game assumptions...) evil had been done to them, and theevil was a reaction to this, no! there was always something wrong with them, he was always scheming, they didn't turn evil.

the haligtree and their actions in going against the golden order are calculated- do i think their aspirations are better than his mother's? maybe? i think it's more the order he instates has the possibility of being better as a side-effect of his actions and they would have gone forward with their own ambitions with or without this possibility of things being measurably better. taking in a class of people subjugated by the current order to build their armies feels a bit cynical and calculated, no?

the second huge red flag was the bewitching branch item description. at first i was a bit thrilled, there! i said, there is the canon justification for my somewhat unfounded hopes for evil miquella! the suggestion that he is able to meddle with emotions and perceptions is a pretty troubling trait to have! especially by a character who is spoken of with both love and to a smaller degree hatred and fear! and then i spent longer than a few seconds thinking about this and was immediately worried about the implications that had on the mohg issue.

THE MOHG ISSUE.

so first things first, the existence of the dlc does not mean that suddenly mohg isn't bad gay rep anymore. like let me be clear here, for two years we had a gay pedophile in our triple a title who kidnapped his little brother for pretty unambiguously sexually charged reasons, the fact that the dlc seems to tack on an addendum of "oh by the way its actually not his fault and he didn't choose to do that" doesn't suddenly erase those two years, and the initial judgements a new player or someone who is unfamiliar with the lore might make. like that's bad, guys, that's pretty bad. i was really disappointed at the time that they had included this character archetype- moreso because i was a fan of their previous games that had their little nuggets of queer representation, and i made the mistake of expecting better from the developers and writers.

i was also mad because they didn't have to write it this way, this was a choice they made to include this, and it's my preference to not enjoy it, but it wasn't necessary at all. if the plot necessitated that something go wrong with miquella's cocoon and initial schemes for god pupation, it didn't have to be that his half brother kidnapped him.

(my borderline au content writing no one asked for: an alternative that i was fond of at the time (B.D., before dlc) was that proximity to malenia's rot could have caused him issues. you still have the issue of something has gone wrong, miquella remains asleep and rots in his cocoon, but you also have this element of the potential guilt on malenia's end- that would be incredible guilt to know she was at fault for the failure of all they had been working towards, and the added grim irony that (as we figured at the time) in shedding his curse in order to help her shed hers, she unintentionally sabotaged him by staying so close to "guard" him. it also involves malenia more in the game story, which was something i had hoped for a bit more of from the base game anyways.)

my concern over the bewitching branch lore can be summed up by saying this. having someone the story paints as the victim suddenly revealed to have wanted it all along, and been the instigator behind the assumed assault is shitty. it's just shitty. and i'll admit i might be more sensitive to this topic than the average elden ring player, so this is all colored by my opinions and biases, but it's bad taste. it's not a fun surprising revelation, it's not a plot twist you feel particularly excited about, you feel bad, and then you feel confused. I like the lore of elden ring, i've spent a lot of time reading it and speculating on it, and it is confusing why miquella would be the one to instigate their own kidnapping and assault.

you would assume that their intended plan would be the plan A he was going with, stay in the cocoon, do his thing, remain in the haligtree so it is sustained and they are safe within it, let malenia handle the defense and conquest while he naps, wake up at some undetermined date with his goals achieved (whatever those mysterious goals may be) and continue on with later stages of their plans. and you would assume that being ripped from the haligtree and doused in blood in a basement somewhere was not within the bounds of his plan A. part of why i dared to hope that i was reading too much into the potential mind-control thing was because it didn't seem like mohg's actions were benefiting miquella's plan in any way- it seemed pretty bad. the haligtree was dying, malenia was rotting, their body looked to be in pretty awful shape, and even their allies did not know where he was.

BACK TO THE DLC.

the dlc did not really expand the context in a way that made this make sense to me. context that he was discarding his body entirely made sense for miquella's character, and if they didn't care about the state of their body, i guess he wouldn't care that his body was taken from where it was abandoned- but it didn't seem like that was their intention to abandon his flesh from the start? or if it was, that they placed his flesh within the haligtree for a reason, and i'd assume he'd have wanted it to stay there. if they were concerned that his flesh was no longer safe in the haligtree and wanted it spirited away by any means necessary (i.e. "kidnapping"), first off i'm unsure of the danger that would cause that, but second off if he didn't care about their flesh- see earlier point- why would they care if it was endangered within the haligtree enough to have it kidnapped? so, this already doesn't make sense to me, and the added justification of oh, he just has the hots for their brother, this isn't satisfying to me. sure i don't enjoy it as a story element in general, but past that it just doesn't feel like a satisfying justification in context. he's ambitious and he's seeing his ambitions through by any means possible, why would they act in this selfish manner that seems to be detrimental to their own ambitions?

issues with the sense of the mohg situation aside, why radahn? the justification given in item descriptions and dialogue states that miquella found him sure and kind and worthy of being a lord in contrast to the conflict, fragmentation, and personal afflictions they were facing, but. why radahn? i liked radahn, i'll gladly point out that yes, he does seem to satisfy all of these character traits, but there isn't any established context between them. miquella doesn't interact with radahn in the base game, malenia dooms him to walk the battlefield addled by scarlet rot and reduced to an empty husk, and if it was miquella's intent to have him be their consort from the start, this paints malenia in a pretty negative light, no? we were led to believe they were a united front, her and miquella, that many of his actions were for her benefit, and they worked so hard in part because of his desire to cure them BOTH of their afflictions, especially and explicitly her affliction. so she's sabotaged miquella's plans? for what reason, did she not agree with it, did she hate radahn? there's no explanation given for this, like how there is no further explanation as to why it is radahn miquella is so hell bent on bringing back to life.

which is odd when you consider that there is another demigod who meets miquella's criteria, was definitely loved by miquella, seemed to be loved by malenia, seems to be depicted in the haligtree, and miquella was previously confirmed to have been trying to bring back to life. where the hell is godwyn?

let me clarify here, i do not like this plotline they have created where miquella apparently has the hots for every other brother in his family, i don't tend to appreciate incest as it occurs in stories, and if it were my choice i would just choose not to include it. i also understand that plenty of people don't care about that, and that media like game of thrones that features incest pretty prominently within the story is beloved by mainstream audiences. i am also aware of the historical trend of royalty being inbred and incest existing on a sliding scale of taboo through the millennia. the greek gods are all siblings, i still enjoy greek myths, etc. etc.. so if i were the sole writer for elden ring and was beholden to no one the story i would write would diverge from the current canon and i would not write myself into a position where miquella is marrying their brother because personally i do not enjoy this. this is not the reality we live in, and this is not the story we got.

within the framework of their story, it should have been godwyn, and i have no idea why it wasn't. i can speculate all i want, was it misplaced fanservice because people liked radahn? was it a plot twist executed poorly, is there some other reason im missing but someone else has pieced together and they'll call me an idiot over? i don't know, and i also sort of don't care, it doesn't make sense, and it also disregards a lot about radahn's character than i and others liked to get him to fit into this weird situation.

where is his horse? if miquella cared for him, and they were able to bring back a whole demigod, was it so impossible to resurrect his beloved horse? if miquella didn't care about him enough to bring back his horse, wouldn't radahn put up a fuss about that? if miquella was controlling him to agree to being his consort, and didn't allow for him to be concerned about his horse, this raises a few more questions about malenia fighting radahn and destroying all of caelid- and likely everywhere else if the fires at the borders of caelid ever go out. was he always controlling radahn, were they ever controlling radahn? what are the limits of this control, what are the rules, if any? there are too many frustrating elements that make very little sense about radahn.

conversely, these elements make a lot more sense when applied to godwyn, and it pisses me off that it seems like, to my speculative eyes, they pivoted away from him. it would make sense why they would need a body to resurrect him when he is just a deceased soul, and his body is busy being a tumor. you could argue radahn's body was not in great shape and was eaten by alexander, and that's a completely fair point, but to me godwyn makes much more sense. not to mention, again, miquella had been explicitly trying to bring godwyn back in the base game.

(and this is a smaller gripe, but radahn's previous boss model had no feet. in his lore they discuss him riding his horse, and then learning the gravity magic to lessen the load on his horse so he could keep riding it. like yes the missing feet could be chalked up to rot, but he also just could have not had feet and was using his beloved mobility horse and the gravity magic to get around the challenge of not being able to walk. i thought that was cool if true, and it was a little speculative thing about his character i really loved, and that just kind of got thrown out with the dlc too so i guess i'll have to die mad.)

was it really necessary to have the assumed sa victim with the body of a child secretly be the instigator and assaulter all along? and then to add insult to injury not even have their actions make any sense within the existing plot? like was that all entirely necessary.

OTHER DLC LORE OPINIONS

you might be surprised to learn that i did not hate most of the other dlc lore.

miquella using mohg's body as fuel to resurrect their consort, while fucked up, i think could work with character motivations. especially if he was holding a grudge towards mohg, or mohg's actions were in fact antithetical to their plans, or he wasn't the one in control of mohg's actions. it could make sense that he would want to humiliate him (as ansbach mentions a few times...). and as i've said before i think miquella is fucked up, i think they do bad things, i think their moral compass is skewed, i think he's a creature of ambition and spite. i could see a world in which he does this out of hatred and spite, but in the situation they've set up where miquella was the one potentially compelling mohg? it lessens that spite, why would they be so hateful or willing to humiliate him if they were the one to compel his actions? you could just say oh, miquella is cruel and messed up like that and he's doing it for the hell of it, but it's not that compelling and doesn't make it as interesting. it just kind of feels gross. so yeah, in the current story i'm not a huge fan, but i see the potential here.

marika's character development was genuinely cool to me- and i understand i'm speculating and i've been speculating this whole time, but that's my business and and i acknowledge it's speculative. marika as a hornsent is a really cool concept to me, and it makes pieces of the main game make more sense. it makes her motivations make more sense, adds color to her character (and she was already interesting to me) and even though this dlc is like a lot of their other dlcs where it adds characters and backstory for no reason and does the ds3 thing of surprise! more secret children! i enjoyed it. it gives her more of a why past judgements of her personal moral character, it grounds her more, i like it. i also enjoyed the tidbits with the pots and sages, further (if not vague) developments with the outer gods. like this is speculative lore than i enjoy, and it's the kind of stuff i was excited for in the dlc.

as i said before elden ring kind of did the ds3 thing where they just added a secret child that was suddenly plot relevant and added a bunch of unnecessary lore, but i didn't really care too much in ds3 and i don't care here. messmer's voice actor is funny and messmer himself is compelling enough that i'm fine with not taking things too seriously. it helps that without messmer there is not hornsent, and a dlc without hornsent is a dlc i wouldn't have finished. (genuinely, i was so discouraged by the main story plot revelations i didn't feel like it was worth it to finish the dlc, but i felt bad leaving hornsent unresolved so i killed messmer. and then just finished the dlc anyways, so thanks hornsent.)

truly and genuinely i was happy with st. trina. i was so excited she was included in this, i've been a st. trina truther for too long and i don't even know what that means because there were like two sentences about her in the whole game, but she's great. i could take or leave thiollier, on the one hand having a creep as a character is fine and hes written in a way that feels believably creepy while also like hes enough of a 3 dimensional character that he has his own personality and motivations, but him included with miquella being elected the president of incest for no reason was a bit of a sour note.

the idea that miquella is discarding his body, and every piece he discards is a piece that they may hate, but they also have to discard those pieces that he doesn't hate, and their power, and all that he is, that's a real sacrifice and i think it speaks to the depth their character COULD HAVE HAD. that and their very clear conflict with their own gender, and conflict with himself over his actions. they discarded the girl sleeping within them and locked her in a pit in the ground so that none would find her. and he discarded with her their love, and the "treacherous" parts of himself that doubted, and disagreed, and with this he was able to become more resolute on their path. trina disagrees entirely with miquella's path to godhood and begs you to kill him, pities him, says their path is destroying him, and those are all doubts he has discarded with her. it is genuinely sad to me that this is not the side of miquella that we get to enjoy as a character because of all of the rest of the mess that's thrown on top in the dlc.

and of course i'm mad because he's acting like marika, they're shaving off pieces of themself and sacrificing for ambition, and they're becoming her while he's intent on being the opposite of everything she stood for, and we were so close to having this. we were so close.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

so far as gameplay goes, i enjoyed this dlc and it did a good job of replicating that feeling of playing elden ring and exploring again in its condensed and familiar setting. i like a lot of their new mechanics and ideas they introduced, though some of the later bosses fumbled it for me balancing the difficulty with actually enjoyable boss fights that feel fun to play.

the main story pissed me off so bad i almost put down the dlc, and erased all excitement i had to play it (even keeping in mind the reservations i already had going in). the side stories were frustratingly fun and compelling when compared to the main story being such a trash fire. i wish things were different but they are not, and i am very disappointed.

if you actually read all of this bless you, i hope you have a beautiful day.

[pretentious-art-love]

Game Reviews #3 - Super Mario Sunshine

Angie's Review

Super Mario Sunshine represented a downgrade in almost every aspect from its predecessor. The missions resemble chores more instead of actual challenges and the platforms are either too easy (when they try to resemble real world places) or too tedious (when they add verticality).

Secret levels with no design were also added to try and balance the lack of challenge most of the missions have, and FLUDD as a mechanic, is under utilized. FLUDD offers opportunities to jump much higher, slide, and interact with the world in new ways. The concept is great, as it’s moving in the right direction to innovate platforming. However, most of the time, FLUDD is only used for hovering, which isn’t particularly exciting. It’s essentially a walking stick for platforms. As a weapon with its spray nozzle, FLUDD isn’t very efficient due to the third-person perspective. Other FLUDD nozzles have additional capabilities, but they are seldom if ever actually utilized.

At the end of the day the only call to fame Super Mario Sunshine can make is its commitment to immersion (yawn) since it is fully set in a Tropical World. When the biggest achievement of a game is commitment to something most players of the genre don't consider a deal breaker, you can easily consider most of the game pointless.

5/10

Lorraine's Review

The atmosphere in this game is so nice, I like how instead of desert level, snow level or whatever, we have all levels themes centered around the tropical island theme and that gives the game such a nice beautiful atmosphere! I think the only other 3D platformer I know that tries to make the game feel like an adventure is the first Crash Bandicoot, which gives you a bit of jungle theme and then you go up and up until Cortex's place, it was also very nice too.

Yeah it has bugs and difficulty spikes. I really dislike the Chucksters level, Angie says is the worst level in a Mario game ever and yes I think out of all the levels it is the most unfortunate one, without the mod this game would be a 6 for me because of this level. The Super Mario Sunburn mod (which included widescreen, 60 FPS, bug fixes, enhanced controls and a few more things) and Dolphin's state saves helped me a lot so I was able to beat the most hard parts without too much of a headache, I got like 73 shines, 8 thanks to 85 blue coins I found on my way, and most of them were fun because it was like having an adventure on a tropical island.

I would have liked to have the rocket and turbo nozzles more, like there is a level where you use the turbo nozzle to jump horizontally through crazy distances, that felt so kinetic and awesome and I said yes!! Give me more of that! But it never came... then we have the rocket nozzle which was super fun but it felt like they used only to give you access back to high platformers you fell from, which was sad, I wanted more kinetic and jumping and use the water, I wanted more. It also still annoys me I was unable to crawl or that I couldn't get on my knees to do a double jump without moving, but I loved hovering because it is the second closest thing to flying (the first being gliding) and I love flying.

My absolutely least favorite part of the game though, was bothering animals that were just chilling, it always made me want to cry. Did anyone notice that in Petey Piranha Strikes Back he is just chilling and we literally have to wake him up and jump in his stomach when he gets agitated? I always felt bad for the poor bloke, always sick and puking everywhere that sad fella.

Also let me say that for someone with verzephobia and stingray phobia like me The Manta Storm level was absolutely horrifying.

Overall I found it shorter than other 3D Mario games, but it was very nice to me, I'm gonna give it a 7.7 out of 10!

Also, the sound Toadsworth makes when you spray him with water is my favorite sound in the whole Mario franchise ever. Seriously.

[notajinn]

Top Games Played in 2024 - 1. Sonic X Shadow Generations (PS5)

Surprising absolutely no one who knows me, Sonic X Shadow Generations is my top game of the year.

The reasons are actually more complicated than "it's a Sonic game" though. In fact I'm not even accounting for the original Sonic Generations being one of my favourite games because I only played the Shadow story so far in this remake.

The Shadow section is genuinely that good.

What I Like

As someone who loved Sonic Frontiers, I love the way they adapted the "open zone" concept to a smaller scale. The area of the whole game is honestly smaller than any one island in Frontiers, but in exchange it's very dense. The white-space aesthetic of Sonic Generations makes the floating architecture more fitting than in Frontiers. There's enough to explore that I haven't found everything despite the small space, and most of it involves fun platforming. Some stuff is gated based on powers you've obtained so far.

Speaking of, the new abilities you get as Shadow are great from making the gameplay feel unique and not just "a Sonic game but with Shadow's character model". Most of them also involve momentum so that you still have the feel of a Sonic game. For example you can launch enemies into the air then away and Chaos Control teleport to where you launched them. So with good aim you can dispatch an enemy and shoot forward in the stage simultaneously. There's also a swinging mechanic which I always enjoy in games.

The stages themselves are much higher quality than the traditional stages in Frontiers. It helps that they're more unique even though they're based on stages from previous games. They are also much closer to Sonic Adventure 2 stages in length and design. There's alternate paths you can take and a little bit to explore if you want. They have enough "I clapped when I saw it" references to their original stages while having enough unique things to not feel like you're just treading old ground.

There are similar small mission stages required to unlock progression just like Generations, but they're all at worst "fine". And some of them are really fun. Importantly none of them are too long so even the "fine" ones are done with quickly.

Most of the bosses are also really fun to fight against, and they're all great on the spectacle side. They don't measure up to Frontier's bosses since you don't have anywhere near as many combat options, but they're still some of the best bosses in 3D Sonic.

The music shouldn't need to be mentioned; it is as incredible as you'd expect from a Sonic game.

The story isn't something I want to spoil, but I think the characterization of Shadow and the others is spot on. There's some comedic elements mixed in like Omega, but the stars are the more grounded Adventure-esque parts. It's a great foundation for Shadow moving forward.

What I Don't Like

On the PS5, the game starts in "quality mode" and runs at 30 FPS. It feels a LOT better once you switch it to "performance mode" so it goes 60 FPS and it still looks great. This default setting did make the first stage feel off for me since I didn't know about the settings yet, so that's a bummer.

One of the powers is just allowing you to travel on water. Unfortunately this power is also the focus of one of the boss fights that I was really looking forward to, so that ended up unremarkable for me.

The swinging power I mentioned has a mechanic where if you release the button when perpendicular to the sphere you're swinging on, you get a bit vertical jump straight up. However the game never tells you this. I didn't discover it until I was doing some of the later missions, required it to progress, and looked it up online. Sure would have been helpful to know before I had already finished all the stages!

Shadow's section also has the common 3D Sonic game problem of the final stage being a sharp difficulty spike over the rest of the game. Fortunately it's not as harsh as Cannon's Core in Adventure 2 or Eggmanland in Unleashed.

One extremely unusual thing is that this game has no set stage from Shadow the Hedgehog (2005). Black Doom is a major part of this game, so it's not like this game is afraid to reference 2005, so why not have a stage from the solo game Shadow has starred in? There are two stages that incorporate elements of 2005, but they are clearly much more Adventure 2 inspired. Instead there's a stage for Frontiers, a game Shadow wasn't in. Mind you I liked having the Frontiers aesthetic in the normal gameplay style, but 2005 would have been a better choice if those were the two options.

Final Thoughts

Between this and Sonic Frontiers, it's clear that 3D Sonic is in a great position. And with it being one of my favourite series, I'm excited to see what the next installment brings building off these two.

[cent-scratchnsniff]

Good luck with Library of Ruina! It's really fun and genuinely so nice to see the cast when they aren't at their absolute worst. I'm also not finished with the game yet (at the second to last difficulty level, I believe?), but I will say that it is like lobotomy corporation in which the difficulty spike is Vertical. I've played a ton of deckbuilders prior to it and there are still quite a few levels I've struggled horrifically with. Very different game from LC but so far every stupidly difficult fight has been worth it to see the cast get a chance to be people rather than actors.

Thank you so much for the wishing of luck!! It's very sweet of you!!! I am totally going to need it 💀💀. Ive heard that Lor difficulty spike is, infact, painful but to hear it from another who actually plays deckbuilders... Oh no. Oh dear. Im going to get my ass beat arent I. The challenge will be fun!! I like hating myself for stupidly stupid mistakes... it is my first deck builder game, though, so itll take AWHILE.

Onto story im loving to see them be free from that dogshit script too. Its so refreshing to see them all be themself!! To interact and talk and express things that aren't primarily centered around their pain and hurt!! Its amazing i keep getting so excited at the smallest of conversations

[skrimblo]

im fucking crying this is EXACTLY my first thoughts about limbus, somehow anime Gregor Samsa got me so intrigued that i played the game, spent 24 hours nonstop playing until i finished canto IV, read his actual book at school and then bought two more classic literatures (Pride and prejudice and wuthering heights) just because of limbus alone 😭😭😭

Not only that, the concept of "classic literature turned anime characters" goes WAAYYY DEEP in limbus. They actually twist the story and its narratives in such a skillful and respective way to it's original counterpart that the stories themselves arent just some kind of retelling/parallel to the original novels themselves, and not only that this isn't just in limbus alone, like they did this with Lobcorp and Library of ruina as well

They understand each character's source materials so well and incorporate them into their world building that you wouldn't even believe the characters came from classic lit, AND THEY'RE SO WELL WRITTEN TOO.

(also gregor in lcb is so fucking heartbreaking and we barely know jack shit about him because he was the first one who's story was explored, dude's arm was experimented on when he didn't ask for it by his own mother then became a child soldier for a war😭 AND HE HAD A SISTER, HAD, and they even turned the apple themes of the original book into something more sinister and fucked its insane)

anyways If youre reading this and think about playing limbus please do the writing is so well worth it, and plus Canto 6 (heathcliff earnshaw chapter) is next in the story so you might as well start now because the difficulty spike becomes very vertical from Canto 3

extra tidbit; in most gacha games girls are always eloquent and usually the serious ones whereas the boys are batshit insane, in lcb its the total opposite

(theyre all insane but with Dons disillusioned idea of fixers being heroes that she thinks herself as one and Ryoshu talking in abbreviations and love for art, that meaning violence, and Faust talking in 3rd person i think we know the real winners here. The boys are literally full of harbored depressed thoughts. This is why i love lcb)

i dont know anything about limbus company other than a 10 minute google search and i think its cool that an anime literature hell game exists but i am obsessed- OBSESSED- with the fact that they made gregor samsa hot and then just gave him a single really cool murder bug arm as if thats somehow disgusting instead of being metal af. If i saw a guy who looked like that id be like ‘AWESOME bug arm bro can i take a picture’ and then hed probably kill a bunch of monsters with his cool bug arm. This is supposed to be Gregor samsa. The guy from the story thats all about being transformed into an unrecognizable useless hideous monster and struggling with everyone becoming disgusted with him. I cant get over how funny it is to me. any limbus company fans who see this please tell me all about anime gregor samsa i need to know more.

[calliecod]

making the tutorial level, explaining the actual concept of the game, CubeDocks (TM) and the design overhaul

Before I go into making the tutorial, I should probably explain some more specifics of how my game and its puzzles work. The main deviation from the portal-esque (with no portals) puzzle platformer I'm making is that you only get one cube (the titular Charlene) with which to solve puzzles, and a great deal of the gameplay revolves around figuring out how to keep bringing her with you as you both progress through the level. Due to this style of gameplay, having a single spawn-point for Charlene at the start of the level became very inconvenient, and thus both to expand the gameplay and add more ease of use, I had to create checkpoints for Charlene, which I have dubbed "CubeDocks (TM)".

These work just like regular checkpoints, except they only work for Charlene. I was at one point thinking of having the original Player-only checkpoints work for both the player and Charlene, but I decided to keep them separate as splitting up both checkpoints in a puzzle every now and then could lead to much more interesting gameplay opportunities. With this out of the way, we can now move on to explaining the tutorial level I created.

The first puzzle gives you a basic introduction to Charlene and you use her to open a door. To introduce the idea of bringing her with you, I created a hole in the wall with the modelling tools which you can grab her through. This is a staple in the tutorial level, but in later levels there will be more complex ways to do this.

The second puzzle gives an tutorial on Checkpoints and CubeDocks (TM), and a brief intro to platforms, which you can cross the gap with to get to the door, which uses the same puzzle again. I am worried there's slightly too much reading in the tutorial, especially for this puzzle, but I'll have to live with it.

The next puzzle properly introduces using buttons to activate platforms, as well as vertical and sideways platforms. this is the first real difficulty spike as the puzzle is a bit more complex. You have to use Charlene to activate a platform to move you across, then you wait for the platform to move back, then activate the sideways platform to push Charlene onto the first platform and use another button to move her over to you so you can use the door to move on. This had some potential for softlocking the plyer, which required adding a one way walkway back across to fix.

After this is an introduction to Jump pads, which you need to use a series of to cross the gap safely. This Puzzle would be simple, but the jump pads are a little finnicky, so it may need some tuning.

The last puzzle of the tutorial brings all the mechanics so far together into one larger complex puzzle. The Player has to use jump pads to reach a higher area where most of the puzzle is located. Once there, Charlene needs to be positioned on an automatic platform that pushes her against a button which regularly activates another platform for the player to use. once across the gap, the player has to time a thinner platform to slide between Charlene and her platform to scoop her up and bring her to the player, finishing up with a risky jump down to the door to the exit area. I'm quite proud of this puzzle, but I'm not a big fan of the necessary existence of the thin platform, and I'm currently trying to find alternate ways to move Charlene besides gravity and platforms to use in later levels. There is unfortunately 1 or 2 ways to softlock yourself on this puzzle still, but that could easily be fixed.

with discussing the bulk of my work on the tutorial out of the way, it's also worth going over the design overhaul I gave to most of the complex blueprints and objects around this point to make them more obvious and interesting to look at.

The most important changes that affect gameplay beyond aesthetics are the buttons now being colour-coded (pink is for doors, silver is for platforms), CubeDocks (TM) having the heart icon with a hex to distinguish from Checkpoints and the Platforms now having a pink bevel to single them out from the walls and floor. overall I'm really quite proud of my first proper puzzle gameplay section I've made in Unreal, and very excited to keep moving foward to Level 2!

[taoistyuri]

despite lor being the more popular game, i think that lobcorp is more easily palatable for general audiences. it has its...many mechanical flaws, yes, the most important ones being poor optimization and overall rough start of a lengthy tutorial. but, compare it to lor. one of lors biggest flaws is that, the world is so bleak someone may simply not want to continue, since it seems like everything just sucks all the time. ive actually talked about this flaw before so i dont wanna repeat myself. also, there is a vertical difficulty spike.

in lc tho, you can get attached to characters, and those characters are there the entire game. you see them every day. you learn more about them every day.

speaking of lc though, i wish that the sequence of core suppression cutscenes was done like in the somethingawful text LP of it, where he choose to save the day 24 robot reveal for when the core suppression scenes would come. it simply makes more sense for what is clearly supposed to be the OMG ROBOTS reveal to come before the game giving you the robot reveal before it even comes up in the story

oh lobby...i miss you, i miss yoy my dear....but i dont even remember, if i still have the kaizo mod installed right now. i would love to make a lp of lobcorp. theres only one day i would cheat on, and only one fight i would cheat on, i promise.....

[oroborosdreadwalker]

Oh no im speaking my mind on what I like and dont like about every soulsborne game,

Demon Souls: The OG and the formula that would be followed for games to follow, only real bad thing i have to say is I havent had a chance to actually play it yet, but I do watch people play it all the time and like what I see. Want to play it soon when i get the chance

Dark Souls: An improvement with a more open feeling to the world and what I would say is a deeper lore, and home to many many memes, only gripe I have with it is the lack of diversity in builds as i feel the game is very tailored to strength/faith builds

Darksouls 2: Not as bad as people say i enjoy both the good and bad that people say, yes it feels a little empty but I feel like it diversified builds more making more playstyles viable only real bad thin i have to say is the EXTREAM difficulty spike in the DLC i feel the game progresses good with its difficulty but the DLC feels like trying to climb a completely smooth and vertical cliff with only a dinner fork

Dark souls 3: babies first Dark Souls, by far the easiest i feel, not that its a bad thing the build diversiry goes back to favoring strength builds but adds in the power of bleed builds, only problem i find is it doesnt feel like it gets harder until the DLC and at that point you expect it to be as easy as the rest if the game.

Bloodborne: my favorite, fluid combat the rally feature is something i wish they kept, love the ascetic, love the fashion, love the weapons, love the bosses(minus one reborn) love the story, only issue i have is its too fucking short, give us Bloodborne 2 Fromsoft stop denying us our return to Yharnam!

Sekiro: not my favorite, but I still enjoy it. Definitely a departure from thenhyoer aggressive style gameplay from other souls games focusing more on defence and deflecting blows, posture damage being more important than main damage, only real diversity is whichever shinobi tool you enjoy more

Elden Ring: take everything good(minus rally and the night progression) from the other games add true open world, weapon varity, more viable builds and multiple endings and you have what id argue is a close to perfect game, only issue I have is lack of true covenants where you are rewarded for engaging with your covenant, only two really exist and they both are invasion based, with no rewards for invading real players other than access to the mohgwyn palace early

[thecreaturecodex]

Zaarg

Image accessed at Club Des Monstres here

[I have not seen Warlords of Atlantis, but it looks very strange. It’s basically a bootleg version of the Doug McClure Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations, like At the Earth’s Core or Land that Time Forgot. Different studio, no source novel, but similar lost-world-with-monsters vibe. And Warlords of Atlantis has got lots of monsters! A plesiosaur, a giant octopus, killer coelocanths, and two wholly original critters, of which the zaargs are one.]

Zaarg CR 10 N Magical Beast This wide, heavy set creature looks like an immense turtle made of stone. It has a tail ending in a spiked ball, and has large tusks protruding from the corners of its mouth.

Zaargs are enormous creatures bearing a resemblance to great, rock-shelled turtles. They are slow and steady, and difficult to deter once they have made up their mind on a course of attack. A zaarg can climb even sheer surfaces with ease, and they use this ability to scale vertical cliffs and walls in pursuit of prey. Zaargs are nomadic creatures, and may visit the same castle as a part of its foraging route, climbing up to eat a defender or two like a bear raiding a beehive. Zaargs do not bother with stealth, and can be surprisingly noisy. They yowl like wild cats.

A zaarg is an omnivore, but they prefer meat if they can get it. They often grind up rocks and swallow them, incorporating bits of stone into their shells, claws, teeth and even digestive tract. They are irritable between each other, but have difficulty in actually doing any permanent physical damage; thus fights between zaargs are more prolonged wrestling contests that end with one party retreating rather than battles to the death.

Zaarg     CR 10 XP 9,600 N Gargantuan magical beast (earth) Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, Perception +9 Defense AC 26, touch 5, flat-footed 26 (-4 size, -1 Dex, +21 natural) hp 125 (10d10+70) Fort +14, Ref +6, Will +6 DR 10/adamantine; Resist cold 20, electricity 20, fire 20 Defensive Abilities stalwart Offense Speed 30 ft., climb 20 ft. Melee bite +12 (2d6+6 plus grab), 2 claws +12 (1d8+6), tail slap +10 (2d8+9 plus stun) Space 20 ft.; Reach 15 ft. Special Attacks powerful blows (tail slap), swallow whole (AC 25, 24 hp, 2d6+9 bludgeoning) Statistics Str 23, Dex 8, Con 25, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 9 Base Atk +10; CMB +20 (+22 bull rush, +24 grapple); CMD 29 (31 vs. bull rush) Feats Improved Bull Rush, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Multiattack, Power Attack Skills Climb +30, Perception +9; Racial Modifiers +16 Climb SQ armored stomach, spider climb Ecology Environment any mountains and underground Organization solitary, pair or dole (3-6) Treasure none Special Abilities Armored Stomach (Ex) A zaarg’s stomach gains a +4 bonus to its AC and has double the normal hit points when determining the success of a creature trying to cut its way free. Spider Climb (Su) A zaarg is treated as being under the effects of a spider climb spell as a supernatural ability. Stalwart (Ex) If a zaarg makes a Fortitude or Will saving throw against a spell or effect that has a reduced effect on a successful save, it instead avoids the effect entirely. A helpless zaarg cannot use this ability. Stun (Ex) A creature struck by a zarrg’s tail slap must succeed a DC 21 Fortitude save or be stunned for 1 round. The save DC is Strength based.

[lessthanagodmorethanaman]

BAH!

Working in a visual medium is such a headache. Let me tell you about it! I’m stuck on a problem I need to solve, so taking a moment to put my thoughts down will help.

You think comedy is the easy way out? WRONG! It’s hard, bitterly so! Easier to do dark, meandering meditations on mortality, you never have to have any answers then. Comedy is hard- every page has to do the heavy lifting of propelling something forward, and also crack a joke.

Then you add in the difficulty of working visually. Take page five of this current arc- need to move the action back to the unicorns, normally I’d start with a dramatic image of their fortress with lightning, always got to have lightning. Plus, rain is piss easy and looks good. But there’s no space for that, this page has a lot to do. How do we move back to them? Easy- Smetterling arrives with sandwiches, thus demonstrating that they are in the middle of something, and we’re back in the castle.

The unicorns are watching what’s going on- that’s good, makes them part of events. But how? Ah yes, awesome bubbly cauldron viewer, classic, Time Bandits, can’t go wrong. That means we have to actually look into the thing to demonstrate what is happening- tricky, more page real-estate being taken up, but it’s worth it because it links them to the real action going on, plus a little exposition from Pixiepouf and we now know that there’s a fortress atop the volcano. Perfect.

We have a view from a distance, but need to establish that there’s a big huge door in the way of our heroes. There’s no room to draw in a distance shot though, how to do it? Aha- hand knocks on door, spikes on door visible next to hand, next shot shows the door with multiple spikes in perspective. Now the viewer has an idea of the scale involved, and it didn’t take much room.

That’s just about left enough room for the joke- I love Hercules, any time that damn cat can turn up and do something riotous is gold. So he’s going to knock that door down, but any explosion needs three parts- before, the big bang, and the aftermath. Okay, I have enough room for that. Trouble is, it means that there must be two shots in the same spot, one showing the interior, one showing the explosion.

Two shots like that are a killer, it’s a nightmare getting it right, but they make for excellent comedy timing. So, how to reduce the work load? Simple, shot one has lots of vertical and horizontal lines, simple and easy to reproduce. The actual monsters only need to appear once, so I can afford to take some time on them. A lot of detail there will hide the limited background detail showing. Besides, the second shot is mostly smoke and smoke is our friend- it’s easy to draw and covers a lot of messy detail.

Then a punchline- “the cat wants letting in,” love it. Cats always want to either enter or exit a location, oh Hercules you scamp, got to put that in there. But need to give Denise a line too, she’s a very taciturn character so it’s important to give her something to do or she’ll just want to stand there glaring. Give her a line too. More smoke, easy shot.

Finally we need to see Hercules atop his howitzer. Howitzer is a naturally funny word, always add a howitzer. Should the unicorns say something like “they’d need a howitzer to bring that down!!” to set it up? No, too on-the-nose. Besides I spent a good bloody while on that cauldron viewer, don’t want to cover it up.

Finally give the narrator a punchline- love that narrator, what a strong and sterling presence, oh how the narrator is beloved. Can’t get “kitty kitty bang bang” out of my head. Will the Kids Nowadays even get the reference to a sixties musical? Don’t overthink it, Dick Van Dyke is a treasure and there’s no denying it.

All that just to get across the idea that 1) there’s a fortress now 2) the heroes are assaulting it and 3) the unicorns are involved. Took three evenings to iron all that out! Need to cut down on the whiskey and Fernet-Branca cocktails. No, too delicious, need the go-go juice.

Now I just need to solve my next problem- what’s the funniest over-the-top thing Denise could do with her magic- need to give her a Moment, can feel some comedy in it. Maybe something with snakes? 

[chigau-mirai]

Mega Man 2 Robot Master stages, ranked from easiest to hardest

8. Crash Man - This is, by far, the easiest. If you know what you're doing, you will never die here. There are a couple of annoying enemies but no major threats, and a lack of spikes or pits makes actually messing up easy to recover from. Crash Man himself ... is a kind of a joke. It is very easy to get him stuck in a loop. 7. Metal Man - Easiest of the actual tricky stages. You just need to go through here patiently. The corridor with the drills is annoying, but not too tricky to get through. Metal Man, like Crash Man, only attacks when you do, but with more attack patterns he's a little bit harder. 6. Wood Man - His stage has almost no tricky platforming and is almost exclusively enemy challenges - enemy challenges that aren't all that difficult once you learn the patterns. Wood Man himself, though, almost single-handedly ramps up the difficulty. It's a little difficult to dodge his shield while also avoiding the falling leaves. 5. Air Man - While large parts of the stage take place over bottomless pits, you just need patience and you'll be fine. The birds are a bit of an issue, but they only come out at set intervals. Air Man isn't too hard, but his shots do occasionally come out in undodgeable patterns. 4. Flash Man - His stage is covered in some sort of slippery material (ice?) which makes it so you sometimes slide into enemy fire, plus there are a fair few Sniper Armours which can be annoying to deal with. Part of it is set up like a maze, though, so it is possible to avoid some of the trickier parts. Flash Man himself, I'm a little bad at dealing with, but he basically sticks to a pattern. 3. Heat Man - Dealing with constantly spawning enemies over instant death traps can be bad for the nerves, but they move slowly and it's clearly shown where they'll spawn. The disappearing blocks can maybe be a little tricky, but they always come out in the same pattern. As for Heat Man himself ... it's a repeat of Crash Man. You can get him stuck doing the fire dash attack until he dies. 2. Bubble Man - There's a lot of pits at the beginning and end, and in the middle you have rooms full of water with spikes on the ceiling and enemies whose weak points are too low to hit from the ground. You need to jump high enough to hit them, but not so high you kill yourself. Bubble Man himself though is not the hardest, even despite the spiked ceiling. 1. Quick Man - Most of this stage is a vertical drop through instant death lasers. One of the parts that is not features Sniper Armours. On the second drop through the lasers, you must react quickly and know exactly where to go; there is virtually no room for error. The boss fight with Quick Man is incredibly hard to predict (apparently on account of glitchy AI), and can easily kill you. Definitely the hardest.

[videogametim]

My Top 10 Games of 2019

It was pretty hard to narrow down the list this year. 2019 was a lot stronger for video games than 2018 and I feel a LOT more confidant about my picks and GOTY choice. In addition, there were also a lot of indie games not mentioned here that I think I will highlight in another post a bit later. For now, here’s the Top 10.

10. Sayonara Wild Hearts (Simogo)

Sayonara Wild Hearts is something special. Although clocking in rather short at just under an hour long, I would best describe the game as an Album Video Game. Each of the game’s 23 or so levels has its own song. The actual gameplay consists of mostly on-rails segments where you have basic movement and avoid obstacles and collect pickups to boost your score, but every level has a unique take on that concept with major climax levels being full tracks with vocals. It’s incredibly stylistic and tells a heartwarming story about dealing with heartbreak. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys musical games.

9. Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Intelligent Systems)

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the first game in the series that managed to grab me. It’s a very competent tactical RPG with one of my favourite casts of characters this year (especially the Black Eagles house). I was consistently impressed the most with just the sheer amount of content and detail that went into it. An unnecessarily large amount of the dialogue is voiced, the second half of each of the three selectable house’s routes are totally unique, and each route takes around 60 hours to complete. I really never thought a Fire Emblem game would be my new most played game on the Switch by a mile but here we are. 

8. AI: The Somnium Files (Spike Chunsoft)

Kotaro Uchikoshi’s (creator of the Zero Escape trilogy) latest work might be his finest. AI: The Somnium Files is the game on the list this year with the most heart put into it. Consistently funny and over-the-top, a wonderful cast, and a really well executed sci-fi murder mystery. It makes me hope that Uchikoshi continues to make the kinds of games he wants to make, because you can definitely tell he had the most fun making this one.

7. Resident Evil 2 (Capcom)

Resident Evil 2 is the new gold standard for game remakes. I could go on and on praising it for how good it feels to play, the sound design, and the painstaking detail of recreating the original game from the ground up to be a third-person shooter. Quality of Life changes like the map marking items and telling you when a room is cleared and telling you when it’s okay to throw away key items are such fantastic additions. It gives me really high hopes for the RE3 Remake next year. Capcom’s hotstreak continues.

6. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (From Software)

Sekiro rightfully earns its spot as my second favourite FromSoft game. The Souls formula is still there, but the gameplay is fairly different now. Taking Bloodborne’s aggressiveness encouragement another step forward, Sekiro rewards not giving the enemies a chance to breathe more than ever. Boss battles are a tug-of-war of trying to break each other’s posture and perfect blocking to mitigate it. The dodge button pushes you forward by default and you often hope to have your attack blocked more than a it be a direct hit. Some of my favourite FromSoft bosses reside in this game with the final boss perhaps being my favourite overall. Level design is also at its best with the game finally giving you a greater range of movement and verticality with jumping and grappling. There’s even decent stealth mechanics. Sekiro was a really pleasant surprise and I hope they continue The Wolf’s story.

5. Judgement (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio)

Judgement is a Yakuza game in all but name, and RGG Studio’s first one set in Kamurocho without Kiryu as the main character. After giving up being an attorney, Takayuki Yagami becomes a freelance detective and investigates a series of murders in the city with the help of his former law office and ex-Tojo clan friend Masaharu Kaito. Substories are framed as side cases that Yagami can take on to earn some extra money, and new mini-games like drone racing and the Paradise VR board game are incredible additions. Anyone who is a fan of the Yakuza series should really check this out, and newcomers can jump right in without prior knowledge. 

4. Disco Elysium (ZA/UM)

Disco Elysium has some of the best writing I have ever seen in a video game. As an amnesiac detective, you explore the rundown post-wartime district of Martinnaise trying to find who was behind the lynching of a mercenary before the situation gets out of control. What sets Disco Elysium apart from other RPGs in terms of gameplay is its character builds. As there is no combat, the 24 skills that you can put points into when you level up are all social skills. The higher you have various skills leveled, the more you will hear advice from them during conversation trees. A high Authority level will constantly remind you to tell people you are The Law, where a high level in Inland Empire will let you talk to inanimate objects to gain new perspectives. I also feel I have to give a nod to your partner throughout the game, Kim Kitsuragi. I’d rather not give anything away but they could not have written a better character to support you throughout your journey. I’ll likely be thinking about this game for a very long time.

3. Control (Remedy Entertainment)

I think Control flew under a lot of people’s radars until the publicity from the overwhelming number of Game Awards nominations. Control is a game for people who like SCP, psychokinesis powers, cool architecture, and a bit of Alan Wake. It wears its inspirations very blatantly on its sleeve and wraps a very cool story and even better side quests around them. It’s very stylish and has phenomenal lighting. Perhaps this is my Remedy bias but I really really adored this game and featured the coolest moment of the year for me. Please check it out if you get the opportunity.

2. Kingdom Hearts III (Square Enix)

Kingdom Hearts III has been a long time coming and what I think it nails best are the size and scale of the worlds. Olympus is the best its ever been with how much of the area outside the Colosseum you get to explore. The Caribbean is more expansive with boat combat that’s better than it has any right to be. Monstropolis has a great original story with some incredible tie-ins to the Kingdom Hearts plot. There’s a ton of incredible fanservice moments too for everyone waiting to see their favourite characters again. I still think a lot of it is really hype albeit cheesy, and it finally puts to rest an arc that has been going since the very first game. Kingdom Hearts isn’t over, but KHIII wraps a lot of things up in as satisfying of a way as they could for a story so expansive and often times convoluted. It’s very rare when a game that has been anticipated for so long not only doesn’t fumble it, but delivers on what I had hoped for, so I’m really glad it got to finally release this year.

1. Devil May Cry 5 (Capcom)

Speaking of games that I’ve been waiting a very long time for, DMC IS BACK! Every moment of DMC5 is a treat. Dante and Nero are at their most fun to play in this game, and V is a very cool addition both story-wise and gameplay-wise.This is the game from this year that I’ve kept going back to the most whether it’s for getting good at harder difficulties, or playing through bloody palace until floor 70 and give up ,or practicing with different weapons. It makes me happy to know that Platinum haven’t just been relegated to being the character action studio and that Hideaki Itsuno’s still got it. There’s no question that this is my Game of the Year and anyone who loves action games but hasn’t ever jumped into this series really needs to address that because DMC5 alone is worth it. 

That’s all for my GOTY 2019 Top 10. If you’ve read this far, thanks for doing so. I really enjoy writing these and there’s a lot to look forward to in video games next March year, so please join me again next time when we can do this all over again!

[gameplayandtalk]

How to Beat the Bosses of Castlevania

This is Castlevania. Often looked upon fondly for its classic horror theme, enjoyable gameplay and memorable soundtrack, it’s a game that continues to stand tall among its peers from the eight-bit era. It’s also sometimes known for another thing: its difficulty. Not only do its stages feature dangerous, tense situations, but they often culminate in some of the most stress-inducing boss battles of the era. The goal of this article (and complementary video) is to help players with these specific parts--the bosses of Castlevania.

Make no mistake, Castlevania is a difficult game, but new players may not be aware of specific strategies that can make its boss encounters significantly easier. If you’ve never beaten the game and struggle with many of these fights, you'll find lots of useful strategies here to help you succeed on your journey. For more intermediate players that are comfortable enough with the game but haven’t played in a while, stick around for a refresher, along with new strategies you may not be familiar with. Even expert players may find some useful bits of information here.

So with that, let’s take a look at the various strategies, one boss at a time.

Stage 1 - The Bat

Castlevania’s first boss is typically a pushover even for first-time players, but it’s still enjoyable diving into the various ways of defeating it. The most obvious way to deal damage here is to wield the axe, dropped right before the boss fight. It covers a lot of horizontal and vertical screen space and it helps to deal with the bat’s tendency to stay higher up on the screen. Just remember to attack the rightmost block at the start of the fight to pick up the double-shot, a power-up that lets you throw two axes back to back.

A more advanced strategy is to use the stopwatch. This item can be handy at many different points in Castlevania, but it’s particularly useful on the first two bosses where it can freeze them in place. You have to ensure the bat is low and close enough to make this work, but with properly timed uses, you can keep the boss locked into place for the entire fight. Constantly mash up and attack during the freeze time to ensure you use the watch again the moment it becomes available, keeping the bat frozen in place.

Going beyond the watch is the fire bomb, or holy water as it’s known in later games. This requires placement somewhere on the rightmost platforms, but with the bat’s tendency to dive towards the player, dishing out damage is actually pretty consistent and easy to pull off. With the double-shot in hand you can keep the boss stun-locked for the entire fight.

Fighting this boss whip-only, or even with just the dagger in hand, requires you to play more conservatively. Wait for the bat to get near the middle of the screen and perform a forward jumping attack from the rightmost platforms. Constantly keep an eye out for the bat’s positioning, as you do not want to be jumping in its direction as it dives towards you.

Stage 2 - Queen Medusa

Medusa is another fight first time players typically don’t have issue with. Even if a player dies here, the holy water and double-shot are available in the lead-up to the fight, allowing the player to be upgraded enough to make this boss a breeze even on a failed first attempt. Simply drop holy water where the boss appears and watch its health deplete rapidly.

If you manage to make it to the boss with the watch, you can also keep medusa locked for the entire fight. Unfortunately, this is the last time in the game the stop watch is useful against a boss, so enjoy it while it lasts.

The difficulty of this encounter ramps up significantly if you decide to use more conventional methods, requiring you to know the flow of the battle. At the start of the fight, immediately book it to the rightmost platform. As medusa gets close, jump over to the left. Deal with any snakes by standing and whipping--there’s no need to duck thanks to the morning star’s large hitbox. Medusa also likes to hover at one of two levels near the bottom of the screen. At its lowest point you can jump over it, so watch it closely and as it approaches, jump back over once again.

The boomerang is by far the most useful of the traditional projectile weapons here, but each weapon still requires you to follow the initial pattern closely if you want to finish the fight while taking minimal damage.

Stage 3 - The Mummies

The mummies lay host to an interesting fight that I find many people make more difficult on themselves than necessary. While the left and right movement of the boss is erratic and their projectiles can be tough to deal with, there’s actually no reason to fight them head on. At the start of the fight, simply jump back on the platforms you came from and whack them in the head with the morning star, taking advantage of its massive hitbox. You will have to occasionally jump up further to avoid being touched by either mummies' head, but just wait for them to walk back over to the right and begin attacking them again.

Of course, if you have made it here with the holy water, the fight is made even easier. Simply drop these projectiles from the upper platforms and quickly call it a day.

If for some reason you grab the hidden health here and can’t get back up top, the boomerang is the best way to deal with these guys face to face. This is especially true if you can manage to get to one side or the other rather than being pinned in the middle.

Neither the stopwatch, axe or dagger are particularly useful here, so don’t bother.

Stage 4 - Frankenstein & Igor

Stage 4 in general along with Frankenstein & Igor is where the game really sees a considerable difficulty spike. One of the reasons for this is thanks in part to something I haven’t touched on yet: The dreaded Game Over screen. At any point you lose all of your lives, you get sent back to the very beginning of the stage. This is the most frustrating on Stage 4 where the trek to the boss is littered with loads of death-ridden water pits, surprise merman and bats that can knock you off platforms and ledges. All this culminates in one of the most difficult bosses in the game, and it’s often times here that players give up.

There isn’t a single surefire “easy” strategy to this fight, but your best bet is making it to the boss with the holy water in hand. Drop it on Frankenstein as soon as the fight starts while whipping in between to do maximum damage. If you miss or don’t get the timing right, Frankenstein will begin moving and Igor will bounce around the arena. The enemy health bar is depleted by hitting Frankenstein himself, but Igor can also be stunned by attacking him. Note that Igor cannot be hit again until his stun period ends, forcing you to time your attacks on him appropriately.

If you die at this fight without receiving a game over, your only recourse is to tackle it with the dagger, the only sub-weapon to appear at this checkpoint. While the dagger allows you to keep distance, it’s actually more effective to stay closer to Frankenstein, whipping him aggressively while also watching Igor’s jumps and projectiles. You will need to have some fancy footwork here to get through the fight, but if you can do it, it’s pretty satisfying.

You’re unlikely to get to Frankenstein & Igor with a boomerang or axe, as neither weapon appears in this level normally. However, you can occasionally get them as random drops. If you find yourself here with either of them, they can both be pretty useful by letting you keep a distance, deal with Igor’s projectiles and keep him stunned more often than not. The boomerang in particular seems to do big damage when used properly and is the easiest of the traditional three projectiles to use here.

Stage 5 - The Grim Reaper

Easily the most difficult battle in Castlevania, Stage 5’s Grim Reaper is an unpredictable and erratic fight. Preceded by one of the most infamous hallways in all of classic gaming, players will often times find themselves shaken up before they even make it to the boss. The fortunate thing is that you can simply use the holy water to breeze past this boss. Drop it on the rightmost platform at the start of the fight and continue to do so until the boss is defeated. If for some reason you die, upon receiving a game over there will be a holy water drop from a candle in the very first room of this stage.

Fighting this boss with any other weapon combination is where things start to go downhill. Death is massive and likes to fly around the screen in a fairly inconsistent manner. Sickles also appear at various locations, often times specifically targeting the player. While attacking death is an obvious goal, it’s usually best to focus on getting rid of the sickles first, otherwise they will stack in numbers and become too overwhelming.

The dagger isn’t the most useful at this fight and is generally best avoided here, but both the boomerang and axe are a step up when paired with a double or triple shot. The boomerang in particular is great for doing multiple hits with one shot while also clearing out some sickles in the process.

Ultimately this fight is all about multi-tasking. You have to focus not just on Death’s trajectory, but where the sickles appear and the direction they are moving as well. Keep in mind that if you are playing an early version of Castlevania, the game can crash if too much is happening on screen at once. This is most-likely to occur at the Grim Reaper with a triple-shot boomerang setup. It actually happened to me multiple times in my practice sessions for this article and video.

Stage 6 - The Count

Castlevania’s finale features the most lengthy boss fight in the entire game. While I don’t consider it to be as outright challenging as Frankenstein or the Grim Reaper, it does end up being the greatest test of endurance compared to any other fight in the game. The pressure to succeed isn’t quite as great either, thanks to this being the only part of the game where receiving a game over doesn’t send you all the way back to the beginning of the stage. Instead, you respawn at the bottom of Dracula’s stairwell.

The fight with Count Dracula comes in two phases. In the first phase he appears in vampire form and teleports around the screen at random. When he momentarily appears he will quickly shoot a spread of projectiles towards the player before disappearing once again. In this phase his head is the only weak spot and the window of opportunity to hit is small.

Dracula’s teleportation is completely random and so it’s important to remain in constant motion during this fight. His fireballs can also track the player in the air, so it’s best to stand on the ground, wait for the fireballs to appear horizontally, then jump and attack. Being moderately close to Dracula when he appears will help you successfully clear the fireballs while also making contact with the whip. If Dracula appears too far away and you think you may not be able to jump over his fireballs, you can destroy them with your whip or boomerang.

Dracula’s first phase can be tedious, but it’s possible to speed up the process by timing two attacks back to back. It’s difficult to get consistently due to Dracula’s erratic teleportation, but with the boomerang you can often get some extra hits on top. Other sub-weapons aren’t particularly useful on this first phase, nor are you likely to have them for this fight, so it’s best to stick a basic whip and/or boomerang strategy here.

..But Wait, There’s More.

Phase 2 sees Dracula turn into beast form. In this phase, it hops from one side of the screen to the other, while occasionally lifting its arms to throw projectiles your way. Its projectiles fire out in a similar spread pattern as his first form, and if timed properly, they can be destroyed with a single attack. Its short jumps can’t be passed under, but occasionally it will soar high into the air. When timed right you can pass under this safely. Interestingly, it’s actually possible to trigger this high jump by simply ducking in front. It’s important to utilize this trick during those instances where you are completely cornered and are bound to take damage.

While the boomerang is useful against Dracula’s first form, the holy water available in the far left candle proves most useful during his second form. This will stun the beast in place for a short moment, allowing you to attack his weak spot--his head--rapidly.

If you die at this fight you won’t have many hearts to work with upon revival. A good trick to take advantage of here is walking up and down the stairs repeatedly. Each time you do so the candles on the upper floor reappear, allowing you to gain more ammunition for this fight. Don’t worry about the timer, as the game gives you plenty to work with on this fight.

It’s also possible to make a double or triple-shot appear by destroying Dracula’s fireballs as long as you have enough hearts in your inventory. This can make life a lot easier on the second form where you can keep Dracula completely stun-locked for the entire fight.

Finale

So with that, you should now have a good (or better) idea on how to take out the bosses of the original Castlevania. If you found it useful in any way, please help spread the word and share it with other like-minded classic gaming fans that may be struggling with the game.

For those that need more of a visual aid to go along with this text, check out the video version of this guide, here: