#from my understanding elden ring is kinda similar?

[waywardsalt]

tag rant but man i fuckin hate the new direction for loz

[cells-n-stuff]

Let's talk elden ring lore.

Theories about Shabriri and the frenzied flame.

So something l've noticed and been thinking about is the potential similarities or comparisons of Shabriri and the abrahamic Lucifer.

Stay with me, I swear it makes a little bit of sense!

So, in abrahamic religions, it is often mistakenly said that Satan's angelic name is Lucifer. Which, surprise, originated from a translation difference. When actuality, Lucifer

is more of a title rather than a name. The best translation is "light-bringer" in latin. Which was translated from the Hebrew word Helel, which again has different translations, one being "to howl"

Like the howl of Shabriri.

Also, Hyetta's title is "lightseeker Hyetta". Light-bringer and light-seeker.

Anyways, so what if Shabriri is not a name but more of a title. It's not one guy named Shabriri, but a title granted by the frenzied flames to those who personifies chaos. I do know that Shabriri is a demon (of blindness) in Jewish mythology, but stay with me. Since the elden ring lore doesn't really match with the Jewish interpretation (at least from my understanding, if anyone knows more, I would like to read it!), and it seems like they just share a name based in the blindness and eyes thing.

Another comparison between the story of Satan and Shabriri is that they are essentially the big, bad, evil guy to their respective religions. In the mythos of the golden order, Shabriri was a liar who had his eyes gouge out for his crime, and with that, the 'evil' frenzied flame was created. Just like everything 'evil' is created by Satan. Not the gods or followers' fault, but one person that every sin can be blamed on. Also, both are a creation of their respective deities.

Final thought about my conspiracy theory is about the similarities between Hyetta and Eve. Eve is tempted by Satan to eat a forbidden fruit. He did so in 3 ways, attacking gods' wisdom, words, and character before Eve ate the fruit.

For us to get the frenzied flame ending, (*To finishe Hyetta's quest), we have to feed Hyetta 3 "grapes" and finally the fingerprint grape to finish it off.

Not to mention that to cleanse the lands between, it the frenzied FLAME, and in the bible mentions a few times the the earth will be cleansed by fire.

There it is, and thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Note: I'm not a theist, nor am I in any way rligious, just someone who had to study the bible as a kid so if anyone has corrections or anything to add, I am excited to read it!

Also, this is all in good fun. We all know that soulsborne lore is convoluted, and most of the time, it is left up to interpretation

*Amendment: you don't have to complete Hyetta's quest to get the FF ending, but I am kinda judging you if you don't.

[hyah-through-hyrule]

I think I figured out why I keep coming back to botw. The way it constructs it's open world is honestly brilliant. I've played a lot of other open world games since botw's release; various assassin's creeds, horizon zero dawn/ forbidden west, stuff like that. And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed playing those games too. But I noticed it got tedious and lost my interest after a while. And honestly, a lot of it has to do with how the maps work. In botw, when you unlock a portion of the map, it doesn't show you the location of anything. Not even the stables show up on the map unless you walk in close proximity to one.

Other open worlds neglect to do this. In other games, locations of things like collectables/boss fights/etc is revealed to you on the map. In botw, they use visual cues to get you to go to a location, whether it's the orange glow of a shrine, rocks formed in a specific way, ruins, etc. What I love about it is you can opt in to have help if you want (sheikah shrine sensor, korok mask, etc), rather than having it automatically unlock for you. Being able to put your own map markers is great too, i wish more games would utilize that feature.

Curious to see if anyone feels the same way, or if you have other opinions!

[dumbfinntales]

So today I finished Nioh 2 and I’m honestly speechless. Although Nioh 2 is very similar to the first game, so much so that you can jokingly call it the worlds biggest expansion pack. But it’s a sequel that outdoes EVERYTHING the first game did and addresses almost every single complaint I had. With Nioh 2 it felt like Team Ninja went: “Alright, let’s do Nioh again. But better”. And that’s what they fucking did. Nioh 1 was already one of my favorite games of 2017 so put that into perspective.

The first thing that stood out. Character creation. As much as I liked William-dono I will always prefer a custom made character in an RPG. Getting to personalize your own yokai slaying samurai is the best thing especially when the character creator is so good. You can create very unique looking characters. I’m just sad you can’t name your character. But I understand that it’s like that due to story related reasons.

The combat is mostly the same as in the first game. Which is fantastic, the combat in Nioh was always so good. But it’s elevated to another level with one mechanic: the burst counter. Any game with a satisfying parry mechanic is god like and I loved it in this game. It changes the pace of every fight in the game making the fights more engaging and fun. Plus you feel like a total badass when you style on a yokai, burst counter them, deplete their ki and then do a final blow. The new yokai cores also add some much needed variation to the game. Each yokai enemy drops a core for you which provides you with a special move based on them. Some cores are naturally better than others. Some boss cores like the yatsu no kami core are pretty busted. But there’s a lot to choose from. There’s also yokai shift which replaces living weapon. Visually it’s really cool, but is kinda useless and runs out quick. The damage you do in yokai shift is pretty minimal, reducing your time even more if you get hit. Only towards the end of the game after upgrading my shiftling tree I started to use it more.

Much like the first game Nioh 2 is as big and complex with a million and one mechanics and you’ll be spending a lot of time in the menus. I didn’t personally mind this, but this aspect of the game might get on some peoples nerves. In your first playthrough you don’t need to pay that much attention to your stats. You can just wear whatever has the highest defense (while allowing mobility of course) and you’ll be just fine. The stats only start to matter in new game+ and when you want to make some dedicated builds, and the game provides many good options with the blacksmith if you want to maximize your stats.

But you know what’s the best part? There are like two to three times more yokai enemies and bosses in this game. They addressed some of my biggest complaints. I was annoyed that there were so many human bosses back to back in the first game, but now there’s an absolutely perfect balance between human and yokai bosses. It also helps that the boss design is a lot better. Most of Nioh 2′s bosses are miles ahead of Nioh 1 bosses. The final boss of Nioh 2 SHITS on every boss from the first game, it’s so damn good that I was rock hard after beating it. The enemy variety is also finally good. No longer will you be fighting the same three basic yokai enemies throughout every level. With old returning yokai and newcomers alike they really spiced up the levels. The level design and level visuals were also improved on. Also there are more unique tracks for the important boss fights which was really nice to hear. Sadly they do re-use some Nioh 1 music.

I also want to give a shoutout to a very special character. Tokichiro. Nioh isn’t exactly a game you play for the story because it can be really confusing. But Tokichiro really stood out and his overall story within the game is amazing. I don’t want to spoil anything as the game just came out, but trust me. Tokichiro is amazing. I would even say that he’s one of my favorite fictional characters of all time.

So with all that praise behind me, is there anything I didn’t like? Remember when I said that Nioh 2 almost addresses all the complaints of Nioh 1? Well there are some unfortunate things that didn’t change. Enemy damage output is still ridiculous. Basic enemies can do 60% of your HP in a single swing even though you’re level 1000 sporting the best gear available. I do wear medium armor and not heavy armor, but I seriously shouldn’t get two shot by a fucking frail skeleton. One shots by stronger yokai/bosses are also abundant. Getting one shot from full health is and always will be fucking annoying. Some of the side missions are designed really unfairly like in the first game. They put you against either multiple bosses or many really difficult yokai enemies. Although there are significantly less bullshit missions. And there are some neat ones where you get a companion and the both of you take on some tough waves of enemies. Although there’s less bullshit, it’s still there. Of course these “complaints” are just my personal opinion, but they’re just a couple small things out of a big pool of great things.

Damn this ended up being long, but if I truly love a game I end up saying a lot more about it than others. Nioh 2 is a far better version of Nioh 1. At this point it’s my game of the year. The only game I see outdoing it this year might be Fromsoftwares Elden Ring, if it even comes out this year. Nioh 2 is fantastic. It get a no jokes 10/10, highest recommendation from me. Now I’ll keep playing it some more and farm that divine gear because NIPPON.