#she’s very fromsoft-y

[grooviestsadpapaya]

Sorry I’ve been inactive but here is one of my like. 50 refs. I just wanted to update and say I’ve been WORKIN on a lot of personal projects as well as school, so I’m so sorry for being like, quiet and stuff as far as SOH goes. But I revamped some old refs and completely redid some. I’m also working on an animation! Kinda. Procreate Dreams is like the TotK of art programs to me and I’m waiting for it to get better. But yeah, have some Zora royalty <3 she’s based off of Queen Rutela from TP and goes by she/they

[ladymariayuri]

The fromsoft bosses changed with elden ring, they made them more spectacular and more gimmic-y, maybe you should adapt to the time you old fart, also those who complain about waterfowl dance are those who can't evade it.

well everybody can dodge waterfowl at this point because it required the effort of thousands of people who kept dying to an attack that is borderline impossible to dodge "normally", or at least intuitively. i still have the muscle memory of my particular method of avoiding it that worked for me engrained almost a year after beating her (run back for first set, dodge into second set, pause, walk backwards and to the right as she does the third)

^ having roll catches, unintuitive attacks, flurries that last longer than the dodge window, and extreme tracking for attacks is fine (which is why i think malenia is great besides waterfowl dance, i think her 3 slash furry that ALWAYS catches backwards dodge rolls no matter when you do it is awesome and forces you to be watching her arm for the spark thing 100% of the time), but it can't be cobbled together in such a way that people have to create "the perfect sequence of inputs you have to put together to dodge this attack that doesnt make sense that has to be executed down to the tenth of a second to be able to pull it off, with very little variation, because running isn't an option unless you're on the opposite edge of the arena" also just gonna respond to the elden beast ask you sent, yeah i am mad i have downtime because the boss is boring. im a bit more mechanically inclined than spectacle inclined, if that makes sense, so if something is annoying enough to ruin my ability to even appreciate the spectacle its gonna piss me off. spending 75% of that fight running isnt fun and its pointless. most of the bosses in the game that were spectacle gimmicks i didnt really mind that much, with astel probably being the most acceptable, even if i did find it super annoying. i just really dont like elden beast, especially coming off the back end of radagon lol

[general-grey]

Heyoooo, I am not active on Tumblr these days tbh, but. Lemme just hug you real tight, wish you the best, because I believe I have missed your birthday this time, but given there top something meme and your Bloodborne - what about top of the best memories related to the game or Souls series in general?

That is alright buddy, I really hope you’re having fun over whatever other platform you’ve migrated over to

Best memories... oh boy, that is. a Hard thing to explain, I had several absolutely unforgettable moments, both alone with only me and the game, and with others.

I don’t know how many I should list, but I’ll just start somewhere and hope to finish :’)

(Under a read-more because it got LONG)

1. My very first login to Dark Souls - So, I’ve actually found this game by pure dumb luck. I don’t actually remember how it came up, I think I maybe saw some memes about it online, bunch of ThePruld videos.

I didn’t think much of it, but at one point it came up in an IRL conversation, as a passing subject and I asked, “okay but what IS dark souls” and the friend just simply went “it’s just very hard”.

I’m NOT good at games. Idk why I wanted to try it though. I guess the dingy ruined castles ticked my mind just enough to be interested.

A friend on Steam shared it with me because they had it, and I didn’t, and so I gave it a little whirl... and I fell FAST and i fell HARD. I remember struggling with the keyboard for about an hour. I remember realizing that I do have a few controllers lying around in the house, and a wireless receiver because at one point my dad ordered some from AliExpress because he wanted to play old Star Wars games on controllers.

The rest is history, now.

2. Exploring the Undead Burg - as a small continuation of the first bit, but nobody warned me that this game would be so damn BREATHTAKINGLY beautiful. I struggled in the Burg for at least ten hours, for sure. I got used to carefully, very very carefully exploring. I firebombed a Black Knight to death from the top of a house’s roof. I did a LOT of Hellkite Drake soul farming. Y’all know the one.

It was so utterly special for the first time I don’t think I’ll ever feel as alive as I did when I was doing those dumb things. I remember the whole Undead Burg by heart. The way the warm sunlight touches down on the moss-covered stone walls.

3. First flight to Anor Londo - I cried, I legit cried, when I finally got there. I don’t remember if I was aware of what was to come, but when those gargoyles lifted my dingy little knight up, and took to the heavens.... and then rose above the golden Anor Londo?

I think I had to go for a little walk after that because it felt so good, so profoundly amazing, I could not concentrate to sit and progress.

4. Oolacile adventures with @abyss-wolf - I actually rambled to her for so long about this dumb amazing game that she actually got it for herself... and then we played a lot together and then these co-op sessions turned into actual dates, adn the rest is history now... but!

Oolacile was special. Because, I think I was getting her through it for the very first time. And I was trying to direct her towards some loot. There was one particular loot that I directed her towards, but I remembered there was a hole in front of it.

I told her so.

She went “yeah yeah I know I saw”

And then she proceeded to walk straight into the goddamn hole, and fell to her death.

I think I laughed at her for like 10 minutes straight, or at least until I ran all the way back so she could summon me again.

5. Oolacile adventures, round two -

Me: “I’m not very good at shooting tbh.”

Her: -pulling out a max upgraded Dragonslayer Greatbow- “why, it’s not so hard lol”

Her: -proceeds to headshot every single enemy in Oolacile garden- “like so”

Me: -at this point actively repressing the gay thoughts like the fucking dumbass i was, there is zero other explanation- “stop showing off your big dick bro”

6. Oolacile adventures, round three - That one time when she got herself a bunch of items from item editor and she gave my knight, Caspiron, Gwyndolin’s bow

and it was so fucking tiny

and SHE laughed at me for like 10 minutes straight because HER bow was bigger than her whole character

there were lots of dick jokes, and that’s how it was all well in life.

7. Dark Souls III adventures, still with @abyss-wolf - That ONE TIME.

When we were doing the Darkened Fireling Shrine.

And we walked into Champion Gundyr’s boss room, and the FUCKER immediately used the fucking grab attack on me and Y O T E me off the FUCKING cliff.

8. Dark Souls III adventures, round two - that one time when I was AFK because I was doing something for mom and when I came back she covered the area around me with shiny pebbles.

9. Exploring the Tomb of the Giants - Something with the atmospheric part - that area is completely, utterly pitch black. You can’t see anything at all, save for perhaps the ground immediately beneat your feet.

There are giant skeletons in the darkness. They are NOT nice. You can stumble blindly into them if you aren’t careful.

You can slip off the roads and fall to your death, or into places where you have to figure aout all over how to get back up, all semi-blind.

That was such good shit, holy fuck guys.

10. Finding the Kiln of the First Flame - The gate beyond the Lordvessel opens up. It reveals a staircase, leading just a little way down. As you walk upon it, spirits of Silver Knights walk past you, like wisps of memory.

You are standing in a giant space. A bleak, burnt up desert or nothing but ash and old, warped structures. There is light filtering in, but you cannot see from where.

It’s beautiful. It’s desolate and forbidding.

And it is the end.

You’ve made it. Only one thing left to do. And you know what it is.

.......

Shit this turned into a “favourite Dark Souls moments”, huh? I didn’t mean to, I just wanted to start from the beginning and I got carried away.

But it REALLY does show which is my favourite game of the whole FromSoft lineup, huh? Can’t really ever let go of the first one you’ve played.

I adore Bloodborne, but I’ve not had all the time to collect my thoughts on it. I’ll probably write good long rambles about it too, eventually, because holy shit i’m loving it with all my heart, indeed i do

[emlan]

The Ringed City trip report!

I'm no writer so I'll just bullet point some misc thoughts pretty much:

- I would've preferred if the long drop-downs was handled in another way. I always play offline since I like finding secrets myself and seeing 3 orange messages in front of a seemingly normal wall kinda gives away that it's an illusion. Since dev messages however show up no matter your online status they where quite the blaring neon signs!

- Obviously my ears perked up when Lorian got name dropped right away but then there's not a single ref to him or the Lothric royal family in rest of DLC? Why would you mention it in the first place then...I guess to refresh people's memories that he fought the Demon Prince way back when but even so it doesn't really bring anything new to the table.

I was mainly hoping for some info on the Queen of Lothric to finally get rid of the theory that she's Gwynevere but I suppose this will never go away...At least the Projected Heal miracle further hints that they’re separate people but you can easily read it both ways.

- Cute that the stone-humped hag ashes implies she was Lorian's (and/or lothric's) wetnurse tho, figures a good lad was handled by a (seemingly) good woman :3

- Not-Patches. I love Patches and his final sendoff was very cute with him gently just pushing you in the direction you needed to go anyway, but I can't help but feel like a salty smash player whining about wasted slots since he got in instead of a wholly new NPC. Also since I'm a swede I regged right away that his name was literally "patch" which kinda gave it a too cheeky On-The-Nose vibe.

- I suffered more than I should've at the hands of the swamp angel, the "parasite" form of the angels you need to kill to get rid of the flying ones looked so pitiful I wasn't sure if killing them would be a sin so I left it alone for a bit.

- Really nice that we got a lot of hot babe armor, Desert Sorceress for maximum sexy, Zullie's for Sexy But Modest, and Shira's outfit just looking lovely overall. Halflight's is also boob country if you wear it as female but it looks like cheap pirate cosplay to me. All outfits appreciated, but it would've been nice to have these options available much earlier. I mean to rush it you have to beat Friede at low level? I shudder at the thought. (Lothric's hoods mends quite nicely with Zullie's dress btw)

- While on the topic on armor I can't believe that even in the end we never got a defiled moonlight set.

- Demon Prince boss, the first half is quite manageable and the second quite hard, I'm not a fan of bosses where you have a long boring part wasting time to get to the real deal. The setup here with two seemingly sickly demons makes me wonder if they're trying to mirror twin princes but if that was the case they didn't seem to commit 100%

- I'm not sure how I feel about the Locust's talking about misc NPCs in the games, it's neat but why would they even bother mentioning someone as unimportant to the world as Irina for example? Ages has gone past.

- I LOVE the cleric turtle enemies!!! Such fun design, made me think about the dogs/spiders in Siren even though they're not quite as warped.

- The long stairway next to Shira with HOW-many-armor-fatties is plain BS. I assume the game expects you to kill them by plunging attacks since there is many ledge opportunities to do so in the area, but in the end it feels like the intention here is designed around blitzing it which is NG.

- "Show Your Humanity". I'm really salty since I actually DID realize what the game wanted here since I had tried a brance earlier trying to sneak past the bramble fatties but I didn't connect that it was standing in the actual swamp that triggered the humanity form. Used a few brances in front of the wall and didn't bother trying harder when it wouldn't cycle to the right one. It's such an unorthodox trigger for something as "important" as continuing a NPC quest, I just figured it would net me some treasure I wouldn't have use of anyway.

(Keeping Solaire alive in DS1 is also unorthodox but the way Patches waves you off makes it seem like the devs expected and wanted you to get his quest correct right away?)

But also randomly getting a ladder to drop down as a humanity sprite is just silly and too video game-y.

- Pretty odd to put a chloranthy ring as the loot on Gwyn's fancy Provide Thee Succ statue instead of something related to the story.

- Midir. I thought I had to kill this thing to progress since I was a huge tool not realizing I could just give the finger to Judicator Argo and open the door even though he told me to fuck off (please no bully I somehow didn't see any Open prompts, I guess I tried opening while he was still talking and that blocked me the first time I attempted it...???) So I butted my head against this flailing HP sponge longer than I should, the camera is a problem even when not locking on and you have to do so much running back and forth in the arena...But since he's 100% optional I don’t mind since it's nice they added something for non-scrubs unlike me to have fun with.

- Halflight, joke boss but then I most likely didn’t have an actual player spawn in. I'm not into PvP so this feature doesn't do anything for me, but fun gimmick to have an Old Monk style battle. Unfortunate that it's far into a DLC? I wonder how long it'll be active.

- Filianore is listed as Gwyn's youngest daughter (and also his favorite? Sorry 'vere.) so I guess this confirms that Yorshka isn't Gwyn's by blood (not that there was any doubt) since there's no way that waif tot can be older than Filly. Wish we got some more info on the mother/s here, it feels to me Filianore might've never even been in Anor Londo and was birthed by another mother than whoever produced the Gwyn-line series of kids.

Her room is so tiny it takes away the full awe of her sight, I wonder if this was a wise choice. In the artbook it looked much more airy and impressive.

- Gael, phase 2 is much more fun and almost easier than first (""easier"" that is, I still died over and over until I gave up and brought a friend ofc), he's just so aggressive in the start! His fancy bloodborne cape did however create the bloodborne problem of having too much parts moving around the boss making it hard to see where he was currently facing or doing.

- The fact that both he and painter constantly talked about The Dark Soul™ ruined any impact the story could've had, it's just plain silly hearing a game title repeated over and over.

In my heart I knew that none of the loose ???-lore tidbits in the main game would be brought up in the DLC but it still hurts that indeed none of them got touched upon. Yorshka's origins forever R.I.P. Overall though it was much more fun and interesting to play than AoA, so that was a treat!

Now how long will we have to wait for proper teasers about Fromsofts new projects I wonder. I'm excited to be able to play something completely fresh without constant callbacks, fanservice and conflicting lore due to there being multiple games in same series. Is just hope they don’t go too sci-fi.

[thecreativedaydreamer]

Nioh Review (Spoilers)

My boyfriend introduced this to me as “weeb souls” (AKA dark souls set in Japan). And it was 500% accurate. The combat style, the item usage, the boss fights, everything all had a very Dark Souls-y feel to it despite being published by a completely different company (takes notes, Fromsoft).

Plot:

This is the only thing I hated about the game besides the tiny font. I couldn't really get a good grasp on what the absolute fuck was going on in this game. So basically, you play as a guy called William, who has a guardian spirit named Saoirse (pronounced ser-sha or seer-sha), who brings you back to life every time you die, so long as you keep believing in her. She helps you find souls-err-Amrita, the energy source of this world, and your EXP.

BUT WAIT. SHE GETS CAPTURED BY KELLEY. Kelley is basically the Voldemort of this game, the typical “I'm gonna use the fairy to get infinite Amrita and take over the world hurr durr villain.” We still never truly die because Saoirse is still alive, just not here, but we do have to start over at the last checkpoint if we do drop.

So Kelley goes to Japan with Saoirse and so do we. Meanwhile Japan is having a civil war of epic proportions, also humans vs yokai (monsters). So we basically get hired to be a yokai slayer and help random warlords out until we kill Kelley and get our fairy back That's it. 5/10, only because we get to use Saoirse in the post game.

Gameplay

Like I said, it’s a Dark Souls hack n slash through and through. But guess what? THERE’S A LOOT SYSTEM. This makes the game infinitely better. Although there’s al to more stats and numbers to keep track of, it’s never truly too daunting. 10/10. There’s tons of missions, plus hard mode unlocks after you beat the game, so even more missions. A fun little thing they added was the introduction of Kodama. what’s a Kodama? Its a cute little green spirit that is hiding throughout most missions. When you find them, they give you a permanent boost (like, +5% Amrita per enemy). Also, where are the Kodama plushies????? They don’t exist yet. Someone get on that.

Overall (Skip here for TL:DR)

TL:DR, it’s a solid 9/10, if you love dark souls and japan you’ll LOVE this game.