peppersky [he/him, any]

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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: August 27th, 2023

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  • It’s the best videogame thing of the year, but there’s also like genuinely no competition (well except maybe if the new Zelda is really good (which it probably will be) (ok also stalker 2 might be good)).

    It genuinely makes me feel like the base game wasn’t half of what they wanted to ship: The map design and openness of the DLC make the base game map feel ancient and like a giant compromise. It’s definitely the closest they’ve gotten to Dark Souls 1 in terms of level design, while also being an open-world game. Dark Souls 1 was a bunch of winding paths that cut through a world, Dark Souls 2 was just nonsense, Dark Souls 3 were like plates of level put next to each other, base game Elden Ring was one really big really wide corridor. The DLC is like a bunch of winding paths all stacked on top of another. There’s so much verticality to it and so many twists and branches to every path you can take. That alone makes it 100% worthwhile.

    I find the “oh there’s nothing to find in the world boo-hoo it’s so empty” complaints to be ridiculous. I guess that’s what happens when every other game that comes out nowadays is skinner-box first and game second. The game is fun to play, the world is fun to explore, I don’t need a dopamine treat every five minutes. The game is better for not giving you one. I don’t need to see number go up. Stop playing shit like vampire survivors or balatro, your brain will thank you.


  • If you haven’t played the original I see very little reason to not just play that instead. It’s cheaper, runs much much better and there’s shockingly little in the sequel that really is noticeably different or improved upon. I’ve played like 15 hours of Dragons Dogma 2 and genuinely regret the money I spent on it.

    Dragons Dogma 1 was cool in 2012 when there was basically no other open-world-rpg with decent combat, but in a world where Elden Ring and its DLC exists, Dragons Dogma feels ridiculously behind the times.







  • Usually easy modes in fromsoft games are a limited resource, humanity for summoning players that also puts you at risk of invasion or finite use healing items to use when you run out of flasks (not ds2) the concept was to make the game easier there needed to be a risk nothing was given for free.

    Was there actually ever any game after Demon Souls where the coop enabling item wasn’t in some way farmable, if just by helping other players in coop?

    I do feel like spirit ashes are just a continuation of From making coop play easier and easier while at the same time giving offline players coop-like options. Dark Souls 1 already introduced NPC summons and added tons of ways to farm humanity (including giving the player passive soft humanity just from beating enemies), Spirit Ashes are simply way to allow the player to almost always have a summon available, while also integrating them into the loot and progression system.

    Elden Ring certainly does feel like the bosses are tuned for you to either be in coop or use the summons, but I feel that the game encouraging you to use any option you have when interacting with the world is more in tune with the spirit of these games than the 1v1, no summons, no magic, sword only mindset some players have. It just obviously sucks when a boss is impossible when playing solo and a cakewalk when using summons, but for the most part they get the balance somewhat in the middle.

    I’ve only beaten two of the rememberance bosses in the DLC so far and while I did use both the NPC summons and the mimic tear for them, both fights ended with both of my summons dead and me without healing items, making for a pretty tense finish, which seems pretty much perfect.