Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

@Kairu LoL, you might need to come down with a sudden illness and have to stay home from work for a week. Too bad there’s not a highly contagious pandemic going on. 😜

Started up Professor Layton and Pandora's Box yesterday. Played for about an hour and I'm really liking it so far! Despite my mixed feelings about the first game, it feels nice to be playing another game in the series. It's just such a chill series, you solve puzzles and enjoy a story. It's definitely a product of its time thanks to it being on the DS. We just don't see many games like this today. So I think I might keep my eyes out for the sequels and get them eventually as well.

@LtSarge I think the first one’s probably my favourite even after so many other games came out. I do have a soft spot for Spectre’s Call and Lost Future is definitely brilliant but the series as a whole is really great to be honest. Fun fact, I found my Pandora’s Box cartridge literally lying on the ground in a theme park. Finders keepers, I’d say.

@Kairu I hope you’re still enjoying Nier Automata!

The one thing that is never well explained with the game is that the multiple endings don’t mean playing the game through multiple times particularly, and that the “replays” of the game are actually completely different as you take control of different characters in parallel or different timelines. It makes the idea of needing to complete the game multiple times make more sense then!

The “final” ending is brilliantly bizarre though. Oh, and you can actually buy any trophies you’re missing when you are properly done with the game too!

@nessisonett I did enjoy the story of the first game, but not the puzzles overall sadly. Too many tricky ones that left me frustrated. So far the puzzles are fine in Pandora's Box but I've obviously only played one hour of the game. The tricky ones could be coming up for all I know lol.

But yeah, I definitely want to check out Lost Future and Spectre's Call as well.

Haha, very interesting how you found Pandora's Box! I guess it was just meant to be.

FIFA Street is ridiculously good fun. Can’t believe I didn’t have it growing up, I would have been obsessed with it.

@Kairu FIFA 2005 being a bit annoying with how the career mode works means that I’ve been playing both that and FIFA Street alternately. So it’ll probably be my next review, if I can stop playing it!

Beat the Taurus Demon boss in Dark Souls Remastered on my first go... with literally the tiniest sliver of health left. Still, a victory is a victory.

Too bad I spent the next three hours dying over and over and losing 7000+ souls in the process of finding the bonfire in the Undead Parish. What particularly hurts is that I lost my biggest load of souls when I went into the church instead of the opposite direction, which led to the bonfire. Practically right next to it, but I went the wrong direction.

@Ralizah If only the game had a map… 😜

Are you following a build guide? One thing I’ve come to grips with is that the FromSoft games are so cryptic (apparently Elden Ring less so) and have the high difficulty that I began using online build-guides with Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls. For me it made the games enjoyable and less frustrating.

Of course I’m less bothered by spoilers than most people, unless they are major story spoilers. A simple build guide doesn’t really spoil things and is a fairy tame loophole to help you feel less like you’ve just wasted hours of time. Losing thousands of souls is a pretty inevitable occurrence, but at least with a blueprint of how you want to level up the character you don’t end up pouring endless hours of soul-collecting into a dead-end build. There are soft caps to the point allocation of character attributes in the FromSoft games I’ve played, so I assume the same here; you get less bang for your buck once an attribute reaches a certain level. And I think I read somewhere that in DS1 spending souls on weapon upgrades goes further than using it on your character, but I’m not sure.

Congrats on beating Taurus Demon though. You’re probably well on your way to being an expert already! 😄

Edit: Incidentally, if it helps I can commiserate with you since I had a similar thing happen to me yesterday in Resident Evil 4. I made a long trek through a couple areas with bunches of enemies and completely missed a save point before the place where you have endless hordes of enemies swarm the cabin, where I of course died and had to repeat all the areas beforehand. If only I’d consulted the map! 😅

@Th3solution I don't even need one that detailed! Just a vague reference to the layout of the world would suffice.

Build guide? Nah. I took a peak at some recommendations for stat distribution for the pyromancer, but since pyro flame damage is upgraded independently from your stats, it seems like I can build her like I would a warrior. So now that I've upped my stats enough to be able to wield a halberd (amazing weapon!), I'm focusing on endurance for the stamina/weight limit gains and dexterity, since my current weapon scales more with that stat.

I was struggling to defeat these gargoyle bosses, but succeeded after upgrading my weapon a few times, which caused it to inflict dramatically higher damage. I've upgraded it as high as it'll go now, and it shreds most enemies like paper. Thankfully, it seems like you can farm the resource you need for weapon and armor upgrades from knights.

Oof, sorry to hear about your RE4 troubles. Dying close to safety ALWAYS strings, man.

@Ralizah Yeah, RE4 isn’t quite Souls level difficulty, but sometimes the resource management part of things makes me replay sections if I burn through too many health items or ammo, and it ends up feeling very Souls-like with repeat runs being easier when you have the enemy placement memorized. Thankfully typewriters and save rooms are pretty generously spread throughout, but there’s definitely some hard sections between saves.

If/when I eventually boot up DS1 I’ll compare notes with you. Glad you’ve found a good rhythm, it seems.

@Th3solution I did think of you when I saw Ral was playing Dark Souls, and thinking that he has beaten you to it.

Good lord, the Gaping Dragon is an annoying boss. Not the first one I've had a hard time with (Capra Demon took me five tries or so; I maintain that particular boss encounter is just badly designed), but it did NOT want to let me around to the side of it.

Noticed I was barely chipping it, so tried applying electricity to my halberd, but you spend so much time running from that stupid thing that it's mostly just a waste of resources. Summoned someone named Solaire, but I think it makes the health pool larger for the boss, and all the guy does is get run over and killed after a minute or two. Hardly worth wasting my humanity consumables to turn human and summon him.

The solution was to just git gud. I stripped down to less heavy armor so that I'd move faster, double handed my halberd, and methodically kited the thing until it either slammed its face down or rushed the wall, allowing me to punish it.

Got a key for somewhere called "Blighttown." Sounds fun.

@JohnnyShoulder I’m feeling the pressure now to play it!

I actually loaded it on my console weeks ago in preparation. Although that’s not always a guarantee that the game will get played soon, it’s the first step. 😄

Played Sonic Frontiers for about an hour today and so far I'm rather pleased with it. Definitely gives off BotW vibes in terms of its aesthetics and sound. I love the mix of open world exploration and linear high-speed levels. Very fun game, I can't wait to play more of it.

@HallowMoonshadow Yeah, I started playing on Saturday after buying it off a friend and have been going at it more or less continuously since then in my free time. I'm sure I'll burn out at some point, although I'd at least like to get through this miserable cesspit of poison, mosquitos, and tiny platforms I'm in first. We'll see.

I remember talking to Solaire at some point. I thought he was close to that red dragon on the bridge, though...

There's a really nice zombie lady who sells me poison protection items in the sewer (and something that says it'll let me attack those ghost women in another environment I tried exploring early on; they beat me back even harder than the ruddy skeletons in the graveyard). She's currently my favorite NPC.

@HallowMoonshadow Pretty much. My experience with Elden Ring left me more... open to giving FS' Souls formula another chance, and I've been eyeing the Switch port of Remastered because of how brilliant the colors look in handheld mode. So when I casually mentioned to my friend that I was in the market for a copy, and he offered to sell me his, I jumped on it. He has no patience for the methodical, stamina-based combat in series like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter, so he was eager to offload it.

The lack of a map is still troublesome, yes, but to less of an extent than it was in Bloodborne. It probably helps that the environments in Dark Souls seem somewhat distinct, whereas a lot of the locations in Bloodborne seemed extremely similar to me.

The lack of fast travel sucks, though. I get that a lot of places still link back to Firelink Shrine, and its absence here is likely meant to force players to grapple with the interconnected nature of the map, but it just makes EVERYTHING in this game other than progressing forward a hassle. A hassle that was almost entirely absent from Elden Ring.

As for Blighttown, it's just not fun at all. Somehow, it's more sewer-y than the actual sewer level. Fighting enemies on those little wooden platforms is an annoyance. I had no idea why I kept dying from Toxic until I realized those little jerks were sniping me from inaccessible locations. The entire bottom is this horrible, poisonous swamp that's a pain to trudge through and is filled with annoying insects.

Good to know the ghosts drop weapons designed to hurt them, since that item that allows you to harm them is pricey, so it's not a long-term solution. And yeah, I've read up on the curse status effect, and want absolutely nothing to do with that!

It's fine so far. I'd even go so far as to say I'm enjoying it. If I make it to the end, I'll likely revisit Bloodborne next, at some point.

edit: And that's Blighttown kicked!

...no idea where I need to go now. And someone killed the fire keeper that upkept Firelink Shrine, wtf.

Lvl 57 now and exploring Anor Londo in Dark Souls Remastered.

Wish I'd stocked up on arrows, as that section with the two snipers was a pain.

It's amusing to me how dangerous the environments are for everyone. It feels like a common occurrence that I'm just strolling around and gain free souls because some dufus knight lost his footing on some of the absurd terrain in this game.

@Ralizah Are you experimented with using magic very much?

@Th3solution Just the basic pyromancy fireball spell, since it's easily upgraded at Firelink Shrine and not reliant on your stat spread. Otherwise, all of my points are going in Endurance, Strength, and Dexterity.