Wormerine

I must say that so far ER doesn't click with me DS1&3 and Sekiro clicked with me. Overwhelming similarity to DS makes it a bit awkward, and tone and gameplay isn't as tonally tight as they were in DS. Vagueness was part of the charm in DS, in here with brighter to tone, bigger guidance and lesser difficulty - I feel like I could have used something more concrete ala. Sekiro. I am just dipping outside opening green areas and exploring some cooler environments. Finally enemies are catching up with my power level. Last couple hours were a snooze fest.

I mean combat and exploration, definitely. World building - yes. Story and characters in true FromSoftware fashion is barely there. Apples to Oranges

Yeah, soon after release they released a small patch that made things better. I do get occasional stutters, though honestly the only place I had an issue that would affect gameplay was Sentinel right at the start of the game. I would get stutters if I fought him at the base of the hill, but not if I fought him around the church. I started as Samurai and rolled without the shield for a while. Turns out it's really helpful, more so then in DS3 I believe. Guard Counter is really powerful (heavy attack right after blocking).

Yup. Top down immersive sim from ex-Arcane devs. Coming to GamePass on day one.

The legacy dungeon that I did I thought was excellent, with two great bosses and some unique encounters with tougher enemies. I so start having an issue with open world - the main appeal of finding new stuff is doing fun content, but I am getting too overleveled for the area - making the encounters forgettable. Rewards aren't particularly great as I just get more and more sidegrades that I am unlikely to use. I hear later areas get tougher so I am looking forward to that.

I heard best performance at the moment is PS4 version running on PS5 . I am fortunate to have not too many issues on PC but stuttering on open world can be annoying.

Elden Ring janky? DS1 had some jank, but FromSoftware releases have been rather refined for some time. Outside poor port, I found nothing janky in it so far. Nor did I in DS3 or Sekiro.

You mean skipping dialogue I think... I am pretty sure 24 hours is about the time I spent in the party camp alone. I spent more then that on expansion alone, and that was a fraction of length of the base game. I think base game took me about 80h, though I can't verify as I played it through a physical copy... those were the times. I need to play more, but I think my take might be that there is a better game then Dark Souls3 within Elder Ring, but you need to go through open-world to get there.

Yes, but it's done better. Characters is what carries ME2, even though it suffers from middle part syndrome - neither starting nor ending the story, so plotwise it's just fluff. But it nicely expands characters from ME1. I do! I believe it failed in every promise it made in it's opening hours. At it's very basic it is a KOTOR style game, but it goes on for about 60h more then it should. Unlike previous Bioware games its move to "dark fantasy" strips it of any charm while failing miserably in creating nuanced world or putting players in interesting situations. It is a game I see potential in, but DA:O is just one big missed opportunity. It failed in being a reactive RPG, and failed in being a cinematic experience. Hmmm, kinda reminds me of another game in the making parading as a successor to classic Baldur's Gate games, cough, cough. Edit: First legacy dungeon in Elden Ring completed. It was some excellent content with two fantastic bosses and some memorable tougher encounters. It's almost shame to return to the overworld - as pretty as it is, it is half as interesting as a curated dungeon.

That's a fine selection of games.

Mostly because I didn't play and as for years EA hid all their games from me on Origin it didn't remind it about myself. Now with gamepass I am considering jumping into Andromeda and DA: Inquisition, but I need to run out of things I actually want to play or replay before I get there.

They work on the ending already, though I think they just made final battle less of a snooze fest. The new content they are working on, I think is just a new campaign.

Cause I picked samurai dude class.

Another pleasant, but not smooth performance wise, session in the whimsical world of the Elden Ring

Waiting is good. Game so far seems excellent, but performance is uneven. Trying to do an outside boss now, and while I would blame FPS drop for all my deaths it is distracting when the game looses 20FPS for a second. While I noticed little stuttering at first, things get worse once you jump on horse and start moving fast.

I don't know about bloodborne, but yes quite a few effects are lifted straight from DS games.. as well as many other things.

Yeah, no kidding. Original Dark Souls reminded me of playing Tomb Raider for the first time.

I meant to just see how Elden Ring runs, but here we are it's 3AM I sunk 3,5 hours into the game. I actually still don't know quite how it runs as I didn't reach the open world. So what happened is when creating my character I picked an item which as it turns out allowed me to open immediately a mini dungeon right after the tutorial. I am pretty sure I was underleveled but not that underleveled to discourage me from exploring. As I was about to call quits I run into the boss of the dungeon - Oscar the Grouch looking thing. One hit would take most of my life, but at one point enemy bugged out and I managed to bring him to the bring of death - and then he came back to life and that happened:

I really enjoyed Sekiro The story didn't necenssary grab me, but I enjoyed all that was too it. It was still far and beyond what most action games have to offer. Still the best bits IMO were indirect storytelling that FS is sooo good at.

FromSoftware games always excel is storytelling but they stray away from more traditional movie/dialogue heavy exposition. You won’t get much plot from their games. Sekiro had a bit more traditional structure but ER stays close to DS roots - there are NPCs with their own stories and probably they can end different ways and probably the game will have couple endings, but it’s more about doing things and learning things organically then watching cinematics or reading texts. I hear ER reveals more of its lore in a straightforward way, but don’t expect spending much time in it talking to NPCs. Those are kind of games that you can finish and don’t know what the story is, but there are some really great stuff for those who pay attention. Unfortunately, as is tradition, port is apparently pretty garbage. 60FPS lock and stuttering issues. Apparently they just patched the game and made things straight up worse. If I can’t run it with stable 60 FPS, which by all accounts seems likely, the game will go on hiatus until it gets better.

Dark Souls and Breath of the Wild is my impression. From what I understand: 1) It dark souls combat, but due to its open nature you can turn around and go other way if you hit a wall of difficulty making it more noob friendly. There are also mechanics like summon to reduce difficulty somewhat. 2) everyone says how uniquely engaging exploration is - it has relatively little predictable content and game forces player to engage with exploration. No map markers to follow only only way to find something it to peak behind every corner. World is apparently constructed in a very unique way, often hiding things on purpose, rather then drawing attention to main things. It seems that many people found the loop of “I wonder if there is something very cool around the corner” very compelling. From handful reviews I skimmed it sounds like it might be Souls-Like that does exploration and variety of build the best, even if tight power progression and challenge might be somewhat loose in this one. Something I heard multiple times is that this one feels more like an adventure, then intimidating, desperate push against overwhelming forces.

Nothing worries me more then IGN giving a game 10/10. It's funny that universal acclaim makes me only more nervous about the game. Still: Only one way to find out.

The next DLC they are currently working on is a new campaign for Solasta. I enjoyed my time with the game a lot as well. Looking forward to jumping back in.

That's a good question, and one I would like a clear answer as well, though my worry is from the oposite. From what I gathered the gist seems to be that dungeons can be just as intricate and challenging as they always have been, while open world offers a more forgiving experience with variety of approaches and opportunities to gain an upper hand - SkillUp in his review mentioned being at a point when he one shots bosses - though as he never mentioned it as a problem, which confuses me. DS games (outside Sekiro) always had easy modes - stuff like summoning other players could and would make your playthrough a cakewalk. ER has couple aditional mechanics that should make things easier for those who want it - like summons and expanded magic. General consensus seems that it is by far the most inclusive game FromSoftware made, but how inclusive it is I have no clue. I recommend checking review and seeing if it is something that would interest you. After watching a SkillUp review I had an impression that ER might get dangerously easy once we start raking XP, but two other reviews stongly suggested that the game still is hard. We will see starting Friday.

Eh, I thought they did decent job with Deus Ex reboots. Thief, however, is another story