toxicitizen

Yeah, the malcontent stuns him long enough to take a decent chunk of his health bar lol. I didn't have enough spirit emblems to completely kill him (not sure if it's even possible since it seems to cap at 20) but it brought him down low enough that it was pretty easy to finish him off.

Big Red is down. Holy fuck, what a terrible fight lol. I completely cheesed his third phase using the malcontent and I don't even feel bad about it lol. Genuinely the only one in the entire game that I hated, even after the fact. It's manageable once you get a feel for his animations but it's such a far cry from everything else in the game that it just feels so out of place. I mean, this is pretty much a Dark Souls boss. Also, some of his attacks felt wildly inconsistent in what you could do against them. It's entirely possible (likely, even) that I missed something but two in particular seemed like I only had a 50/50 chance of running under them. Half the time his bullshit tracking would just follow me through every single pixel and crush me. I could never figure out what the difference was. Really glad that's over. Now to see if there's anything I should do while I still can before moving on to NG+.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice I'm not sure what I expected initially but this is a completely different beast from the Souls games. It failed to scratch the Souls itch I was hoping it would, but it ended up offering something more interesting than just another take on the same formula. The basic structure and level/world design of the game is very similar but that's about it. The combat is so completely different that it's essentially a different genre altogether, and that's before even taking into account that it's also partially a stealth game. I'm gonna need to do another run or two and let it sink in a while before I can say whether I liked it more or not but I definitely found the combat here to be much more fun and the fact that you can't just brute force bosses by leveling up made it all the more satisfying to finally defeat them. I still have a few loose ends to wrap up before jumping into NG+ but I'm really looking forward to fighting all the early bosses again with my current skill level. Here's hoping for a sequel because I absolutely want more of this. I also can't help but be reminded that I never finished Nioh. I should probably get back to it in the near future, especially since I'm not quite ready to leave Sengoku Japan just yet.

Oh my god, finally! My gourd was empty and I had just used my last resurrection but I somehow managed to kill that fucker! The difficulty curve of this fight was some genius level shit. Going from "wtf can I even do against this guy?!?" to "wait, I just got through the first two phases without getting hit once :O" is more satisfying than anything from any of the Souls games. Holy shit! I think the hardest bosses from this game ended up being my favorites because of how you truly have to master them to get past them. Oh and thanks again for the Shadowrush tip, Jack. Once I figured out how to get 3-4 hits in each time, it came in really handy. Pretty sure saving it for the last phase is what made the biggest difference on my final attempt. Now that leaves only that optional boss before I can move on to NG+. I really hope the attack power upgrade I got from the final boss is gonna give me the edge I need here because I really don't feel like spending another couple days bashing my head against another wall lol.

Yeah, ok. I thought that must be it but I wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking another more useful move. I can somewhat consistently get through his second phase now, so that only leaves the last one...

I meant the upgrade itself, I have all the prosthetics. I'm not seeing any fire upgrade in the tree, though. The only one I don't have is Lotus. I'm assuming that's the one? edit: Just got it, and yeah it's definitely flaming. As for shadowstrike, I have shadowrush but it's only one attack. Unless I'm blind, there's nothing called Shadowstrike in the skill tree lol.

Thanks for the tips. I was trying to time it visually but I would only get it like 10% of the time, so I figured I was better off dodging it. I'll have to give the sound thing a shot because it's much harder to dodge here. I'm tempted to try Shadowstrike but I'm starting to reliably be able to make it through his first two phases, so I'm really hesitant to change my strategy now lol. I'm not sure if I have the umbrella thing. I've mostly been sticking with the axe, spear and firecrackers. I'll check it out next time I fire up the game.

Oh fuck my life. I can finally make it to the final boss' third phase and of course he does At least I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. If only faintly...

Yeah. I made some progress last night and one time even got to his third phase through sheer luck but I guess it was drunk skills because today I'm back to struggling against his first phase lol. It sucks cause knowing I'm at the very end of the game, I kinda don't have the patience to grind them until I have the muscle memory down. I wanna start NG+ and go back to just playing the game. Oh, for sure. It's kinda maddening because he's way faster than any other enemy in the game but his animations make him look like he's barely even trying. He's absolutely trashing the shit out of me but the fight ends up basically looking like this lol

Yeah, you can just hold but as far as I can tell that only blocks their attack. If you actually deflect, you deal posture damage and open them up for a counter-attack. Right now I've kinda hit a wall in the game. ? I'm at the very end and the only two things I have left to do are the final boss and an optional boss that kinda feels like he belongs in a Souls game more than this. Both are ridiculously hard and are making me eat serious shit. I kinda wish I could just go right to NG+, I've run out of mini-bosses and they're way more fun to fight than these assholes lol.

My only real tip is to get good at deflecting ASAP. Once I did, the game really started to shine and all my early frustrations disappeared. Seriously, after that boss I mentioned in your status update I started just utterly dominating most regular enemies. It's such a key aspect of the combat that it'll probably make or break the game for a lot of people. I also had to lose so many habits from the Souls games early on. For example, dodging is rarely the right move here lol.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 rated for PC! That was faster than I expected. Especially considering that financial report or whatever from a while back that seemed to suggest they were planning on porting Yakuza 6 next. I'm really glad that's not the case because even though I want them all, I have no interest in jumping right to the end of Kiryu's story. SEGA usually move pretty quickly with these, so hopefully an official announcement isn't too far off.

Lol. Fallout 76 sales and Rage 2 pre-orders must've been abysmal on their launcher. And after all the controversy surrounding F76, they must be desperate to gain back some good will. Now to wait and see if they lose it all again by taking Epic's money!

Not exactly a huge surprise considering the teasing and ARG weren't exactly subtle but Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is getting a sequel! Guess I'll need to go back to the original and finish it this time.

Pretty much where I'm at, yeah. I can wait a year for Outer Worlds but Control really stings. I love Remedy and it was gonna be their first game in a while that I didn't need to wait out some exclusivity period for. Also, if Epic are paying to make ports happen AND still only requiring a year of exclusivity then that's honestly really cool. I still won't use their shitty store but I have to give credit where it's due. edit: Damn, son lol

Holy shit. Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and even Detroit are coming to PC O_O Exclusive to Epic for a year, though. But honestly, if their deal actually played a part in making the ports happen then I can't say I'm really bothered. I really wish they'd use that Fortnite money like this rather than "here's some money to not release your PC game on Steam". Hell, if they can get Bloodborne on PC I might actually not wait out the exclusivity period and just double dip once it hits Steam...

James Gunn has been reinstated as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 director! Kinda surprising to see them backtrack after such a long time but I'm really happy about this. Guardians is my favorite MCU sub-series and Gunn's firing pretty much killed any interest I had in the next one.

Alright, cool. Thanks!

The fact that it's coming to Steam day and date (or at all, really) is genuinely shocking news. Especially in these dark times where Epic are trying their hardest to fuck the PC market up. I would've skipped a Win10 store release because I still constantly hear stories of how much of an unusable fucking nightmare it is. But with a Steam release, sure, I'll give the series a shot. I'm surprised by the episodic release, though. It's been so long since the initial MCC release that I figured they had plenty of time to port the whole thing at once. For a newcomer like me, is it optimal to start with Reach? I know it's a prequel but those aren't always the best intros. Like, I'd never recommend anyone start with MGS3. I got you, Mal!

Devil May Cry 5 Welp, DMC3 is no longer the best one in the series. Everything about this game feels like a love letter to the fans, even the goddamn story is fan servicey as all hell in the best possible way. The game pretty much has everything I could've possibly wanted from it. Well, except for one specific thing but I have a feeling that's probably coming as DLC at some point. The ending felt a little anticlimactic but the journey there was so freaking hype that I really can't complain. It was a bit on the easy side but now that the tutorial is over I can bump it up to Son of Sparda difficulty and start the real game. I can't wait to really sink my teeth into it because goddamn does the combat feel good in this one. Dante is as wonderfully complex as ever, Nero's actually fun to play this time, and while he's the weakest of the three, V's playstyle is a pretty cool addition. I never quite figured out how to use him as well as the other two, though, because having to constantly keep your distance from enemies feels kinda weird to me in a game like this. So yeah, the wait was ridiculously long and we had to suffer through a decent but completely misguided reboot but it was all worth in the end because it led to this. Here's hoping we won't have to wait another 11 years for DMC6. At least, I'm assuming this isn't the end. The ending could totally work as a send off but it also leaves things wide open for the series to continue.

Yakuza Kiwami I finished the story about a week ago. It was alright. About as meh as I remembered but Zero really fleshes out a lot of key characters, so it ends up feeling less confusing early on. The game makes no effort to clearly set up the structure of the Tojo Clan, so you're hearing about this and that family and some assholes die and you have no idea who the fuck they are or why it's that big of a deal. At this point, I'm pretty much convinced that Zero exists solely because they considered remaking the first one and realized what a dogshit introduction into this world it actually is story-wise. This is why people say Kiwami is glorified DLC because playing it after Zero is so much more enjoyable that it's basically mandatory. That's just the story, though. I imagine in that regard the series will only get better from here on out. At least I hope so. I don't want to set myself up for disappointment, so I won't expect anything as insanely good as Zero. Gameplay is as good as it was back in Zero, although I did miss the disco minigame. Also that one really good karaoke song. As for completing the game, well... I tried. I don't have time to do a Legend playthrough before DMC5 unlocks tonight, I have no desire to do the climax battles right now and that fucking endless Haruka fetch quest in the post-game mode is actually broken near the end, so I have to wait for a patch to finish that. And I haven't even gotten to the part where she wants you to get 950 points in karaoke on Otometal... I really wish the game would let me smash a motorcycle into her dumb little face because fuck that song and fuck you, Haruka! But holy shit, this game sure makes you work for this completion. I mean, casino/gambling minigames are whatever. Most of them are simple enough to figure out if you don't already know them. But I actually learned how to play fucking Mahjong for this shit! Which I've wanted to do ever since watching a few episodes of Akagi with a friend like 15 years ago. It's a pretty fun game! Anyway, between DMC5 and Sekiro, I'm probably good for the next month or so but after that I'm gonna need Kiwami 2 ASAP. So get on that, Sega! Now if you'll excuse, I'm going to go spend the next ~10h pulling my devil trigger eagerly waiting for DMC5 to unlock on Steam.

Pretty much. I often get the urge to do a marathon right before a sequel is due to come out but I almost never actually do it. For example, there's about a week left until DMC5 and I kinda want to replay DMC3 and 4 before then but I'm probably just gonna end up spending that week trying to 100% Yakuza Kiwami.

Which mission is that? I was just thinking that I need to fire up the game more often. I haven't touched it since November, even though I made a point of keeping it installed on my SSD. I was planning to get every elusive target as they became available but I keep waiting until it's too late. I've missed every single one so far lol.

Yeah, that's because it's really one map short of the first season. They kinda hide it by re-using the first season's tutorial, so they technically both have 6 non-tutorial locations but, I mean, come on. That first beach house map is even lighter in content than the fake boat level. It's basically a glorified tutorial for some of the new mechanics with little replay value. Can't really complain, though, considering they gave season 1 owners the previous locations for free. There's also the two upcoming expansion pass locations, which as far as I'm aware there's still no ETA for. I'm really curious to see if they'll conclude the story or still keep things hanging for a potential third game/season.