toxicitizen

For what it's worth, in the first Dark Souls you can essentially opt-out of multiplayer by remaining in hollow form. It won't reduce your health and it'll prevent invasions, but you won't be able to summon help unless you return to human form. As for the lack of pause,, it's a valid concern but in practice it's honestly never really been an issue for me. Due to the way enemies behave, if you're in a safe spot then you can often just leave the game unattended. Worst case scenario, you can also just use the quick menu to instantly quit out to the main menu. When you reload, you'll be exactly where you were and IIRC the game state won't have reset (unless you were in a boss fight or something). Dark Souls II brings back the reduced health bar thing but it's never as egregious as in Demon's. It's not an instant reduction, it's gradual with each death and you still get a ring or something to reduce the effect.

The teasing has begun! Their publisher page's avatar was changed to a Kiwami 2 reference. They usually like to release quickly after teasing, so Kiwami 2 might be coming much earlier than anticipated. Kinda surprising since Kiwami 1 came out just a couple months back. I was personally expecting an announcement at the PC Gaming Show like last year. Hopefully this means they have something bigger and better for E3. Not sure what that might be exactly but personally I'm thinking maybe a JRPG of some kind???

Out of curiosity, what was your problem with the Dark Souls games? The complaints I usually hear are about enemies respawning and shit like that and this is all still in Sekiro. If anything, Sekiro is harder (especially early on) given how much faster it is and your limited options to help with bosses. Maybe you should give Dark Souls another shot.

Lol See that's why I was hesitant about using save manipulation for the endings. I heard the skill points get super grindy, to the point where I've seen people strongly recommend against using them to upgrade attack power. If I'll have to do at least 3 playthroughs anyway, then I might as well just roll with it and do them clean.

Have you done multiple endings yet, Jack? I'm still early in NG+ but I'm not sure which one to go for next. It's tempting to save Shura for last since it's the shortest one and by that point I imagine the game will be pretty hard but since there's a different boss I'm worried about screwing myself into a tough spot by leaving an unfamiliar boss for NG++++ lol. Then again, I could just backup my save and fuck around with the cloud files to not have to do four full playthroughs...

Kinda half-forgot it was coming but this finally releasing on PC means this should be the last time I buy these games. Hopefully this will also be the time I finally finish them all. IIRC, I played all the way to the third one on NDS but never finished it and only ever played the first one on the 3DS version, so I never even touched Apollo Justice and the other sequels.

Oh, absolutely. These games will fuck you up if given the chance, so I'll take any advantage I can get. I spent the entire game abusing the enemies' terrible short term memory. Especially with mini-bosses to get that first stealth deathblow right off the bat.

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!