MetalCaveman

With the buffs to some incantations and colossal weapons I'm now running I'll also respec to move my points from arcane into intelligence, maybe the Ruins Greatsword will be better than my current setup.

IIRC, there's some weird translation shenanigans going on with that ending, seems like in Japanese it makes more sense and is closer to a "good" ending than the others... Well, as close to a good ending as you can get in this kind of game at least.

It does take a while to get some of them though, in preparation for that, before starting NG+ I bought about 60 of each stone, including somber ones, which was kinda excessive given you only need one of those per level.

Fair, I did use a notebook to keep track of particularly important things , but yeah, after seeing how they added NPC markers on the map, I'd be willing to trust FROM to implement something like that without it being too obtrusive/overwhelming.

Elden Ring Currently on NG+++. Easily the best game I've ever played, no question about it. There were however, some issues: Upgrade materials seem oddly scattered, this might just be due to the open world nature and how I played, but I had a bunch of upgrade stones 6, a ton of 7 and some 8 while 5 was nowhere to be found. Pop-up messages "A door has been unlocked" "Stonesword key lost with use", these things get in the way take too long to disappear and having to press a button to instantly dismiss them almost got me killed a couple of times. Being asked if you want to use a flask to re-summon your horse, this was extremely annoying and would be better off as just a tutorial once you get Torrent "Hey, if it dies, you can use a flask to call it once more!" Multiplayer co-op and pvp, but at this point it's kinda pointless to complain about it, FROM has their style and it's unlikely they'll change. Everything else though, pure awesomeness. The map felt like an actual map, not a glorified checklist of quests and NPCs I don't care about, opening it and being able to just mark a path to a place I wanted to go was awesome. Being able to look at a map and just see the map instead of getting anxiety from the trillion icons, npcs, quests and other pointless shit was a breath of fresh air and I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to other open world games. NPC quests are fun, and even the more simple ones either lead to secret areas, unlock merchants or have other cool rewards. The fact that there's no quest tracker makes it that much more fun to actually complete these quests IMO, found a lady who was like "You got any grapes?" and it turns out that I did because earlier I found a ghost dude next to a "grape" (it's actually an eye), asking for a maiden to take his grapes... Never saw that lady again even though I had collected a bunch of those things, and that was cool. On the other hand there were NPCs I had forgotten about until I ran into them while doing other stuff, this IMO, feels way more organic than just having map markers or quest logs that tell you exactly what everyone wants, where to find it and where to find them once you have their items. The gameplay, it's Souls, with improvements, some streamlining and new additions, the stealth mechanic was worrying to me because I didn't know how well it'd work, how necessary it would be or if it would lead to areas that could only be cleared by using it, thankfully, it works much better than expected, and was actually quite useful without feeling like if you didn't stealth you were screwed. Having a dedicated jump button is awesome and it's hard to explain how much it improves things compared to previous Souls games. Guard counters make shields feel more useful, spirit summons are awesome and a great way to get some support without the penalty of increased boss health when summoning other players, and IMO, the best new change is the Stakes of Marika which allow you to respawn much more close to boss gates or to certain areas with tough enemies instead of having to respawn at the last bonfire site or grace, this eliminates much of the tedium and annoyance of having to fight, or run all the way back to the boss. The story is a bit more straightforward this time, there's still a whole lot of "read item descriptions" and stuff, but NPCs and cutscenes also reveal a fair bit more than in other SoulsBorne games. My favourite part was just abandoning all weapons and instead carrying a huge shield, with a couple of talismans to reduce damage, this thing can tank through even the strongest of bosses, except for two, one which is just a pain, and the other... Kinda makes sense that trying to block wouldn't work on it. TL;DR: Love it, best game ever!!! lol

Got it as soon as it came back in stock! EXCELLENT \m/ \m/

Went on a bit of a shopping spree. Vol 1 was sold-out Soon as it was announced I knew I needed it. While browsing amiami, I also saw that they had these wall scrolls on pre-order, bunch of different designs, but these were the four I liked the most, really enjoy 23/Sela's work and been meaning to buy some merch so this was some nice timing. NSFW

Honestly, the ring trophy is the only one I'd need help with, thanks to the ever so annoying character tendency, however, I'm not sure I want to go for it. Played for a bit today, trying to get some of the other trophies I'm missing (spells, miracles and one of the endings) and honestly, the differences between DSR and Elden Ring are so big that I think Demon's Souls is better off in that category of "I remember it being fun". Demon's Souls did not age well, even compared to the Dark Souls series, Elden Ring just wiped the floor with it. The original Demon's Souls will keep its place as one of my favourite games, and so I think I'd rather just leave it as is, rather than force myself to go through with it. One thing I did like and wish Elden Ring had (iirc it's supposed to be coming "soon") is the usage of the PS5's controller, both haptics and the speaker, they really do make things better, but that's the only thing I'd bring over from DS to ER.

\m/ \m/ Went through it three times, could've done it in two runs, but for role-playing purposes I wanted to get a certain ending on my first playthrough and make that the canon one for my character, NG+ for the ending that locks you out of the other ones, and NG++ for the vanilla ending.

Even with that it still took a couple of tries, though I also learned that anything that has works well too, this includes

So it does, glad I upgraded it even though it wasn't part of my build.

Is a pain, not particularly hard in that moves are somewhat easy to avoid, but it has way too much health, and the camera acts as an extra enemy for this fight. This is NG+ btw.

Yeah, I'm up for that, during launch I helped a friend get the friends ring lol, kinda wish I had asked him to help me too back then, but I didn't think it'd be that annoying to get. I'm in central time, moving the clocks forward this weekend lol.

I want to get the Platinum on PS5, main thing is that my main character fucked up with the friend/enemy ring, doing PVP is a pain and farming black phantoms even more so, that's the biggest obstacle preventing me from going for plat on DS.

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Me: Abandoning the way of strength, sacrificing everything to become a bloodlord, levelling up arcane all the way, all just to defeat this one boss. This crazy maniac playing as a lvl 1 wretch: That's insane lol

Yeah, they nerfed I can see them tweaking this other boss too in a future patch.

Super cool boss the first 5 times, starts to get annoying after that, and by the 20th time I was just like "SHUT UP, I ALREADY KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!"

Related to status effects, you WANT bleed, as I just learned having switched quickly to a bloodlord build to deal with a certain boss. Dexterity and arcane is what you want to level up for a beast bleed build. Magic does seem to be easy mode once more, to a certain degree: Press button Fire glowy thing at enemy Enemy goes ow! Enemy dies Strength can also deal hilarious amounts of damage, but it's harder to pull off and some of the talismans and other buffs required take some time to get, that said, before switching to shield mode, I was easily dealing with certain bosses simply by applying a couple of buffs and rushing a jump attack. Still, for a first build, magic or bleed are best. Later you get a fair amount of items that allow you to respec so you can experiment more with different builds.

That's the main thing really, you can easily head elsewhere if you're having trouble in a particular area, in fact, you can skip the entire first main dungeon and come back later, it doesn't prevent you from exploring further areas. My other recommendation, level up vigor, whatever else you're putting points into, vigor is always useful, more vigor = more hp. Also, spirit summons, learn them, collect them, use them, love them, they're awesome tools, some can easily turn the tide in your favour, some can tank hardcore allowing you to do damage, some can even solo certain bosses. Find one that suits your play style and work with that, exploring dungeons gives you the materials needed to upgrade them after you've talked to a certain NPC. Some minor spoilers for an early boss, otherwise a really helpful way to start and some of the basics of combat:

Didn't some US general or something recently mentioned that GRU has a ton of operatives in Mexico? That's a fun thing to think about.

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*In the Halo announcer voice* Point taken. Though this was more of a criticism at how the Estrada Doctrine keeps being invoked by the government, and though it states that we "don't praise anyone, don't criticize anyone and, in times of conflict, we don't make moves that may seem like we're taking sides" they follow it with two actions that go directly against it, apologies if I didn't word it correctly.