Elden Ring.. oh Elden Ring!

Release date: February 25, 2022

Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox Series, PC

Elden Ring is coming! It is almost upon us. The newest installment from FromSoftware in their long running "Souls" series featuring an open world, mounts, and the jump button. I have not played the network test (because I didn't get in) and haven't been watching all that much coverage of the game because I would like to go in relatively fresh. I am pretty excited to dive into this game! The open world isn't a huge selling point for me as I'm sure like everyone else I've been feeling some serious open-world-fatigue as of late. I also don't think Elden Ring is going to revolutionize what an open world is in games either. FromSoft make really great experiences but ones that are technically limited in many ways and often not only rely on familiar systems, but also feature familiar bugs and oddities. Will you be able to backstab enemies on inclines in this one? Who knows! Will there be a large boss in a tight area that will force the camera to uncomfortably clip into corners of the room and make it all a big headache? Most probably. That said I do love their worlds. What originally drew me into Demon's Souls all the way back on the PS3 was their peculiar take on fantasy. At the time it was called "dark fantasy" but you could see it was a highly original mish-mash of ideas - a version of the genre seen through a vastly different cultural lens. Elden Ring continue the trend of esoteric imagery that seems to borrow from many different themes. This time around I'm really hoping to explore magic a bit more rather than going with the true and tested pure melee build.

Are you-all excited for some Ring?

i think the thing i'm most interested to see is how a wider design space affects the combat, exploration and encounters. so much of what they do seems predicated on being able to anticipate with some precision where a player will be and at what level of progression at a given time.

i don't really engage with the lore of these games, and i'm not a NG+ sort of player- but i do love the monster/boss design. if they're able to craft a souls experience that feels expansive without getting directionless or overbearing- it could be a huge win.

this will also be the first souls game i'm playing near release (all the others i came to years after they'd been conquered) so i'm curious to see if it's an enjoyable experience for me. i really don't mind looking things up as i get more out of the performance/execution rather than the puzzling aspects, but i figured what the hell with this new one.

I love novel open world games, especially RPGs. However, I have ultimately hated every From game I've ever played except arguably the first few hours of Bloodborne (due mainly to its setting). I can't imagine Elden Ring will somehow be the one that clicks for me, so I'm staying far, far away, and I am not looking forward the usual rapturous Soulsborne discourse dominating gaming spaces for the next month and change. I am, however, excited to see the news stories in early 2023 about some madman who beats the whole game in 20 minutes blindfolded using a Rock Band kit.

I hate Souls games but I always play them because I am stupid. I really want to like them; I played Sekiro and got to Guardian Ape before giving up. In Dark Souls 2 I never even made it to a boss. I had a roommate that played Demon Souls, so i know how it is supposed to work, it just never clicks.

I love Miyazaki's games, but I'm really not sold on Elden Ring. It looks like a knockoff Souls-Like more than the next evolution of the genre. Like, if the budget were lower and I didn't know anything about the game, I'd probably assume this were done by the Mortal Shell or The Surge devs.

I think the open world is just going to serve to add a commute between areas and dilute the magic of how the Souls games build their enemy encounters. The series' strength has always been carefully curated, closed-end level design with thoughtful enemy placement. I can't imagine that the open world will still allow for that kind of hand-crafted feel, and I think there's going to be a lot of extremely generic camps of enemies around the map that aren't particularly interesting or fun to kill. The network test sure felt extremely empty, and the combat encounters in it mostly felt almost procedurally generated. They feel generic in the same way that outposts in Far Cry games do.

I also just can't believe that they're reverting back to the sword-and-board combat meta from the Dark Souls games. They made huge improvements to the formula in Bloodborne and Sekiro that forced players to be more aggressive and engaged, but for some reason they've chosen to completely drop both the rally and posture systems. I really, really don't understand what they're thinking, apart from maybe that making turtling and dodge-roll spamming viable again would make the game accessible to a wider player base? The novelty of chipping away at a boss's health one poke at a time between a million dodge-rolls has worn off over the course of the last decade.

The art direction is a big turn-off to me, too. Everything shown off so far has had some pretty astoundingly ugly color grading applied to it, and the character and enemy designs have reverted back to fairly basic fantasy stuff. I don't know if it's the George R.R. Martin involvement that's led to this, but there just doesn't seem to be much personality to the game, which is a bummer given the unique spins FromSoft has put on fairly well-trodden genres like dark fantasy, gothic horror, and Japanese folklore before.

I'm still going to play it because I enjoy the core Souls combat, but I think a lot of FromSoft devotees are going to be kind of let down. I hope I'm wrong, but the network test just didn't do anything for me.

I'm looking forward to riding a ghost horse around and swinging a big ass sword

I’ve not followed anything about elden ring but I’m stoked to play it. I would hope for more Sekiro influence than Souls but I’m still excited.

I try not to get hyped for games anymore, but I can't wait to play it. Seems like every From game surpasses my expectations.

@mellotronrules: This is a really fascinating point that I never really connected in my brain. I'm a Souls fan (and I like Sekiro even though I'm too bad at it to finish it), and am psyched about this game, but it does feel like it is hugely stepping outside of what those games are...even more so than Sekiro.

Also, I'm 100% with you about lore stuff. I feel like having GRRM even remotely involved is going to make the lore shit immeasurably worse. I like ASOIF but like, that dude never met a fucking index he didn't like, and you combine that with the menu item based weird lore of the Souls games and I'm tired already just thinking about it.

Hard to say. I've grown to really like the Soulsborne games and even liked playing through Sekiro for the first time last year. However with the amount of hype people are giving this next game, I can't shake this feeling that people are setting themselves up for disappointment. I'm hoping it's good too but let's slow our roll on expecting it to be better than 10 superbowls. The RR Martin connection feels like a big question mark for me. Granted I've only seen the TV show for Game of Thrones but to me the good part of that series was the geopolitics. I found the actual fantasy aspects of that world to feel sort of lacking compared to other stuff in this genre that I'm familiar with. I appreciated the lore and styyyyle of Dark Souls because of how much it evoked Forgotten Realms and Eberron to me, and I personally don't think Martin's fantasy ideas measure up to those settings.

@mezmero: Not for nothing, and I'm far from the biggest GRRM fan, but the best stuff from GoT was definitely the stuff they yanked from his books. To me I wonder just how much of this game he even had anything to do with?

@sethmode: My assumption has always been he was acting as the big overall concept guy.

@efesell: That was my understanding as well, but then it just feels so weird and of its time in a way, because in my opinion Miyazaki is just as good if not better than him on that front too. I guess if the idea was to make something less inscrutable? I don't know.

@efesell: Martin wrote a lore outline at the very beginning of development and then had no further involvement with the project. Miyazaki recently jokingly tweeted that he’s (Martin) going to hate what he did to his characters. So I think it’s safe to say this will have the typically esoteric and largely nonsensical story beats and characters as always.

I absolutely adore soulsborne games. The soulslikes and copy cats, while plent are good, don’t scratch the itch like the real thing. I just finished the Demons Souls remake, allowing me to tick the last of the Fromsoft SoulsBorne games from my list, so yeah, I got hype for Elden Ring.

Now, all that said, they are bound to either get old or make a flop eventually. I really hope this isn’t it. I do worry about what the fine tuned difficulty curve will mean in a wide open map. A bit of a souls game is rote memorization, like you know to slash coming around one corner to take out the east guy and then come into the next room with shields up and roll when you get by the barrels because a guy jumps out, that sort of thing. So coming at an enemy camp from any angle could make it either easier or harder, and either way may deflate the experience into more of a Far Cry sort of thing. Or maybe it’ll be brilliant. I don’t know, really. The previews from the network test a while back were mostly positive, so I’m hopeful.

I'm looking forward to this open world Souls game that is heavily influenced by Lord of the Rings. I believe it's going to live up to the hype.

I've watched a three hour Q&A with Dan Tack from Game Informer about this game in which he remained a 14-year old boy throughout, acting as though he'd just gotten to play Ocarina of Time before everyone else. The last time I remember a member of the press being so openly enthusiastic about a game was probably Dan Ryckert talking about Breath of the Wild. Lucy and Tam also recently did a 20 minute or so interview with a coworker that got a similar extended preview of the actual game and he also had nothing but positive and curious things to say about it.

Paired with comments from the development team that they've explicitly designed Elden Ring so that it's not necessarily an easier game but is by far their "most winnable" game or however they phrased it and I'm expecting that this could be my very favorite FromSoft game of the three I've played (Bloodborne, Sekiro and just now about 20% of the way through Demon's Souls).

...Then again, I had the same anticipation about Sekiro (except sub "favorite FromSoft game" with "favorite game of the generation"), and felt the same excitement that I was correct about Sekiro for over ten hours before I hit a wall at every turn so insanely punishing for me that I had to give up and wound up really resenting that game for not including even the tiniest pathway for a player to get over a hump they just can't execute, whether that be a deeper weapon system, an easier way to restock vital items or most simply just a way to build of vitality and strength. I get why they didn't and consider that debate dead on arrival anymore but it still stings me.

So on principle, I'm waiting for a sale. I'll let the public tell me how much this game is or isn't for me in the meantime.

What the fuck is Elden Ring?

This is what I like to hear, even though I never have any idea what is going on until I watch a YouTube breakdown months later!

Also, hearing that he just fucking railroaded GRRM is hilarious to me. But what else can one expect form this dude who was like losing his mind in an interview about how great it was to be cursed.

I kinda got my Souls fix by re-playing Dark Souls 1 late last year, and I haven't finished Dark Souls 3 yet. so I'm good for now.

@sethmode: Eh I dunno it’s a name that has a lot of pull in regards to narrative.

It’s a smaller name in the grand sense but a lot of RPGs did this with Chris Avellone for a while until.. well.

@efesell: A fair point. And I didn't mean that there was anything weird about it...I don't mind it either way. I just think the idea of him being like "I kind of destroyed his characters" is very funny and Miyazaki-ish.

This is a game that I was always going to get at launch, but I had managed to not anticipate it much until fairly recently, when I looked up and was like, "Oh, right, it's coming out near the end of this month, maybe I should just look at a little coverage." At which point I discovered that a lot of press had been allowed to play six hours of a near-final build of the game, so there's all these preview articles from around February 10. And after reading some of those, yeah, I'm somewhat hyped now. It helps that I'm sort of bored of all my other games at the moment, so part of it is just looking forward to something new. I don't know for sure if the new open structure will ultimately help or hurt my enjoyment versus the Souls games, but I'm sure keen to find out.

The thing about the evolution from Souls to Bloodborne to Sekiro is that each one gave you less and less choice in terms of playstyle. In Souls you could be heavy melee, light melee, pure magic, pure bow, etc. In Bloodborne there was light melee and that was it, but at least there were a dozen weapons to change things up. In Sekiro there was one melee weapon, period, with precious little customization aside from choosing which prosthetic tools you wanted equipped.

Of course having less choice as to your playstyle isn't necessarily a bad thing... there are both drawbacks and advantages. It's a lot harder to tune/balance a game that allows a hugely diverse array of combat styles, because it's almost inevitable that you'll be making some encounters much easier and some encounters much harder for a given build. Sekiro never had that problem, because every player had to approach combat encounters in pretty much the same way... you couldn't just sit fifteen feet away from a boss and Soul Spear it to death, for instance.

Whether you prefer a game that is more focused in its gameplay versus one that has a wider array of options is, I think, largely a matter of personal preference. Speaking purely for myself, I liked Bloodborne and Sekiro a great deal, but their very dearth of different playstyles has made me less inclined to replay them. I've idly considered replaying Bloodborne again since its release in 2015, but have never actually done it. Maybe I still will someday. Sekiro I doubt I will ever play again. But I've kept returning to the Souls games over the years. I think I've played the first Dark Souls about... eight times, maybe? Hell, I played Dark Souls 3 three times in a row when it first came out.

In short, different strokes for different folks. I suspect they keep returning to the wider range of gameplay styles because it has a somewhat broader appeal.

@atheistpreacher: I agree that past games had a lot more game style flexibility which is definitely an advantage. Sekiro is a great game and I was able to actually finish it after about 3 solid hours of mastering pattern recognition on the final boss. At the same time plenty of people didn’t finish it because of its single minded my way or the highway approach to difficulty curves. Truly a “git gud” game if there ever was one. From what I’ve seen of the previews there seems to be a wide range of hybrid classes this time around so you don’t have to pump all intelligence or all strength in order to use that late game weapon - you can mix and match - and that’s exciting to me.

I do worry somewhat about how the combat will feel to me post Sekiro. I'm not advocating that all From games going forward just focus on singular styles in that same way but there's a rhythm and execution to Sekiro that I'll be interested if this game can do anything to approach while also maintaining that level of variety.

Far and away my most anticipated game of the year. Definitely taking some time off on Friday to dive in, and I've been playing through DS3 for the past few weeks in anticipation.

Eh. As someone who has beaten every Souls game and played a fair number of other games of that style, I think I've hit a fatigue with the series. I might pick it up on a sale or something, but it's hard for me to still get excited for a series that I've been playing for the last decade plus, and making a game more "open" doesn't really do much for me.

@atheistpreacher: where are people getting the idea that the game will be less flexible? The game seems to feature more weapon based abilities/skills and the game seems to expect you to use these abilities more often if you want. That magic can make up a large portion of any build and that most classes should be able to use long range abilities more often before resorting to melee.

I've only seen a few long beta streams and it seems like people are approaching combat in a number of ways. Twin blades which were useless in previous games now seen to be pretty useful for horseback combat. Some people are able to do nearly pure bow builds with some magic mixed in. I could be wrong but it seems to be pretty open.

@merxworx01: If you think I or anyone else is suggesting that the game will be less flexible than prior From Software games, you are very much misreading. My entire point was that Bloodborne and Sekiro forced a more focused gameplay style on the player that had less flexibility, but that Elden Ring was returning to the Souls formula that provides a wide variety of playstyles. Not sure how you read what I wrote and came away thinking I had said exactly the opposite.

@humanity:Again im still confused on this hype train relying on the game coming out and revolutionizing gaming. It seems like an easy way for disappointment to set in for a game that just said it will be open world ish dark souls. Dark souls is great so what's bad or ok about another one with great graphics more bosses and fun lore. We don't need it to come out and be this year's BOTW. I feel games like death stranding were what we should hype for some revolutionary ideas, not a game that's a sequel in a franchise sorta. Anyway, I'm excited but will hate the backlash, from fans who think it's not good enough, people who hate dark souls saying the game is too hard, it being easier causing non-fans to think its overrated, and so on, and in the end, it will be like any other great game, fun and nice...but the discussions and comparisons will not end. At least it won't be like star wars where the sun will explode and the universe will still discuss it. (fire punch)

@topcyclist: Why will you hate the backlash?

Like yes, some people will be disappointed and not like it. For a variety of reasons. You don't have to dwell on it.

@atheistpreacher: fair enough. I must have misread your response to another post and thought you were explaining that their dislike of Elden Ring's return to form was a graduation of Bloodborne and Sekiro's escalating trade off between flexibility and skill checks.

Personally, I liked what the first dark souls did, got reasonably far in 3, and while I finished Bloodborne I eventually came to resent the limitations it placed on builds. I didn't play Sekiro at all because it didn't allow co-op* and the combat went in the opposite direction I wanted (even more restrictions, there is one "correct" way to play, etc)

*Sorry, I know I'm not allowed to like playing with other people, and only disgusting casuals would dare betray the perfectly immaculate game design by playing a videogame with a friend, but you know what, it's fun to roll through a tough area with your buds and just see the game in a different way. I promise that every time I have fun summoning I go file someone's taxes or call my ISP as a penance.

I guess I'm waiting to find out if there is gonna be anything that puts me off before I pick it up. Right now, I am cautiously optimistic that it'll be a return to the style of the earlier games, rather than a doubling down on the "You must play this one way" format

Im with you. I like em all but of course have my favorites. It seems after dark souls critics from people who jumped on and either loved the difficulty or hated the slow combat, they streamlined and made everything faster and a bit more hard (cant tell since you naturally get better after you beat one of them). So by sekiro it got to the lane of...ok so this is just another action game with extra steps. It seems to have worked as many who hated ds started to warm up as bloodborne and sekiro came out. I also see plenty of people mad about elden ring cause it seems back to basics and they wanted something out of this world different. I love fantasy old worlds so it kinda saddens me when people generally persuade devs to go a direction i see in tons of alternatives (surge 2 for example). Well see how it goes. Plenty of games to play and for me to stop being salty.

I'm extremely excited. I don't preorder games, because fuck that, but I love the Less Is More style of open world exploration where things seem to be happening seamlessly in the world around you without needing to be prompted by map markers and ingame cutscenes. You stumble across things naturally, and you have the constant sensation that there's more mysteries to uncover around every corner.

Compared to the "climb a tall tower to uncover a bunch of collectibles and side quests on the map" style of gameplay (no thank you) it's extremely refreshing, and I wish more designers would have the confidence to trust their players to find things organically.

I strongly dislike the focus on leveling up stats and weapons in the Souls games and the only ones I've beaten are Bloodborne (looked up what stats to aim for with my chosen weapons) and Sekiro. I'm all for having a choice of playstyle, but I hate having to think about leveling up the correct way to not hamstring my chosen playstyle or weapon, and I loathe grinding for XP or crafting materials. It doesn't help that the Souls games often make it very unclear what the stats actually do, and that leveling up takes forever. I remember getting really annoyed about all the weapons the Bloodborne DLC threw at me. They expect me to grind for hours to get these weapons up to the same level as my current, and I still can't use them in NG+? It's to be blunt, awful.

I hope Elden Ring makes it as simple and straightforward as possible, because I hate wasting my time on such things. Just let me choose a weapon and gain some new attacks or whatever, but I don't want to fight a boss and have to worry about whether my build is 'correct' or is actively hampering my progress. If I can reach a boss, I should have a reasonable chance to beat it.

Sekiro, and Sifu are great examples of what I'm talking about. No matter how you approach the fights, there isn't a single worthless or bad upgrade or skill to choose from. Some might benefit your playstyle more than others, but in the end you never have to stress about it and can always feel 'I should be able to handle everything the game throws at me', I just have to learn and get better if I fail.

The inclusion of stealth and a jump button is very exciting to me. I don't expect a new Sekiro, but I do think it will be less obtuse, mechanically, than the older games, which I am all for.

@topcyclist: it’s more about talking a step in a new direction for this particular franchise than revolutionizing gaming as a whole. They’ve been doing this already with Bloodborne and Sekiro. Both were very much souls games and both strayed from the classic formula which had polarizing effects. Elden Ring will be no different. A step in a new direction while maintaining a familiar core that is bound to turn some fans off. I’ve liked all the games in the series apart from Dark Souls 1 so I’m looking forward to it.

I'm very ready to play this game. I've stayed far away from most pre-release footage and info. The only thing I think I've really seen on it is gameplay from that beta they did several months ago. Hopefully this will be a Souls game I actually finish. I love these games but I've always quit before the end, aside from Demon's Souls on PS5.

@humanity: i get ya. Sometimes even a small change like a structured world to open can spin the feel of a game to be as people state "revolutionary" I still think people saying the game will change the face of history for games or whatnot are just setting up for the backlash. I'm not saying it won't be good. I think it will be 10/10 great. Some online already stated they hated the beta. They felt the monsters were randomly placed and the world was not well made. IMO from videos, it seems they actually physically placed stuff and it will take time to realize due to lore, etc. But opinions. I liked Dark souls 1 most due to playing it first, thinking it was trash, then adjusting and getting "good" and loving it. DS3 is polished but nostalgia makes me like DS1. DS2 is good but by DS standards...Then bloodborne IMO feels so different it isn't even a SOULS game. Sekiro is the same, if it was by another company the only reason people compare them and get mad at FROM for making sequels is cause they associate them with their best work. Like if marvel made a stand-off movie people would hate on it for being marvel not cause the actual movie was bad lol.

Since Bloodborne I have picked up each subsequent release on day one. Sekiro and Bloodborne are often battling for first place in my heart. This time I intend to wait for at least the first sale. I'm certainly excited for the game, but it doesn't have that same "brand new thing" feel that Sekiro did. It looks like an amalgamation of their history more than anything. I expect they'll use the open world in some clever ways and won't overstuff it with mindless, tedious tasks. Having watched a fair bit of the network test it looks like Dark Souls with some added ideas and an open world. And I'm fine with that. Though not in a rush to play it this time. I'm also curious about their dlc plan this time around. Sekiro didn't get any and I don't think they've said one way or the other for Elden Ring yet.

I've been trying to play stuff in the library that I never got to these days rather then buying new games currently as well. Also, replayed the Bioshock trilogy recently, and it finally got me in the mood to get into Prey, and I'm glad I did.

I am very excited, but I'll also be relieved if the Armored Core rumors turn out to be true. This game seems like it'll be a neat culmination of what they'd built up over the past decade; not a revolution, but a refinement of revolutionary (now rote to many) ideas From had since Demon Souls, and especially since Dark Souls.

Unfortunately for some the DNA of BB and Sekiro are only slight, at least as far as combat, but combat is not the primary thing I personally go to Fromsoft games. I really enjoy their level design and am excited to see the pivot to wider, expansive landscapes. Especially since the attempts they've made in past games at broader exploration areas (Darkroot garden, Road of Sacrifices, Valley of Drakes) were far from my favorite. Though I'd say their weaknesses were because they were intended to "open" up the worlds in a way that the games progressions didn't really support and Fromsoft just wasn't technically ready for. i.e Dark Souls is successfully "open" but at the cost of one area being almost useless save for a plank bridge and a cutscene with a flood gate, and one area that I just run around the edges of to avoid annoying enemies. Seeing the landscapes they'd sampled from the previews, the geography looks incredibly unnatural and fantastic and I'm optimistic it'll continue that way.

Game looks big and I am excited and I hope From is thoroughly satisfied with this iteration that they can take a break from this type of game.

FWIW here's a new trailer.

This'll be my first time "experiencing" a FromSoft game at release. I'm honestly thrilled, I've never just had an experience of one of these games before.

Except Sekiro, but that doesn't count.

So I’ve put about 5 hours into this which is nothing but I think so far - it’s pretty good!

Right off the top: the performance on Series X is a real bummer. I spend a lot of time in this cast open world and it honestly feels like I’m constantly right around 40 FPS. It doesn’t affect gameplay, I’ve been able to dodge just fine, but it sure is annoying especially since apparently the PS5 is on average fairing much better. This isn’t all that shocking since I have for a long time now criticized FromSofts apparent technical limitations, but it is disappointing to once again be playing a game that could be great but has just enough small things that constantly remind you that it could be so much better. Normally I would say they will patch this but man with From.. I’m not even confident they can patch it.

As far as the game-game goes it rides that thin line of being just different enough to make the familiar formula fresh again. This is essentially Dark Souls 4. You have the same movement speed, the same move sets and general character management. Welcome back equipment load! Some past experiments like weapon arts have also made their way over. Turns out all that stuff is still really fun, especially when you are no longer being railroaded down a long corridor.

I’m ready to get lost for a good 40+ hours in this world. It’s been a long time since I played one of these games that I instantly think about right after I’m done with a session and one that I boot up right after breakfast on a weekend morning.

Now just give me The Surge 3 Deck13.

Neighbours call the police concerned about domestic violence. Turns out the man was playing video games with "varying success" innthe midfle of the night.

O Elden Ring

Article in swedish:

https://www.google.se/amp/s/amp.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/varmland/polisen-ryckte-ut-pa-misshandel-i-tv-spel

I finally got the framerate to stabilize. I forgot which setting to enabled on the Radeon GPU settings. The whole area around Stormhill no longer stutters like crazy and I can finally parry like there's no tomorrow. It was real hard to do when the framerate would stutter so bad I'd CTD. Hopefully From gets around to unlocking the FPS because being locked at 60 is pretty shitty.

The legitimate online mode bandit. His name is Craven Moorehead.

@rubberbabybuggybumpers: I always mean to get these games on PC so I can fool around with cheat engine after a regular playthrough but never do. Really need to give it a shot one of these days…just…maybe not Elden Ring.

@humanity: After having played almost all of the Souls games on consoles, I'd have to say those who play on consoles have the edge when it comes to skills. You pretty much HAVE to git gud or else you'll be in for a very shitty time. AFAIK, there is no CE or something similar for the console versions. The only ones I haven't played on the console are Demon's Souls and Sekiro. I did a legit play of Sekiro and got my ass handed to me so many times it took almost a year to force myself through the misery. Now it's one of my favorites.

Elden Ring has elements of Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro in it. Those elements range from the environments, boss fights, gear, and mechanics. I'm still trying to figure out the gun-parry equivalent in this game since it appears all the bosses can be parried and staggered. I did discover a dupe glitch by accident. I plan on keeping the method to myself since I don't like spreading cancer. It can definitely break the game's difficulty.

Think my save has roughly 15 hours on it so far. Level 21 ish? I still have not made it past what I guess would traditionally be considered the first boss lol

Always find that part amusing. I've beaten all of From Soft's stuff. Dark Souls 2 is great stfu ;) Platinum'd Bloodborne. Multiple playthroughs of Sekiro and nearly platinum'd it (didn't feel like going through the whole game a third or fourth time just to pick a different story branch) And yet here I am. Struggling with the first boss. I know it should be easy, I just can't execute it. Just how these games go.

Every time a new one comes out, I need to get my Souls legs under me again. This time is maybe harder though because I just moved into a house so I feel guilty because I have a million other things I should be doing.. And also I'm playing Horizon FW.. And also GT7 is coming in a couple days and I'm dying to play that.

So all my time has been spent wandering the world and finding items. Practicing combat on other enemies. Beating side/smaller bosses I guess. Love the horseback combat.