probablyoliver

Yeah, I just finished my second Elden Ring playthrough, will likely take a minute away from Souls-y games, but a Lies of P thread wouldn't go unwarranted. I haven't spoken to him about it yet but I'm sure it's right up @apsham's street too.

Stick with it, I didn't love it at first, but it's fast becoming one of my favourite JRPGs, especially in recent years. It gives me big I Am Setsuna vibes, but better. According to howlongtobeat, I'm around half way through, and it's just getting better with every story beat. Lovely game, very charming, very funny, and a lot more challenging than most JRPGs I've played.

I played the demo and loved it, but haven't jumped in to the full game yet. I really want to but there's also eight thousand games out right now. It's on Gamepass, so I'll definitely play it at some point (he says, I still haven't touched Starfield!), and I've heard nothing but good things. It does sound like it's very Bloodborne-y, but if you're gonna copy something you might as well copy the greatest game of all time, right?

It gets even better! I've just got to the open world portion, and it's very, very charming. Garl especially might be the single most disarming character I've ever encountered in a JRPG.

Sea of Stars is wonderful. I'd fully recommend to the @Ruki's and @Benji's of the world.

As far as I remember, the Tantalus brothers sidequest only got discovered 4/5 years ago, 15 years after the game came out, because it literally isn't referenced anywhere outside of that one room in a city you've had no reason to visit since midway through disc 2. Absolute madness.

Shut your mouth Ruki, this ain't no safe space for people like you. Get 'em boys.

"It's-a me, Keith", doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

I'm sorry, I thought you were a Zohore.

I'll play whatever @Kaney is playing so that we have to leave Kaney on the bench.

Oh yeah, PS5 for me. I'll play in whatever position allows me to hog all the glory.

Why am I mascot @King Ellis? I am not the mascot, i am the captain.

Tony Cascarino. Faustino Asprilla. Mary Earps. Peter Beardsley. Solly March.

MDTMTSWAJOAFT,SHTMDKK

I'm in because I am a football man now.

Yeah, I'm of the camp that thinks the difficulty in Souls games is overstated. At their very core, they're just puzzle games. Enemy groups are always in the same place, with the same movements and movesets, and it's up to the player to figure out their patterns and the tool sets required to overcome each obstacle. I think people equate the fact that you die a lot with difficulty, when pretty much every Souls games starts with a borderline impossible encounter to teach you that death is inevitable. Bloodborne has the wolf in Iosefka's Clinic, Elden Ring has the Tree Sentinel, Sekiro has Genichiro Ashina, etc etc. You hit your head against these brick walls early on because you're supposed to, and then you learn that you need to maybe do something else if you want to beat them.

Come back to me when you get the trophy for getting 1000 on the jump rope.

My only 'Souls' game before Elden Ring was Bloodborne, and for the longest time I felt the same way. I hated it, because I couldn't do it and I thought it was rubbish. But for some reason I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I'd find myself obsessively coming back to try and get through the first area. I still remember the first time I beat the Cleric Beast. It took me about 20 attempts and I literally screamed when I did it, and by then it totally had its hooks in me. Bloodborne is now a game I revisit at least once a year, I don't tend to play the whole thing, but now the muscle memory means I tend to beat the first three bosses in the space of about an hour. I was unsure on whether I'd like Elden Ring at first, because Dark Souls itself had never really done it for me, I always found it a little slow and I was worried that the reason Bloodborne hooked me like it did was more to do with the victorian gothic aesthetic. I think I struggled with the first few hours of Elden Ring, but I put around 200 hours into my first playthrough. I've gone back to it a couple times since but never got too far before moving onto something else. This time it's clicked again and I'm around 20 hours in. Finished off Raya Lucaria last night, and figure I'll be playing for another 100 or so before I'm done.

Playing through Elden Ring again. I genuinely think this game has ruined over video games for me. It's just perfect.

As the boards foremost and longest standing Brighton fan, this season is off to a cracking start.

Got to the bit in FFXVI last night where you meet and I really can't decide how I feel about it all right now. When it's good, it's really good. Lots of very hype moments, combat is fun (although a little on the shallow end at times) and it's absolutely stunning, but when it's not good it just feels super slow. The side quests are terrible, the story seems to veer off wildly at times and it just doesn't feel particularly coherent. It's a marked improvement on XV, and is easily the best mainline single player entry since XII, but so far it's not a patch on the VI-X golden age. I'm hoping it proves me wrong, because I am enjoying it for the most part, but I really wanted to love it a lot more than I am.

Joel already used up all the scissors tbf.

The chocobo race is one I weirdly never had much bother with, either back in the day or my replays on PS4/Switch. Now butterfly catching and lightning dodging, those can get all the way in the bin. I've been replaying VIII over the last week, currently on disc 2 having just left FH and I maintain it's the worst Final Fantasy. The junction system sucks, the story has a decent opening and then devolves into genuine batshittery, none of the main cast are particularly likable, there's a bunch of twists thrown in with no rhyme or reason, and it has the distinct disadvantage of being sandwiched between VII and IX.

Well it's only Tristy that's actively playing it soooo...