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Making my way through Raya Lucaria in Elden Ring. It's hard to gauge properly what kind of headway I'm making in the game in general, in terms of the critical path (which I've read is like, a tiny fraction of the overall experience), or total completion, or even my own leveling/progression. The game just keeps expanding every way at every step. It's overwhelming, in a good way. By now I've beaten around 20 bosses which is more than I've encountered in Souls game I ever played and holy shit, I read there's 165 bosses in this? I gather that most of them are gonna be mini bosses but still - wow.

Anyway, Raya Lucaria is awesome looking. Bloodborne meets Hogwarts. The art direction for the game is consistently otherworldly. A lot of it reminds me of the old John Howe illustrations of The Silmarillion. This game does for Tolkien what Dragon's Crown did for Frank Frazetta. The irony being of course that GRRM gets a credit. And it doesn't escape me that the whole thing is framed as the anti-LotR: you're on a quest to reforge a ring rather than destroy one, and in a place called The Lands Between, which is basically just another way of saying Middle-earth.

Take the boss count with a grain of salt. It’s an open world game with world-building stuff, so you’ve probably already seen repeated variants like the Erdtree avatars and fire dragon, magic dragon, etc. But yeah, over half are still going to be unique bosses which is pretty steep.

Also speaking of GRRM, pay attention to those initials and main boss names as you’re going through the game, lol.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
I'll add that to my wishlist and keep an eye on it for their sales, thanks for the tip!
Burnout Revenge was the first game I bought for the 360. In 2005, you couldn't find one and then in April 2006, Bestbuy had a huge showcase at which I got the console with 20Gb gigantic external drive, you had to buy a separate wireless adapter for $100!!! In 2006!!! and this game and it was fantastic. Justified the purchase and looked awesome on my 1080p 50" Sony DLP TV.
I will likely pay full price for Forza Horizon 6. Spent my first 3 years of my life in Japan as my dad was stationed there and I've had a soft spot in my heart for the place my whole life. Wish it was drive on the right side of the road but, can't have everything. FH 3, 4, and 5 are some of my all time favorite games. Feels like a party playing them.
EDIT: Phew, Paradise City, at least, does work on my Xbox One X. At least for now as being a digital purchase? You never really own it.
Burnout Revenge was one of my earlier 360 games also, had a ton of fun with it, but I never played Paradise. At the time open world in an arcade racer didn't make sense to me and I didn't get console games anymore since my 360 had red ringed outside of warranty so I had to fix it myself and no longer trusted it for gaming. The final game I got on it was a used copy of Mass Effect 3 since I did have to finish the trilogy and at the time, it wasn't on steam.

I played a ton of Forza 5 also, pretty tempted to just grab 6 when it comes out.
 
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gorfias

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Burnout Revenge was one of my earlier 360 games also, had a ton of fun with it, but I never played Paradise. At the time open world in an arcade racer didn't make sense to me and I didn't get console games anymore since my 360 had red ringed outside of warranty so I had to fix it myself and no longer trusted it for gaming. The final game I got on it was a used copy of Mass Effect 3 since I did have to finish the trilogy and at the time, it wasn't on steam.

I played a ton of Forza 5 also, pretty tempted to just grab 6 when it comes out.
Mine red ringed a month before warranty was out so got it fixed. It died from a disc read error 3 years later. Went PS3 till the next gen came out.
Paradise is a hoot but, TBH, shows its age relative to the Horizon series. But there's nothing I know of exactly like Burnout 2 that I had for the Gamecube. You had a whole segment of the game to set up and cause as big a pile up as possible, getting points for the amount of damage done. I do have a buddy that came across one of those big water mains made of cement, suspended in the air by a crane and he thought, "there has to be a way to drive through that" and tried doing so repeatedly until achieved a week later. Obsession can be a fun thing!
 

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Resident Evil 4: Castle completed. Somehow I managed to get through the worst room in the game without dying, though probably not playing on Professional difficulty helps.

Salazar's boss fight in the original is honestly pretty weaksauce, and that's me being generous. Less generously, it's braindead. Run into the right-hand corner, dump TMP rounds into the tentacle until it disappears, shoot the giant obvious eyeball with a rifle until Salazar's body appears, shoot Salazar with a magnum or rifle depending on what you have ammo for, repeat from removing the tentacle until the game tells you to stop. You shouldn't get hit at all, and you don't even really have to do any dodging, either the 'move to another part of the room' kind or the 'hit the flashing buttons quickly' kind. As much as I remember ranting about how difficult the remake's version is, that was mostly before I got used to the major changes it made, and overall I'd say they were greatly in its favor. However else you feel about other aspects and changes, I don't know how anyone can defend the original Salazar boss fight over the remake's.

The game is still really good overall, it's just this specific boss fight that's a lowlight. And for the record, I felt that way about it before the remake came out.

Anyway, onto the island, which amps up the action and somehow simultaneously the horror as well.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Mine red ringed a month before warranty was out so got it fixed. It died from a disc read error 3 years later. Went PS3 till the next gen came out.
Paradise is a hoot but, TBH, shows its age relative to the Horizon series. But there's nothing I know of exactly like Burnout 2 that I had for the Gamecube. You had a whole segment of the game to set up and cause as big a pile up as possible, getting points for the amount of damage done. I do have a buddy that came across one of those big water mains made of cement, suspended in the air by a crane and he thought, "there has to be a way to drive through that" and tried doing so repeatedly until achieved a week later. Obsession can be a fun thing!
The first red ring I had was under warranty, second wasn't. Burnout had so many cool little game modes, on top of just great arcade racing.
 
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Drathnoxis

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I've been playing a bunch of Dark Wizard for the Sega CD. It's a pretty slow game, but it's fun ranking up all your little monsters and soldiers from fragile peasants into killing machines. It does have some amazingly obscure BS characteristic of games of the time. So I learned about this fire spirit that lived in a shrine in the mountains nearby and got a fire staff to let me see it. I see a unique pointy mountain, so I give one of my characters the staff and go and 'seach' the mountain. They don't find anything. Apparently I needed to 'use' the staff on the mountain. Ok, maybe that's not so bad and I should have realized that. Next I get a hint that Shinobi are distrustful of outsiders, but you might be able to trick them into telling you their secrets if you have something that belonged to a Shinobi. A little later someone in a pawn shop gives me a Shinobi Knife, so great. In a different village a woman tells me "There's something weird in the forest east of here, nobody has gotten a good look at it because it always disappears into the twisted thorn trees. Maybe it's a ghost or a hermit" So I look in the forest and there's a unique tree sprite, but searching it again does nothing. Looking it up, I need to be carrying the Shinobi Knife because this is actually the Shinobi village. This is a game where each character has 6 inventory slots and you can have 40 characters. How was I ever supposed to figure out "something weird" meant "a Shinobi"?
 
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meiam

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I've been playing a bunch of Dark Wizard for the Sega CD. It's a pretty slow game, but it's fun ranking up all your little monsters and soldiers from fragile peasants into killing machines. It does have some amazingly obscure BS characteristic of games of the time. So I learned about this fire spirit that lived in a shrine in the mountains nearby and got a fire staff to let me see it. I see a unique pointy mountain, so I give one of my characters the staff and go and 'seach' the mountain. They don't find anything. Apparently I needed to 'use' the staff on the mountain. Ok, maybe that's not so bad and I should have realized that. Next I get a hint that Shinobi are distrustful of outsiders, but you might be able to trick them into telling you their secrets if you have something that belonged to a Shinobi. A little later someone in a pawn shop gives me a Shinobi Knife, so great. In a different village a woman tells me "There's something weird in the forest east of here, nobody has gotten a good look at it because it always disappears into the twisted thorn trees. Maybe it's a ghost or a hermit" So I look in the forest and there's a unique tree sprite, but searching it again does nothing. Looking it up, I need to be carrying the Shinobi Knife because this is actually the Shinobi village. This is a game where each character has 6 inventory slots and you can have 40 characters. How was I ever supposed to figure out "something weird" meant "a Shinobi"?
Oh neat, some sort of fire emblem like.

You can try the langrisser franchise if you never tried for sorta similar feel.
 

Old_Hunter_77

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Lost interest in stuff I was trying to revisit, so finally pulled the trigger on the one big game I knew I was gonna get to eventually: Ghost of Yotei. It's a safe, comfy choice. Will likely start it on the weekend.
 

Drathnoxis

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Oh neat, some sort of fire emblem like.

You can try the langrisser franchise if you never tried for sorta similar feel.
Pretty much the only reason I'm playing it is because SGF played it for a couple hours as part of his journey of trying out every Sega CD game. He played it kind of badly and it looked surprisingly deep for a 16 bit console game so I wanted to give it a shot myself.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Beat the second big legacy dungeon, Raya Lucaria. Fun all around. I keep expecting to run into a brick wall or one of those tortuous runbacks designed to send you to bed early but so far so good. Rennala took two tries.

Speaking of which: I remember Yahtzee whinging about what I'm assuming was Rennala (thwack three enemies for a boss' shield to go down, rinse and repeat), being shocked about there being a second phase, and later miffed that he had to redo phase one after dying to her. And that this somehow soured him on the whole game. Even though the fight is cheesecake and to anybody who's played an FS game it should be a no brainer that you have to do the whole thing again.

Take the boss count with a grain of salt. It’s an open world game with world-building stuff, so you’ve probably already seen repeated variants like the Erdtree avatars and fire dragon, magic dragon, etc. But yeah, over half are still going to be unique bosses which is pretty steep.

Also speaking of GRRM, pay attention to those initials and main boss names as you’re going through the game, lol.
Any opinion on whether I should be upgrading the Bloodhound, the claymore or zweihander? Bloodhound is working well enough for me so far.

And looking at trophy % I gather I'm supposed to go to Caelid after Lucaria?
 

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And so, once again, the day is saved, thanks to Leon S. Kennedy. Great game, definitely play it if you somehow haven't. It costs like 20 bucks on Steam and for the next 15 hours it's on a 75% off special.

And now since I'm still in the mood for this sort of thing I'll probably play the remake next. Well, if I can fit it in around putting a lot of time and energy into the next time-limited Leagues mode in Old School Runescape.
 
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Beat the second big legacy dungeon, Raya Lucaria. Fun all around. I keep expecting to run into a brick wall or one of those tortuous runbacks designed to send you to bed early but so far so good. Rennala took two tries.

Speaking of which: I remember Yahtzee whinging about what I'm assuming was Rennala (thwack three enemies for a boss' shield to go down, rinse and repeat), being shocked about there being a second phase, and later miffed that he had to redo phase one after dying to her. And that this somehow soured him on the whole game. Even though the fight is cheesecake and to anybody who's played an FS game it should be a no brainer that you have to do the whole thing again.


Any opinion on whether I should be upgrading the Bloodhound, the claymore or zweihander? Bloodhound is working well enough for me so far.

And looking at trophy % I gather I'm supposed to go to Caelid after Lucaria?

If you’re leaning more into DEX than STR the ‘fang will serve you well, but otherwise it’s up to what moveset/ashes you prefer on the other two, since they can do pretty equally well with either or both stats. They each have a nice poke for piercing damage, but zwei is generally trading some speed for range. Slap the Giant’s Hunt ash on it plus some grease for up close fun with dragons’ mugs.

Speaking of, Caelid has a big one waiting for mercy kill and drops a good amount of runes. It might be quicker at this point to take out the smaller ones around it though to the same effect. There’s a lot of good stuff in that map and it’s not as bad as people may say. Just use Torrent wherever possible.
 
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Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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I'm playing Silksong again, and yeah, it's fucking good, if not lacking in the charming calm of Hollow Knight.

And I think I already said this before, but the story is way too serious. But I think that's the result of the dialoge being overly written - Whenever Hornet speaks, what could be said in one sentence is extented to 3 sentences. Like, she'll meet someone somewhere and instead of saying 'How did you find yourself here? This trek is dangerous' she'll say 'Good bug, I see you've made your way up here. Though claw-wielding foes roam the surrounding vicinity. I doubt it was an effortless journey to come this far. What is your secret?' And maybe I wouldn't mind if the dialoge had some personality, but it just doesn't.

Not that this is a blight on the game, but Hollow Knight kinda kicks Silksong's butt in terms of wit.
 

Old_Hunter_77

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Beat the second big legacy dungeon, Raya Lucaria. Fun all around. I keep expecting to run into a brick wall or one of those tortuous runbacks designed to send you to bed early but so far so good. Rennala took two tries.

Speaking of which: I remember Yahtzee whinging about what I'm assuming was Rennala (thwack three enemies for a boss' shield to go down, rinse and repeat), being shocked about there being a second phase, and later miffed that he had to redo phase one after dying to her. And that this somehow soured him on the whole game. Even though the fight is cheesecake and to anybody who's played an FS game it should be a no brainer that you have to do the whole thing again.



Any opinion on whether I should be upgrading the Bloodhound, the claymore or zweihander? Bloodhound is working well enough for me so far.

And looking at trophy % I gather I'm supposed to go to Caelid after Lucaria?
The Renalla fight was the one that started souring me on the game.
Yes, I know about two-phase boss fights and I'm glad you had an easy time with it. But I was fucking miserable.

First of all, she summons, and the RNG here plays a huge part. I once got three dragon summons in a row. WTF. You have to run very far away when that happens.
Second of all, the homing projectiles. Just in general I found them way too unforgiving in the whole game. I don't care if it's SKILL ISSUE. I accept that I'm completely out of touch with modern gaming animations and speed and it's why I pretty much quit this genre. But I found I had to time my dodges frame-perfect in a way that wasn't so for other moves
And third of all, as a magic user, she was resistant to my attempt to play as a mage. Since she is also the one you have to beat in order to re-spec, I just had to deal with my pathetic attacks. It didn't really feel satisfying to summon my doggies, hope they bother enough to let me wack away and she doesn't summon too many dragons. Just lame.
 
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The Renalla fight was the one that started souring me on the game.
Yes, I know about two-phase boss fights and I'm glad you had an easy time with it. But I was fucking miserable.

First of all, she summons, and the RNG here plays a huge part. I once got three dragon summons in a row. WTF. You have to run very far away when that happens.
Second of all, the homing projectiles. Just in general I found them way too unforgiving in the whole game. I don't care if it's SKILL ISSUE. I accept that I'm completely out of touch with modern gaming animations and speed and it's why I pretty much quit this genre. But I found I had to time my dodges frame-perfect in a way that wasn't so for other moves
And third of all, as a magic user, she was resistant to my attempt to play as a mage. Since she is also the one you have to beat in order to re-spec, I just had to deal with my pathetic attacks. It didn't really feel satisfying to summon my doggies, hope they bother enough to let me wack away and she doesn't summon too many dragons. Just lame.
What’s kinda funny (but not in your case) is in typical obtusey FROM-fashion she’s an optional boss to story progression. Unless respecing of course. But also as a mage, rock sling works well for physical damage and stunning.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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What’s kinda funny (but not in your case) is in typical obtusey FROM-fashion she’s an optional boss to story progression.
She's WHAT now!?

The Renalla fight was the one that started souring me on the game.
Yes, I know about two-phase boss fights and I'm glad you had an easy time with it. But I was fucking miserable.

First of all, she summons, and the RNG here plays a huge part. I once got three dragon summons in a row. WTF. You have to run very far away when that happens.
Second of all, the homing projectiles. Just in general I found them way too unforgiving in the whole game. I don't care if it's SKILL ISSUE. I accept that I'm completely out of touch with modern gaming animations and speed and it's why I pretty much quit this genre. But I found I had to time my dodges frame-perfect in a way that wasn't so for other moves
And third of all, as a magic user, she was resistant to my attempt to play as a mage. Since she is also the one you have to beat in order to re-spec, I just had to deal with my pathetic attacks. It didn't really feel satisfying to summon my doggies, hope they bother enough to let me wack away and she doesn't summon too many dragons. Just lame.
I guess I got lucky because the only time I fought her second phase all she did was summon some wolves, which went on to duke it out with my wolves, while Rennala herself didn't have much of an answer to getting sworded.

Bed of Chaos felt more like a gimmick, but at least the game saves when you're done thwacking its sides. Rennala's first phase didn't feel nearly as bullshit.
 
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She's WHAT now!?



I guess I got lucky because the only time I fought her second phase all she did was summon some wolves, which went on to duke it out with my wolves, while Rennala herself didn't have much of an answer to getting sworded.

Bed of Chaos felt more like a gimmick, but at least the game saves when you're done thwacking its sides. Rennala's first phase didn't feel nearly as bullshit.

Well, there’s playing it…then there’s Platinum’ing it…
 
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gorfias

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I need to figure out how to find trading towns (Where I can get cars) and I think I'm supposed to be able to call my vehicle like Batman in Arkham Knight. I left it behind in a gang area to do a thing, came back and it was gone. Now I'm walking slowly, on foot, in a giant but relatively empty open world. Too bad. Started developing some fun powers, like the ability to sort of force push bad guys. Rage 2: