What are you currently playing?

[Drathnoxis]

Blue Prince

Roguelike puzzle game where you need to explore the rooms of a house - you have a "deck" of rooms, and can select from one of three every door. You have a limited number of moves per day, and every day, the house resets. (Blue Prince, blueprints - get it?) You're set to find room 46 in a house with only 45 rooms. That's the headline aim, except you'll find that there's a whole, massive lot to find out - narrative, secrets, puzzles, etc. You can however make some permanent changes which deliver permanent advantage/progress.

This is, I think, genuinely a masterpiece. Almost.

Because it's also incredibly annoying: like many of these games, you need to go in again and again to get progress, but the ease with which you can be screwed by RNG is huge. Managing RNG to the right level in these games is probably one of that hardest things for a developer. I think these devs have tended to RNG excess.

So for instance you can see a puzzle and a solution, but you've also got to get via RNG the right rooms in the right place and picked up the right three items. And you'll need to luck out like that another 20 times to find stuff out. You'll have the odd freakish run where stuff comes together, and you have ways of planning to make these more likely. You can get bits of incremental progress. But mostly you'll be wading through a mass of runs which don't pan out, and each one is probably 15-30 minutes of your life wasted, and it feels like the game does not respect your time. You will get frustrated, start to resent the day start cut scene, etc.

I'm hoping that the game will have an update that gives us some better tools for managing RNG because this is such a commonly discussed issue. I'm waiting until then to play more of the endgame.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished the Artorias DLC for Dark Souls.

My pride and joy is that I managed to beat Manus, who shows up as the toughest boss on every list, on my first try.

Spoiler

I get a good sense of his combo early on, but consistently take a beating whenever he does his jump attack, because my go-to is to roll sideways instead of away. A magic shield would probably go a long way too but I managed to tank the barrage of bullshit just fine.

And before that Kalameet. That was 4-5 tries.

Spoiler

I don't know what the hell is that weird red psychic attack and don't care to find out. Sadly I miss the tail weapon on this one.

 

[Agema]

I'm hoping that the game will have an update that gives us some better tools for managing RNG because this is such a commonly discussed issue. I'm waiting until then to play more of the endgame.

Yes. I think it needs more flexibility to keep things - even just one or two items (the Coat Room is not nearly enough) might slow down the grind.

Also, just as a QoL, I would normally start a run by unlocking the west path room, which is about 2-3 minutes wasting time just to jog there and back to the house. That could be better automated - like some device to open it in the entrance hallway.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Finished the Artorias DLC for Dark Souls.

My pride and joy is that I managed to beat Manus, who shows up as the toughest boss on every list, on my first try.

Spoiler

I get a good sense of his combo early on, but consistently take a beating whenever he does his jump attack, because my go-to is to roll sideways instead of away. A magic shield would probably go a long way too but I managed to tank the barrage of bullshit just fine.

Manus first try?? That's fuggin' impressive. I've thrown and broken exactly one controller in my life, and it was against Manus.

And before that Kalameet. That was 4-5 tries.

Spoiler

I don't know what the hell is that weird red psychic attack and don't care to find out. Sadly I miss the tail weapon on this one.

And Kalameet is the ONE Dark Souls boss I've never beaten. Granted, I've not tried more than a half dozen times; after struggling with Manus for days, and Kalameet being 100% for pride (i.e.: not tied to any achievements,) I was content 100%'ing the game.

Good fuckin' work, dude.

 

[Xprimentyl]

@Johnny Novgorod, if you haven't already gotten it, please record some videos of your going for the Large Divine Ember in the Tomb of the Giants...

 

[Drathnoxis]

Yes. I think it needs more flexibility to keep things - even just one or two items (the Coat Room is not nearly enough) might slow down the grind.

Also, just as a QoL, I would normally start a run by unlocking the west path room, which is about 2-3 minutes wasting time just to jog there and back to the house. That could be better automated - like some device to open it in the entrance hallway.

Yeah, the west path room is definitely too far away for something you need to go to every run. Things just take too long in general, like the unskippable boat animations.

I would also say the Coat Room should hold 3 items and spawn every run as an outhouse after you reach room 46. Same with the Conservatory.

 

[Worgen]

My pride and joy is that I managed to beat Manus, who shows up as the toughest boss on every list, on my first try.

Mine is that I beat Orenstein and Smaugh my first try.

 

[meiam]

I did Manus first try too, but thats cause I was using super heavy shield setup on the run that was doing when DLC release, and you could absorb all his combos by just blocking them.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I'm pretty sure in DS1 my only first-try kills were the freebie bosses like Pinwheel, Ceaseless, Centipede Demon. I did get Seath first try as well though and I'm not sure if he counts as a 'freebie' or not. In the later games I got Soul of Cinder and Gehrman first try, and Fire Giant on the second.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Maybe I was overleveled from all the endgame farming (I ended around SL 120-130), if there's such a thing as overleveling. I feel like I maintained a consistent ratio of damage dealt/damage taken and basically used two weapons the whole game (BK Sword and Zwei); pretty much the same shield too (Silver Knight, Black Knight). The biggest powerup for me ended up being kindling bonfires and getting 20 heals. But even then a boss like Manus only required like half that.

I died more times to the Stray Demon than Manus, Gwyn and Kalameet combined so maybe it's a simple case of git gud. I'll take some credit anyhow.

 

[BrawlMan]

Ninja Warriors Again (SFC) - I did a hard mode run and no death with Kamatachi. Managed to get over 1 million points.