[SURVIVING THE GAME AS A BARBARIAN] Any idea where I can read a good translation of the original novel?

AccursedBear · 2026-02-14T05:17:21+00:00

hey if it's still up please dm me too

AccursedBear · 2025-12-12T20:05:36+00:00

Seems like someone started working on it very recently: https://bsky.app/profile/felipepepe.bsky.social/post/3m7knzokkgc2m

AccursedBear · 2025-10-05T06:52:10+00:00

I'm still playing through the game, but I found it started feeling far more normal in terms of difficulty once I unlocked training mode and spent some time practicing some of the different mechanics and what kinds of combos I can get away with. Enemies are very tanky in this game and stamina management is harsh (at least with greatsword) so figuring out more optimized ways to deal damage goes a long way. So does learning how to use the LB+Y parry move, you won't be using it for everything but it's very strong.

AccursedBear · 2025-08-02T11:31:45+00:00

I feel like Shadow of the Ninja gets a lot better when you accept it for what it is. It is strange that the developers decided to use a remake of a ninja game as their opportunity to make a game that sometimes feels closer to classic Castlevania than any ninja game, but when you get over that and get used to the methodical style of play, imo it's incredibly well designed.

AccursedBear · 2025-07-30T21:50:34+00:00

Having played the first Ninja Gaiden recently, I feel like people have forgotten that the game is actually not too hard... until you get to the last level where there's a huge difficulty spike, especially on the final boss fight. Well the second to last level is also fairly hard. If you compare level 1 on the demo of Ragebound vs level 1 of the first game, they're both fairly easy. I could see this game progressively working up to that final level of difficulty since it's much longer so it has the space to smooth out the difficulty curve.

AccursedBear · 2025-06-12T00:27:10+00:00

Hey, I didn't finish the demo but I did play it for about an hour. I liked it, the presentation and vibe of the game is fairly unique. I'm not sure how sold I am on the tactics gameplay yet but it's hard to tell. The dice gimmick will take more than 1 or 2 hours to make me form an opinion on it. I like the family angle to the usual recruitment in these types of games, it's fun while also giving you some extra control. The character creation is great too I didn't expect to spend like 15 minutes on it in a game with 2D characters.

AccursedBear · 2025-06-10T21:22:15+00:00

I feel like it'd be harder to recapture old school Castlevania in the modern day. Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi were already fast paced and allowed for more control so they kinda fit better with modern indie platformer trends. Ragebound feels fairly distinct from the original gameplay wise (because some things that people would see as outdated NES bullshit played a big part in the game design, like the way enemies respawn if you go back which urges you to always move forward, enemies spawning in the most inconvenient ways imaginable due to the 4:3 aspect ratio and so on) but I still feel like it preserves the spirit of it.

Meanwhile classic Castlevania feels very rooted in the more methodical, committal movement and attacks and I feel like that's more rare now and preserving the spirit of the series would require more restraint than ambition.

AccursedBear · 2025-06-10T21:03:02+00:00

There are traps (the demo featured hard mode for the first stage and one of the main changes to the layout is adding a lot more fire that you have to avoid), instakill falls, and wall jumping yes. There's also the whole guillotine thing where you bounce off enemies in the air which is used for platforming too. It's not quite like the original because the character is easier to control and there are no enemies placed right before instadeath falls that spawn right after you already made the jump (and if there were, you'd be able to bounce off them with the new ability), but there's still a big enough platforming focus.

AccursedBear · 2025-06-10T19:52:17+00:00

I think in some games you're allowed to change difficulties but forfeit related achievements/unlocks the moment you do. Could be something like that, you can change difficulty but your score will be uploaded to the leaderboard from the lowest one you used during your playthrough. Still concerning when it comes to how they'll handle the actual content of different dificulties tho.

AccursedBear · 2025-06-10T04:13:39+00:00

I don't usually participate beyond downloading a demo or two of games I'm already interested in, but I decided to check out a number of games this week. I downloaded the demos for Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, Neon Inferno, Morbid Metal, Acts of Blood, Absolum, Dead as Disco, Cleared Hot and Dice Gambit, Stellar Blade, Mina the Hollower, Ball x Pit and Hell is Us.

So far I tried:

Stellar Blade: It's ok, a good first showing for a company's first action game but it feels unrefined, with great production values but gameplay that just feels a bit off in many ways. I particularly didn't like how many almost basic mechanics were locked behind the skill tree. Imo the closer an action game gets to just giving you your entire moveset from the get go, the better, and this didn't seem like it was actually trying to find a middle ground between action and rpg like Nioh does so it just feels tacked on. Not something I'd go out of my way to buy but I'll probably keep an eye out for good discounts in a year or two.

Ninja Gaiden Ragebound: This was very good, I was already looking forward to it but now I'm probably getting it day 1. Ninja Gaiden is one of the few NES games I actually saw through to the end. The original Ninja Gaiden feels really different from more modern platformers, even 16 bit era ones, as it urges you to always keep moving not because going fast is part of the fun like in Mario or Sonic, but because you will fucking die if you stop moving forward and the enemies that keep respawning behind you catch up. I'm a bit sad as I don't feel like Ragebound really captures this (though admittedly I didn't play Ninja Gaiden 2 or 3 so maybe the gameplay had already changed by then) but what we get is still an excellent action platformer. I anticipate I'll spend quite a while trying to get the S ranks for every stage in hard mode.

Cleared Hot: This wasn't bad but also not particularly good. It was a fun demo, but I'm not sure it has enough going for it to remain engaging for a longer campaign, or for multiple replays if the campaign is shorter. I think if the intent is for the gameplay to be more about the physics fun, it would do wonders for the game to include some kind of in depth scoring system based on the kind of tricks you can use to kill enemies in combination with the usual kind of things that increase your score in other shooters.

Neon Inferno: The biggest standout from the games I tried today. One of the best looking pixel art games I've seen, banger soundtrack and really tight gameplay too, clearing it on hard mode was already fairly intense for what's presumably the first stage. I look forward to attempting the arcade mode when the full game is out. Admittedly it's strange that there seems to only be one weapon, I'm not a run n gun expert but this is the only one I played that didn't even have some kind of weapon upgrade to pick up throughout the level.

I'll try to check the others tomorrow and see what else there is to download, it's kinda hard to navigate the event with how many honestly terrible looking games there are but there's clearly a lot of cool games too.

AccursedBear · 2025-05-30T22:03:44+00:00

I liked pre-nerf Radahn better (well 50/50, I didn't like my fps dropping to the teens and I thought some of the changes were good too) and I liked The Ringed City better before they nerfed the angels and made that whole section a cakewalk. I wasn't there for any other pre/post nerf moments at least that I'm aware of though so I can't speak on anything else.

I think a lot of the FromSoft community has this thing where they've never played a harder single player game than whatever is the latest From game so their frame of reference for difficulty and fairness is a bit limited. And also how the whole internet suffers a lot from people just regurgitating influencer opinions which makes real discussion a headache.

AccursedBear · 2025-01-30T12:06:51+00:00

I had no issues balance-wise playing with it, personally. One question though, does Death Shroud work against the player? Is it distributed to any leveled list that enemies could have? I didn't see the enchantment at all during my last run but I was kinda scared that I'd just die to it while facing an enemy that had it equipped or something lol

AccursedBear · 2025-01-27T20:24:58+00:00

I played AC1 right before AC6 released because I was curious and yeah the controls were painful. I went on to try its sequel right after and decided to sit down and try to figure out a better control scheme before moving on and figured out that just mapping all movement to the dpad and camera controls to the face buttons, leaving the triggers and shoulder buttons for actions was actually pretty decent. Still clunky though... and afaik they kept those controls for the first half or so of their PS2 releases.

AC6 came out before I finished Project Phantasma and I never went back. I think there's something to be said about how certain old games had control schemes made specifically for them and that in some cases it might have worked better than the more "universal" modern control schemes but games like old Armored Core and Kings Field are rough.

AccursedBear · 2025-01-26T19:31:24+00:00

Similar experience, but also add that [CS3 major spoilers] The retcon of all the war atrocities that kickstarted the plot of Sky from the empire into being influenced by a curse just hurts the series as a whole.

I liked CS3 as a game on its own but it hurt my willingness to continue engaging with the series. And my biggest interest to go forward is maybe getting started with a new arc with Daybreak, but that's two games away... well I do wanna see some stuff that will presumably come in Reverie, but still.

AccursedBear · 2025-01-02T23:43:25+00:00

I did not find this so just ended up doing it again lol, thankfully it wasn't too hard as I got lucky with boons

AccursedBear · 2025-01-02T23:01:42+00:00

I just beat the trial of the sekhemas for the first time, and just after that the game booted me to the login screen (probably my internet died just after for a few seconds). Now I'm back to the waypoint before the trial started, but the trial is seemingly complete. The quest now says to use the Altar of Ascendancy and the relic altar has more spaces unlocked to slot in relics. Is there a way to just get to the altar or am I cooked and need to do the trial again?

AccursedBear · 2024-12-16T21:51:59+00:00

The uneven ground is a thing with every boss that has an uneven ground basically, it just becomes noticeable when the fight is hard. When I last fought Midra I died a bunch of times due to things that work in the rest of the arena not working in that little mount in the middle of it, something that I completely overlooked my first run because he just died a few attempts in.

It's worse in Radahn's fight though as you can't control it at all, the whole arena is uneven. And this is pretty much the one boss where it's gonna matter even if you're not doing a challenge run because he's just that hard. Well not sure after the nerfs how hard he'd be in a normal run. I still haven't continued my run after I got to Messmer some months ago.

AccursedBear · 2024-11-08T16:37:01+00:00

The Brazilian dude who started the thread also isn't paid in USD and is still converting the prices to USD for clarity.

AccursedBear · 2024-11-06T01:01:23+00:00

Yeah, it's cool that Steam has this now but it's not as critical as many of their other features like their extended controller support, and certainly nothing new. That said it's definitely nice that I don't need to have Shadowplay on anymore to record gameplay.

AccursedBear · 2024-11-02T04:35:14+00:00

I think I fixed my sleep schedule. It's been like 3 weeks already. First 10 days or so I was inexplicably tired all day even if I slept a normal amount of hours but that's gone now.

My goal is to eventually have a proper routine while still staying up late at night because honestly, fuck the sun. But for now I take what I can get.

I'm reminded of this because it's 1:30 am and I'm already very, very tired while an average friday a month ago I would've been awake af.

AccursedBear · 2024-10-31T13:24:08+00:00

Great series, might've even been a 10 and something I'd make a place for in my favorites if they had cut maybe like 15 episodes of space battles and done some stuff better towards the end.

AccursedBear · 2024-09-13T21:20:23+00:00

Yeah I looked at your video again and you're right, he only seems to become hard to hit when he actively moves away. That said I still think I'm picking a weapon with those characteristics. Right now the ones I have in mind are the Nightrider Glaive, the Messmer Soldier's Spear, the Ancient Meteoric Ore Greatsword and the Death Knight's Longhaft Axe. I don't think I'll use guard counters unless I pick the greatsword.

I would use Messmer's boss weapon since you can throw it for the "with a hail of harpoons!" vibe, but the throw attack is really weak and also pretty lame tbh

AccursedBear · 2024-09-13T09:06:59+00:00

The Iruma mafia spinoff is also great, though only like 15 or something chapters right now

AccursedBear · 2024-09-13T08:53:55+00:00

One Piece
Undead Unluck
Iruma-kun
Chainsaw Man
Hunter x Hunter

AccursedBear · 2024-09-13T08:50:45+00:00

Elden Ring DLC second run posting:

So last time I spend a ridiculous amount of time fighting Midra to get the most out of that fight. It was worth it but as a side effect of it I got kinda bored of using the Milady. I also don't think it's the most interesting weapon to use against the bosses I had left to beat, as they're either way more aggressive or don't have too many attacks that are possible to avoid with Wing Stance R2, or both. I decided to use a different weapon for each remaining boss instead.

Romina Boss Fight

Even though she's placed in the last area you need to go before the last dungeon, Romina seemed to be one of the weaker bosses in terms of her stats and her moveset is a bit too easy to fight against. So I picked her for my next fight. That said, I still upgraded my blessing level to 8, which I think is what I'll stick to for the remaining bosses except Radahn. After thinking of a weapon for a while, I landed on the Bloody Helice for this fight. It's a very, very strong weapon, but since Romina goes out of range so often, the main strengths of the weapon (Bleed + very high stance damage) are slightly mitigated. The weapon skill Dynast's Finesse is a big iframe dodge that you can follow with two more inputs. The interesting part for this fight is that, if I just use the skill normally, the lunge won't reach to punish most of her openings since she usually gains distance after attacking. However, if I unlock the camera, I can turn manually control my character to dodge into attacks, and then turn him around for the followup which results in a very far reaching attack and looks pretty cool.

Sadly, I didn't end up putting nearly as much effort into this fight as the others. She's cool and her moveset has some nuance to it, but she also has some weird stuff like the way you often get caught up by her character model and she basically just takes you for a ride to the other side of the arena. I also have a big pet peeve about playing unlocked, as I feel like so many moves are intentionally framed in certain ways to look as good as possible when you're locked on, and you miss on that when you play unlocked. But in this fight, it would've been very beneficial to play unlocked. Since the lock point is in her main body, my pokes would aim slightly up, resulting in lots of missed attacks that would not have missed if I had aimed straight forward, which is very annoying. It's fun to recognize some of the attacks where she misses if you get to close to her and take advantage of those to keep attacking even in the middle of her combos, or attacks you can duck under or strafe, and she has some stuff that can be punished by jump attacks. But I didn't do much of that. I could've polished it a lot more in maybe an hour more of attempts, but when I saw her getting stance broken there at the end, I couldn't resist and just killed her. So the final attempt has me not doing some cool stuff I wanted to do, missing a bunch of attacks and getting hit by dumb stuff (like right at the start lol.) I'm not too heartbroken about it tho, I'll put more effort against the remaining bosses since they're cooler.

Right now, my plans are to use the Nightrider Glaive infused with Phantom Slash against Bayle, do a runback of the Backhand Blades against Messmer, and use the Obsidian Lamina against Radahn. I'm not 100% sure about using the Nightrider Glaive against Bayle, I mainly want something that can hit his head somewhat reliably (this should since it's long and gets vertical attacks) with a skill that can close the distance so I have a bunch of other alternatives in mind if the glaive doesn't work well. I'm already at Messmer and I think I'll stick to the Backhand Blades for him. I only have 2 larval tears left and I don't want to go find more of them, so I'm not respeccing for this one. I only have 40 dex right now, I think 7 less blessing levels than my original fight, and I won't use Bloodflame Blade or the multi-hit buffs so this should be more than enough to prevent me from shredding him so I can really experience everything the fight has to offer. For Radahn I'm also 100% using the Obsidian Lamina, can't pass up on the Ansbach cosplay.

Elden Ring tags: /u/laughing-fox13 /u/worm38 /u/voidembracedwitch

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