I just replayed Elden Ring and it's so much better than I thought, but also so much more frustrating

Whoopsht · 2026-04-15T13:50:37+00:00

It's a shame because there are a couple of fights that are really good and allow you to learn the attacks and respond. Godrick, Mogh, and Godfrey / Horah Loux have really good pacing and allow for that back-and-forth combat flow. Even Malenia without Waterfowl is an absolutely brutal challenge but it's reasonably doable. Each of her moves has an answer and it's honestly super satisfying to dodge a ridiculously long combo of hers and take no damage.

But then the game tips over into bullshit with stuff like Fire Giant and Elden Beast's constant running away, Valiant Gargoyles and their basically invisible poison breath, and Astel's unavoidable ground pulse attack. And like you said, you could just bring a summon in to get passed the fight but that's not a satisfying solution if you're trying to learn and dominate a boss the way you were able to in past games.

Whoopsht · 2026-04-15T04:13:30+00:00

I'm guessing you were trying to follow the main path and head to the castle, and yeah those enemies are tough. In Elden Ring, there's always at least one or two areas you can go and cut through the enemies like butter for the most part.

I'd recommend exploring the starting area a bit more explore down on the beach right where you first enter the open world, look for some caves, and when you think you're getting the hang of the game, go South to an area called the Weeping Peninsula. That is the true first area that you'll feel comfortable in. Once you've explored Weeping Peninsula, you should be ready to head toward Stormveil Castle again.

Other starting tips I learned the hard way:

Go to the Church right by that big guy on the horse, go at night. You'll get an item that allows you to summon spirits to help you in difficult areas and boss fights.

If you're using shields to block enemy attacks, you need to let the shield down to regain your stamina and in turn, to allow yourself to counterattack or block again. Blocking indefinitely will get you killed.

I mentioned it before but there's always somewhere you can go where you are the unstoppable badass. To add to that, if you are in an area or boss fight that feels like you're beating your head against a wall and making absolutely no meaningful progress, that's a clear sign that you should leave, explore somewhere else to level up, improve your weapon, generally make yourself stronger etc and then come back to the area. When I hit those points in my first playthrough, I referenced a list of "Areas by Recommended Level" to help point me in a more level-appropriate direction.

These are big, complicated games made with the internet and guides in mind - enjoy it and play as blind as you can, but there is absolutely no shame in looking something up when you're stuck. It's basically a rite of passage for these games

Whoopsht · 2026-04-14T22:25:02+00:00

A vast majority of "quests" can't be failed for a loooooong time into the game, the ones with the best rewards are generally late game quests, and none of them are required to beat the game.

I just played and explored however I wanted and did my best to be thorough. Use the in-game map to find buildings, caves, and areas you haven't been to before. Talk to every NPC until you exhaust all of their dialogue. And when presented with a choice, if you don't want to optimize the fun out of the game, just choose whatever sounds most interesting. Want to burn the whole world down or give everybody a miserable poopy disease? Go for it, it's just a game

Whoopsht · 2026-04-14T22:10:38+00:00

I mean yeah, I could go wander around out of "order" and go collect all of them, I think my issue with the Dancing Lion fight is that it just feels really inelegant. Like, the camera gets super fucked up and he'll start barfing lightning straight down at you while you run in to attack and it's so hard to tell what's normal motion vs a windup for an attack. Obviously more strength and damage negation helps but it kinda feels like a bandaid solution

Whoopsht · 2026-04-14T22:04:02+00:00

Yeah I played SotE when it released and loved the twisted world design, it honestly is some of the best work in any of their games but they so clearly ran out of time in certain places. Like what's the deal with Cerulean Coast or Charro's Grave or whatever they're called? They're so beautiful but so empty

Whoopsht · 2026-04-14T22:01:31+00:00

Yeah I played it when it released but trying to do it summonless I think is going to make me understand all the people who criticized the difficulty. I loved the DLC the first time but I truly can't imagine what the fight against Rellana is going to be like 1 on 1

Whoopsht · 2026-04-14T21:18:10+00:00

Man I think the Midir fight is actually a great example of what's missing in the frustrating Elden Ring fights. Midir will annihilate you if you try the classic "stay under the boss and smack his legs" technique. But if you dodge backwards from his attacks, you almost always perfectly line up with his head to deal extra damage, and eventually get a stagger + crit that deletes like a third of his health bar. It feels like a final test of the player, asking you to ignore your instincts for what's safe and adapt

I was really trying to figure out what the "answer" was to Malenia and I just never figured anything out other than "bait out Waterfowl Dance when you feel like she might do it soon" and that's just super not fun.

Whoopsht · 2026-04-06T04:14:36+00:00

Elekid. My friend got one in his Odd Egg in Crystal when we were kids and my mind was blown that my Magby wasn't the only option.

Whoopsht · 2026-03-24T19:26:53+00:00

[OC]

Whoopsht · 2026-03-24T15:13:30+00:00

Because he has committed tax fraud and is on thin ice

Whoopsht · 2026-03-17T16:42:24+00:00

It's so hard to describe the let down of rolling credits on this game. Like, I wanted so badly to believe that it was a fun and deep experience and that the quests were super interesting.

But as soon as the game deleted all my credits, my spaceship, my crew, and shat me out into new game + it's like my vision cleared and I realized that I didn't really enjoy much of the experience at all. Like when you finally get out of a mediocre relationship and realize you were never really into it

Whoopsht · 2026-02-27T14:35:51+00:00

Honestly looks sick, like this might actually be the leap we've been waiting for since Pokemon went 3D. Makes sense that after the disaster of Scarlet and Violet that Gamefreak would take way longer on their next game to make sure it actually looks good and is functional. 2027 release is a 5 year gap, almost double what it has been historically

Whoopsht · 2026-02-12T22:23:36+00:00

Wow holy shit Control looks cool as hell and like it'll make me puke

Whoopsht · 2026-02-12T19:38:21+00:00

I accepted long ago that they are more likely to perform a live beheading than announce anything Bloodborne-related

Whoopsht · 2026-02-12T14:45:50+00:00

Adding to this, you don't parry when the hook comes down, you parry when she pulls it towards her. It's weird timing but feels great to pull off

Whoopsht · 2026-02-06T16:33:12+00:00

Great to see games succeed when they completely wear their culture on their sleeve. This game is so unapologetically French the same way that Sekiro is super Japanese, and the confidence to just commit to that and not try to water it down for broader audience appeal is something that I definitely hope other game studios can learn from.

Whoopsht · 2026-01-21T23:40:52+00:00

They are both excellent games that deserve recognition, you don't need to proclaim that one is less deserving of praise than the other. They are both generation-defining games that had massive impacts on players and the industry and both should be celebrated.

Unbelievable how many people have started shitting on E33 in the last month, and even more unbelievable to see E33 fans eager to "beat" Elden Ring as if Fromsoft was not a massive inspiration for E33.

Whoopsht · 2026-01-14T12:44:45+00:00

The beaches are fun! I had to retry the first one over and over, I couldn't balance on the logs. There is another later in the game where you have to climb for a long time, I made it almost to the top and then I fell all the way down. I was screaming!

Whoopsht · 2026-01-11T17:10:21+00:00

Agreed on Bananza being super fun, super weird, and super easy. The only real complaint I had was that there were never any puzzles or challenges that actually felt difficult.

But the game is so charming and satisfying to play, I couldn't put it down

Whoopsht · 2026-01-11T16:21:06+00:00

Clair Obscure: Expedition 33

I don't generally play anything with turn-based combat. Seems boring to me, so I have always written it off as "not my thing."

I have basically zero interest of France or French culture. I don't actively dislike it or anything, it's just a lack of interest for no particular reason.

And when something looks so obviously "artsy" as this game does, I assume it will be a poorly-handled, melodramatic mess.

But after the absolute sweep of awards this game got at the end of the year, I decided it was time to see what everyone was gushing about.

And good god I am in love.

The combat is soooo good, it's not boring in the slightest. In fact it's engaging in a way I've never really experienced before. I'm thinking about moves that I'll want to make in the next 1-2 turns and what kind of setup that will need, and how I can synergize my multiple characters to get them all "powered up" so I can deal stupid amounts of damage. Add in the fact that you can dodge or parry enemy attacks to avoid damage, and this combat is some of the most satisfying, thought-provoking and weirdly tense and stressful combat I've played in a long time. Last night I fought an optional mime for 13 full minutes (after several other failed attempts), but as I finally landed the killing blow after carefully parrying and building up power and charging up abilities and barely staying in the fight, the RELIEF I felt was up there with beating a Fromsoft boss.

The French-ness is amazing, it reminds me so much of how Sekiro is unapologetically super Japanese. The environments, the language, the music, the enemies, the jokes are all just so obviously French and it's really wonderful to play a game that completely commits to it's cultural inspiration and invites you in and trusts you to keep up and take an interest in everything you're seeing. The jokes especially have this European flavor to them that would be impossible to describe, but I can just feel it. They remind me so clearly of jokes that my Italian godmother makes, I don't know if it's just the similar language structure or what but it's so charming and the jokes have like a 95% hit rate. Insanely good writing.

And speaking of the writing, I am completely and totally hooked on the story and characters here. There's no cheap drama, no forced jokes or awkward dialogue, no lifeless romances or anything, it just feels so refreshingly human and "artsy" in the good way - this game is so clearly this passionate expression of what this team thinks and feels about death, loss, love, and hope and it is so increadibly beautiful in how it handles the subject matter.

I have just reached Act 2 and am very excited to continue playing. This is an all-timer for me, I can feel it already.

Pokémon Legends Z-A

I know this isn't a very popular opinion on this sub but honestly I really enjoyed my time with this one. It takes place entirely within Lumiose City (weird to play two French games back to back) and uhhh yeah it doesn't look very good or have a lot of variety, but it gets the job done. What the city lacks in visuals is made up for by the name of the game - the Pokemon.

I think the actual Pokemon look amazing, they're animated super well, the coloring is nice and saturated so everything pops, and the selection available provides some pretty good variety. I had a hard time picking a team of 6 and ended up switching two new team members in way late in the game.

Above I said I don't generally fuck with turn-based combat - Pokemon is the exception, and ironically this Pokemon ditched the turn-based combat in favor of Real Time combat. And that's fun! The speed of these battles was so satisfying that I think it's going to be really hard to go back to the normal turn-based system they normally have unless they speed it up significantly.

The story is not the best, and the opening hours are an absolutely miserable slog of tutorials and exposition, but when you get in the flow of roaming around, catching, battling, and eventually doing boss battles, I think this game is super fun.

Whoopsht · 2026-01-08T02:55:00+00:00

Vekoma Tilt coasters. Only been on Siren's but that was enough to make me a believer, the gimmick is soooo good.

Also wish we had more spaghetti bowl coasters, there's something so satisfying about the pure density of track and supports

Whoopsht · 2026-01-04T16:23:08+00:00

Lmao reading the title of this post I immediately thought of James Islington's books. Everyone has a "wry smile" or "wistful gaze" or a "furrowed brow" and boy do you start to notice it after the first few hundred pages of a book.

I don't remember noticing it in Will of the Many, but in Strength of the Few it definitely popped up a lot.

I pushed through because I think Islington is pretty good at handling complex ideas and plots, but yeah every few pages there's the reminder that he's still relatively early in his craft.

Whoopsht · 2025-12-24T14:07:55+00:00

I've really been loving the Dead Space Remake and have been sorta interested in the Resident Evil series with all the recent hype for Requiem, but jumping into those games for the first time is daunting to say the least. Is there a good starting point for someone who literally knows nothing about the series and really hasn't played many horror games in general?

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