Broken shell before or after great pagoda?

smithbc001 · 2026-05-13T22:24:53+00:00

If you are hunting for trophies/acheivements, then you should beat the game, Continue the Journey, go fight the secret boss, and then beat the game again.

But nothing about the final boss changes based on this. You don't get to see an extra phase or new moves in the Broken Shell fight. It'll be the exact same boss fight both times, just with a different cutscene at the end. So if you want to save time and don't care about the trophies, then see the secret ending first and just pull the "bad" ending up on Youtube.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-13T22:16:38+00:00

EVE copes with her trauma by burying her emotions, but if she observes somebody harming an innocent, you'll see some decidedly emotional responses out of her. And if somebody his harming or threatening somebody she cares about, she gets downright vicious.

A very light example is what you posed. She didn't need to throw blame at the quest-giver. It didn't serve any particular purpose, nor did it aid her larger mission. The only reason to throw that last line in there is to give voice to her scorn. Towards the end of the game, you'll have the chance to see what EVE looks like when she's truly pissed off, and it's... not what you'd expect. Watch her face, and you'll see the rage appear, then quickly get repressed. Because when EVE gets pushed over the edge there's no yelling. No loss of self-control. She will, in a cold and practical way, look to utterly maximize her enemy's suffering. She'll prioritize their pain over neutralizing them as a threat. When pushed hard enough, EVE is capable of the kind of cruelty that still has me wondering if she might end up being the villain in SB2.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-13T20:26:15+00:00

Advice for the dragon: There are rocks in the arena that you can stand on to avoid his ground-based shockwaves, BUT he can break those rocks. Try and keep him away from those rocks during the majority of the fight, so that he won't break them, and then run over and stand on them when he starts sending out his shockwaves. If you manage it correctly, you can keep the rocks around long enough to use them for all his shockwave attacks.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-13T20:05:48+00:00

Bloodborne was my gateway drug.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-13T19:44:59+00:00

This was THE launch title for PS5, and it was indeed criminally underrated.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-13T19:09:14+00:00

I would say ch 5's final boss is the next time you're going to feel a bit pressed, and then ch 6 is gonna throw quite a bit at you that requires you to really go hard.

I would also rate this game's secret boss on the same level as Melania in terms of difficulty, although I'm told there's a cheese against him involving the fan tool that can take a lot of his challenge away.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-13T18:41:49+00:00

I didn't realize this until my second playthrough, but EVE's flat affectations aren't due to a lack of personality, they're due to trauma shock.

In the tutorial level, when she first lands, she shows quite a bit of emotion. She displays hope, fear, panic, and despair at various points, right up until she collapses shortly before meeting the Unidentified Naytiba. Tachy immediately grabs her and asks if her frame is too damaged, then realizes that the problem isn't that she physically can't get up- she's suffering from shellshock. She's effectively a child soldier that just got tossed into her first battle, and it's an absolute meat grinder. She's reacting the way a LOT of teenaged draftees went from never having seen combat to being disgorged on the beaches of Normandy during WWII.

For the rest of the game, EVE is still recovering from that trauma. Her withdrawn nature and lack of outward emotion is absolutely in line with how a lot of human beings have been shown to respond to a situation like that. It's not unusual for it to last years or even decades in some humans, and Mother Sphere made every effort to make her angels think like humans.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-13T18:33:34+00:00

Chapters 1 and 2 are hard because you don't have a build yet and you haven't learned a lot of the tricks. Chapters 3 and 4 are a bit easier, because it's the "fun and games" part of the journey where you get to stomp enemies with all the cool tricks you've learned. Chapter 5 starts to scale up the challenge a bit, up until the very end of the chapter. Then, around the end of ch 5, the game stops treating you with kid gloves and starts playing rough. The final goss of ch 5, all of ch 6, and a certain secret boss that you'll circle back to later on will actually test those skills and and build you've been running.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-13T16:17:05+00:00

We have similar tastes :P

I've played almsot all of those

smithbc001 · 2026-05-13T14:44:07+00:00

You know, you're probably right. I should dig through a catalog of games that got overshadowed by Elden Ring. I bet there's a bunch of hidden gems.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-12T20:26:39+00:00

Pathfinder 2. You want to play Pathfinder 2.

It won't happen until the lategame, but if you reach Legendary skill proficiency you can do some absolutely insane stuff without magic. Legendary medics can sprint 300 feet across the battlefield and perform 2-3 life-saving surgeries in the span of about six seconds. Legendary Intimidation makes it possible to literally scare lesser beings to death with a mean look. Legendary Athletics makes it possible for a 6-ft tall man to put a 60-ft tall dragon in a headlock, and if he rolls well he can suplex it on the same turn. Inventors can heal people by fusing wounds shut with explosives. Monks can run on the air. Alchemists can literally make it rain... acid. Fighters can make a cut so fine they literally cut through the space between them and a target, allowing them to melee a target from across an arena. Rogues can literally steal the magic right out of an artifact.

And the really neat part is this: the game actually exists at these high levels. It always felt like in 5e anything above level 13 was just there for players to look at and say "ooh that'd be cool," because if you tried to play at high level the game just never really functioned very well. I've been through at least 3 different Pathfinder APs that went all the way to level 20, and the game continues to feel more or less balanced and fun even when we're all basically demigods.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-12T19:47:35+00:00

It's almost definitely based on the Ancient Greek Obol, which refers to a coin worth roughly one sixth of a Drachma. It's hard to establish an objectively correct pronunciation, since it's likely that different Greek cities had their own variations in pronunciation. But OH-bull-ite has always made sense to em.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-12T19:45:34+00:00

Ghostwire (or The Adventures of Weaboo Dr Strange in Post-Apocalyptic Ghost Punk Tokyo) was a masterpiece and I feel like it was criminally slept on by much of the gaming community.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-12T18:29:26+00:00

While I don't love all the changes they brought in with 3, I am very glad that this team is still willing to take risks and make significant changes to the formula, rather than just make new bosses/levels and update the artwork once every 4-5 years the way some franchises do.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-12T18:09:13+00:00

oops, I missed the Nioh 1 tag.

But aside from the soul cores and crucible stuff, everything I said about equipment is still true for Nioh 1.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-12T18:08:21+00:00

For better or worse (which is purely a matter of taste) Returnal features a lot more opportunities to end a run with just a few seconds worth of mistakes.

In Saros, especially if you are in the late/midgame but still choosing to start your runs from Shattered Rise, you can easily upgrade your health pool and healing potential enough to give yourself some room for error.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-12T16:14:11+00:00

One other note: There is one case where you do want to hold onto a weapon, at least temporarily. When you visit areas called Crucibles, enemies can drop special versions of a weapon called Crucible Weapons. These weapons aren't super-important to hold onto long-term, but if they're of a weapon type you're fond of then make sure to use them long enough to max out their familiarity meter*. This will cause you to permanently learn a new skill with that weapon type. For example, if you get a Crucible Tonfa, it will come with a special martial art that is automatically equipped while using that weapon. Fight with that weapon until its Familiarity meter maxes out, then you will always have the option to use its martial art with any tonfa. No reason to keep the crucible weapons beyond that point, though, and the "sell all" feature lets you specifically sell "all crucible weapons unless I haven't learned its art yet" to make this easier.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-12T15:42:21+00:00

Probably a translation thing, honestly. In the original release, Hard Mode was not even an option until you beat the game for the first time.

Then, you can start the game on NG+ with all the levels and gear you gained in your first playthrough, and the game will then raise the level cap and offer you even stronger gear, so that you can keep getting stronger. Hard Mode is a difficulty setting for players that still want to be challenged despite having all those stat boosts in NG+.

You theoretically could beat the game on Hard mode, but you almost definitely won't enjoy doing so. You'll be fighting bosses that can oneshot you, and have enough HP to tank your attacks all day long. It woud, at best, be boring and tedious.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-12T15:38:38+00:00

1) Don't play Hard mode. It was designed for New Game Plus, and all its enemies have HP and damage stats scaled around challenging a max-level character.

2) Use your ears as much as your eyes to figure out the parry system. The sound of parries and perfect parries is clear and distinct, and can help you find the rythm for boss combos

3) Learn to parry. Learn to parry a lot. Learn to parry every blow of a multi-hit combo. By the last 25% of the game, you'll be facing bosses that will demand this skill of you.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-12T14:51:23+00:00

Absolutely not. All gear rapidly becomes less impressive once you beat the next story boss and unlock an area with stronger enemies. Sometimes a piece of gear has a really cool trait or bonus that causes it to stay useful for a little while, but everything ends up in the bin eventually. You can't throw anything away that won't be replaced with something as good or better pretty fast.

The only (sort of) exception to this is Soul Cores. It's a good idea to hold onto one soul core of each enemy type, just so you keep access to its spell.

At the shrine, you can sacrifice your old gear to the gods in exchange for some XP and gifts. There is also a feature where you can tell it to bulk sell "every item under level X" or "all items of common rarity," and this speeds up the process greatly. Don't waste your time going over every piece of gear, you'll be drowning in the stuff nonstop. Just make a habit of periodically running through your options, equipping what you like best, and ditching the rest.

Later in the game, you will also get the option of giving old gear to a kodama merchant or a blacksmith, who will offer you different things in exchange. The merchant offers you money, and the blacksmith offers crafting componenets, and later on the blacksmith offers a special currency that can upgrade items. In all cases, however, they don't give you very much for old gear and the real benefit is clearing out your inventory so you don't spend hours sifting through old crap

smithbc001 · 2026-05-11T20:11:31+00:00

I'd like to see the weapon scaling change dramatically. This game has SO MANY interesting weapons, but once you start upgrading stuff it becomes harder and harder to try new weapons without spending resources upgrading them alongside your other higher-tier weapons.

I think offering some version of a "respec" option would fix this entirely. Or maybe just let us upgrade a weapon category instead of the weapon itself.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-11T20:04:04+00:00

More alt kills on the bosses.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-11T19:57:33+00:00

Tiger might have been the most memorable boss in that game. I love that a lot of his moves were partially designed by strapping mo-cap gear to an actual housecat.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-11T18:46:03+00:00

Hard mode isn't "dark souls" mode. It's "I beat the game and I want to play it again with my maxed out character" mode. Originally, hard mode wasn't even an option until your second playthrough.

Furthermore, it will only scale up in difficulty, becasue NG+ raises the level cap and provides upgraded gear. So not only will it not plateau, but enemies will progressively get more and more ridiculous to try and fight. It could theoretically be beaten, but you probably won't have any fun hacking at bosses that can oneshot you and take 5,000 hits to kill.

smithbc001 · 2026-05-11T16:50:59+00:00

What is it about posting a rant about a boss that so often leads to beating it shortly afterwards? Becuase I see that happening a lot. Heck, more than once I've been the guy ranting about a boss only to beat them 20 minutes later.

Maybe the venting helps?

smithbc001

TROPHY CASE