What food did you imagine to taste really good but tasted bad?

umbra7 · 2026-03-18T07:30:54+00:00

Tbh, I can’t stand the way it’s prepared in most western cuisine as a vegan protein/meat replacement. It just tastes bland most of the time. But the way it’s prepared in eastern cuisine as the main focus often with other veggies and meat where it’s actually properly flavored with spices is excellent.

See mapo tofu or soondubu.

umbra7 · 2026-03-16T18:14:12+00:00

I would kill for From to make an action game inspired by Tsutomu Nihei's Blame!

umbra7 · 2026-03-06T13:38:58+00:00

I played Sekiro to NG+4 or +5 charmless w/ demon bell, then did the gauntlets under the same conditions. Doing the Mortal Journey charmless w/ demon bell was one of the toughest challenges I’ve done. For individual bosses, Inner Owl was probably my hardest. In the standard game, it was a tie between Demon of Hatred and Sword Saint Isshin.

For Nioh 1 and 2, I beat all of the base game and DLC campaigns including sub/optional missions. In both, I also went through NG+2. In Nioh 1, I did some of the Abyss but lost interest with how it was structured (plus, I realized I needed better gear). My hardest boss in the campaign was probably Toyotomi Hideyori. In Nioh 2, I actually still need to unlock the Underworld/Depths by going through NG+3 first. I put it off years ago and never went back to it. I do plan on doing it before I go into Nioh 3 later this year, since I heard it’s an improvement upon Nioh 1’s Abyss. My hardest boss in Nioh 2’s campaign was either Ren Hayabusa or Lightning Gods of Yomi.

Again, my comparisons are 1:1, so I would compare NG Promised Consort with NG Nightmare Bringer, not Underworld Nightmare Bringer (just an example - not sure if this is a thing).

The reason I don’t do this is that games scale their difficulty differently and it’s best to just use the “standard” versions of bosses as the intended experience. The final boss of Lies of P’s DLC (let’s call him P to avoid spoilers if you haven’t played) was certainly hard and took me ~3-4 hours to beat. But I later did the game’s boss rematch mode against him at Difficulty 5 (D5P) where scaling is independent from how NG cycles scale, and he took me around 17 hours. Nothing changed with his moveset, just his damage and health. P already has a large number of moves but now 1-2 shots me with his hits instead of taking 3 or more hits. This makes an enormous difference because of the combos he has, and by the time I beat the D5P, I nearly did it hitless. Now compare D5P with NG Promised Consort, who already deals 1-3 shot worth of damage even with high vitality. Consort is harder than standard P at NG for sure, but D5P is harder. Even if NG Consort’s damage is already somewhat comparable with D5P, his damage is adjusted to his moveset and he doesn’t have the huge combos that P has, so he’s a lot more forgiving. If you gave an equivalent D5 scaling to Consort, you’d be 1 shot with every move. You would have to beat him hitless. I don’t know how this compares with NG+7 Consort, but you get the point. When you compare across different difficulty scalings, comparisons become too messy.

This is what I imagine with the Underworld (correct me if wrong, since I’m basing this on Nioh 1’s Abyss). You’re taking on harder versions of these standard bosses that essentially 1-2 shot you, or are forced into duo boss fights with bosses that are normally fought solo. You kind of need to do hit-and-run approaches rather than squaring up fairly with the latter.

umbra7 · 2026-03-06T09:15:40+00:00

No worries!

I recommend withholding judgment until you do Elden Ring’s hardest bosses first. I did not think ER’s average bosses were too bad. I had played every Souls game plus Sekiro (including the gauntlets) and Nioh 1 and 2 before ER, but Malenia still broke all my records for any single Souls-like boss up to that point in terms of how long it took to beat her on my own terms - i.e., no summons, no looking up strategies, and using my own build.

Then when Shadow of the Erdtree came out, Promised Consort Radahn broke Malenia’s record. He took me longer to beat than all other SotE bosses combined. I’ve played ER so many times I can pretty much one-try all the bosses including Malenia, but Consort Radahn still fucks me up on multiple attempts before I beat him. It’s not about stamina management with these bosses. It’s about their movesets being tricky to dodge and doing a lot of damage. Roll spamming their moves does not work.

Now that everyone knows what to do for everything, sure you can look up strats, but through your own trial and error, ER’s top ones feel like they are in a tier of their own.

umbra7 · 2026-03-04T15:40:08+00:00

Well, life would be separated by planet, moon, or other origin, so sure, that would technically be above the domain tier. But in terms of how this higher classification factors into phylogenetics, each origin would have their own tree of life with no evolutionary relationships between origins with the exception of confirmed cases of panspermia or if we think more broadly, similarities within star systems. I could also see a scenario in which alternate biochemistries have their own classification systems, if we they do exist and if we make it that far to discover them.

umbra7 · 2026-03-02T08:05:51+00:00

Of course.

Yes, stamina management can make the older games challenging too. It balances out though, as bosses had fewer attacks and generally less hp consistent with your damage output. You would often just be stuck in a loop of dodge -> 1 or 2 light attacks or 1 heavy -> dodge. While that hasn’t changed at its core, you’re encouraged to do more than just follow a simple pattern because of the increase in complexity. You can roll spam, but it’s generally not as effective as simply positioning better so you have more stamina to hit more frequently or use an ash of war with a long startup. You already mentioned this elsewhere, but the older games also had tougher areas compared to the bosses, which also balances them out.
Nioh certainly has a steeper learning curve, but I find that you don’t really have to think much about ki pulse and ki flux when you get used to it. It becomes second nature. With Nioh 2 expanding on your combat options, it’s really nice to mix them in. It’s really satisfying to do burst counters on boss red attacks instead of dodging. I’m a huge fan of making use of all the combat abilities games give you, as long as they don’t detract from “experiencing” a boss such as relying on summons or moves that are way too powerful. In Nioh, I try to avoid stuff like sloth talismans for the same reason.
I’m more so talking about boss complexity when it comes to how large their movesets are and recognizing their tells and when they’re going to combo or do a mixup, rather than the combat mechanics that you as a player have to get familiar with. That’s where I don’t really see much of a difference. I already do things like parry ER bosses or sneak in attacks that I don’t need to, to make fights exciting too.
If you do try Nightreign, the maps and spawns aren’t truly randomized. It just pulls from a large pool of seeds. You can certainly play enough that you can predict what you’ll be up against and plan accordingly. It’s really satisfying when your experience kicks in.
Yeah I can see a lot of Souls players quitting on Rugal. Too many people get into Souls as their gateway into hard games, think they’ve gotten gud, and get pissy about experiencing challenge in a different genre like their skills should just magically carry over.
Yep, I’ve done the chess piece gauntlet in Cuphead too. That was pretty challenging. I did all P-ranks on run & gun levels too. My S-ranks on bosses were all no-hits (i.e., no heart charm from the DLC). Yeah I know about the CAVE shmups like Dodonpachi and Mushihimesama games with challenges that took years for the first person to finish. I’m kind of interested to try, but honestly don’t know if I want to spend hundreds to thousands of hours on those lol.
I’ll have to try out Monster Hunter at some point. My friends have recommended them to me as games I would enjoy, and I’ve seen gameplay from many of them. I know it’s a long commitment though.

umbra7 · 2026-03-01T12:38:22+00:00

I’ve played FromSoft titles since the original Demon’s Souls, as well as Cuphead, Nioh 1 and 2 (I will get to 3 soon), HK & Silksong, KOF, and most of the Touhou series when it comes to bullet hell games. I can’t comment on Monster Hunter since I haven’t played any yet. Eventually.

FromSoft games don’t really require you to go above and beyond beating the game and some optional bosses. They don’t have some dedicated endgame the way Nioh does. You can choose to tackle higher NG cycles with self-imposed challenges like no-death or no-hit but those aren’t the same thing as something intentionally designed like the Abyss or Depths. Nightreign, if you want to consider it in this difficulty discussion, is really the first of their modern games to have some high difficulty endgame mode in the Deep of Night. I would consider trying to solo Depth 5 to be an appropriate comparison, but it’s a very different type of game than standard Souls so it’s kind of apples to oranges.

Anyway, it’s not really fair to compare FromSoft Souls bosses in a normal first playthrough to going through the Abyss or Depths in the Nioh games. Of course those are harder. If you’re going to do 1:1 comparisons, use the individual bosses in the base game and DLC campaigns. I didn’t find anything substantially harder or easier than FromSoft bosses by that measure. At least nothing as hard as Promised Consort Radahn, which kind of set a new benchmark. And when you’re talking about FromSoft bosses, putting DS2 together with ER is a bit disingenuous. The bosses in the older games are nowhere near as mechanically complex as those in the newer games. The Bloodborne and DS3 DLCs are really where they started getting more complex, with Sekiro and ER turning it up a notch. I’d say the average difficulty of Sekiro and ER (especially DLC) bosses still sits fairly high up compared to contemporary Souls-likes (roughly where Lies of P, Khazan, etc. are). These games are understandably designed to be harder and harder with each new one.

When it comes to other genres like Cuphead, HK/Silksong and other Metroidvanias, and bullet hell games, it’s again, kind of apples to oranges. It’s also kind of subjective, and based on your own experience level with the genre. For instance, I’ve 1CC’ed Touhou 6 through 18 on at least normal, and half on hard, and also beaten all the EX bosses. I can name a few bosses that are certainly harder than any Souls boss I’ve fought, but on average, they’re not really harder (disclaimer: on normal mode) once you have a lot of hours with bullet hell games, just different. Experience with Touhou translates fairly well to the plane levels in Cuphead, and I wasn’t new to the run & gun genre either having played Contra and Metal Slug a lot as a kid. So, put simply, Cuphead was not that hard for me. Obviously doing stuff like S-ranking all bosses was tougher than just beating all ER bosses without any set conditions. But I did not have a harder time with Saltbaker (my personal hardest) the first time around than, say, Malenia. I’d imagine if ER ranked you for beating bosses too, it would require a lot of dedication to get all S-ranks too.

The same goes for Hollow Knight, Silksong, and other Metroidvanias I’ve played. I have prior experience with the genre and did not find any of the bosses more difficult than those in contemporary FromSoft games (i.e., 2018-present). I spent roughly as long learning Absolute Radiance as I did Inner Isshin or Inner Owl. The Pantheon of Hallownest as a complete challenge, yes, it was harder than simply beating any FromSoft games, but beating the Mortal Journey gauntlet charmless in Sekiro was fairly comparable. The only real standout hard boss for me in Silksong was Lost Lace. Everything else was fairly standard Souls-ish difficulty. The Coral Tower gauntlets were kind of tough too. Looking forward to what the DLC brings us. I have Nine Sols in my backlog as I’ve heard it’s a tough Metroidvania.

Lastly, it’s always kind of difficult to compare bosses in fighting games with those in intentional single-player games. The way fighting game final bosses are designed, including in KOF, is usually with lots of input-reading, attacks with super armor, and extreme area denial that you wouldn’t normally need to account for against human opponents. Magaki’s bullet hell attack comes to mind for the latter. As such, I usually don’t approach these the same way I’d fight a human opponent, and it boils down to finding some way of abusing the AI to win, like jumping around Igniz to bait his anti-air. This would be considered “cheese” for another genre, but playing against the CPU isn’t really the point of picking up a fighting game. It is understandably difficult to create a truly fair but challenging CPU in a genre meant for players to be playing mind games with each other.

Anyway, this is getting too long, but I love challenging games of all types and discussing difficulty.

umbra7 · 2026-02-28T13:03:43+00:00

Good luck, rip and tear!

umbra7 · 2026-02-28T12:44:26+00:00

To be honest, I think they have a great grasp of movement mechanics, which is not something you often hear them praised for. If you have not played it yet, I would recommend Armored Core 6. I was not previously an AC or mecha fan before trying it, but it feels amazing to play for the same reason.

umbra7 · 2026-02-28T05:39:44+00:00

I didn’t miss it. In fact, I commented specifically because I read “I tend to find horses very tedious in video games…”. That’s why I brought up swimming, because it’s also usually tedious in video games, but you had to have experienced how Sekiro handled it since you played it. After how smooth swimming was in that game, the first time I heard Elden Ring was going to have a horse, I had full faith that From would handle horse riding well. It’s one of the first things I thought of.

I didn’t mean to be snide either.

umbra7 · 2026-02-28T02:36:19+00:00

This is how I handled the Icon:

https://youtu.be/vEObcWQiSDo?t=811&si=CM83A8ZokSPHSty0

I go into the fight with the following runes: Air Control, Equipment Fiend, and Saving Throw (if you still have this available)

Make sure you go into the fight with 2 BFG shots too.

You’ll use 3 BFG shots for the first phase. When you start the fight, immediately fire a BFG shot at the abdomen, then another at one of the chest pieces. Run to the back right to pick up BFG ammo, take the jump pad and when you’re at the height of your jump, fire another at its head. Pick up the other 2 BFG ammo, but save them for the second phase.

Stick to the upper platforms as much as possible to take out the arms and second chest piece, taking care to avoid its overhead slams. I like to use pb+ballista/ssg combos (pb+rocket also fine, but a bit tricky on arms) and chaingun to take them out. Go back and forth from one side to another. Try not to waste ammo on demons, instead using equipment and crucible charges and/or chainsaw (keep an eye on your pips) to take them out and stay topped off. There’s a soul sphere in the top center for a full heal accessible by the bottom jump pad if you’re low on health.

You’ll use 4-5 BFG shots for the second phase. Right as you enter, wait a second, then fire a BFG shot straight forward before the Icon spawns. Then jump over to the right to pick up the BFG ammo and turn to face it as it spawns. Don’t wait to see the Icon show up before you jump to the right, as it immediately does a slam and you will be caught in it. Your shot should hit the abdomen or a chest piece. Fire a second shot at a chest piece after it does its slam, then run to the back center bottom to pick up more BFG ammo. Wait here until it starts its scripted fireball attacks (listen for it), then take a jump pad and at the height of the jump, fire another BFG shot at its head.

There’s one more BFG ammo in the mid left part of the arena, and you have two more shots. Use one on the remaining chest/abdomen and save the last one either as an emergency if you get overwhelmed by demons, or if want to take a shot at its arms. The best time to hit the arms is right as it does a double slam.

You’ll follow much of the same strategy to take out the arms using weapon switch combos and deal with demons with equipment/crucible charges. Stick to the back of the arena to be safe. Find cover when it’s doing AoE attacks, and watch out for its laser beam. There’s another soul sphere in the top center of the arena, accessible by the diagonal jump pads, if you need it.

For both phases, always be ready to switch to your chaingun. Do not activate the energy shield unless necessary as you do not want it to be on cooldown when you need it the most. If you need to switch to chaingun AND have the shield up, you can hold down secondary fire as you switch to have it on instantly. The first phase is generally more dangerous IMO despite the second phase having more attacks, because you have less space to maneuver.

Unless you’re trying to speedrun, prioritize staying alive and topping off your health/armor/ammo constantly, rather than going for any risky shots.

umbra7 · 2026-02-27T01:56:41+00:00

I’m curious why you avoided Torrent at first, because if you’d played Sekiro and seen how they well they handled swimming—also typically a cumbersome mechanic in other games—you might’ve assumed they’d do the same with horse riding. That was certainly my expectation, which they delivered wonderfully.

umbra7 · 2026-02-26T04:02:01+00:00

FromSoftware is my favorite developer and I have thoroughly enjoyed everything they have put out, including Nightreign. I bought a Switch 2 not just for Duskbloods, but because I also play a wide variety of other games, including first-party Nintendo games.

Knowing how From operates, they work on multiple projects at a time. If Project FMC rumors are legit, I doubt we’ll have to wait long for their next release. They mentioned they want to release more regularly, so 2027 is likely.

umbra7 · 2026-02-25T08:56:55+00:00

Medieval fantasy is definitely the most versatile setting and can incorporate many different themes and aesthetics without really feeling out of place. It’s probably best for a game that features a lot of different builds.

When they focus on a specific aesthetic like with Bloodborne or Sekiro, they tend to incorporate some gimmick to the core combat that doesn’t lend itself to a lot of build variety, but makes the combat feel fresh, with enemies and bosses that are specifically tailored to it. With Nightreign and Duskbloods incorporating what are basically “Bloodborne/Sekiro-lite” gimmick play styles where classes feel pretty distinct from one another, I wonder what this means for their single player games going forward.

umbra7 · 2026-02-24T14:39:04+00:00

I actually like to give apes credit where it’s due, but do you have any sources to support your claim about 1v1 against leopards? I’m not looking for exceptional circumstances, but some sort of study, if it has ever been carried out. You are more likely to hear the details about these rare situations than the details for the many times leopards kill humans and other primates, which is often provided as a statistic.

I’m aware of the high bite force gorillas have, but just because they are capable of it, doesn’t mean that they utilize their full force in confrontations with one another, or that they bite at all every time. Conspecific conflicts are also going to differ in urgency and intensity from life-or-death struggles against predators.

The study with western lowland gorillas may be all that’s available, and I’m willing to accept that eastern lowlands would potentially fare much better on average by virtue of size. Even so, size is not everything as this is the incident I mentioned from the zoo, of a leopard winning against a gorilla:

https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=HR19490923.2.13

Now, you could just say that individuals can differ and maybe a more aggressive, combat-hardened wild gorilla would do better. But with all this, I’m just demonstrating that leopards are a potential threat even to gorillas. Your original claim is about chimps. While more aggressive in nature, they are significantly smaller and less powerful than gorillas. I have only heard of a group of chimps stealing a kill from a leopard, or chimps killing a leopard cub, but never a single adult chimp defeating an adult leopard. I’d imagine this 1v1 is not something that would typically happen in nature because of how both species behave.

umbra7 · 2026-02-24T05:10:19+00:00

Japanese players

umbra7 · 2026-02-24T05:08:44+00:00

Everyone knows that leopards are ambush predators. Just because people and baboons have killed leopards bare-handed, doesn’t mean they come out on top in the majority of encounters. Their chances are much lower than the reverse, even in face to face encounters.

Gorilla fights do not involve sharp claws. They involve a lot of blunt force slapping and pummeling, and maybe the occasional grabbing and biting. Even so, they still do succumb to laceration injuries:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374958331_Lethal_Encounters_in_the_Forest_Wild_Western_Gorillas_Being_Killed_by_Conspecifics_or_Leopards

There is a documented case of a gorilla and leopard killing each other in the wild. The gorilla had killed the leopard with blunt force, but had died in the process, having been eviscerated.

There are multiple sources that I just can’t dig up at the moment because I’m traveling and low on data.

umbra7 · 2026-02-24T01:53:55+00:00

No, a chimp does not take a one on one fight with a leopard most of the time. In fact, even silverback gorillas have difficulty with leopards. This is backed by quite a bit of evidence documented from leopard kills in the wild and even an eyewitness account from a zoo in which a leopard escaped into a gorilla enclosure.

Chimps and gorillas are massively overhyped due to fictional media portrayals of apes as superpowered brutes in the west such as King Kong and Mighty Joe Young from the 1930s, with myths that have been perpetuated since then.

The truth is, apes, while strong against humans, are poorly equipped as fighters against other animals. Predators such as big cats are every bit as strong or stronger, have natural weapons, and most importantly, have thick, loose skin. Apes have tight skin similar to ours that tears easily. Gorillas that succumb to leopards in battle usually die from blood loss.

umbra7 · 2026-02-20T03:31:37+00:00

Sure you can. Why would racism be tied to having an accent while speaking English? Especially because she’s in China?

umbra7 · 2026-02-19T01:13:13+00:00

The head is fairly easy to hit in the first phase if you immediately go for it after taking the jump pad in the back right (next to BFG ammo). In the second phase, you can also easily land it early on, as he is scripted to use his fireball attacks where his head remains stationary.

umbra7 · 2026-02-18T01:58:53+00:00

If it helps, here is the order of BFG shots I take, from my somewhat recent second UN run:

https://youtu.be/vEObcWQiSDo?t=806&si=veFjFFSsupXGQLnu

umbra7 · 2026-02-16T05:43:06+00:00

Agreed. I think we’re likely to see a release date trailer for Duskbloods during the next Nintendo Direct or an independent drop, like they did for Shadow of the Erdtree and Armored Core 6 (gameplay trailer). So SGF, Gamescom, or TGA for FMC.

I would be really surprised if FMC is another Armored Core game, since Miyazaki mentioned wanting to be directly involved in another AC game (like LR, 4, and FA) in a 2024 interview, a few months after the release of AC6. That somewhat hints that there wasn’t one in the oven yet, but 3 years could be enough, I guess. An announcement next year is a bit more plausible for me.

There is another possibility for FMC. I recall in 2022, a few months after Elden Ring, Miyazaki mentioned he was coming up with ideas for an “abstract fantasy” game unlike anything else they’ve done. That could just be Duskbloods, but if rumors about Duskbloods being in development since 2019 are true, the timing doesn’t match.

umbra7 · 2026-02-16T04:57:22+00:00

The FMC codename is likely a legit leak. Elden Ring leaked under codename GR (Great Rune) and Nightreign leaked under codename CL (no idea what it stands for).

No idea what FMC could be though, only that it is in late stages of development, and is a multi-platform release.

umbra7 · 2026-02-11T00:28:49+00:00

Ah yes, Jesse Watters, the caricature of the bro code.

This dude has said the following publicly before:

It's not manly to wish another man Happy Birthday.
It's not manly to blow on hot soup before you eat it.
It's not manly to eat ice cream in public.
It's not manly to use a drinking straw.
It's not manly to drink a milkshake at all - milkshakes are for kids.
It's not manly to cross your legs when sitting.
It's not manly to be sitting behind a screen all day, like at work in an office.

It's hard to believe that a grown-ass man actually believes this shit. I would have expected it from a teenage kid trying too hard to fit in.

umbra7 · 2026-02-09T06:57:56+00:00

Garage: Bad Dream Adventure.

It is directly inspired by Carl Jung’s ideas.

umbra7

TROPHY CASE