Best quality of life improvement (minor mechanic spoiler):

Blocks100 wrote:

As this is an open world, do the bosses really still act as chokepoints? If they give you a spanking, can't you just flee, go on the grind and return when you're a few levels higher and return the favour. I guess it doesn't work like that though?

Yes you can, completely. There is one 'end of area' boss I speedran too, but you can still go back and grind if you want. Other bosses can be avoided entirely, especially with a certain new mechanic.

Blocks100 wrote:

Is this going to convince the doubters? And by that I mean the real DS haters like myself who just can't abide the forced difficulty?

I like hard bosses if I can retry immediately, because it takes a few attempts to acquire pattern recognition, and then loads more to refine it to mastery.

But Souls have you repeating lead-up sections that pose no challenge in comparison, arbitrarily taking up so much time. Serving up game-flagellation like it's 1989, boredom their penance for failure to the point of lapsed concentration lifeloss.

So long as you respawn at boss doors in this, its new openworld should let us choose our own difficulty. That could well be the difference in mainstreaming it.

It's definitely been made with wider accessibility in mind. I'd be surprised if there are any long runs to bosses. Early days yet, of course.

I just love the aesthetics and will be in day 1.

tigersgogrrr wrote:

I just love the aesthetics and will be in day 1.

Me too.
There's nothing I don't like about it.
(Took a while to figure out how to 2 hand weapons etc but it's still so so good)

At this point Silksong seems like Vapourware

Dark Soldier wrote:

acemuzzy wrote:

Sounds like I will need to dedicate my life to this, it does sound amaze from the snippets I've caught, right up my street.

I just pray it doesn't land right alongside Silksong...

Its a take three months sick leave game.

I've done the first two network tests, stayed up til 3am just to have a go and all I want to do is just play it, get lost in its world.

The area you are given feels ridiculously vast, like an 8-10 hour exploration area, and its not even half of the opening area of the entire map. It's madness.

Yes yes yes.
I went to bed last nite about 12:30 then looked to see what time the tests were today and seen the next one is at 3 am,
Plenty of coffee and bongs later I was set and running around finding loads of hidden dungeons etc and also beat that first major boss before exploring a little further till time turned 6 am and kicked me off.
I was gutted, couldn't believe that was 3 hours felt like half hour of the best stuff.

Anyway I don't want to spoil anything but this is a definite buy.

I just stuck sekiro back on my ps5 internal so I can try and beat the funking monkeys second phase,
The shit throwing cunt!

I've had a couple of sessions on it now, and I'm in two minds about it.

I love everything that's new for a From game - exploring the open world, using the map to actually find places of interest, etc. The landscape itself is a fascinating departure, and I've stumbled into some unexpected encounters. Even little things like jumping or the new counterattack, the horse thing, and item crafting. It's all great.

But I'm disappointed by how much had been transported basically unchanged from previous games. Why don't they change the combat mechanics more? Or ditch the old items for new ones? Why are they still using the same dungeon traps they did 10 years ago? Why can't they come up with different kinds of bosses anymore?

Why go to all the trouble to create a world that's so mysterious and interesting to explore, then fill it with stuff that feels familiar?

JonB wrote:

I've had a couple of sessions on it now, and I'm in two minds about it.

I love everything that's new for a From game - exploring the open world, using the map to actually find places of interest, etc. The landscape itself is a fascinating departure, and I've stumbled into some unexpected encounters. Even little things like jumping or the new counterattack, the horse thing, and item crafting. It's all great.

But I'm disappointed by how much had been transported basically unchanged from previous games. Why don't they change the combat mechanics more? Or ditch the old items for new ones? Why are they still using the same dungeon traps they did 10 years ago? Why can't they come up with different kinds of bosses anymore?

Why go to all the trouble to create a world that's so mysterious and interesting to explore, then fill it with stuff that feels familiar?

I've no issue with it, why change what isn't broken and is proven to work?

They've successfully moved a dungeon crawler into a vast open world, made it exciting to explore, added surprisingly good horse back combat, variety, a large scope of QoL improvements etc.. I'm not bothered about some reused assets and movesets.

Has this got the BotW straight yo the boss type design then?

Cheers.
I've not really read up on this much.

I heard “bwah, why can’t I button mash and face tank enemies?”

Elden Ring has gone gold! So we're definitely playing it next month.

WOOOOOOOOF!!
Can't wait!!!