We’ve recently got back into Elden Ring which we’ll maybe get to again this weekend. We’ve recently finished the Abyssal Woods with its boss at the end (really cool fight, first time I’ve managed an entire fight with parries) and are now exploring this green, verdant, lush, and jungle-like area in the top-left corner of the DLC’s map (don’t remember the name).
Apart from that, I kept playing Monster Hunter Rise for a while this week and gave the lance a try for the first time in probably 15 years of my playing Monster Hunter, and I must say: it’s a lot of fun. Felt a little nostalgic today, so I downloaded PPSSPP and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite and started a new character. It’s a lot different than I remembered it, and yet it felt a lot like visiting an old friend you’ve not seen for years.
Also transferred my old save data from the PSP:
Considering I had played the game for so long, I barely accomplished anything in it lol. A bunch of random armours and weapons, 0 actual builds with useful skills and whatnot. Simpler times 🤧
I’m not sure if I’ve made a post about this before but here goes. ER has had an enormous impact on the genre, the overall visibility of it, and pushed the boundaries of what a soulslike can look like nowadays. Between the liberty of the open world, the variety of possible builds as well as the very deep lore, there’s a lot to like about the game and for a good reason.
How much do you feel like ER will impact soulslikes to come? I’ve not felt a noticeable impact yet, but most soulslikes I’ve played either were in development only shortly after, I assume, or before ER dropped. I haven’t checked out newer ones outside Khazan or Lies of P yet. Have you felt a different in design yet? Because I feel like ER could very well be as, or close to, influential as Dark Souls was back when it came out.
I’m playing Valheim this weekend (and the next few weekends for sure) which has soulsy-style combat with parry, dodge, stamina… And an Open World! And crafting… But is it like Elden Ring? Not at all. Honestly, after playing souls games for more than a decade, just combat combat kill boss kill boss is not cutting it anymore for me. It’s fun, but too shallow sometimes? Elden Ring was kind of my hope that it would rekindle my flame for the genre, but it didn’t. It felt like dark souls with some AAA marketing words (open world! crafting!) slapped on top, and the open world just didn’t feel as rewarding or as open as Zelda BOTW (which for me stands as the golden standard of Open world games). Today I like games with souls combat but that have more than just “fight!” as the goal. The older I get, the more I prefer to build things rather than destroy/kill as an end goal. Ashen was a great souls-like to me because everything I did brought a little bit of life back to that bleak world, while in most souls the world is permanently bleak, and saving the world is an end goal that you don’t get to see yourself (same complaint I had with BOTW, you save the world, but don’t get to enjoy living in it, but at least on that it was remedied during TOTK where you can kind of see the world during its rebuilding). Back to Valheim though, I’d really like a more AAA RPG souls with the same kind of ideas: build your base, prepare yourself, fight enemies, kill bosses, progress you and the world. Enshrouded and Valheim are close, but are not really souls games.