I recently replayed Dark Souls 1 and tried a Strength build to see how it goes.

Full Havel’s straight up lets you face tank Artorias, and you’re taking almost a 1/15th of his health with just a hit.

Armor was nerfed after that, but still, it was rather hilarious. Magic was nerfed too by the virtue of bosses getting more gap closers and ranged attacks - by Elden Ring, magic is far from the boring “stay back and just spam attack” idea, but on the contrary, the cheesiest tactics I used when needed were Greatshields or dual jump attacks for stunning bosses. There’s videos out there of people beating Malenia by just shield poking her to death with a spear, and I certainly used that when I wasn’t having fun with Rellana. It’s crazy to me how most people just grab a greatsword and only use that the whole game, then say the game’s shallow or too hard.

Hollow Knight mostly had pretty barebones movement for a metroidvania. Great for combat, not fun for going from point A to B, and HK has seemingly more backtracking that other metroidvanias. Silksong actually has a sprint button that makes it all better.

Expedition 33 is still good, but a lot of people go as far as saying it’s the best JRPG last decade, which feels like a copout when half of it is not being a JRPG. It feels like the Persona 5 hype all over again (which was a full on JRPG, mind you, but it also had problems and I felt was just good)

To clarify, I meant gameplay, because you can (and a lot of people do) turn on easy mode just to ignore it and focus on everything else.

The easy mode could win battles for you automatically and most people would “enjoy” it all the same, but I hardly think anyone would love it.

Edit: The context was explicitly combat, but, I feel there’s still a difference of enjoyable combat and actually engaging combat. Is parryless easy mode challenging enough?

I (re)play Soulsborne for builds, and I think that’s necessary to appreciate ER. Trying out all the spells and different weapons is most of the fun, the rest being trying them out on bosses.

Was it good though? I imagine you’d be AP starved until you get the Picto for AP on hit, and then it sounds like the opposite where you can spam costly skills.

The worst part is, that decent game isn’t even in the same genre. E33 is too damn heavy on parrying. Imagine if all 2000-2015 Zelda games were garbage, and Breath of the Wild was the first good one. I’m sure some OoT fans wouldn’t be too thrilled, while a majority of gamers would be.

As a JRPG fan though, I concur, most JRPGs suck ass, and it’s often for the most obvious, easy to fix problems like slow combat speed, or throwaway random encounter design.

It depends on person and skill, a lot of people manage to beat a majority of bosses 1st try.

Also, personally, I just like using magic which makes some parts easier.

Expedition 33, but I’m sure other people think that about Silksong or Hundred Line.

I love the pictos system, it’s the best thing about it and I hope other JRPGs take it, almost every pickup you find is good. Resuable consumables are cool, and the first two hours or so is cinema (even on Steam Deck with crappy settings). The rest is just good to flawed by the middle of Act 2, especially parrying (I’m decent at it, but I’d rather either play an action game where it’s deeper, or a JRPG where it doesn’t intrude on strategy)

It might not make up for the other shit they do, but at least Nintendo seems to treat its employees right

Crosscode has a ton of dialogue changed if you turn on NG+ modifiers, such as carrying over levels or using a “cheat code” for ludicrous damage, 1shotting almost everything.

One NPC quotes the “you cheated not the game, but yourself” copypasta.

It was a culture shock that you can smoke indoors there, especially since I hate smoking.

Secondhand PS5? I’m planning to get a used Switch 2 and some come for that price, and so seems the PS5.

I don’t know about second-hand PCs though.