Doing the elden ring coop mod rn. Shits dope

I’m playing Nightreign. Just bought it this week. I’m still unsure. The moment-to-moment gameplay is fantastic. Smooth Elden Ring combat with the new dash, no fall damage (!), nice character skills to explore… But I don’t know if I like the gameplay loop. When I wipe to the three dog’s, I have to try very hard not to think of it as a 30 minute run back. I also lack a significant amount of game knowledge, which feels alien coming from ER. With my strategy at the moment, I get almost garantied to The Dogs (Trisephalos?). But you know, every 30 minutes. After I beat the first expedition, I’m probably going to look up a guide.

Favorite areas? Design-wise: Otherworldly. The Nightmare in Bloodborne, coming out of the cave in the Nightmare of Mensis and seeing Mergo’s loft at the peak of the Nightmare is still one of my favorite Gaming moments. The dread-filled creepiness of the Research Hall in the DLC, makes me still shudder.

This brings me to my next type of area that I like: Area with branching paths. Yes, how novel, someone who likes branching paths in a Soulslike.
This type of area adds for me not only to the exploration, but also replayabilty. I’m still finding new paths through the Shadowkeep. Stormveil Castle comes to mind: A super linear path to the main boss, but so many alternative paths you can take to Godrick and so some much more to explore.

I’m going to try to finish Dark Souls for the first time ever. PTD edition because I just have had it so long - and yes the DSFix still works without issue on Win10 at least. I’ve cleared Nito and Seath. I did semi-blindly. Many years ago when I tried it for the first time, I just couldn’t get into it. Too obscure mechanics and stat systems, too detached world and with combat that just didn’t feel fun for me. I cleared Taurus demon by luck (he fell) and then met with the Drake and just didn’t have it in me to continue. Too many hurdles to get over at once so I never got into soulslikes and I just started to call them “dodgewanking” games. My friends however persuaded me to play Elden Ring (reforged+seamless) and I was able to learn the game logic and stat systems through that. Also could learn the game as suits me as one friend is playing a tank and the other is a sorcerer - leaving me to just bumble about with a fun jack-of-all-trades build without it being an issue since I’m being carried anyway. Also learned to play with a controller for the first time in my life. So I started to feel like giving Dark Souls another go as this time I’d be able to mostly focus on the game itself, without having to learn everything from scratch. Granted I had heard that the “easy” build was STR+Sword so I did go with that. I am the type of player that does like to systematically go through everything so I did get Zweihander almost immediately, which served me until I got the Black Knight Sword and… well that’s about that for my weapons. Now I’m just messing around with other weapons because thanks to being thorough, I have a ton of crafting materials (and I’m lvl75) and I just wanna see what they do but I only really needed the now-Divine Zweihander for Nito. Else the BKS gets the job done a bit too effectively to not use. I did pump up my other stats so I can wield Greatsword of Artorias for when I go back to New Londo. Though that’s more on principle than out of any real need. I just don’t like depending on consumables. And I do use some heal miracles for out of combat and some utility spells like Light and Hidden Body (makes running from the bonfire to the boss slightly smoother). For armor I’m just using Thief+Wanderer for looks unless the situation really feels better with something else (like Favor set for Seath).

For favorite area… In Dark Souls I guess Darkroot. And Caelid in Elden Ring. Mainly for visuals, not so much for the gameplay. In terms of gameplay i think I actually like Anor Lando because I prefer a few tough enemies to a ton of weak ones. Plus exploration that’s easy to make systematic.

Frosty areas are some of my faves.

Especially DS3 Anor Londo & Ariandel, DS2 Frozen Eleum Loyce.

Just like real life, if you’re warm inside, then cold, snowy weather is cozy af.

Gotta get to the lies of p dlc man if I have time. Absolutely love the town areas myself. Strong architecture, tight corners, sectioned challanges. Usually at the start too so I still have a lot of that wonder

Nightreign dlc is out, so I might play that but the only character I’m interested in is Executor.

Other than that I’m working on my 5th ng (not ng5) play through of Elden Ring, currently with a light roll, parry/arcane build and it’s probably the most fun ive ever had playing it. Stuck on Malenia but I’m really just training myself on her parry timings.

My favorite part of Soulsborne games are boss fights. Second are the Chalice dungeons in bloodborne, not the story dungeons but all the crazy ass glitchy root chalices that have the crazy themed rooms. Theres a common edited chalice (idk what its based on could probably find out) where the first level boss is supposed to be a grind for adept gems, but the second level is like my favorite area in the whole game. Early in the dungeon theres a small room with a watcher spear cleaver hunter, but the room is like completely stacked with boxes. So like every dodge or attack you end up breaking something, and the whole fight is just stuff exploding and at the end the whole room is like completely filled with rubble.

But further in, theres an oil swamp with one hook hand undead giant and two cannon undead giants. A little further on down the hall is a beast possessed soul (bepis), and you can lure him into the oil swamp. Theres even a shortcut hole in the hallway to make it easier to get him in. Once he is in there, you can make bepis fight the undead giants, and its absolutely incredible. Theres just huge fire explosions everywhere, if you get hit with anything its instant death, the bepis can usually take out the hook giant, and you can lure the cannon giants to shoot each other and kill the bepis. Finally its just you and one injured cannon giant to finish off.

The root chalice dungeons are full of these like hard puzzle challenge rooms. For instance I found one of the small circular elevator rooms that had 10 Pthumerian fireball witches. Just an absolutely insane prospect, but some developer had to develop like 2000 of these things and decided “why not?”

The random root chalice dungeons are the greatest part of any souls game

I recently went through a bunch of souls games so I might try either nioh 2 or first berserker khazan. Favorite areas are probably the safe zones, firelink majula, etc