feltmonkey

I dunno if the thread seems like a blog. I reckon it feels more like a cautionary tale.

99p on loaded.com if you're feeling particularly frugal.

I'm just going to add a Play at the end of the month here.

Play - Dark Souls Remastered
I'm not a Souls guy. I loved Elden Ring, but I've never really got on with any of the other Fromsoft games I've played. Even since Elden Ring, I've tried and failed to get into Bloodborne and Sekiro. So frankly it came as a surprise to me that I not only enjoyed Dark Souls Remastered, but I finished it. I killed every boss, required or optional, apart from the large woman at the end of the Painted World, and some bloke who keeps disappearing down a long corridor. I didn't bother fighting them as I didn't think they needed to die. I even killed the DLC bosses, including the Black Dragon Kalameet, which is generally regarded as the hardest boss in the game. I don't know why the game clicked with me this time. It was my third attempt at playing it. I couldn't even tell you what I liked about it, although I did really like it. It's a brilliant game and worthy of it's reputation. I can see it's problems. People say it's perfectly fair and when you die it's always your fault, but that's not true. The camera kills you, particularly in the areas where the game asks you to do some platforming. The controls kill you. The button for closing the menu is the same button for rolling backwards, so sometimes you close the menu and immediately roll backwards off a cliff. The multiplayer stuff where you have messages left everywhere and players can invade or be summoned is immersion-breaking and atmosphere-damaging. Nothing destroys the idea that you are fighting your way alone through a dark and hostile world quicker than a message on the ground that reads "Feet ahead" before a bare-footed female NPC. However, the combat is incredibly satisfying and the world evocative, labyrinthine, and genuinely strange.

So I know what you're thinking. "You're not good at games, feltmonkey. How much cheesing did you do to complete Dark flipping Souls?" Well I'm going to tell you. I struggled with the Capra Demon (a big guy in a tiny room who kills you in one hit the instant you enter his area. Also he has poisonous dogs that get you.) so I killed him by throwing shit over a wall into his boss arena. I aquired this shit from a giggling merchant in a sewer. She was literally selling turds in a sewer. Presumably she was giggling because she was astonished that her business model was suddenly turning a profit. I also found the notorious Ornstein and Smough (two bosses at the same time - one small and fast that shoots lightning, one huge and slow, and a second phase where you fight one of them who becomes both huge and fast and shooting lightning) very difficult and I ended up summoning a guy to help me. It was the only time I did this, as I don't like interacting with other people even if they can't speak and just kill the baddies for me. Is it cheese to summon? It's part of the mechanics of the game, and I did as much damage as the guy I summoned. I'll let you judge. The other cheesy thing I did was killing a group of enemies called The Phalanx a lot of times. They give you so much xp, so I used them to level up so I was able to use particular weapons or wear armour without fat-rolling. Apart from that I didn't use any more dubious tactics - I just hit things with my sword until they died or I did. I hardly even used my shield, which I think made the game much more fun. I always hated the thing people tell you to do where you hide behind your shield and poke out with a spear. That just isn't fun at all.

Would I recommend it to anyone? Nope. You already know if you're going to like it or not by now. Or maybe you don't - I mean, I thought I knew I didn't like it.

Haha yeah, that was a horrible part of the process. The noise every clip makes coming apart makes you think you've broken it.

Yeah, I mean I've got three different Android handhelds as well as the ROG Ally and PS Portal. I think I just like handheld gaming. The ROG Ally is the largest screen I game on these days.

I did the 2tb SSD upgrade on the Ally a while ago, before they got too insanely expensive. It is a bit of a faff to be fair. You have to clone the 512gb drive you get with the machine so that you keep Armory Crate and the cut-down version of Windows. I had to buy an adapter thing and I think download some software, but it wasn't too bad. Then you can scroll up and down through a hundred games instead of fifty. Let me know if you do decide to do it (or put the Claw's SSD in the Ally), Cav, because I can link the video guide I followed and post you the adapter to borrow if I can find it. I think I know which drawer it went in.

You probably don't even need to do the cloning if you don't mind setting it up from scratch again.