bruno

"mr storylets"

writer (derogatory). lead designer on Fallen London.

http://twitter.com/notbrunoagain


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Bluesky
brunodias.bsky.social

the other really nasty bit of bad balance in elden ring is the wall that you hit around Mountaintops if you're foolishly using a weapon that upgrades with regular smithing stones. At that point the game kind of fully expects you to have a nearly fully upgraded or actually fully upgraded weapon, and the somber stone economy is just dramatically more generous; unless you've been meticulously scouring every area of the game for smithing stones, you are unlikely to be able to get a +24 weapon before Faram Azula, but it's pretty trivial to get yourself a +9 legendary weapon. This kind of punishes the player for caring about or investing in the ashes of war system, instead of just getting a +9 Moonveil/Blasphemous Blade like the game basically tells you you're supposed to.



bruno
@bruno

Commander Niall is a sort of sample platter of annoying fromsoft boss fight tropes: inescapable AoEs, nonsensical reach, bonus enemies, shoebox arena, annoying runback complete with enemies that hit you through the fog gate

The best I can say about Rykard is that he's 'less annoying than Bed of Chaos'. I think people mentally filed him under 'gimmick boss' and sort of disregarded his annoyingly long health bar, repetitive move set, and utterly nonsensical phase two attacks.


bruno
@bruno

The thing that makes Rykard a truly rancid boss fight is that he insists you replace your carefully curated kit with holding l2 and r2 on one specific weapon forever in a fight that eschews such flippancy as 'positioning' or 'stamina management'. And then he asks you to do it for an inordinately long amount of time. People say you don't need to upgrade the serpent killer spear but you really do if you want to kill rykard in a normal amount of time.


bruno
@bruno

and then just for funsies he makes every spirit summon useless except for the one spirit summon that is already broken and better than all other spirit summons.



bruno
@bruno

Commander Niall is a sort of sample platter of annoying fromsoft boss fight tropes: inescapable AoEs, nonsensical reach, bonus enemies, shoebox arena, annoying runback complete with enemies that hit you through the fog gate

The best I can say about Rykard is that he's 'less annoying than Bed of Chaos'. I think people mentally filed him under 'gimmick boss' and sort of disregarded his annoyingly long health bar, repetitive move set, and utterly nonsensical phase two attacks.


bruno
@bruno

The thing that makes Rykard a truly rancid boss fight is that he insists you replace your carefully curated kit with holding l2 and r2 on one specific weapon forever in a fight that eschews such flippancy as 'positioning' or 'stamina management'. And then he asks you to do it for an inordinately long amount of time. People say you don't need to upgrade the serpent killer spear but you really do if you want to kill rykard in a normal amount of time.



Commander Niall is a sort of sample platter of annoying fromsoft boss fight tropes: inescapable AoEs, nonsensical reach, bonus enemies, shoebox arena, annoying runback complete with enemies that hit you through the fog gate

The best I can say about Rykard is that he's 'less annoying than Bed of Chaos'. I think people mentally filed him under 'gimmick boss' and sort of disregarded his annoyingly long health bar, repetitive move set, and utterly nonsensical phase two attacks.