I think that a block, regardless of whether its done with a shield or a weapon, should block 100% of physical damage. Elemental damage chipping through “makes sense” to me, and allows for interesting niche equipment (like the Black Silver shield of Demons Souls).

I definitely prefer DS2 to 3, and probably have sunk more time into DS2 than any other soulsborne save Bloodborne, but that’s not say the common criticisms of DS2 aren’t fair.

You very well may be right, I really hope not though. I think that varying damage mitigation on shields/weapons for blocks is one of the dumber ideas in soulsborne. Nioh really showed this doesn’t need to be the case. I think FromSoft has just had a huge fear of incentivizing shield-turtles when you really can strike…

It’s a shame because I think they got really close to making magic both viable AND fun in Dark Souls 2. It wasn’t perfect, but at least there was actual spell variety instead of 20 different flavors of soul arrow that could have been condensed into like 3 spells with different charge levels.

As someone who really couldn’t stomach the roll-and-r1 spam combat of DS3, I’m really happy with where this seems to be going. Magic looks like it might actually be fun for the first time in a FromSoft soulsborne game! And either the PC is using a no-shield block just because, or theyve made no-shield blocks viable…

I mean, I get that frustration. The character system is sort of odd in LiD (I’d actually forgotten about that strange wrinkle until you brought it up) and the game is a bit obtuse to begin with so wasting resources on early characters not knowing they’re meant to be disposable is a pretty common issue I’m sure.

Did we play the same game? Or did LiD substantially morph at some point after the first few months following release?

Are you talking about the big humanoid types in area 6? They are definitely rough. I haven’t lost a run to one of them but I have wasted an astronaut figure and a resurrection on a single encounter with them.

If you comb for items and switch weapons to grind out their upgrades, I feel like the snowballing power creep more or less guarantees a win for most folks once you get to the 3rd area. I’ve died to area 3 once, and I have never died in area 6.

It is really solid. The biggest changes are new enemies, the new equipment slots for classes (I.E. Wing Divers get better/different jetpack cores, Soldiers get a slot that can be filled with vehicles or armor) and a really streamlined approach to Diablo style loot that I wish more games used.

I liked EDF 4.1 for the dumb fun it was, put a lot of hours into it in splitscreen and just had a good time with it.

There was this bizarre subset of NMS players that had a kneejerk response anytime someone suggested the game should have towns/cities/settlements of some kind. Without fail you’d get a dozen replies of “Eeeacktually the lore explains the sentinels destroy them and that’s why there are none”, like that was somehow a…

Ha!....ah.... man, on a totally unrelated note I am glad I never got into Attack on Titan.

If you would like to pretend the story was building to the “conclusion” that was reached in the last chapter, that’s fine. It’s not accurate to the mountains of work preceding it, but that’s your choice.

I don’t expect a “conventional” ending where Guts kills Griffith and everything turns out happily ever after. I very much expect The Struggler to do what he does and overcome the odds to kill the man that caused him so much suffering.

I don’t know what kind of edgelord would enjoy an ending where the mass-murdering traitor rapist doesn’t end up dead and/or worse.

Maybe I’m misremembering, but I am pretty sure it’s been confirmed he shared the general direction and ending with his team or publisher?

I am not emotionally equipped to live in a world where Griffith doesn’t get his fucking just deserts.

I have more than a few bones to pick with the “I Kill Giants” film.

A few years back I spent a some time in Vermont. I really loved the scenery and just thought the state was beautiful, got to do a bit of hiking and sightseeing. It wasn’t until I flew back home to a major city that I realized the white noise of billboards was completely absent absent from my trip there, and how much I…