The Elden ring.
I sit, cloaked in autumns fading rays, watching a pair of
pigeon’s squat in the grass. I think, caressed by the crisp air, of the words
that are to spill forth on the subject chosen. I feel: dread. I am not yet well
from this ordeal.
I went into Elden ring just a touch cocky. I rolled up a
Samurai, because I think their swords look cool. They do look cool, history be
damned, swordplay be damned. I am exactly the sort of troglodyte to love a
katana, but my love is without fact or pretence.
We start roaming about a bunch of rolling hills, strewn with
rock and meanies. I was at a total loss. My old haunt, Dark souls, had been
linear in its progression; yet I was expected to explore, without any guidance
on where to go or what to do: the information may have been present, but I was
not; so I wandered aimlessly; A Ronin if you will; some kind of vagabond. Having
no sense of purpose for myself, I could not deny by blade its purpose so began
to paint my own path in streaks of crimson.
At one point an NPC
told me not to go into the lake, with nothing else to on I heeded this warning
and missed about half the content of the area as a result. How then did I
progress? Well, a cyno-bacterium propelled by a singular flagellum is still
capable of navigating its medium using chemical gradients, it cannot know where
it is going, it does not plan or consider. Where things are good, it moves
towards, where things are bad it spins about and tries again.
I employed this same technique, taxis using satisfying
combat as my chemical of choice. I moved reflexively away from steam-rolls or
dick flattening zones, and pressed deep where the thrill of battle was at its
best: a goldilocks zone, if you will. There were maps that could be unlocked at
set locations, but I hadn’t figured that out yet; but with the inevitability of
persistence I beat the first boss main boss on my second try. Bit lame, but it
was a decent encounter.
This is not a story of man overcoming monsters, but of man overcoming
himself. But BVGRONTI, surely the self is just another monster? Well, dearly
beloved reader: FUCK OFF!!! How dare you try to outdo me in my own blog post
you insolent turd. This is my domain.
I was warned by a friend that the second major boss was
guarded by a powerful knight that made the boss itself easy by comparison.
Intrigued I sought out this new foe and upon encountering him, lifted up his
face plate, leaned in and with a heavy baited breath, bit his nose and rammed my
sword through his chest, noob. I had real trouble with the boss proper; whilst
my sense of swordplay is par excellence I lack that most basic of skills, dodging
death rays. This won’t be a problem later.
The third boss lives in the “oh no” zone, named for the two
syllables that kept slipping from my lips whilst fending off myriad horrors
that craved the consumption my supple flesh. This mushroom hell-scape was by
far the most fun of the bunch. The boss is slated as the toughest boy in town,
and the NPCs suggest you summon a bunch of peeps to help you in one big murder
festival, and so I followed their advice, and they all killed the boss for me;
which left me feeling hollow and down, there I promised to never summon any
help ever again. This was my bushido.
As the game crept on a number of bullshit bosses started
creeping in, highlights include, two flying golems, two flying tree knights,
two pumpkin heads in a very small room, but surprisingly not the two foreskin
priests from planet fuck. This is because fighting the same flying health bar
twice is tedious but fighting hells own Laurel and Hardy is test of my mettle,
and my blade’s metal.
The game has a lot of magic now, various spells schools and
ways of integrating it into combat; I didn’t use any of it; not because I look
down on it, I’m just too stuck in my ways to change. Every time I considered
putting a single point into something like faith, arcane or intelligence I
found myself unable to part with the potential, it all went into the hit
harder, hit more, or don’t fucking die attributes.
It was whilst roaming around the Silly city at the base of
the big tree that I came across a discovery most startling, a wiki; in which
lay all the erudite secrets of the game, and more profitably: the locations of
the stones that make you hit stuff real good! It was then that my game became a
cursed mirror of supermarket sweep. I dove face first into the sewers, met the
crazed kaka consumer, and battled the shit marinated lobsters all to acquire
said stones.
I was a stoner, the man seeking stone! Rock hard in soul and
constitutions (editor’s note: wtf?)
Now with the power of the wiki at my side I discovered the secret
location of the really big katana, it had been carefully hidden in a place no
one would ever think to look: at the start of the game in the big lake!
Powered up with a blade that had more reach than a bigoted
article on BBC news, I made my way to the really big bowl. There a lady set a
tree on fire for reasons that escape me, and as a result, for reasons that also
escape me I was transported to the land of winds and decaying shit, and
dragons. They need a better name for it.
I cut my way through dragons the same way a metaphor for efficiency
cuts through the need to describe what actually happened.
And it was here, on the precipice of victory, caressed by
the crisp air of ancient winds that I must now prostrate (editor’s note: not
prostate) myself, and utter my confession. I used a summon, I did it, I summoned,
it was I! The bastard black blade had laid me low time after time for the
better part of five hours of gruelling slug matches, his first stage was tough
but sword of destined death was pretty aptly fucking named.
I had long ago abandoned the philosophy of bloodshed that
had guided my hands, and slowly at first, game had begun to rot away from the inside.
The thrill of combat, once so strong, had become a raging frustration; the fruit
of victory had become ash in my mouth. I had wailed, and cursed, and finally
given in; summoned aid. I was defeated in my victory, left hollow, going
through the motions of what remained. Forever lost, shattered like the Elden
ring itself.
Game is too hard towards the end, but otherwise fun!
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