Sundered : In the third area
I am destroying all the elder shards, so at least I don’t get the obvious bad ending, and will get some less obvious bad ending instead. The fancy losange is really super pissed at me for this.
The first area is like a lategame JRPG dungeon, the second area is like the final dungeon, and the third area is the postgame impossible one. It is super vicious, but also the perfect representation of the sublime, vertical and grotesque architecture it’s meant to convey? It is completely stunning. Maybe the elevator that turns you into a eyeball is a bit OTT.
Difficulty is a bit easier now but I still die a whole bunch. I made some fatal build mistake at the beginning I corrected pretty fast: I focused on the big nodes and didn’t really care about the little nodes on the way. The problem is that all the melee damage upgrades but one are on little nodes. Everything went much more smoothly super fast once I took a little detour to grab a few strength nodes. (and once I realized you could re-jump in mid-air if you hit an enemy, staying airborne for really long at times)
I think I went with a pretty good build: Past the beginning I completely ignored the gun, health and energy, and focused on damage, shield, luck, and miscellaneous orbs. + crits lategame. The gun is really cool but has too many drawbacks – might make a gun build on a replay.
Now that platforming is king in the third area and bottomless pits are everywhere I am focusing on energy upgrades to keep that air dash rolling.
I really love it when the game goes DING DONG TIME FOR DEATH and I just know resistance is futile and I now have to grab as much treasure as I can before my inevitable next death
I am using the hell out of the elder shards, mostly because the native crystal people are such a bore. Elder shard powers are all over the map in terms of utility. I built in a general manner, ignoring gun's but pumping everything else. Guns, especially late, are troublesome because using them cuts down on your immediate mobility. The trade's rarely worth it when the chips are down. Anyway, building that way has been working fine, though since I'm using shards I can't directly compare how hard the game is. If I'm ever inspired to finish my playthrough then do it all again I suppose I'll find out. One word of advice though maybe you've already got it: if you don't have treasure sense yet, prioritize unlocking it - it's tremendously useful and will pay for itself many times over. One of the things I like the best is being in an endless hordes area and making a mad dash for treasure chests. It's a ton of fun but you can't do it without knowing well in advance where they are.
Ys VIII: intend to replay this on inferno but NISA just announced they've rewritten basically 100% of the script, including rerecording basically all the voiced lines in the game. Seriously. So I'll wait til that hits next year.
Dark Souls III: After a couple false starts, playing this in earnest. Just beat Wolnir, who was cool af but not that hard. Thoughts: through the first few zones I was carefully, methodically making progress. Then, the swamp hit and that stopped happening. It's amazing they have found new ways for a swamp level to be horrific, but fighting dudes who can curse you in an area where you can only walk and fatroll does the trick. It did kinda make something clear, though: this game is not as unforgiving as its predecessors. This swamp level, despite everything, is way tamer than DS1's (did DS2 have one? if Shrine of Amana counts then it's tamer than that, too) or Demon's. DS3 catacombs also very tame! Maybe there are catacombs later that are awful? Bonewheels: not the murderwheels I have come to expect! Not even close to as bad as Nioh Wheelmonks, even!
I'm going with a pyromancy/dex weapon build. seems like a good, somewhat complementary balance. and it's got the utility, but splitting stats has created some problems. it seems like whether it's fire or weapon damage, every enemy has been calibrated so that it survives my attacks with like 1% health, as if the game is laughing at me for multiclassing. Even so, still seems like the best choice - even without great stats, pyromancy's getting me through some tough spots (getting Great Combusiton early surely helps this a lot). It has been a weird mental adjustment after Bloodborne and Nioh to remember to block all the time. Nioh there are builds that can get a lot out of blocking, but I didn't build that way, and the penalty for running out of stamina while blocking in that game is severe. DS3 even having ignored all the stats that would make it a good idea, blocking is still very powerful. One final thought: so far as I have discovered, the game is very linear, at least in terms of what zones you do when. I guess 5 bosses in is not very far, but I kinda expected to have more options by now. Even ignoring the key in DS1 you had a lot more freedom by the time you got 5 bosses deep. Bosses have all been pretty cool. I'm sure there are folks who can't stand the big tree boss but I liked it.
