OT: Video Games/Computers/Gadgets/Gizmos

[MikeIsGood]

Was I supposed to win Balatro the first time I played it? It was fun and it's a cool game, but it feels kinda anticlimactic now.

[ReasonablySober]

Was I supposed to win Balatro the first time I played it? It was fun and it's a cool game, but it feels kinda anticlimactic now.

You've gotta be kidding me

[MikeIsGood]

Was I supposed to win Balatro the first time I played it? It was fun and it's a cool game, but it feels kinda anticlimactic now.

You've gotta be kidding me

I think I got lucky with some great jokers. One of them increased my multi with each hand I played - not round, hand. It alone was giving me 30 multi per hand by the end. I beat the last boss with 2 hands left

[ReasonablySober]

Was I supposed to win Balatro the first time I played it? It was fun and it's a cool game, but it feels kinda anticlimactic now.

You've gotta be kidding me

I think I got lucky with some great jokers. One of them increased my multi with each hand I played - not round, hand. It alone was giving me 30 multi per hand by the end. I beat the last boss with 2 hands left

LOL that's absurd. I only played for a couple days but I didn't come remotely close.

[ReasonablySober]

I know it's not new, but I'm finally using some devices that utilize it tonight and Apple's spatial audio is freaking me out.

ETA: realized I had noise cancelling that wasn't turned on and I'm not kidding, I am completely freaked out. This is WILD.

[TheDominator273]

Is anyone waiting for the 1.0 update for 7 days to die? Can't wait to see what they did to the game. The trailer didn't show much, so we'll have to wait.

I love playing this game, been doing it for 2-3 years with my friends. We even rent a private server because it's faster, and there's no need for someone to host the game. And for $6 a month, why the heck not.

We rent it from 7d2d.net. Reliable and better than other providers because of their stability.

[machu46]

FragPunk seems fun. Hoping I can get into the playtest

I got an invite. Haven’t given it a go yet though.


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[KidA24]

Posting this again as they are on sale for the Summer Sale for less than $10 total.

(Shoutout to MikeIsGood)

Watch on YouTube

[tydett]

Shadow of the Erdtree winds up being pretty much a huge miss. Incredibly, I think it's the worst DLC for a Soulsborne that From has ever released. Pretty unbelievable after what the base game was.

[TroyD92]

FragPunk seems fun. Hoping I can get into the playtest

I got an invite. Haven’t given it a go yet though.


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I ended up getting one after a v rising grind and still ended playing up another 4 hours.

[TroyD92]

Is anyone waiting for the 1.0 update for 7 days to die? Can't wait to see what they did to the game. The trailer didn't show much, so we'll have to wait.

I just saw and i am also pretty interested in what its going to look like.

[Ayt]

Shadow of the Erdtree winds up being pretty much a huge miss. Incredibly, I think it's the worst DLC for a Soulsborne that From has ever released. Pretty unbelievable after what the base game was.

Can you explain why without being spoilery? I haven't yet played it.

[ReasonablySober]

I’m also curious. It hasn’t totally hit with me, but I wasn’t sure if it was me or not. I haven’t played it this week after binging all last weekend.

[Prez]

Im really enjoying the DLC personally. I do get some of the criticisms, but I think two critical things that helped me are:

- Backhand Blade is one of the nastiest weapons in the game, and Occult infusing it to scale with my heavy Arcane build was perfect. Unreal ash of war as well. It’s such a good weapon for the quicker bosses with long combo attacks. If I was using a slower weapon without that ash of war Im pretty sure my enjoyment of the DLC would dramatically drop.
- Scadutree fragments. Cannot emphasize enough how important and how impactful those upgrades are. Like even just a couple blessings is a huge difference maker. Without collecting these upgrades, some of the bosses feel straight up broken in their difficulty.

I do think there is a substantial portion of the map that feels emptier, beautiful to look at but not quite as densely packed as the base game in terms of loot/interactions. Which is fine, but I wonder if that’s part of it.

The lore/story hasn’t really grabbed me if I’m being honest. There are cool parts to it I guess but I’m kinda just exploring and bonking enemies/bosses at this point, like I’m not really absorbed by any particular questline. I get that’s never been a strong part of Soulslikes, but still.

[TroyD92]

I just think the hype level of Elden Ring is beyond insane at this point. I can't imagine being a new player coming into Elden Ring and being like yeah this lived up to hype.

[tydett]

Im really enjoying the DLC personally. I do get some of the criticisms, but I think two critical things that helped me are:

- Backhand Blade is one of the nastiest weapons in the game, and Occult infusing it to scale with my heavy Arcane build was perfect. Unreal ash of war as well. It’s such a good weapon for the quicker bosses with long combo attacks. If I was using a slower weapon without that ash of war Im pretty sure my enjoyment of the DLC would dramatically drop.
- Scadutree fragments. Cannot emphasize enough how important and how impactful those upgrades are. Like even just a couple blessings is a huge difference maker. Without collecting these upgrades, some of the bosses feel straight up broken in their difficulty.

I do think there is a substantial portion of the map that feels emptier, beautiful to look at but not quite as densely packed as the base game in terms of loot/interactions. Which is fine, but I wonder if that’s part of it.

The lore/story hasn’t really grabbed me if I’m being honest. There are cool parts to it I guess but I’m kinda just exploring and bonking enemies/bosses at this point, like I’m not really absorbed by any particular questline. I get that’s never been a strong part of Soulslikes, but still.

As to point one, the DLC bosses have so much health that they basically push you into a bleed build to deal with their massive health pools, and their damage so high that if you mess up in one window, it can undo all your work on the boss. Add on that 85% of the bosses are legit reskins of previous boss fights (seriously, like 15% of them are dragons, fought the exact same way that dragons are in the base game), and the new Remembrance fights are okay to cheesy.

As to point two, the Scadutree fragments and Summon ashes are supposed to power you up - still doesn't stop the last boss from 2 shotting me with 1900 health (50 vigor). It makes the effort of going to get them feel pointless and stupid - and the last boss is basically cheaty itself. Many players are reporting 6 hours put in to beat it - I just don't have the desire to do that for one last boss. FromSoftware seems to have decided that to add difficulty is not to add novel mechanics, but to just give you smaller windows to attack bosses and make being hit by their **** more punishing.

The map is pathetic. Gorgeous, but absolutely wasted for about 70% of it. So much open space that's just unused. Seriously, the first plain you land on is about 70% dead space, not even with mobs to fight. There are terrible items strewn everywhere - I found many Sharpening Stone (1) and Sharpening Stone (2) around - why are these in an area that you can only access after beating an endgame optional boss? It's like they realized that there was nothing for a bunch of the world and had to add shinies to make it worthwhile to hop off of Torrent (which it is not, again, in like 90% of the cases).

The lore/story is horrifying. Doesn't really make any sense, the NPCs and their quests are easy to miss steps for and they don't really even matter. There's one dope dude who just shouts about how much he meets dragons, shows up one other time, you summon him for a boss and then his quest is over. There are no Solaire or Rannis here worth mentioning. Add in that there's like, maybe, 3 bosses actually connected to the overarching story and it's just a disaster.

It is incredibly unfulfilling. I love Dark Souls and have played all of the games many times. Elden Ring base was great. This DLC is a steaming pile of **** that I have no desire to ever replay again - if I play Elden Ring again (which I probably won't - world is too big), I will pretend the DLC doesn't exist.

[ReasonablySober]

I do think the map, as beautiful as it is, is largely empty. I agree with that.

I also got very annoyed at every Soulstone I picked up. It's been two years since the base game arrived; everyone should have the bell bearings needed to buy smithing stones 1-24 and somber stones 1-9. What I would have liked to see is an overwhelming amount of ancient smithing stones and larval tears, so I can buildcraft to my heart's content.

As for the bosses, I'm not to the end yet, but so far they've been fine. None have been too difficult. I've seen a couple videos of the final boss and it seems pretty easy to beat him with some strategies that should be available to everyone by now.

[Prez]

Im really enjoying the DLC personally. I do get some of the criticisms, but I think two critical things that helped me are:

- Backhand Blade is one of the nastiest weapons in the game, and Occult infusing it to scale with my heavy Arcane build was perfect. Unreal ash of war as well. It’s such a good weapon for the quicker bosses with long combo attacks. If I was using a slower weapon without that ash of war Im pretty sure my enjoyment of the DLC would dramatically drop.
- Scadutree fragments. Cannot emphasize enough how important and how impactful those upgrades are. Like even just a couple blessings is a huge difference maker. Without collecting these upgrades, some of the bosses feel straight up broken in their difficulty.

I do think there is a substantial portion of the map that feels emptier, beautiful to look at but not quite as densely packed as the base game in terms of loot/interactions. Which is fine, but I wonder if that’s part of it.

The lore/story hasn’t really grabbed me if I’m being honest. There are cool parts to it I guess but I’m kinda just exploring and bonking enemies/bosses at this point, like I’m not really absorbed by any particular questline. I get that’s never been a strong part of Soulslikes, but still.

As to point one, the DLC bosses have so much health that they basically push you into a bleed build to deal with their massive health pools, and their damage so high that if you mess up in one window, it can undo all your work on the boss. Add on that 85% of the bosses are legit reskins of previous boss fights (seriously, like 15% of them are dragons, fought the exact same way that dragons are in the base game), and the new Remembrance fights are okay to cheesy.

As to point two, the Scadutree fragments and Summon ashes are supposed to power you up - still doesn't stop the last boss from 2 shotting me with 1900 health (50 vigor). It makes the effort of going to get them feel pointless and stupid - and the last boss is basically cheaty itself. Many players are reporting 6 hours put in to beat it - I just don't have the desire to do that for one last boss. FromSoftware seems to have decided that to add difficulty is not to add novel mechanics, but to just give you smaller windows to attack bosses and make being hit by their **** more punishing.

The map is pathetic. Gorgeous, but absolutely wasted for about 70% of it. So much open space that's just unused. Seriously, the first plain you land on is about 70% dead space, not even with mobs to fight. There are terrible items strewn everywhere - I found many Sharpening Stone (1) and Sharpening Stone (2) around - why are these in an area that you can only access after beating an endgame optional boss? It's like they realized that there was nothing for a bunch of the world and had to add shinies to make it worthwhile to hop off of Torrent (which it is not, again, in like 90% of the cases).

The lore/story is horrifying. Doesn't really make any sense, the NPCs and their quests are easy to miss steps for and they don't really even matter. There's one dope dude who just shouts about how much he meets dragons, shows up one other time, you summon him for a boss and then his quest is over. There are no Solaire or Rannis here worth mentioning. Add in that there's like, maybe, 3 bosses actually connected to the overarching story and it's just a disaster.

It is incredibly unfulfilling. I love Dark Souls and have played all of the games many times. Elden Ring base was great. This DLC is a steaming pile of **** that I have no desire to ever replay again - if I play Elden Ring again (which I probably won't - world is too big), I will pretend the DLC doesn't exist.

Yeah I have not played the final boss yet, everything I've read/seen leads me to believe you're probably right and a rage quit is very possibly in my future lol.

As for the lore/story, I agree. FromSoft's super thin storylines I think worked okay enough in the more linear games like Sekiro, BB, etc. but in a massive open world game it's gotten tiresome having to constantly google everything to figure out most of these quest lines, which end up being not rewarding at all. I get the appeal is the gameplay and not the story, but it would be pretty nice if they put any effort at all into making quests more meaningful, more fleshed out, easier to follow, and easier to track. I genuinely don't give a **** about a single character in this DLC or their quest line and I've put somewhere around 20 hours into the DLC so far. That shouldn't be happening. The usual response is "it's a FromSoft game what'd you expect"...I kinda hope/expect they grow as a developer and try to do better in those areas.

I think the emptiness of the map amplifies it. Again if it was more densely packed with enemies/dungeons and stuff to do (like the base game), it would distract me more from the nothing burger that the story is. But that isn't there.

Again I'm having fun with the gameplay so far, so I'm not as low on it as you, but I do think the rave reviews I'm seeing and "best DLC ever" stuff I saw initially were too far in the other direction.

[ReasonablySober]

God I love Octopath 2. In between doing a couple chapters I've mostly spent the weekend failing at grinding strategies for either XP or money. Then just now I pulled off a random move that grants 100x XP at the end of a battle. It has a .01% chance of ever hitting. The levels I gained looked like hilarious going up.

[machu46]

My wife bought Dave the Diver this weekend. We aren’t at Stardew Valley levels of obsession yet but she’s been playing all night lol


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