Meruem
40 reviews liked by Meruem
Dear FromSoftware,
I think we need to talk. You have made some of my favorite video games of all time. I cannot express how much I love Dark Souls and what that game means to me personally. I truly believe that if it hadn’t been for Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this review because I probably wouldn’t be playing video games at all anymore. Those games reignited my passion for this hobby and I couldn’t wait to see where the journey would go for the studio that developed them. And what a journey it was – Bloodborne, Sekiro and even the base game of Elden Ring all brought something new and exciting to the table while still retaining the core design philosophy that drove the development of the previous games. But there was something off. Every time, I played a new FromSoft game, I felt that the main draw of the latest game was to challenge players in new ways. To present them the latest batch of presumably unbeatable bosses that would require them to forget everything they had learned so far and adopt new strategies to succeed. I think that realization hit me for the first time when I played Dark Souls 3. Bosses were brutal in that game, at least I felt that way at the time. They would spin around for ages, spamming attacks, giving the player very small windows to counterattack. Bosses would delay their attacks in weird and unnatural ways and mess with the player’s sense of timing. I remember distinctly fighting the Nameless King and hating every second of it. To me, this way of designing challenging combat encounters felt super weak and lame. Surprisingly to me, that was not the general consensus at the time. I looked up discussions online and found that people loved Dark Souls 3. Nameless King was even praised as one of FromSoftware’s best bosses ever. People not only loved the new bosses but also the additions made to the lore introduced in Dark Souls 1, which to me, felt very out-of-place and tacked-on. I realized something that year.
I was in the minority.
A couple years later, Sekiro was released and even though it had many of the same problems that I had with Dark Souls 3, Sekiro was different enough that I just had a great time with that game. It was hard and unforgiving, but it was also not a Souls game. It was an action title, focused on timing your deflects and attacks and it was a welcome breeze of fresh air. And then came Elden Ring. A “return to form”, a true continuation of the Souls formula in a new open-world dress. For the most part, I think that combination worked really well. The Lands Between were a joy to explore. How the areas were connected, how there was always something interesting and cool to find in every corner of the world, how boss fights would just start out of nowhere in the middle of the open world – Elden Ring had some cool ideas. And it also had some of the deepest lore, FromSoft had ever put in a game. The way Miyazaki combined eastern philosophy and western mythology with allusions to real world events was marvelous. Add to that some war-of-the-roses family drama that George R.R. Martin brought to the table and you end up with something truly magnificent. The world of Elden Ring was intriguing, its characters interesting and multi-faceted. The game left many questions unanswered and I longed for more. This is where the DLC came in.
On that front, I have to admit that Shadow of the Erdtree mostly delivers. Many mysteries of the main game are addressed here. Without spoiling anything, I was delighted to learn more about Marika, Miquella, St. Trina, the Fingers and the origins of the Golden Order. However, I cannot help but feel a little let down after finishing the DLC and exploring pretty much every nook and cranny of the Shadowlands. I really hoped to learn more about the Gloam-eyed queen, Godwyn, and other narrative aspects of the main game that were kept rather vague until now. Maybe that’s just me and I realize that FromSoft could only focus on so many things but I do feel a little disappointed on the lore-front.
So, how about the gameplay then? Well, as it is often the case, it’s complicated. On a fundamental level, gameplay hasn’t changed much from the main game. You still dodge, attack, block and parry your way through the lands. There are still a million ways to play and for the most part, they are all viable. But there are some significant changes that only apply to the Shadowlands. You’ve probably heard or read about it somewhere already but Shadow of the Erdtree introduces a whole new balancing system based on certain key items that are scattered around the world. These “Scadutree fragments” increase your damage done and decrease your damage taken, simple as that. Now, I get why this is in the game. Balancing the difficulty in a way that provides a fair challenge for everyone is probably an impossible task considering that players come in a huge variety of builds, some over-leveled or under-leveled before starting the DLC. This is a simple way to even the playing field for everyone regardless of level, equipment or skills. It also feels cheap in a way. I felt like the entire DLC was about these damn fragments. Exploration was only a means to get more fragments and I actually felt disappointed when after uncovering a secret area or hidden chest, there wouldn’t be a precious fragment as a reward. It’s important to note that there is a set amount of these in the game. You cannot farm them or something, you have to go out and explore to find them. This felt really restrictive to me. In the base game, whenever I faced a challenge that was a bit too hard for me, I would go somewhere else to farm runes and level up. In Shadow of the Erdtree, that didn’t work anymore because levels are next to meaningless. You have to get those fragments to make a significant change and to me, that felt like it took away my freedom in how I wanted to explore the world.
Thankfully, exploration in general is as fun as it ever was in Elden Ring. I would even say that the Shadowlands are far more interesting in terms of exploration than the Lands Between. The first time I explored the Gravesite Plain, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I took out my spyglass and looked down below into the next area. But there wasn’t just one area, there were layers and layers of different areas on top of each other. At first, I thought some of them were just scenery but soon I discovered that there were paths to walk and items to pick up – you could actually go there! This excited me immensely. Having now spent more than 30 hours in the Shadowlands, I can confirm that the way this game handles vertical exploration was fun as hell. There were so many hidden paths and connections between areas, it was truly a bliss. On top of that, the game is just gorgeous. These are by far the most beautiful areas, FromSoftware has ever created. The vistas are breathtaking, the colors and lighting create this very unique melancholic vibe that is quite distinct from the Lands Between. In general, the Shadowlands are beautiful and exploration was in itself rewarding. Even though there were some rather empty stretches of land here and there, especially towards the end of the DLC.
If exploration was fun, the lore interesting for the most part and gameplay mostly unchanged from the main game that I enjoyed, why do I still walk away from this DLC being disappointed? Well, folks, it all comes down to the boss fights and let me tell you – I think each and every single boss fight in this DLC sucks, like really really sucks….all of them. Remember what I wrote about Dark Souls 3 and how I didn’t understand how anyone could think this game had decent bosses? It’s the same thing here, just multiplied by a thousand. Who decided that these games were about challenging bosses? Is this the only thing people care about? Hitting your head against a wall for hours until you break it and feel like a champ for a short while?
I feel like Shadow of the Erdtree encapsulates everything I hate about modern FromSoftware’s boss design. A typical boss in the DLC does the following things constantly: Spinning around in circles while spamming attacks, unnaturally delaying an attack by holding the weapon in an awkward position simply to mess with the player’s timings and catch them while rolling, and hitting so hard that one or two hits kill you. Mind you, the last point holds true regardless of whether or not you have upgraded your Scadutree Blessings. Even with all blessings maxed out, best armor and a high level of vigor, boss attacks will deal insane amounts of damage. So, what can one do to overcome such tremendous challenges? Well, you have to learn every single attack, you have to recognize patterns and react accordingly. In some cases, you have to drop the way you play and adopt a completely different play-style - that is something, I had to do for the last boss.
I simply do not understand how people draw pleasure from this.
Seriously, to me, this feels like learning for a test in school. So, I played by the rules. In each boss fight, I would learn every action of the boss and how to react accordingly like the good boy I was. I would then apply my knowledge and eventually overcome the challenge and beat the boss. And you know what I would feel? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. After finishing the DLC, I would go on YouTube and Twitch and see people react to defeating a hard boss, they would scream and go crazy and I totally get that…but I also don’t get it. Every time, I defeated a boss, I was just glad it was over. I didn’t feel accomplished or particularly great about myself, I would just sit there and go on to the next area. I didn’t feel like any “real skill” was involved, just learning and applying knowledge. And no, it hasn’t always been like this in previous FromSoft titles. Every time I faced a boss in Demon’s or Dark Souls, the scales were balanced and a fair fight would ensue. It was absolutely possible to beat a boss first try by dynamically adjusting to the battle action. Attacks were telegraphed in a way that would make them actually readable. Making mistakes was ok. You didn’t have to memorize every single attack to prevail. To me, these fights were much more versatile and fun than anything I have faced in this DLC. Then there’s the multitude of technical issues that make boss fights feel unfair to an extent. Demon’s Souls is 15 years old at this point and we are STILL dealing with shitty camera behavior when moving against a wall or trying to target an enemy while the game thinks you wish to target that random guy 20 miles aways and not the big dragon head that is literally in your face right now. Then there’s so much visual clutter in many of the fights, I was just overstimulated at times – Lightning strikes, fire, lightning strikes engulfed by fire, whirlwind attacks, magical laser beams, blood, madness, holy attacks…half the time I couldn’t even follow what was going on on-screen. To make things worse, I experienced constant stutters, frame-drops, crashes and bugs on my somewhat beefy gaming PC. I’m okay with some technical difficulties so close to a game’s launch but it’s hard to accept that a game released in 2024 still deals with many of the same technical issues as its predecessor from 2009.
So, would I recommend getting this DLC? If you’re a fan of the main game, you probably haven’t read this review. You don’t need this review as you’ve already paid 40 bucks to play this DLC day one. I don’t blame you, I did the same. If you enjoy modern FromSoft games and had a good time with Elden Ring and you’re looking for that extra challenge, you’ll find it here. If you hope that all mysteries of the lore will be uncovered, you’ll probably be disappointed but if you’re looking for more intricate writing to enrich the world of Elden Ring, you’ll find it here too. If you hoped that the DLC would offer anything fundamentally new in comparison to the main game, I commend your naivety for we are both fools.
For me, this is goodbye for now. FromSoft, we had a good time you and I. Maybe we can still be friends and who knows what the future might hold but if this DLC is indicative for where you are going, I fear I cannot follow you any longer. You’ll always have a special place in my heart but for now, I fear it’s goodbye.
Farewell, Umbasa and Vereor Nox
Gloominary
I think we need to talk. You have made some of my favorite video games of all time. I cannot express how much I love Dark Souls and what that game means to me personally. I truly believe that if it hadn’t been for Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this review because I probably wouldn’t be playing video games at all anymore. Those games reignited my passion for this hobby and I couldn’t wait to see where the journey would go for the studio that developed them. And what a journey it was – Bloodborne, Sekiro and even the base game of Elden Ring all brought something new and exciting to the table while still retaining the core design philosophy that drove the development of the previous games. But there was something off. Every time, I played a new FromSoft game, I felt that the main draw of the latest game was to challenge players in new ways. To present them the latest batch of presumably unbeatable bosses that would require them to forget everything they had learned so far and adopt new strategies to succeed. I think that realization hit me for the first time when I played Dark Souls 3. Bosses were brutal in that game, at least I felt that way at the time. They would spin around for ages, spamming attacks, giving the player very small windows to counterattack. Bosses would delay their attacks in weird and unnatural ways and mess with the player’s sense of timing. I remember distinctly fighting the Nameless King and hating every second of it. To me, this way of designing challenging combat encounters felt super weak and lame. Surprisingly to me, that was not the general consensus at the time. I looked up discussions online and found that people loved Dark Souls 3. Nameless King was even praised as one of FromSoftware’s best bosses ever. People not only loved the new bosses but also the additions made to the lore introduced in Dark Souls 1, which to me, felt very out-of-place and tacked-on. I realized something that year.
I was in the minority.
A couple years later, Sekiro was released and even though it had many of the same problems that I had with Dark Souls 3, Sekiro was different enough that I just had a great time with that game. It was hard and unforgiving, but it was also not a Souls game. It was an action title, focused on timing your deflects and attacks and it was a welcome breeze of fresh air. And then came Elden Ring. A “return to form”, a true continuation of the Souls formula in a new open-world dress. For the most part, I think that combination worked really well. The Lands Between were a joy to explore. How the areas were connected, how there was always something interesting and cool to find in every corner of the world, how boss fights would just start out of nowhere in the middle of the open world – Elden Ring had some cool ideas. And it also had some of the deepest lore, FromSoft had ever put in a game. The way Miyazaki combined eastern philosophy and western mythology with allusions to real world events was marvelous. Add to that some war-of-the-roses family drama that George R.R. Martin brought to the table and you end up with something truly magnificent. The world of Elden Ring was intriguing, its characters interesting and multi-faceted. The game left many questions unanswered and I longed for more. This is where the DLC came in.
On that front, I have to admit that Shadow of the Erdtree mostly delivers. Many mysteries of the main game are addressed here. Without spoiling anything, I was delighted to learn more about Marika, Miquella, St. Trina, the Fingers and the origins of the Golden Order. However, I cannot help but feel a little let down after finishing the DLC and exploring pretty much every nook and cranny of the Shadowlands. I really hoped to learn more about the Gloam-eyed queen, Godwyn, and other narrative aspects of the main game that were kept rather vague until now. Maybe that’s just me and I realize that FromSoft could only focus on so many things but I do feel a little disappointed on the lore-front.
So, how about the gameplay then? Well, as it is often the case, it’s complicated. On a fundamental level, gameplay hasn’t changed much from the main game. You still dodge, attack, block and parry your way through the lands. There are still a million ways to play and for the most part, they are all viable. But there are some significant changes that only apply to the Shadowlands. You’ve probably heard or read about it somewhere already but Shadow of the Erdtree introduces a whole new balancing system based on certain key items that are scattered around the world. These “Scadutree fragments” increase your damage done and decrease your damage taken, simple as that. Now, I get why this is in the game. Balancing the difficulty in a way that provides a fair challenge for everyone is probably an impossible task considering that players come in a huge variety of builds, some over-leveled or under-leveled before starting the DLC. This is a simple way to even the playing field for everyone regardless of level, equipment or skills. It also feels cheap in a way. I felt like the entire DLC was about these damn fragments. Exploration was only a means to get more fragments and I actually felt disappointed when after uncovering a secret area or hidden chest, there wouldn’t be a precious fragment as a reward. It’s important to note that there is a set amount of these in the game. You cannot farm them or something, you have to go out and explore to find them. This felt really restrictive to me. In the base game, whenever I faced a challenge that was a bit too hard for me, I would go somewhere else to farm runes and level up. In Shadow of the Erdtree, that didn’t work anymore because levels are next to meaningless. You have to get those fragments to make a significant change and to me, that felt like it took away my freedom in how I wanted to explore the world.
Thankfully, exploration in general is as fun as it ever was in Elden Ring. I would even say that the Shadowlands are far more interesting in terms of exploration than the Lands Between. The first time I explored the Gravesite Plain, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I took out my spyglass and looked down below into the next area. But there wasn’t just one area, there were layers and layers of different areas on top of each other. At first, I thought some of them were just scenery but soon I discovered that there were paths to walk and items to pick up – you could actually go there! This excited me immensely. Having now spent more than 30 hours in the Shadowlands, I can confirm that the way this game handles vertical exploration was fun as hell. There were so many hidden paths and connections between areas, it was truly a bliss. On top of that, the game is just gorgeous. These are by far the most beautiful areas, FromSoftware has ever created. The vistas are breathtaking, the colors and lighting create this very unique melancholic vibe that is quite distinct from the Lands Between. In general, the Shadowlands are beautiful and exploration was in itself rewarding. Even though there were some rather empty stretches of land here and there, especially towards the end of the DLC.
If exploration was fun, the lore interesting for the most part and gameplay mostly unchanged from the main game that I enjoyed, why do I still walk away from this DLC being disappointed? Well, folks, it all comes down to the boss fights and let me tell you – I think each and every single boss fight in this DLC sucks, like really really sucks….all of them. Remember what I wrote about Dark Souls 3 and how I didn’t understand how anyone could think this game had decent bosses? It’s the same thing here, just multiplied by a thousand. Who decided that these games were about challenging bosses? Is this the only thing people care about? Hitting your head against a wall for hours until you break it and feel like a champ for a short while?
I feel like Shadow of the Erdtree encapsulates everything I hate about modern FromSoftware’s boss design. A typical boss in the DLC does the following things constantly: Spinning around in circles while spamming attacks, unnaturally delaying an attack by holding the weapon in an awkward position simply to mess with the player’s timings and catch them while rolling, and hitting so hard that one or two hits kill you. Mind you, the last point holds true regardless of whether or not you have upgraded your Scadutree Blessings. Even with all blessings maxed out, best armor and a high level of vigor, boss attacks will deal insane amounts of damage. So, what can one do to overcome such tremendous challenges? Well, you have to learn every single attack, you have to recognize patterns and react accordingly. In some cases, you have to drop the way you play and adopt a completely different play-style - that is something, I had to do for the last boss.
I simply do not understand how people draw pleasure from this.
Seriously, to me, this feels like learning for a test in school. So, I played by the rules. In each boss fight, I would learn every action of the boss and how to react accordingly like the good boy I was. I would then apply my knowledge and eventually overcome the challenge and beat the boss. And you know what I would feel? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. After finishing the DLC, I would go on YouTube and Twitch and see people react to defeating a hard boss, they would scream and go crazy and I totally get that…but I also don’t get it. Every time, I defeated a boss, I was just glad it was over. I didn’t feel accomplished or particularly great about myself, I would just sit there and go on to the next area. I didn’t feel like any “real skill” was involved, just learning and applying knowledge. And no, it hasn’t always been like this in previous FromSoft titles. Every time I faced a boss in Demon’s or Dark Souls, the scales were balanced and a fair fight would ensue. It was absolutely possible to beat a boss first try by dynamically adjusting to the battle action. Attacks were telegraphed in a way that would make them actually readable. Making mistakes was ok. You didn’t have to memorize every single attack to prevail. To me, these fights were much more versatile and fun than anything I have faced in this DLC. Then there’s the multitude of technical issues that make boss fights feel unfair to an extent. Demon’s Souls is 15 years old at this point and we are STILL dealing with shitty camera behavior when moving against a wall or trying to target an enemy while the game thinks you wish to target that random guy 20 miles aways and not the big dragon head that is literally in your face right now. Then there’s so much visual clutter in many of the fights, I was just overstimulated at times – Lightning strikes, fire, lightning strikes engulfed by fire, whirlwind attacks, magical laser beams, blood, madness, holy attacks…half the time I couldn’t even follow what was going on on-screen. To make things worse, I experienced constant stutters, frame-drops, crashes and bugs on my somewhat beefy gaming PC. I’m okay with some technical difficulties so close to a game’s launch but it’s hard to accept that a game released in 2024 still deals with many of the same technical issues as its predecessor from 2009.
So, would I recommend getting this DLC? If you’re a fan of the main game, you probably haven’t read this review. You don’t need this review as you’ve already paid 40 bucks to play this DLC day one. I don’t blame you, I did the same. If you enjoy modern FromSoft games and had a good time with Elden Ring and you’re looking for that extra challenge, you’ll find it here. If you hope that all mysteries of the lore will be uncovered, you’ll probably be disappointed but if you’re looking for more intricate writing to enrich the world of Elden Ring, you’ll find it here too. If you hoped that the DLC would offer anything fundamentally new in comparison to the main game, I commend your naivety for we are both fools.
For me, this is goodbye for now. FromSoft, we had a good time you and I. Maybe we can still be friends and who knows what the future might hold but if this DLC is indicative for where you are going, I fear I cannot follow you any longer. You’ll always have a special place in my heart but for now, I fear it’s goodbye.
Farewell, Umbasa and Vereor Nox
Gloominary
I have most of the same issues I have with the base game here, though some things are better, and some are worse.
As far as positives, the Shadow Keep is a very intricately designed legacy dungeon that feels appropriately big, a lot of the new weapons and incantations are cool, albeit with some varying degrees of usefulness, and the art direction here is pretty strong. Unfortunately though, bosses suffer similar issues in the base game despite there being some good ones, between annoying cameras or frustrating/over-tuned movesets, though any gripes I had with the bosses are nothing compared to whatever the final boss was. While it has a passable first phase, the second phase tanks performance hard for me and is just not fun to fight against. It doesn't help that the way the boss is designed just encourages you to change builds mid DLC to a greatshield/scarlet rot rapier poke build that lets you easily beat the boss. If the souls series continues to fail to encourage build variety and continues making the player feel as though they should be changing their build to accommodate certain bosses, then the series' identity as a RPG is being compromised. The games should be easy enough where any build/class can beat the game but still a challenge, but not a challenge that feels like I'm banging my head against a wall, and a challenge that is not fun in the first place like the previous games tough fights, where it felt like your player was just better equipped for them and not fighting Sekiro bosses with dodge rolls.
Aside from my issue with bosses popping up again, the scadutree system is very, very flawed; to keep it short, I think your scadutree level should just be something you dump runes into, or the scadutrees should be much more plentiful instead of arbitrarily located items that require intense exploration. The base game's approach of just come back later works better because all you need to do to progress and get stronger is play the game; to get stronger in the DLC, you have to find these specific items that just feel like a drag to look for, though after a certain level you do get diminishing returns.
Of note, the abyssal woods is this game's equivalent of the poison area. A whole lot of nothing that you gotta walk around, and its in the style of an early 2000s movie-game stealth level. Really riveting stuff there!
Lastly, the game is just completely isolated from the main game, and to a frustrating extent. Despite being part of the same world, supposedly, the things you do here just don't feel like they matter, amounting to it just being a filler arc. This would be less an issue if the area was just a cast of mostly original characters, but Miquella had been built up in the main game and this DLC centers around them. Pretty disappointing.
To put it shortly, there's a lot of promise, and I'd like to love it more, but there's some gaping flaws that are easy to correct that will not be corrected.
As far as positives, the Shadow Keep is a very intricately designed legacy dungeon that feels appropriately big, a lot of the new weapons and incantations are cool, albeit with some varying degrees of usefulness, and the art direction here is pretty strong. Unfortunately though, bosses suffer similar issues in the base game despite there being some good ones, between annoying cameras or frustrating/over-tuned movesets, though any gripes I had with the bosses are nothing compared to whatever the final boss was. While it has a passable first phase, the second phase tanks performance hard for me and is just not fun to fight against. It doesn't help that the way the boss is designed just encourages you to change builds mid DLC to a greatshield/scarlet rot rapier poke build that lets you easily beat the boss. If the souls series continues to fail to encourage build variety and continues making the player feel as though they should be changing their build to accommodate certain bosses, then the series' identity as a RPG is being compromised. The games should be easy enough where any build/class can beat the game but still a challenge, but not a challenge that feels like I'm banging my head against a wall, and a challenge that is not fun in the first place like the previous games tough fights, where it felt like your player was just better equipped for them and not fighting Sekiro bosses with dodge rolls.
Aside from my issue with bosses popping up again, the scadutree system is very, very flawed; to keep it short, I think your scadutree level should just be something you dump runes into, or the scadutrees should be much more plentiful instead of arbitrarily located items that require intense exploration. The base game's approach of just come back later works better because all you need to do to progress and get stronger is play the game; to get stronger in the DLC, you have to find these specific items that just feel like a drag to look for, though after a certain level you do get diminishing returns.
Of note, the abyssal woods is this game's equivalent of the poison area. A whole lot of nothing that you gotta walk around, and its in the style of an early 2000s movie-game stealth level. Really riveting stuff there!
Lastly, the game is just completely isolated from the main game, and to a frustrating extent. Despite being part of the same world, supposedly, the things you do here just don't feel like they matter, amounting to it just being a filler arc. This would be less an issue if the area was just a cast of mostly original characters, but Miquella had been built up in the main game and this DLC centers around them. Pretty disappointing.
To put it shortly, there's a lot of promise, and I'd like to love it more, but there's some gaping flaws that are easy to correct that will not be corrected.
Omori
2020
Get ready to learn chinese buddy
The revisionism around Cyberpunk 2077 and the reception of this DLC makes me feel like I’m going fucking insane. It’s like everyone forgot how bad this game was because a mediocre anime launched on Netflix.
Cyberpunk 2077 had a myriad of foundational and structural issues regarding its world design, writing, quest design, and mission structure that cannot be fixed by making slight edits to the leveling system.
It wanted to be every kind of AAA game simultaneously without succeeding at any single junction (probably because it’s impossible to combine some of these game styles). It wanted to be an open-world RPG with the density of an Immersive Sim and a Grand Theft Auto-style game with bombastic, setpiece-driven missions like Call of Duty.
Phantom Liberty septuples down on the latter pairing in particular. It is a meaningless open-world that buffers what are essentially Call of Duty missions centered around set pieces, complete with walk-and-talk and press F to pay respects segments.
It’s a shame because, for all of the original game’s faults stemming from a hellish development cycle with a lack of a cohesive vision, with multiple rebooted versions of the stacked on top of one another to create a freakish AAA homunculus, Phantom Liberty offered a second chance on a fresh slate.
Instead, it’s just more of the same inharmonious game design, except this time, the characters and writing are even less interesting.
Cyberpunk 2077 was never good, and it can’t be good until CDPR makes a new game. I think people struggle to accept that CDPR dropped a massive fucking turd, and the reception to this DLC and the 2.0 version of the game is just a sunken cost fallacy for the games media hype machine.
Now that the game isn’t in a state where it’s literally falling apart at the seams, it can receive the ecstatic fanfare that people have been edging on for the past three years.
As great as Cyberpunk 2077 looks and sounds, it’s nothing more than a celebration of shallow AAA tropes and bad taste in a hollow open world. Now that the stink of its fraudulent launch has been cleaned up and laundered by an anime, post-launch support, and media fluff pieces, people can hop back to touting CDPR as an industry paragon.
If you already like this game, then Phantom Liberty and the 2.0 update will probably be up your alley. For people like me who didn’t enjoy the original game, they will not change your mind.
It’s also funny that after all of the controversy surrounding the transphobic imagery in this game, they couldn’t be fucked to remove it after three years and a “game changing” update.
Oh, I also ran into a game breaking bug that prevented me from beginning the last mission that made me have to go back two hours and replay multiple missions.
Cyberpunk 2077 had a myriad of foundational and structural issues regarding its world design, writing, quest design, and mission structure that cannot be fixed by making slight edits to the leveling system.
It wanted to be every kind of AAA game simultaneously without succeeding at any single junction (probably because it’s impossible to combine some of these game styles). It wanted to be an open-world RPG with the density of an Immersive Sim and a Grand Theft Auto-style game with bombastic, setpiece-driven missions like Call of Duty.
Phantom Liberty septuples down on the latter pairing in particular. It is a meaningless open-world that buffers what are essentially Call of Duty missions centered around set pieces, complete with walk-and-talk and press F to pay respects segments.
It’s a shame because, for all of the original game’s faults stemming from a hellish development cycle with a lack of a cohesive vision, with multiple rebooted versions of the stacked on top of one another to create a freakish AAA homunculus, Phantom Liberty offered a second chance on a fresh slate.
Instead, it’s just more of the same inharmonious game design, except this time, the characters and writing are even less interesting.
Cyberpunk 2077 was never good, and it can’t be good until CDPR makes a new game. I think people struggle to accept that CDPR dropped a massive fucking turd, and the reception to this DLC and the 2.0 version of the game is just a sunken cost fallacy for the games media hype machine.
Now that the game isn’t in a state where it’s literally falling apart at the seams, it can receive the ecstatic fanfare that people have been edging on for the past three years.
As great as Cyberpunk 2077 looks and sounds, it’s nothing more than a celebration of shallow AAA tropes and bad taste in a hollow open world. Now that the stink of its fraudulent launch has been cleaned up and laundered by an anime, post-launch support, and media fluff pieces, people can hop back to touting CDPR as an industry paragon.
If you already like this game, then Phantom Liberty and the 2.0 update will probably be up your alley. For people like me who didn’t enjoy the original game, they will not change your mind.
It’s also funny that after all of the controversy surrounding the transphobic imagery in this game, they couldn’t be fucked to remove it after three years and a “game changing” update.
Oh, I also ran into a game breaking bug that prevented me from beginning the last mission that made me have to go back two hours and replay multiple missions.
Pseudoregalia
2023
Putting a mug on my desk at the office that reads This Metroidvania Could've Been Linear.
Hyper Demon
2022
Market forces by and large have directed video game design to lean into systems that facilitate a steady drip feed of random rewards long before I was cognizant enough to realize what the hell was going on. The only thing keeping me from burning my time and money on gacha is that their thin veneer of gameplay cannot deceive dopamine receptors long since fried by tens of thousands of hours of Team Fortress 2. A five star SSR roll would need to include the opportunity to kill a man for real for a brain like that to be tricked into thinking looking at spreadsheets constitutes gameplay. Hyper Demon does not have smoking hot anime babes, one of a handful of minor flaws, but the satisfaction of climbing the leaderboard comes close to the exhilaration of one. They even hid a real game behind it.
Omori
2020
this is a sentiment that has been echoed by many other people on this website, but omori and its fanbase are exactly what people thought undertale itself as well as its fanbase were like in 2015.
i think ultimately as somebody who suffers from a lot of the issues portrayed in the game, omori's commodification and desire for marketability with a subject as touchy as childhood trauma and mental illness for the sake of making a shoddy attempt at replicating early rpg maker titles turns omori from a 5/10 mediocre horror rpg to one of my least favorite games of all time.
you spend a good chunk in the game in a frustratingly obnoxious trauma induced headspace with a woobified cast that ultimately has no depth, and the other half in the real world which is barely much better, all of which to set up badly done, laughable horror while still making these sensitive subjects digestible to people who would otherwise be put off by them. the whole game feels like it was designed to sell merchandise of these uwu so sad teenagers and i wouldn't be surprised if that was 100% the intention with making this game, as the entire experience is deeply shallow.
if you want an actually nuanced depiction of childhood trauma and mental illness that doesn't try to make a dark and troubling topic marketable for teenagers, read something that's at least a little sincere like oyasumi punpun or something.
i think ultimately as somebody who suffers from a lot of the issues portrayed in the game, omori's commodification and desire for marketability with a subject as touchy as childhood trauma and mental illness for the sake of making a shoddy attempt at replicating early rpg maker titles turns omori from a 5/10 mediocre horror rpg to one of my least favorite games of all time.
you spend a good chunk in the game in a frustratingly obnoxious trauma induced headspace with a woobified cast that ultimately has no depth, and the other half in the real world which is barely much better, all of which to set up badly done, laughable horror while still making these sensitive subjects digestible to people who would otherwise be put off by them. the whole game feels like it was designed to sell merchandise of these uwu so sad teenagers and i wouldn't be surprised if that was 100% the intention with making this game, as the entire experience is deeply shallow.
if you want an actually nuanced depiction of childhood trauma and mental illness that doesn't try to make a dark and troubling topic marketable for teenagers, read something that's at least a little sincere like oyasumi punpun or something.
Omori
2020
only losers like this game
edit: damn i just read the omoriboy comic and i was right. only losers like this game
edit: damn i just read the omoriboy comic and i was right. only losers like this game
Omori
2020
really bad amalgamation of the most shallow understandings someone can have of what makes yume nikki and earthbound good. this is tumblr-2013core being sold to a 2020+ audience. unfortunately, it seems everybody ate it up.
Playing through Dark Souls for the first time is such an emotional experience. There is no feeling of dread quite like being far from your previous bonfire, running low on estus, unsure when your next warm, momentary salvation will appear, just like there is no feeling of relief quite like when you finally find that next bonfire, spotting it in the corner of your eye, and you know that rest is near if you can just manage that final, short leg of the journey.
The thrill of narrowly dodging an attack as you just barely cling onto life, the terror of fighting close to a precipice knowing that the slightest misstep spells doom, the curiosity and caution with which you approach nightmarish creatures whose capabilities you don't quite know yet, the sheer joy, elation, when that boss you've struggled against a few times now, that you've put in time and effort trying to learn and understand, finally succumbs to your blade. Dark Souls understands how to not be difficult for difficulty's sake, but instead how to use difficulty as a way to instil very specific, powerful emotions in its player. A big part of the reason some of these locations are able to make you feel so vulnerable is because you quite literally are.
This emotionality is aided by quite how immersive the setting is. The world of Lordran is just so evocative, the way all these areas manage to tangle together into one cohesive whole via myriad shortcuts, views into far-off places that you can almost certainly reach and more broadly a sense of the map as a whole and how all these places relate just making sense. It feels like so many of these places have their own stories to tell, the characters you meet have their own lives apart from just what you see, and there's a deep sense of history here dripping from near-everything; by the end of the game it's hard not to find yourself reading through the flavour text on the various equipment and items you find just to gain even an inkling more of an idea as to how everything fits together, seeking insight into what stories existed so very long before your arrival.
Dark Souls is far from a perfect game. In a broad sense I think some of its systems could do with being explained at least a little more than they currently are. On a more specific level, the game definitely derails in quality in the last third of the core-game as you hunt the Lord Souls. I don't think this is nearly as disastrous as people often claim, mostly just Lost Izalith and Crystal Caves come out looking very unfinished and gimmicky respectively, but there's definitely a sense that the well thought out and almost playful enemy placement up until this point starts to slip away. By then I was already so in love with this world though, its sheer imagination and the discoveries and secrets that feel like they wait around every corner, that I was left in a very forgiving mood towards any missteps, and frankly the DLC that follows this up is so incredible that it does a lot of work redeeming things regardless.
I think the only thing that makes me truly sad about Dark Souls is that I won't get to experience this world for the first time again. This world has a potent mix of horror and wonder to it, with so many mysteries begging for you to try and wrap your head around them, and whilst I can fully believe that other games may have iterated on the mechanics of this game in very effective ways, it is this sense of discovery and the extraordinary worldbuilding that enables this which makes this game endure.
The thrill of narrowly dodging an attack as you just barely cling onto life, the terror of fighting close to a precipice knowing that the slightest misstep spells doom, the curiosity and caution with which you approach nightmarish creatures whose capabilities you don't quite know yet, the sheer joy, elation, when that boss you've struggled against a few times now, that you've put in time and effort trying to learn and understand, finally succumbs to your blade. Dark Souls understands how to not be difficult for difficulty's sake, but instead how to use difficulty as a way to instil very specific, powerful emotions in its player. A big part of the reason some of these locations are able to make you feel so vulnerable is because you quite literally are.
This emotionality is aided by quite how immersive the setting is. The world of Lordran is just so evocative, the way all these areas manage to tangle together into one cohesive whole via myriad shortcuts, views into far-off places that you can almost certainly reach and more broadly a sense of the map as a whole and how all these places relate just making sense. It feels like so many of these places have their own stories to tell, the characters you meet have their own lives apart from just what you see, and there's a deep sense of history here dripping from near-everything; by the end of the game it's hard not to find yourself reading through the flavour text on the various equipment and items you find just to gain even an inkling more of an idea as to how everything fits together, seeking insight into what stories existed so very long before your arrival.
Dark Souls is far from a perfect game. In a broad sense I think some of its systems could do with being explained at least a little more than they currently are. On a more specific level, the game definitely derails in quality in the last third of the core-game as you hunt the Lord Souls. I don't think this is nearly as disastrous as people often claim, mostly just Lost Izalith and Crystal Caves come out looking very unfinished and gimmicky respectively, but there's definitely a sense that the well thought out and almost playful enemy placement up until this point starts to slip away. By then I was already so in love with this world though, its sheer imagination and the discoveries and secrets that feel like they wait around every corner, that I was left in a very forgiving mood towards any missteps, and frankly the DLC that follows this up is so incredible that it does a lot of work redeeming things regardless.
I think the only thing that makes me truly sad about Dark Souls is that I won't get to experience this world for the first time again. This world has a potent mix of horror and wonder to it, with so many mysteries begging for you to try and wrap your head around them, and whilst I can fully believe that other games may have iterated on the mechanics of this game in very effective ways, it is this sense of discovery and the extraordinary worldbuilding that enables this which makes this game endure.
3 lists liked by Meruem
