Just like Stormveil, I did a bunch of exploration in-between doing Raya Lucaria stuff, but I decided to devote part 9 to talking exclusively about the enemies we meet there. Between the Rennala lore, Fingercreepers, the Abductor Virgin and the sorcerers themselves, I think there was quite enough to talk about there?
These guys are enemies I kind of found while wandering around and farming for runes to level up and get enough stats to beat up Rennala, while also trying to clear out other parts of Liurnia, Weeping Peninsula and Caelid. I did a lot of the shorter dungeons (many of the ones have became a fair bit easier) to just see more of the world and collect items, but I also made it a point to clear some of the larger overworld sub-areas like Carian Manor and Sellia the Town of Sorcery.
And... to be frank, I've been really loving just exploring the Lands Between
without the pressure of having to grind a certain way to get certain objectives or whatnot. I'm just clearing dungeons and talking to people, yeah? While I figure out whether I want to clear Volcano Manor or Caelid first, which could honestly go either way.
But there are a lot of bosses, a lot of humanoid enemies and the like, so this one has a fair bit more entries in it -- enough differences as human/humanoid bosses for me to remember them, but not really enough of a 'wow' factor for this review to be extended into two articles or whatnot, yeh?
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Ghostly Enemies
I'm going to lump all of these guys together because they're just "reskins" of enemies we've met before... they're not really significant in terms of design, but they were annoying enough and prominent enough in their respective dungeons for me to want to at least talk about them.
The ones on the left here are the ghostly Raya Lucaria Knights that hang around in Caria Manor. I think them being ghosts is just a way for the designers to have them manifest and 'spawn' in ramparts and corridors so that they can ambush you. Some of them can teleport! Later on, you discover that these guys are technically 'puppets' and the puppetmaster is the last remaining servant of the Carian royals, who are tasked to create puppets of the Raya Lucarian forces that once laid siege to the castle. Not sure how, exactly, they do the 'teleporting in' if they're just puppets, though.
The second one I'm mentioning here is a Headless Troll Knight Ghost. We've met troll knights before, and we've met troll knight ghosts before. These guys teleport around! The fact that there's a headless variant -- and they're found around the Four Belfries, which is an area to protect -- implies that they might've gone through the same ritual that created the Mausoleum Knights.
The next ones are ghostly versions of the Wandering Nobles and the Raya Lucaria Sorcerers (all three variants show up) that hang out in "Sellia, Town of Sorcery" in Caelid. While most ghosts tend to just be more or less identical to their fleshy counterparts, with maybe some additional teleportation skills, these assholes are actually invisible. They don't spawn in, they just exist and shoot glintstone magic at you from afar while you scramble to get close enough to trigger them appearing so that you can target them.
And since the Lucaria sorcerers are already pretty annoying enemies in the first place, having invisible ones that can flit in and out of your targeting reticules is just extra fun. There's a lot of them swarming around this ruined town, which inherently requires you to explore and jump around to figure out how to unlock the magic doors there. I love and hate the design of Sellia in the same breath.
Commander O'Neil
This guy is considered a 'great enemy' in the Caelid regions, who I encountered and killed honestly by accident? He's important to a quest that I didn't discover until a bit later. He sure is a big guy in a fancy armour, wielding a halberd with a flag wrapped around it and he fights me by summoning a bunch of Exile Soldiers ghosts as minions. I can summon my own ghost buddies too, and he's honestly kind of slow in an area where I can jump around with my horse, so it was the terrain inflicting Scarlet Rot on me that was more of an issue.
Item descriptions tell me that O'Neil is the only survivor of one of the factions that battled in Caelid, and he's still fighting in honour of that memory. I just find him extra memorable for his otherwise rather mundane name, O'Neil, in a setting with Radagons and Margits and Rennalas.
Guardian Golem
This is the boss of the Highroad Cave, which is a fun-designed little subterranean cave filled with natural enemies (including a Giant Octopus that hang upside-down like a bat!). Standing at the end is the Guardian Golem, which is a version of the Archer Golem we met before but with a giant axe with a glowing furnace for a chest. There were technically a bunch of them that guarded the way to Godrick's Great Rune tower or whatever, but I just... never talked about them? Well, I was doing some of the older dungeons and I guess I'll mention this guy. He's a big giant suit of armour with a big weapon. That's pretty cool, even if we still have nearly no context about who made these Golems beyond the fact that they're big, they're old, and some parts of them litter the Lands Between.
Preceptor Miriam
Another new model, this one is the boss in sort of a mini-dungeon, the Carian Study Hall. It's kind of unique in that the whole hall's dungeon basically involves us chasing Miriam up the tower as she continually teleports upwards. She summons a giant Quincy bow and launches gigantic blasts of magic arrows, and summons a bunch of ghost soldiers. Being a 'Preceptor', she's a new model with a fancy hat and golden mask, but... as always, I find myself really out of words to talk all that much about humanoid enemies.
Page
We met the 'High Page' variant in the Raya Lucaria Academy, but in my quest to clear the Carian Manor and its infestation of Fingercreepers and ghost knights, these guys show up. They sure have hood-hats and shoot me with crossbows! These are completely new models, technically, so I'm obligated to at least mention them here.
We met the 'High Page' variant in the Raya Lucaria Academy, but in my quest to clear the Carian Manor and its infestation of Fingercreepers and ghost knights, these guys show up. They sure have hood-hats and shoot me with crossbows! These are completely new models, technically, so I'm obligated to at least mention them here.
Royal Knight Loretta
The Carian Manor is basically the big overworld 'dungeon' in Liurnia, dwarfed only by the main 'legacy dungeon' of Raya Lucaria Academy. And after fighting your way through hordes of Fingercreepers, ramparts filled with ghostly knights, graveyards filled with living jars and a troll knight leading a bunch of sorcerers, the final boss of the Carian Manor is Royal Knight Loretta, who is faced in perhaps one of the most badass boss stages not given to plot-relevant demigod. It's giant circular pool used for moon-gazing, with a bunch of chairs arranged around it like a ritual circle. Loretta herself is a mighty knight on a horse, who, like most of the knights of Caria Manor, seems to be a ghost.
She's got a really cool spell where she channels her power into giant Quincy bow and fires it at me, which is basically a cooler version of what Miriam does. The best thing about Loretta, however, is the fact that you actually do get the bow spell after defeating her, which I thought is pretty cool!
Lesser Sanguine Noble
Yeah, while we're at it, might as well as rapid-fire some more humans. The Sanguine Noble here is quite neat. I meet him in the Rose Church, which is a church filled with some Resident Evil levels of random flesh lumps, and the Sanguine Noble summons like bloody briar thorns to fight me. He's a little preview of 'blood sorceries', which is associated with another one of the demigods we won't see for a while. It's a nice little showcase of some of the enemies we'll face in the future, which is nice worldbuilding. The Sanguine Noble here isn't quite entirely human, though. It's a bit hard to see when he's in motion, but screenshots like this show how clawed his feet are, implying some kind of mutation.
Cleanrot Knight
This Cleanrot Knight is the boss of Stillwater Cave, a cave filled with poison lakes, Miranda Flowers, and the Servants of Rot who appear to be worshipping them. They are knights sworn to one of the demigods we have only seen in the cutscenes, Malenia, and are supposed to be guarding against rot... for as long as they can. It's a slight spoiler, but the idea of these knights that are devoted to their leader that they continue to wade into battle against the 'rot' while their body slowly starts to decay -- implied by the plantlike growths growing out of their body, and the way they shamble around like zombies before they see you and get into battle mode -- is pretty badass even if their design is yet another "it's a person in armour!" design.
This Cleanrot Knight is the boss of Stillwater Cave, a cave filled with poison lakes, Miranda Flowers, and the Servants of Rot who appear to be worshipping them. They are knights sworn to one of the demigods we have only seen in the cutscenes, Malenia, and are supposed to be guarding against rot... for as long as they can. It's a slight spoiler, but the idea of these knights that are devoted to their leader that they continue to wade into battle against the 'rot' while their body slowly starts to decay -- implied by the plantlike growths growing out of their body, and the way they shamble around like zombies before they see you and get into battle mode -- is pretty badass even if their design is yet another "it's a person in armour!" design.
They've got fancy armour with branches sticking out of them, and they dual-wield a sword and a spear, with a little buckler shield. The one I fought also has this cool attack of slamming his (her?) weapon onto the ground to create a bunch of glowing spears that rise up from the ground.
Nox Swordstress & Nox Priest
Yet another humanoid boss. Or a pair of bosses, more like. These two fellows are the final bosses after solving the puzzles in Sellia, the Town of Sorcery. The Priest fights with a club and sometimes throws down with his fists. It's hard to tell here, but the swordstress wielding a ridiculously oversized curved sword that can be 'moulded' into liquid metal and function as a whip. I know this, because her sword is the reward from the boss fight and I've been using that as my default melee weapon after this fight.
As for these two... eh? I really like the weaponry they have, which sets them apart, but we have so many humanoid knights and priests and warriors of many sorts on this page alone. There is some cool, if spoilery, lore about the Nox civilization that these guys are aligned with... but that makes the backstory interesting. These ladies are just cool-looking hooded women with fancy weapons. The fight against them was... surprisingly easy, which is a bit of a surprise considering that Sellia kicked my figurative nuts when I was exploring it.
Ball Bearing Hunter
I like the execution of this guy. There are some locations in the overworld where it's a site of grace where you can teleport to a safe place. Some of these places are near merchants! And... at night, in some areas, the merchant is gone. After looking around in confusion, a scare chord plays and this large guy wrapped up in thorns and chains and whatnot stride out of the darkness. He is called the "Ball Bearing Hunter", which is a reference to a mechanic in the game where if you kill a merchant, you can get their 'Ball Bearing' to essentially transfer that merchant's wares to a centralized location. It's a nice little game mechanic, and apparently the Ball Bearing Hunter here is going around killing merchants. Now, no actual merchants you meet will actually be harmed by this guy, but it is an interesting concept nonetheless.
The guy attacks with a cool glowing sword that he can telekinetically manipulate away from him, but ultimately he's just some guy. Unlike Edgar, there doesn't seem to be a story yet about the Ball Bearing Hunter, but I do like the presentation and the shock factor of seeing this mofo appear for the first time when you were expecting safety.
Mad Tongue Alberich (and other Invaders)
Okay, maybe talking about these named human enemies is a bit of a mistake. I really don't have much to say about most of them without going into Fashion Souls territory. Alberich here is fun, though. He's a secret encounter if you jump off the balcony in the Roundtable Hold, which is supposed to be a quiet base where no combat occurs.
But... yeah, I tried talking about other invaders, like Edgar the Revenger, Anastasia Tarnished-Eater, Recusant Henricus and Bloody Finger Ravenmount Assassin... but they're just people, y'know? There's not much of a gimmickry to them without going into their story. And not all of them even have a story! Edgar does, at least. He's an NPC we helped (or rather, failed to help), and is driven by grief at the death of his daughter that he's going around killing people and we have to put him down.
Also, I just find them being covered in a red aura to be so ugly. I realize it's a holdover from Dark Souls or something, but look at the screenshots of the 'regular' non-invader humanoids like the Nox Swordstress or Preceptor Miriam! This is a leftover from the Dark Souls games that Elden Ring is based off of... and I don't know if Dark Souls explains this 'invasion' PvP mechanic in-universe, but this is probably the thing I dislike the most about the otherwise pretty top-notch worldbuilding of this game -- I felt like the NPC 'Invaders' feel utterly unnecessary and there's no reason why all of these guys have to be glowing red and pretend to kinda be spectral entities or something. I dunno. Just be regular people, guys.
Necromancer
These guys vexed me. Not that the idea of a necromancer summoning skeletons is particularly new or anything, but... but for the rest of the game, skeletons have been showing up and doing their whole 'hit their corpse one and they die for good' schtick. And then I walk into the Black Knife Catacombs, and the skeletons not only have gained the ability to roll, but they also refuse to die. Like, I died so many times like a dunderhead trying to stab the fallen skeletons only for it to have no effect.
Turns out that only in this dungeon, skeletons are maintained by these Necromancer bastards, who look like the commoners in Godrick's castle, holding torches. And you have to kill them to get these 'special' skeletons (sometimes there's a bunch of them!) to die. But not all the skeletons are tied to the necromancer, though, no! Some are just regular skeletons that behave like they do in the wild. Oh, and of course the necromancer is always located in like a corridor after the skeletons, so you really do have to dodge the skeletons and hunt down the necromancer and rush him down before the skeletons gank you.
It's not that hard once you get into the groove of things, but this gimmick did really bamboozle me in the dungeon.
Black Knife Assassin
I think we met a 'named' one near Patches' cave? The Black Knife Assassin serves as one of the two bosses in the Black Knife Catacombs, hanging out in the tomb's equivalent of a chapel. She's one of the Black Knives that killed one of the demigods, Godwyn, in the prologue to the story, and I think I'm supposed to hunt all of them down and collect certain items to help one of our allies unravel the truth about that night. Apparently they stole fragments of a rune of death of Maliketh, another demigod, and used it to kill Godwyn the Golden. Okay!
They have a rather cool grab animation where they latch onto you and really slice into your jugular. They move quickly around the room, your typical 'glass cannon' archetype, but can be staggered quickly with fast attacks of your own. Okay!
Cemetery Shade
The actual final boss of the Black Knife Catacombs is a Cemetery Shade, which takes place in a similar room with giant roots with corpses growing out of/being fed to it or something. Instead of a giant kitty-cat statue, however, the boss here is this... black shadow-man. It's got glowing eyes and tentacle hair, and summons a bunch of those aforementioned annoying skeleton friends to attack.
...it turns out that the Cemetery Shade's bark is way worse than its bite, though. It dies to like, less than four hits, and the only real difficulty is to dodge his skeletons and chase him down as he smoke-forms all around the room. Which is kind of a shame, because I really didn't even get to absorb what this guy is all about as a boss. I'm not sure if it's just my build that's suited to fighting him, but surely it would be a Faith build, not an Intelligence build, that would one-shot undeads, right?
Googling proper images of the Cemetery Shade gives me a closer look to what it's all about... those aren't actually tendrils, but rather bug legs. And it's actually wielding a pair of giant mantis scythes, with the description of some item (that I haven't obtained yet) describing them as 'insect-ridden grave keepers'. And it's a bit clearer from other specimens seen in brighter areas that the rather underwhelming tendril hair is... actually some Facehugger-esque bug legs that curl around the Shade's head like a crown. Actually, the central two horns almost look like engorged moth antennae or something. These close-up images also really shows off the actual texture of the emaciated, skin-and-bones ghoul-corpse beneath all the shadows.
This breakdown of the monster's visual design within the files of the game further showcases something more about the Cemetery Shade... that it's implied to be either a corpse or a near-dead person being pupeteered by a monstrous crab-thing. I wouldn't think of crabs as my first choice of a parasitic monster, let alone a parasitic monster associated with the undead and catacombs... but Elden Ring really does love using crabs to symbolize scavengers and corpse-feeders, so I guess that's the connection there? There's also apparently a 'web-spitting' attack that the crab-hat creature can do, so there's some 'spider' baked in there as well.
Even without taking my long-running love for insects of all sorts, this is so much more interesting than the honestly rather banal 'it's a shadowy boss that summons some skeletons' boss fight I just had. I'm honestly kind of disappointed! Such a great concept, such a great design, and honestly, such great animations... and I barely saw any of it.
Tree Sentinel
Oh, hey, yeah, I try not to repeat monster 'reskins' if there's nothing super-interesting to talk about (that troll being headless and a ghost is one such interesting factor) but since this guy was one of the first encounters in the game, I think it's obligatory to cover the Tree Sentinel now that I've beaten him. Mostly by accident! I was testing out some new summons when the Tree Sentinel attacked, and I fought back, and managed to beat him.
Having played through a fair bit more of the game now, I can see a lot of the 'tree' imagery built into the Tree Sentinel's shield in particular, with vines growing around it. The Tree Sentinel is also able to conjure one hell of a cool-looking Dr. Strange style magic circle to bombard you with magical golden missiles, and I think we've established elsewhere that the plants in this world are what other fantasy settings' holy magic are associated with. The colour gold is also a running theme across the game, with Godwyn the Golden and the main religion of the world being the Golden Order.
It is nice that the Tree Sentinel design is ultimately just still the same, and my commentary is still the same -- it's a cool looking knight with oversized weapons. It will look cool, just like how all the dragons in this game look cool, but we've seen this before. But I do like that after exploring the world and seeing more of it, some of the design choices I had taken for granted ended up feeling a bit more significant.
I really love the presentation of Highroad Cave and the golem within it, makes it feel a fair bit more special than the relatively small early game dungeon it is. It’s a shame it’s fairly easy to miss.
ReplyDeleteYeah there’s an in-universe explanation for invaders in DS as well. Don’t disagree that the red color is ugly(hell from the invader side there’s a talisman to make you look normal colored that feels necessary if you actually wanna appreciate your fashion) but ig it makes it more clear who’s an enemy and who’s a friend to a host. Wouldn’t mind them doing away with it though, feel like chaos is half the fun of invasions and you can still tell by the different colored name when locked on.
Yea the cemetery shade got done a little dirty. It’s soooo squishy and many elements are easy to miss. (Vague Minor Spoiler) If it makes you feel better this is not the last time you will see them.
Highroad Cave was definitely easy to miss -- I was somewhat over-leveled when I came back to clear it. Very pretty to look at, though, and a nice break from a lot of the samey catacombs or monster dens that populate the earlier areas.
DeleteYeah, I'm not the biggest fan of the Invaders thing. Particularly when I'm playing single-player, I think it should be pretty obvious that the other guy -- particularly when he's an NPC -- is hostile. I don't know... I feel like it's a franchise-wide artifact that would feel 'wrong' to remove, like, say, the idea of Pokeballs in Pokemon or something. But as someone brand-new to the franchise, it's probably the single thing that takes me out of the immersion of the game the most.
Oh, I hope not! Elden Ring has been very good at not repeating the cool boss monsters too much, but I would be disappointed if any non-named boss only ever showed up once.
I had a similar first time experience with Highland Cave unfortunately. Oh well, it still had nice atmosphere.
DeleteYeah I get that. The games have also moved away from the multiplayer being as integrated into the game, where solo invasions went from being fairly commonplace, to deprioritized, to now gone all together unless you turn on the taunter’s tongue. Even for Elden Ring the Varre quest used to require you to attempt some invasions, but then they added in the ability to invade a NPC later(and neither of the invasion-centric factions of the game have the sorta covenants of previous games that would incentivize you to invade other players) I have a lotta love for invasions but I imagine it seeing at this point where it’s become a much smaller part of the game, it would be pretty jarring.
I don't know how it was in Dark Souls, but there wasn't even a proper explanation to the whole... I don't know, 'invaders are coming from a parallel world' thing? Are parallel worlds even a thing here? No one ever mentions that in-universe to me, so I guess I have to play other games to find out. Except if I get invaded by NPCs like Varre or Dung Eater and we beat them, they still die in my world? Is the difference to be them teleporting in? But bosses like Margit also essentially teleport in, and those aren't covered in a terrible red aura. So what makes the invasion people so different? Are they from another world or not?
DeleteThe one thing that the 'invasion signs' feel like they're cool is when I'm summoning spectral allies for a boss fight. Okay, sure, so they're helping but it's a projection of them so they don't really 'die' when Margit kills Rogier for the twelfth time or something. Or during the Jerren/Sellen quest when the invasion signs let me choose which outcome I want. But otherwise...
It's all quite poorly shown, and the idea of the invasion mechanic making "multiplayer into an immersive thing" be absolutely untrue to me since the invasion stuff is easily the easiest immersion-breaking thing to me.
Are the older Dark Souls games a lot more multiplayer-focused? I admittedly have never really played through any of them since just the 'Souls' gameplay without the open world exploration didn't feel too appealing to me... but I dunno, I had lots of fun on Elden Ring so maybe I should try them out? Bloodborne, at least, being gothic/eldritch horror, would fall right under my belt.
In dark souls it was a bit more of a parallel worlds sorta thing(“the flow of time is convoluted” and all) but in Elden Ring there’s even less of an explanation. Tbf idt the dark souls explanation was particularly lore immersive anyhow(moreso a bit more gameplay integration helped it feel like more a natural part of the gameplay loop imo).
DeleteIf you did want to force an explanation(which is probs unwise but yknow), I’d say invaders/summons sometimes survive death the same way most tarnished do(e.g. Rogier surving dying under the castle for inatance, albeit the nature of that death is unusual) with the whole guidance of grace(/removal of rune of death but that’s a whooole other can of worms on what that actually means and if it should affe t this or not) not necessarily due to the nature of being a phantom. Varre dies since he’s long since lost the guidance of grace and doesn’t have the will to live after losing to you. Dung Eater does survive iirc and he tied himself up…since he’s a FREAK(ye I got nothing for why you beating him would force him into a chair, besides him basically self punishing since he’s passing the curse the world task to you n all). Margit doesn’t have a red aura since he’s not a tarnished and using his own golden grace construct magic to project things instead of a finger. I suppose you’d have to both be able to invade/summon within your world and outside of it?(since some summons/invaders are clearly in your world and some aren’t with multiplayer items mentioning other worlds. There’s the millicent invasion in the swamp for instance, which clearly should be from a parallel world since our millicent has neither the motivation or means to be invading at this time. Or it could not be millicent but that would be the text).
That being said I don’t think there really is a clean answer and this explanation opens up a lotta other holes(like how does alexander survive being summoned v radahn? Is it an abstraction of him being defeated and retreating?) You could also view it as invading not having protection of the body but being summoned as a cooperater does(which tbf is backed up by the multiplayer interactions, where invaders lose their runes when they die and coopers don’t). There’s a few other bits that complicate it too but they’d be spoilers f later game stuff so I digress. Really though there isn’t a super clear answer for a lotta the gameplay convenience here(though tbf things get weird with death and enemies in general when you think about it even beyond multiplayer).
Anywaaaays, I wouldn’t say prior souls games are a LOT more multiplayer centric, moreso there are more inroads to pvp. More incentives to do it with multiplayer factions called covenants which have unique item rewards, more ways to get opened up to pvp since using the rune arc equivalents means you can get invaded, and without spirit summons there’s more reason to summon friendly phantoms too. The games are still more pve focused but multiplayer is more likely to be part of your journey compared to Elden Ring(though opinions vary of course, I am clearly biased as I have a lotta affection for the multiplayer mechanics).
DeleteI haven’t played Bloodborne(no Playstation :/) but everyone I’ve talked to who has played it has loved it. Though if you wanna be a dedicated spellcasted its kinda rough in Bloodborne, there’s pretty much no options earlier in the game. That being said the aesthetic is right up your alley and it is closer to Elden Ring in terms of gameplay speed than some of the older games. Also there are of course some pretty incredible monster designs in that game. Otherwise there’s Dark Souls 3 which is definitely the closest to Elden Ring in terms of combat(and lets you be a traditional mage, albeit some of the ER spells are missed) though there’s still a fair difference. And of course as far as exploring an interconnected world goes DS1 is great and it’s a fair bit easier than some of the subsequent games(though it definitely can feel clunky). DS2 isn’t a bad game but if you wanted to try and branch out it wouldn’t be the first one for me to recommend(moreso something to try if you picked up and liked DS1). Anyways I do think all of the Dark Souls games are worth playing and if you’re having fun with ER it’s a good sign, but of course a lot depends on what parts of ER you enjoy. I do think giving one of the other more recent FS games a try probably wouldn’t be a bad idea if you have the time.
There’s also Sekiro which isn’t multiplayer at all, but while I love it, it is a pretty different game type.
Oh yeah, I absolutely get it with Dark Souls, and how it was at least explained in-universe what the invasions and multiplayer is. There is absolutely nothing that explains or distinguishes invasions vs 'regular' NPCs in Elden Ring, and if anything, the random item descriptions going 'this ugly furled finger is an item for MULTIPLAYER PLAY' is another kick in the balls for immersion. I felt like if they wanted to do something with multiverse bullshittery they'd have Varre (who's the one NPC trying to incentivise invasions, and someone we meet very early on) say something about it. But no, it's just... some NPCs are glowing red and look ugly for no reason.
DeleteThe Dung Eater thing is a bit confusing, 'cause we do find him in that cell before and after his invasion. Is Dung Eater sending out a phantom projection like Morgott/Margit does? Is his 'real body' in Leyndell's sewers, and the red phantom we see in the Roundtable Hold and the invasion in the lake just that, projections? But then why does every other 'invasion', particularly the Volcano Manor missions, treat us as having actually killed people? We 'summon' a phantom of Alexander, and he later bemoans being injured by Radahn. So either A) a phantom/projection/multiverse bullshit shows up, but somehow 'our' Alexander gets injured, or B) the real Alexander is actually supposed to be summoned, but he looks spectral... for reasons? And he gets damaged anyway?
Oh, wait, Bloodborne is PlayStation exclusive? Boo, that kills any chance of me playing it. I might just speedwatch a playthrough and do a short monster review series. I really do love the gothic-lovecraftian aesthetic.
I do have fun with Elden Ring, but I also think that after I'm done with it I'll be playing more chill games for a while. Still quite a ways off from the climax, assuming it'll get harder and harder, and I still have the DLC to beat.
I've eyed Sekiro for a while, but apparently the combat's very melee-oriented which isn't the most exciting to me. I'll probably try out Dark Souls 3 at some point in my life since it's in my Steam library, but I remembered not really having fun with it for the first hour or so that I played it. Of course, that was a while ago, and before 100 hours of Elden Ring under my belt so maybe my opinions will change.