Elden Ring Review

 

Elden Ring: The best Skyrim/10

The best Dark Souls/10

dog/10

Liar ahead/10

Hidden path ahead/10

9.5/10

 

It’s difficult to talk about Elden Ring from even my “vaguely objective” point of view, because my viewpoint on the game, by virtue of having played 90 hours of it, is going to be positive.  I can’t have not liked it and wanted to keep playing for that long.  40 hours? Sure, you can play a game that long and then be “yeah this kinda was meh”.  I did that with Cyberpunk, for instance.  But putting NINETY hours into a game? I have to be obsessed with it at least a little.

 

And this wouldn’t be a major issue were it not for the fact that Elden Ring is very much not a game for everyone.  It’s difficult.  It’s unforgiving at many times.  It doesn’t play like many other games in the genre and thus you’ll be confused and annoyed if you’re expecting something else.  It’s confusing almost the entire way through, and if you don’t have the unofficial wiki open in another monitor (which isn’t very good either) you’re going to be confused.  A lot of the best content can be completely missed with barely any indication that you did.

 

But still, 9.5/10, absolutely loved it.

 

Let’s start at the beginning.  Elden Ring is an open world RPG with difficult combat and punishing mechanics.  If you’ve played any Dark Souls game, especially Dark Souls 3, this is that but open world.  They could have called this game Dark Souls 4 and it would have fit.  But the Dark Souls formula is mixed with the open world RPG formula, echoing design decisions of Skyrim and Breath of the Wild.  You play as the Tarnished of No Renown, a dude coming to this nobledark setting to restore the titular Elden Ring and ascend as the Elden Lord, master of the land. 

As an open world RPG, you roam the land searching out baddies to fight and get stronger, leveling up with currency acquired from said baddies.  As a Dark Souls game, death drops all of said currency where you died, where you can go pick it up again, or lose it forever if you die again before doing so.  This makes combat riskier, which alongside the fact that enemies deal way more damage to you than in your standard Skyrim, makes you need to think about how to approach each encounter.  Fortunately, you do have a lot of options, from strong melee attacks, long range spells and bows, and various stealth options incorporating your arsenal.  Indeed, at least in the early game, I found myself using stealth a ton to great success, as getting near instant kills with backstab attacks really keeps you safe.

 

But as a Dark Souls game, there’s always going to be that one part of the game that doesn’t let you use stealth, and that’s the boss fights.  And the fights in this game can be absolutely brutal.  The first story boss, Margit, is infamous already for taking dozens, if not hundreds of attempts to get past for many players.  And while I do think that Margit is a tad too difficult, he does demonstrate another strength of the game: the exploration.  Instead of fighting Margit, the game is telling you to go explore some more (though this really could have been handled better).

 

For, as an Open World game, there’s always more stuff for you to find.  Sometimes you’ll wander into a cave and find a new weapon, or some crafting materials, and other times you’ll walk onto a lake and a dragon will swoop down, incinerating everything in sight.  To aid in this exploration, you are very early on given a horse that you can summon, who is a great boy named Torrent, so named as to make pirating the game much more difficult.  You can go much faster on horseback, as well as getting access to more mobility options, while still having some fighting options.  Indeed, many bosses end up being easier on horseback than not.  Additionally, in many areas you can summon allies, either little ghosts of your own, NPCs, or other players over the internet.  These summons can dramatically reduce the difficulty of the game and aid you in defeating many a boss.

 

So what makes this game the best in class of all its fellows?  There’s a lot going for it in those regards.  Like Breath of the Wild, exploration is rewarded not only with seeing beautiful vistas and cool new areas, but with new weapons and materials.  Like Dark Souls, the enemy design for the boss fights is incredible, with Elden Ring having perhaps the coolest boss I’ve ever faced.  And like Skyrim, such a massive world gives you a ton of things to do.  But the game iterates on all of these experiences: it doesn’t rest on the laurels of any past title.  The exploration is more rewarding, the bosses more difficult but more engaging, and the world more interesting.  Gone are fetch quests and random towers you have to conquer.  Instead, you have NPCs with quests that require you to meet them randomly across the map.  While as mentioned above, this is not always a good thing (since missing segments of a quest can be real easy, requiring a wiki to ensure you’re on the right path), there is a thrill of entering a cave to find the giant Jar Man you befriended 10 hours earlier just chilling, and later fighting a literal raid boss with the same Jar Man. 

 

The story also is very good.  While not as linear as a Skyrim or Horizon Zero Dawn, it’s more solid than Breath of the Wild or even past Dark Souls games.  NPCs clearly delineate who’s important, what characters are related to whom, and why you’re doing what you’re doing.  There are several reveals in the games story that made me go “OOOOOOOO”, and characters that brought countless emotions to me, from the lady who revived me, to my 4-armed blue wife, to the blacksmith and everyone in between.  You get invested beyond the traditional Dark Souls reason of “let’s get to killing”.  Even Bloodborne, by far my favorite Soulslike, does this worse than Elden Ring, and while I’d argue that the underlying story there is just as interesting as that of Elden Ring, the fact that Elden Ring got that close is pretty great for it.

 

But should you get this game?  Ehhhhh.  Like I said, this game is not for everyone.  It can really feel like the game is intentionally wasting your time if you’re not familiar with the archetype of the Dark Souls game.  Also, the game is very long and very big.  If you want to complete it, you’re looking at a good 30-40 hours minimum for most people (though speedrunners are sub 40 minutes so there’s that).  And if you don’t know what you’re doing in terms of levelling, or haven’t gotten a handle on getting stronger, as the game progresses you are going to feel incredibly weak and incapable of attempting some of the bosses.  Sure, you can summon, but saying “you don’t have to play the game, just let someone else do it for you” is not a great selling point. 

 

But if you have played a Dark Souls game, were interested in them, or just wanted the best open world game since Fallout New Vegas, I’d recommend taking a look.  The game is not without fault.  And the faults here, unlike other games that I love despite their faults (cough Project Wingman cough) are not ignorable.  But in total, the experience is one I enjoyed and want to come back to, and a game that might finally convince me that FromSoftware knows what they’re doing.

Kamigawa Neon Dynasty Type 4 Review

 

What is up nerds, and welcome to another Type 4 set review written by yours truly.  While I’ve fallen off Magic hard, this new set looks cool as hell, especially for the King of formats.  So let’s dive in and see what we got.

 

Brilliant Restoration: A one-sided reanimation spell for all your artifacts and enchantments.  You’ll need to draft around this, or at least have a stack with a lot of those permanents in it, but there could be something here. Most of the time I envision this just being a less flexible Rise from the Grave, but you might find some big payoff.

 

Cloudsteel Kirin: A very interesting card, give any of your creatures Platinum Angel.  Unfortunately, it’s pretty fragile, being a creature to start and always being an artifact: very easy card types to kill.  That said, could be pretty fun and also gets brought back by recursion for both types as well.

 

Farewell: One of the best wraths ever printed.  The flexibility on this is off the chain, allowing you to get rid of pretty much any problem you’re dealing with.  Plus, as you do the effects in order, you can shut down any sort of reanimation shenanigans.  Playable in every stack.

 

Invoke Justice: Brings back any permanent, which is an improvement on your standard Rise From the Grave.  Sorcery speed prevents some possible tricks, but if it was worth playing and killing, it’s probably worth bringing back.  The extra +1/+1 counters are just gravy. 

 

Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa: Our first Infinite Stack card, Kyodai makes one of your Shivan Dragons indestructible with flash and is one itself.  Probably a fine card for those stacks, especially since you can’t interact with it at sorcery speed.

 

Lion Sash: Basically a Scavenging Ooze that can transfer its power to any of your other creatures.  I expect this one to fly under the radar for most, but this looks like a solid playable in most stacks to me.  Graveyard hate is always good and this doubles as a solid beater.

 

March of Otherworldly Light: Just an instant speed Vindicate.  I say “Just”.  But yeah, this card is the real deal.  Another instance of a white card conspicuously not letting you kill Planeswalkers, but still a likely instant add to every stack that owns one.  Flexible and exiles, there’s not much more you can ask for. 

 

Repel the Vile: If you’re just starting out in Type 4 or Magic in general, there are far worse cards than this.  Doubles as a big creature kill and enchantment removal, all at common.  Not for more powerful stacks, but not an embarrassing card.

 

The Wandering Emperor: Basically just an instant speed Assassinate that leaves behind a weird Planeswalker. Said Planeswalker can technically make a few 2/2s and maybe Assassinate again, but my money isn’t on that happening often.  Playable, but not exciting.

 

Disruption Protocol: It’s cancel, I’ve played cancel in the past.  Cancel is not exciting.  I am not likely to add this card.  But you certainly can if you’re just starting out.

 

Essence Capture: Again, I’ve played Remove Soul before and hated every minute of it.  I do not recommend this, but it’s not the worst card ever.  Also I’m pretty sure it’s a reprint.

 

Invoke the Winds: Oh so this is a cycle.  This one is just as cool as the last, just yoink something good and get ready to abuse the hell out of it.  Again, sorcery, and just a 1-for-1, but probably pretty good.

 

Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant: Jesus Christ what a beast.  A pretty prototypical “your opponent discards a Counterspell” because if this guy gets on board things are going to get out of hand quickly.  Forces your opponents to work together if they want him gone with spell based removal, and makes your counterspells work double duty.  Absolute house, shame he doesn’t have flash but that would just make life incredibly miserable. 

 

Kairi, the Swirling Sky: a 6/6 flyer is pretty good up front, but then getting back two counterspells or removal spells when it dies is probably even better.  Not the best creature ever, but doesn’t need to be.  It’s just solid.

 

March of Swirling Mist: part Fog, part Sleep, all upside.  Someone is likely to die after you play this, losing all your creatures even just for a turn can be exceptionally bad.  Very powerful card.

 

The Reality Chip: Can turn one of your creatures in Magus of the Future which… isn’t a card I play.  It’s not terrible, but I do not foresee this seeing much Type 4 play.

 

Thousand-Faced Shadow: A free spell that copies one of your bombs.  Requires some set up, but a fun card and one that might be powerful enough to see play.

 

Assassin’s Ink: Instant speed kill a creature or Planeswalker.  Now we see where the Planeswalker removal went to.  Jokes aside, every stack needs instant speed 1-for-1s and this does the job as well as most.

 

Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos: Not a super impressive body, and no keywords means he has to be out for a turn to do his tap ability, but an Archivist type ability attached to some burn is worth looking at.  Unlikely that it’s good enough, but interesting at least.

 

Junji, the Midnight Sky: 5/5 flying menace is actually hard to block, and the on death trigger has two pretty good modes.  Rip apart their hands before you try to resolve some threat or get back the best creature in yards.  Good strong card.

 

March of Wretched Sorrow: A kill spell for infinite stacks that also gains you a lot of life.  Not for normal Type 4.

 

Explosive Singularity: Big burn spells are typically best at instant, but sorcery speed 10 damage is still big game.  Can kill people dead, deal with most threats, and has some weird combos that you can work with.

 

Invoke Calamity: I see this casting two reactionary spells more often than not.  I’m not sure it’s very good at that purpose either.  Sure there’s some good success cases here, but I’m not as convinced on this one as the white or blue ones.

 

Invoke the Ancients: Two 4/5s with [ability] counter isn’t the worst deal.  There’s probably better stuff to do on your turn, not to mention better creatures, but this isn’t terrible.  At least you can be sure you’ll always get paid off.

 

Shigeki, Jukai Visionary: god damn, this is a nuts card.  It’s free, instant speed get back your entire graveyard.  Doesn’t even specify permanent cards.  Honestly might be too powerful for some stacks, but I know it’ll go great in mine.  Absolute bomb.

 

Spinning Wheel Kick: A silly card, but it might have some legs (heh).  You can kill a lot of creatures if you have something big enough, and if it has any sort of lifelink or deathtouch it can go real well for you.  Not a necessary card, but if you’re short on wraths, this can do the job. 

 

Colossal Skyturtle: lots of modes on this one.  My guess is free Recollect is most likely to be used, followed by 6/5 flyer and then Unsummon.  Still a reasonable card, and worth considering.

 

Spirit-Sister’s Call: What a weird card.  I’m sure there’s ways to abuse it, most likely with tokens, but pretty strange. 

 

Boseiju, who Endures: Oh look, it’s a free disenchant with no downside that also can kill weird lands.  Instant add to every stack ever.

 

Otawara, Soaring City: Not sure if free disperse is good enough (and not sure why they didn’t just say nonland permanent) but it’s worth considering.

 

Inventive Interation: It does not nothing on the front side, and the back side is a really cool effect.  I don’t think this is good enough for my stack, but I really like the design.

 

The Kami War: As a sorcery speed vindicate, this already has some legs.  If it sticks around, you get to make people discard, and finally get a 6/6/ flying trample that can get pretty big while recurring good cards.  A very interesting card, slow to be sure, but looks strong enough.

 

But wait! There’s more! Now for… the Commander cards.

 

Organic Extinction: It’s another wrath, less good than Soulscour but having a couple of that type of effect might make it draftable in some stacks.

 

Release to Memory: Having good graveyard hate is always important, as discussed above. This gets rid of a yard and makes you a bunch of 1/1s.  Is it the best grave hate card? No, but it’s pretty good.

 

Access Denied: Speaking of doing a good thing and making some 1/1s, god forbid someone cast a Dwarven Catapault and you get them with this.  Even just making between 5-8 1/1 flyers is likely to be good enough.

 

Collision of Realms: A very, very weird wrath, but dodges indestructible I guess?  Also can ensure you have something afterwards.  Very weird card, but possibly playable.

 

Shorikai, Genesis Engine: Lets you filter through your deck with card advantage as well as making 1/1s.  Also can be an 8/8 if you want.  Probably unlike that that last part matters, but the first part is plenty good to see play.

 

And that wraps us up!  A good spread for this set, some strong creatures, good interaction, and some decent engines. 

Bionicle’s story is weird, man.

OK, so this is probably going to lose some people, so let me explain.

 

Last year I was talking with a friend about running a Warhammer 40k Dark Heresy tabletop RPG at some time in the future.  But, me being me, I wanted to add some wack ass flair to it while ripping off some media I loved.  Enter: Bionicle, a series of Lego toys that ran from 2000 to 2010 (with a brief attempt at a reboot in 2015 but we don’t talk about that). 

 

As a young boy in the years 2000 to 2010, I naturally loved Lego (let’s be real, who doesn’t?) but found myself super drawn to Bionicle.  These guys were in cool colors, were action figures that let you make your own dude to fight with, and there was a comic book as well that came with the Lego magazine, a subscription to which as a gift for the majority of the runtime.  In these comics, I read of the exploits of the legendary Toa (Kopaka is the coolest and most awesome don’t @ me) and their fights against the evil Makuta, all in the name of the Great Spirit, Mata Nui.  We learned what happened a thousand years ago when a previous group of Toa also fought against Makuta, fleeing their homeland with the Matoran villagers, getting turned into mutant spider-Toa by a race of evil spiders, turning back into Toa, using the legendary Vahi, the Mask of Time, to fight against both Makuta and a criminal syndicate called the Dark Hunters…

 

I think you’re beginning to see a problem here.

 

What the hell is going on? Who are these characters? How do you reconcile a world that has all of them?  How the hell did the Shadowed One survive hitting Voporak and getting aged 3000 years in a second?  How old is everyone???

 

The world of Bionicle on its surface, following the comics and some of the novels, was relatively straightforward.  But as it got older and older, the main author, Greg Farshtey, had to reconcile a lot of weird stuff because at the core, this was a children’s toy line.  There’s a race of spider-bugs now?  Well, they need a name and a reason for being.  Their existence causes ripples across all of canon?  Eh, we’ll deal with that later.  And this continued on and on.  The first few years made sense, Toa fight dangerous Rahi beasts, defeat the Bohrok swarms and their queens, fight the servants of Makuta himself, this is all straightforward and makes sense.  But when the wider universe expands, when it’s revealed that this massive island that the last 4 years have taken place on is just a fraction of the wider universe of Bionicle, things start getting messy.

 

So we return to me in 2021 and 2022, trying to figure out some way to reconcile all the insanity that had to be included for the toys to make sense narratively, and boy howdy, there’s a lot.  Mata Nui is a moon-sized giant robot and the majority of the story took place inside his body.  Makuta (who has a name and is part of a race of the same beings)* put him to sleep and used the process of his revival to take control of that same giant robot.  Mata Nui and everyone inside him are over 100000 years old, designed by an enigmatic race of godlike entities called the Great Beings to rebuild their destroyed home world.  Even inside Mata Nui, there’s three major secret societies running around fighting each other from the shadows.  Ancient warlords exist and seek to regain their power. 

 

How the hell do I include all of this in a TTRPG???

 

The answer, so far, has been slowly.  Fortunately for me, Warhammer 40k is a pretty open world in terms of power scaling.  There’s already demigods and planet busters and races that construct enormous technological projects.  All I need to do it reconcile some timelines, drop in some proper foreshadowing, and send my players on their way.  That’s “all”. 

 

But yeah, Bionicle has a lot going on. 

 

 

*Sidenote on the Brotherhood of Makuta, but holy crap how do these guys ever lose a fight.  They have 42 different powers, one of which is invulnerability, can shapeshift, have armor that is already virtually indestructible, are all ancient scientists, have access to the best technology in their universe.  Like seriously, I always knew every time Makuta Teridax lost a battle he did it on purpose, but reading over the complete list of his abilities, hot damn.