Savage Beastfly

Never even met the Judge in Act 1 and even then, she's not very random

Breaking news: Chill games relax you

I think a lot of it was just getting sick of E33 discussion. I remember when Hundred Line released this year some time after E33 and on Steam forums (which, to be fair, is as bad as most gaming forums), while people were, er, "discussing" the game, plenty of valid complaints were topped off with "just play E33 instead, it's cheaper and much better" Like, I don't even disagree, HL was disappointing, but why are you bringing it up, it's apples and oranges.

It was also the first I heard of E33 personally so it wasn't a good first impression, even if the devs are sweet and actually gave a shout out to HL.

(As someone who prefers Silksong that game's community sucks too though, no, I don't care a game is as expensive as 3 Silksongs)

Where socks?

I spent years living with off making about 400€ monthly as a student with a part time job (most of it going to food and housing with family), and now that I have 800€ monthly I find myself immediately overextending with plans. New furniture, console, TV, actual PC instead of a budget laptop. If I didn't live in a big city I'd consider saving up for a car.

It's easy to forget almost anything besides a roof, homemade food and healthcare is a luxury. (Or, sadly, even the last one, if you want good healthcare, or live in America)

After finally getting a pay raise and trying Switch 2, the size is pretty subjective. I appreciate SD's bigger size giving not only a better controller grip, but also actually good speakers.

I recently replayed Dark Souls 1 and tried a Strength build to see how it goes.

Full Havel's straight up lets you face tank Artorias, and you're taking almost a 1/15th of his health with just a hit.

Armor was nerfed after that, but still, it was rather hilarious. Magic was nerfed too by the virtue of bosses getting more gap closers and ranged attacks - by Elden Ring, magic is far from the boring "stay back and just spam attack" idea, but on the contrary, the cheesiest tactics I used when needed were Greatshields or dual jump attacks for stunning bosses. There's videos out there of people beating Malenia by just shield poking her to death with a spear, and I certainly used that when I wasn't having fun with Rellana. It's crazy to me how most people just grab a greatsword and only use that the whole game, then say the game's shallow or too hard.

I (re)play Soulsborne for builds, and I think that's necessary to appreciate ER. Trying out all the spells and different weapons is most of the fun, the rest being trying them out on bosses.

Doing Fire Emblem soft Ironmans (not reloading when a unit permadies) made me love the series even more, it went from "ughhhh do I really have to move on without this guy? This sucks, what if I'm underpowered later" to "I lost 40 people and died for the first time at the penultimate map, this is a beautiful, sorrowful story".

I now let a unit or two die even when playing for the first time, because it basically adds your own personal death scenes to the story. I will always pay respects to wolf boy who died to make that one final push happen, or respect the axe bro who went through his Kratos arc with a dead wife, kid and second dead wife.

A lot of hobbies like gardening, sports, chess require effort, why is it necessary for video games to be easy?

Forcing some challenge gets you to engage with more things rather than taking the easy way out. It's like bungee jumping (I'd assume), sometimes a push is necessary to experience something new.

Some of my favourite moments were trying Fire Emblem Ironmans, which initially made me go "this is stupid, I'll regret this, I should reload", only to change to "this is peak"

Or don't get it at all, never played them or felt like it!

(Bad news: I grew up with Nintendo instead)

It was a culture shock that you can smoke indoors there, especially since I hate smoking.