games

DS3: Thoughts on Sister Friede

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Before I start the boss fight with Sister Friede in the Painted World of Ariandel, I want to mention the bosses I defeated previously. These include Dragondslayer Armor, Oceriros the Consume King, Champion Gundyr, Ancient Wyvern, Lothric, Younger Prince, and the Nameless King. I did this before starting this DLC because I was no match for Sister Friede at level 45. I suppose there is a reason why players can access the DLC midway through the game. It was placed at the Cleansing Chapel Bonfire, which I still do not understand. I do, however, think there is a flaw in this edition. I cannot summon Slave Knight Gael (will do a separate post on story) during the boss fight. I have already summoned him for the battle with Prince Demon and progressed his questline. So, if you are playing this edition, I suggest you skip the DLCs. Return when you are at a higher level. Make sure to play the DLCs in order. It will save you time because the extra help from Slave Knight Gael is greatly appreciated. Of course, you can summon help if you play online. However, I couldn’t do that because I don’t have a PlayStation Plus subscription.

Oh boy, like Prince Lothric and Nameless King, those boss fights took me several runs. Sister Friede was the cherry on top!  I guess never underestimate the power of the cold nun.

Sister Friede walking coldly
Is that Priscilla Scythe from Dark Souls? I love Priscilla!!! (phase 1)

The first phase was fine. The second phase was easy. The third phase was the most difficult. You can summon Slave Knight Gael. However, he will only appear during the second phase of the boss fight. As I mentioned earlier, you can summon him if you have not defeated Prince Demon in The Dreg Heap. I wasted so many embers because I kept running out of estus flasks in the third phase. In the end, like always, skill helped me beat the boss. I knew its pattern and dodged like crazy. I am not going to lie. It feels so rewarding when I beat her. I have been trying for several days! Of course, I do feel shame for invading her world. She did politely ask me to return to where I came from. But I am just so curious. A world without flames? What sort of world is that? Death? The curious cat in me has to know!

Sister Friede getting angry
My curiosity pisses Father Ariandel off… (phase 2)
Instantly got killed by Blackflame Sister Friede side swipe
The image is a bit dark, but there were several moments like this when I almost killed her, but she got to me first (phase 3).

I won’t talk about the strategy on how I won the battle in detail. There are some good ones on YouTube: Gentle Needle and Loreena are ones that stood out to me the most. It was hard to avoid her when she goes into invisible mode. She swipes you with her scythe, taking a big chunk of your HP. What I did differently from other players was preventing her from going into invisible mode. I blast her with the Great Soul Spell before she even gets to disappear. Doing this helps conserve estus flasks for the final round. She was so quick and fearsome in the final round. My heart was pounding!

Lastly, I will mention the optional boss: The Champion’s Gravetender and Gravetender Greatwolf. This post is mainly about Sister Friede. The boss fight took me a few tries, but it wasn’t too difficult. By defeating it, you will unlock Undead Match. Perhaps this is where ‘PVP creed’ came from, where players are not allowed to use estus flasks during a duel. I like how the developer added this gaming mechanic. If players want to do PVP, there is a section for that. This is because not everyone wants to duel. Not everyone wants to fight to the death.

I burned the Painted World. Now all I have left is the final boss and the Ring City DLC. But first, I stop to smell the flowers before I go on a killing spree.

stopping to smell the flowers

Rambling about Dark Souls III (The Fire Fades Edition)

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As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I decided to replay Dark Souls III, but I did not mention of all the games in the series why I chose the third installment, which happens to be my least favorite (at the time). The reason is that it’s the finale of the Dark Souls series; I would like to finally piece the story together and give it another chance. Plus the Fire Fades Edition include the DLCs, which will sate my “dark souls-craving fix” since I have not played the DLCs! And I must confess, 27 hours of trial and error, I am enjoying it more than I did back in 2016 when I first played it. Apart from the interesting NPCs’ questlines, the looting and exploring are one of my favorite things about the Souls game (If interested, you can read more about my thoughts I wrote a few years ago: Dark Souls: Exploring Is an Achievement).

So far, I have completed Cemetery Ash, Firelink Shrine, High Wall of Lothric, Undead and Settlement, Road of Sacrifice, Cathedral of the Deep. However, I decided it’s best to restart the game. I was not aware that giving the Pale Tongue to Rosaria (Mother of Rebirth) would cancel Sirris, The Sunless Realm questline, who happens to be the most interesting character that I feel most connected to. I don’t know why. Maybe I admire a woman in armor who has a purpose (This sounds like a potential topic for a blog post). I remember liking Selen Vinland from Demon Souls (PS3 version) too.

Selen Vinland (image credits: Fandom)

By now, you might speculate that it is one of my favorite video game franchises. I have so much to say about it. And no, I don’t like it because it’s difficult. Quite the contrary, it’s a fairly challenging game, which involves strategy. When I realized the flow of Dark Souls III (memorizing enemy positions and level layouts), it took me about 9 hours to reach the part where I had to restart the game (Cathedral of the Deep). I knew what I was going into, thus making the experience seamless. This game was always meant to be played multiple times. You will fail, and that is all right because there are multiple ways to meet your objectives. You will begin to see patterns. You will learn how to dodge. You will utilize the items in the game to survive. Most of all, you need to have good reflexes, and incredible amount of patience. I think it’s a fair game once you know its rhythm.

From the time I started drafting this blog post, I defeated the Deacons of Cathedral of Deep boss, the Abyss Watcher, and High Lord Wolnir. It took me about 24 hours compared to my first playthrough which I was doing horribly because I spent hours trying to hop into the Butcher’s cage to get to an area that allowed players to join the Mound Makers Covenant. I couldn’t initiate the sequence because I entered the boss fight with Curse-rotted Greatwood before speaking to the NPC located below the area of the boss fight. Pretty much starting the battle caused the ground to collapse and kill the NPC. It was so worth it to restart the game because my first playthrough was a bad run. If you follow the natural flow of the game, progressively you will get better at navigating its world. In addition, the guides available on the internet help, if you use it as a reference.

Apart from the gameplay, one thing I love about souls games is that it feels as if I am playing inside a fantasy book. Like reading a book, I became self-aware of my own actions. I remember after beating Dark Souls II (my favorite out of the series), I felt odd sitting on a throne. I started my character as a fairytale-like human, but it ended up looking like a monster.

I beat DS2
I claimed the Throne of Want. Now what?

The realization of losing sight of humanity made me more humane in real life. A game that does that is not all that bad despite its dark theme. If you think about it, that’s why it’s called Dark Souls.

Death Mark 2 Review: “Eww, Eww, Eww!” 

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The monsters are grotesque, and the artwork is enthralling. But the impression I had of this game after obtaining the true ending (happy ending) was eww, eww, eww! I would love this game if I had the brain of an insect. That statement alone should pique your curiosity enough to pick it up because I will not spoil the story for those interested in playing the game. Let’s say the plot is creatively perverted, and I don’t even know if that’s a compliment!

Departed approaching
It’s trying to bite

In terms of gameplay, for a visual novel, it’s kind of out of the ordinary to level up your skills so you can take more damage from your opponent (spirits).  It seems like the developer put the gaming mechanics because it makes it more “gamey”. You can also collect lost souls which come in the form of a decaying tooth.

tooth of the departed
I suppose a tooth tells a story

You use the tooth to trade for charms to level up your spiritual gifts which help you reduce the damage taken during the Suspensive Act which relies heavily on deduction and memorization. However, the logic behind the amount of damage did not make any sense to me as to whether I made the right choice or not.  You see, to survive a confrontation with the spirit, you need to pick the right action based on the evidence you gather during your investigation. Each choice has a percentage success rate. So even if you ignored the story, you can still guess at the expense of your health points.  For example, let’s say selection A has a 77 % success rate, you know it’s likely the right answer compared to selection B which has a percentage rate of 52%. But of course, if you keep guessing wrong, you will die. Another important point distinguishing the gameplay from its predecessors is that it’s a harem game. The unnatural way the underage school girls gave attention to the protagonist made the experience cringey, but it’s not a bad thing because there is a creative logic behind it.

This brings me to the topic of the title itself: Death Mark 2 (2024). The title is misleading and a bit of a false advertisement. 1) Death Mark 2 is not nearly as good as its predecessors and 2) this is the third installment from the franchise.  It’s just my speculation, but I think the publisher thought the first game was more well-received than Spirit Hunter NG (2019), so they decided to bring back the old cast from the first game without giving them any real depth other than saying to the fans, “Do you remember me?” From a creative perspective, bringing back characters from the first game for the sake of making a reentry seems like lazy game design to me. Don’t get me wrong, there is still some real talent in the development of the game (i.e. art direction), but the overall package of the game was missing substance. I suppose this is a type of game you play for the artwork and the bizarre story. The artworks were so grotesque that I could not avert my eyes away from the screen.

Departed and the protagonist
girl with scissors coming from the inside out
Decent game, but you have to have the mind of an insect to truly love it.
So over the top

For my final thoughts, I still recommend this game even though it is my least favorite from the franchise. The political ideology toward women remains the same: when facing adversity, strong female characters such as Ms. Sakamoto, the Chief of Academic Affairs, are proven to be the weaker vessel. I find that quite disappointing.

My Year End Wrap~

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I wish I could say I beat a lot of games this year when realistically I only finished a few games:Ghost of Tsushima, Tales of black forest, Mandemon, Silent Hill the Message, and Remothered: Broken Porcelain. That’s not an impressive list, I know. On the contrary, Steam reminded me I played 30 games in total. 17 of them were demos. Now that I think of it, I did replay Nightcry and Shenmue III and started up a bunch of games. I suppose that is considered gaming, but yeah, the graph below doesn’t lie. I didn’t play all that much. Life got in the way…

graph for 2024 on Steam
Gaming Sessions on Steam

During days I don’t play games, I spend more time reading and watching movies to balance things out. Some notable movies I watched were Alien Anthology and Planet of the Apes trilogy.  Recently I also finished Claymore the anime series. As for books, you can read the blog posts here:

I also read two children’s books that are full of wisdom: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Coraline by Neil Gaiman. This brings me to the topic: why didn’t I publish more blog posts?  Why did I downgrade my blog plan and not renew my domain? The answer is simple: any down time I have, I try to give my eyes a rest from the screen, which I learned recently from an ophthalmologist that I don’t blink enough when I stare at the screen and that I have narrow angles eyes which explains my constant headaches and eye pressure. Left untreated, I could go blind. Luckily, I had surgery, so I will be okay. Secondly, I have been wanting to do something more relaxing. One of my passions is to become a better cook but that hasn’t been too successful since planning and gathering ingredients can be so time consuming. It took me several trials and errors to get my mom’s chicken soup right. When I did achieve it, I felt so happy. Yet, I still have a long way to go to build a book of recipes that I could come home to.

Despite investing less time with this blog, I am feeling excited for the New Year. I still plan to tackle my backlog and play at my own pace. Blog whenever I can. So far, I am ending the year with Tales of Symphonia. After Tales of Symphonia, I will play Death Mark II. Then I am looking forward to playing Xandu Next.  In addition to my backlog, I am adding Spirit of the North and Deadly Premonition 2. Here are the rest of my list for next gaming year:

  • The Bookwalker (Steam)
  • Teslagrad 2 (Steam)
  • Tales of Berseria (Steam)
  • Tales of Vesperia (Ps4)
  • Tales of Xesteria (Digital psn)
  • Songs of Horror (Digital psn)

Initially, I started this blog with a title: “Older games have more charm” because I want to replay Parasite Eve on the Ps1. Unfortunately, time flies so quickly that I never got the chance to play it and review it for Christmas. I learned that If you want to enjoy a game you stick to it and play it thoroughly despite all of the distraction from video games sales and releases. For instance, I want to play Unicorn Overlord, but it’s only made for consoles. I don’t really own a Switch or a PS5, so it might be hard to play those exclusive games. I have thought of investing in Switch 2 when it does come out or a Switch. But I don’t know yet because I am also interested in Steam deck since I spend more time on Steam than any other sites. Another game I am interested in purchasing is Tales of Grace remastered. There are tons of cool-looking games coming out which makes it difficult to focus on a game. So, whenever I start up a new game, I give myself about 45 minutes. If I am still not into the game then I just drop it. I don’t feel the pressure to complete games anymore.

Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Hopefully, you are enjoying a good game. I know I have been enjoying Tales of Symphonia remastered very much!

brrr.. it’s cold

Picture credits: Featured image is Presea from Tales of Symphonia

Steam Thinks It Knows Me and Maybe It Does…

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I appreciate the spider graph from Steam and think it’s pretty cool to learn about yourself and your gaming habits, but Steam only has a portion of my gaming data. It doesn’t know that I spent a lot of time with action-adventure games on the PlayStation5. One thing it got right though is that I don’t play as many Metrovania games so when I did play Hollow Knight on the PS4 which was part of PlayStation Plus member-free games, I was pretty hooked. It’s a shame though that the PS4 controller broke. Anyway, I learned that it’s not the genre that I enjoy but who makes the game. Like with any creativity, game design is an art form, and a$$holes can’t make good games because they don’t have a heart (Okay. I paraphrase what my photojournalist teacher once said to me that a$$holes can’t take pictures because they don’t have a heart). I think you get the point and remember kids, it’s important to give people the proper credit even if it’s written by a “doll”.

Lately though, I do tend to gravitate toward games that require light reading and pretty visuals, and perhaps, I am a fan of visual novel games and I didn’t even know it! So next year, I probably will be looking into more visual novel games. The only visual novel games that I have played and written reviews for are:

So, that is why I think it’s funny when Steam thinks it knows me! I only took an interest in visual novels a couple of years ago because I was looking for something that has light gameplay. They don’t require a lot of mental energy and that is what’s so relaxing about that type of game. But I would never make a bold statement to say I love visual novel games because I have only played a handful. You see, I love gaming but there are so many types I have yet to play such as otome games. It’s my dream to play every type of games out there so that I can declare myself as the Queen of games LOL (Now, I am just poking fun at myself). I know some game developers look down on games because society thinks they are just toys. I get it. The world will be in trouble if everyone play video games. but the world will also be in trouble when there’s no more coffee, cigarettes and gasoline and of course, the ultimate villain–the internet! As the saying goes, technology is a double edge sword. That is very true.  A friend of mine from Bangladesh once asked why do locals like to hike so much? Now you know why… It’s always nice to get some fresh air because if you stay inside your head too much, you will go crazy.

Someone must be going crazy to make a survival horror video game that takes place in the woods in Washington State. I am talking about Alan Wake that is. From what I remember you just run in the woods…Now that I think about it, that some intense forest bathing.

I think ramble on too long about games and cracking jokes that only I might get. I just want to make up for the time I did not publish last week.

P.S.

I was looking through my old pictures. Around this time of year in 2019, I was at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle. I don’t consider myself a techy person, but growing up in the Greater Seattle area, like most kids, I picked up on video games because it was in front of me to play and it sure brings a smile to my face. You see, video game is a product. It doesn’t define a person’s integrity. So it’s hard for me to say, “We are what we play.”

Drifting Where the Wind Takes Me

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Some may not have noticed, but for those who look forward to my blog weekly, thank you. Normally I publish weekly, but it seems like there’s always a lot going on toward the end of the year with the holiday around the corner, and I wish that was my excuse for taking a small hiatus. Honestly, I lack the motivation to blog after doing extensive research about SEO, marketing, and web design. More importantly, I took the time to contemplate what I wanted out of blogging and asked if I was still enjoying it. If I were to be honest, not so much. I enjoy blogging on WordPress but I don’t like how it penalized the blogger for not engaging with other bloggers by commenting on their blogs and hitting the like and follow button. It takes a lot of my energy to reach out to people and when it doesn’t reciprocate, you get that feeling of rejection. Too many rejections make it feel like is it even worth it.

I just love getting my heart burned, it builds resistance but I rather do it in video games. It’s more enjoyable because I know not to take it seriously.

Blogging is becoming more like work and most sane people run away from work. That’s why I don’t work for the gaming industry. I am pretty sure I would run away from it too. All work no play is crazy. But that’s the marvelous thing about the world is that: “we are all in it together” LOL. I digress. Going back to my blog, perhaps, the audience I am trying to reach may very well be too busy gaming because gamers play games. It’s that simple. So that is why I have been hanging out at Steam, playing Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition. It’s quite entertaining and it gives me something to look forward to each day. Great story+great gameplay +great soundtracks=A+++! I believe they are an indie studio but with triple-A qualities. As mentioned in my previous blog post, I have been bewitched by the game! I also learned that the studio is accustomed to making educational and casino games, which explains a lot about my newfound addiction! I love learning and gambling with my time “recklessly”, but at least I am having fun. I enjoy uploading screenshots of my gameplay over on Steam’s account. Here, one sample of my screenshots:

The prisoner’s dialogue made me laugh hard. I suppose gaming is like prison and I am already crazy! Thank you for bringing this awareness to me 😀

Steam makes it enjoyable to capture those fun silly moments in games. Press F12 to take pictures. I even thought of joining a Girl Gamer club on Steam to be more “social” and less “crazy” but then I looked at the comment section and I stopped. I would be walking into a trap. From what I observed, I don’t think half of the members are even legit and the way they talk is so lewd. So here I am back in my little corner. Doing my own thing. It’s a shame though, I really like Steam’s interface.

Little Shopping Video Game Haul

I took advantage of November Steam’s sale and purchased: Gris, Remothered: Porcelain, and Tales of the Black Forest. After much thought about Remothered: Porcelain, I caved in and bought it. It’s out of my mind and out of sight. The sales marketing tactic works! I shouldn’t have to make things complicated by being indecisive about a purchase, but time is valuable and I have a bad habit of finishing everything thoroughly. Also, I decided to pick up a book to read: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. I read a few chapters and it feels like it’s written for a movie. One of my political science teachers once said…if you want to know what the book is about just read the introduction, and that’s what I did to the Pillars of the Earth. I learned that the author imagined his book making it into a motion picture. Is there a movie out there based on the book that I am not aware of? I might just pick up the movie but then on a second thought, nah. I discovered the book because of the game, which ironically there is no real gameplay to it. So, I said, well if I am “playing” for the story might as well… pick up the book. That was my logic! I still plan on playing the game because I like the illustration. Why is it so hard to make a decision sometimes?

Games I Am Looking Forward To

  • Dragon Dogma II
  • Death Mark II
  • Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
  • Granblue Fantasy Relink
  • Elden Ring DLC: Shadow of the Erdtree

Well, that’s all I have to say for now. Thank you to those who tuned into this blog. I hope you have a wonderful holiday and that my craziness hasn’t scared you away!