BurntWitsWeekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?
ketamine_analogueI’ve been in a bit of a gaming limbo since I beat my first playthrough of Bloodborne earlier this year. I’ve been trying out and revisiting a bunch of games and nothing seems to stick.
I’ve been returning to genres that I’ve really enjoyed in the past, like survival-horror and detective games, only for them to fall flat. But that’s cool, those genres were kind of the soundtrack to specific moments in my life and right now seems to be the souls-era. While there are a ton souls games out there, my plan has been to just focus on the FromSoftware titles first before I check out the rest. The ones I still have to play are Dark Souls 2, Sekiro, and Armored Core 6, which I guess isn’t really a souls game, but I can’t say no to a FromSoft entry at this point. Technically I still have things to do in Dark Souls 1 (put it down after Ornstein and Smough) and Dark Souls 3 (didn’t complete the dlc, but have since lost my save), but I think I’ll wait a while before I revisit those games.
I also picked up the Devil May Cry games while on sale. I love the og Resident Evil 4 so it should be fun to see how an early iteration of that game evolved into its own thing and spawned a whole series.
I was also impatient and bought some new releases that, while they seem up my alley, aren’t meshing with my current mood. Oh well, live and learn.
I absolutely adore Sekiro but going to it after a different souls game is gonna be tough. It plays very differently from every other souls game, to the point that a lot of folks would consider it to not be a souls game. The combat is just so unique and if you try to play it like a souls game you’re gonna have a bad time. With that being said, it also has my favourite combat system I’ve ever played and once you learn it, it’s so satisfying to play. I would still highly recommend it, but don’t go into it thinking it’ll play like Bloodborne or Elden Ring or something.
I’ve actually played a bit of Sekiro before, I only got to Lady Butterfly, but I wasn’t meshing too well with the combat and put the game down. I’ve picked it up and set it back down a few times since, always starting from the beginning, but maybe this go around will be the one where I can see it through to completion. Fingers crossed!
The entirety of Hirata Estate is technically optional, so you could always skip it or save it for later if you find Lady Butterfly for example to be too difficult. Outside of there, how far did you get in the main part of the game?
Ah interesting, I didn’t realize that. And I’m not quite sure how far I got, but the one thing I remember was there were bird guys on the roofs giving me a heck of a time, it was my first time running into them.
Ah, the roof of Ashina Castle. The boss at the end there is sort of described as the brick wall that basically is the “final exam” that determines if you’re ready for the “real game” so-to-speak. I’d personally recommend doing that boss and Lady Butterfly around the same time, but you could do it in either order or avoid LB entirely if you wanted to. I usually reach both bosses before fighting either, then fight them back to back, that’s just the way that makes the most sense to me, but everyone’s different.
Thanks for the tips!