• Tag Archives Action RPG
  • Last Epoch Update

    Took a bit, but now I have eleven of Last Epoch‘s fifteen available specializations sitting at the Cultist Camp. Which (while still quite early game) is a good point to get a feel for most of the builds’ playstyles.

    The Chaos Warlock gets real crazy once it unlocks Chaos Bolt. Just a constant stream of devastation. What’s particularly nice about this build is that since you only have 3 active skills, you can put skeletons or a bone golem on the free slots for some extra damage/distractions with zero drawback. Speaking of which, taking Blood Pact so far has worked out well. It has no downside against powerful single targets and against groups the life drain is negligible with all the healing you get.

    Less chaotic but no less insane damage-wise, the Sparking Spellblade starts getting real crazy once all the synergies start firing. Although early on you’ll want to play it a bit safe and use Lightning Blast manually as a starter, by the time you reach the surface of the Ruined Timeline you should be able to just teleport into masses of enemies and destroy them with both Mana Strike and Static discharges. I cannot wait until Surge gets unlocked and the final piece of the puzzle is assembled.

    The Bleed Bomb Falconer starts off quite slow since all the key abilities are unlocked later, yet once you acquire Falconry stuff just gets minced. Even without Net and Dive Bomb the Falcon Strike ability alone just lays down total devastation. Zero complaints.

    Last of the Icy Veins builds, the Cleaving Void Knight just takes off once you get Erasing Strike. The combo of Lunge -> Void Cleave -> Erasing Strike -> Volatile Reversal is just plain unfair. Nothing to complain about with this build either.

    And that’s it for the builds I modified. Now on to the ones I put together from scratch.

    One of the later ones, the Harvest Lich build focuses on the titular Harvest skill supported by Spirit Plague, (unchanneled) Drain Life, and Reaper Form. Spirit Plague melts anything it touches to a shocking degree. At first I was torn on whether to use Transplant or Reap as the mobility skill, but ultimately Transplant’s Bone Armor tipped the scales in that direction. Currently Reaper Form is saved for bosses, but eventually it should have basically full uptime. We’ll see.

    Last of the Acolyte specializations is the Volatile Necromancer. This build had a bit of a journey, as first the idea was to just cast nothing but Volatile Zombies with the Bone Marrow node activated. Then I realized that Summon Wraith could handle spawning the zombies and Cycle of Putrescence would always keep at least one perpetually spawned. And then, finally, I realized I was being silly and dropped Bone Marrow completely in favor of leveling the wraiths. Just beware of Transplanting into a hostile situation and nothing should ever be able to get close to you.

    For Sorcerer I decided to go with a fire-based channeling build. The idea here is to use Disintegrate on general trash mobs and then switch to Elemental Nova for bosses or massive swarms. Flame Ward provides constant protection, Teleport acts as both mobility and extra damage (from the Nova nodes), and Arcane Ascendance is just there to add insult to injury. Main issue here is the perpetual mana shortage and early game the damage is rather lacking. At this point (Cultist Camp) the damage finally seems to be catching up to some of the above builds, so we’ll see how things develop.

    Lots of minor changes have been made to my Stormy Beastmaster build. I kept flip-flopping on how to ultimately level the wolves, finally settling on maxing out Tundra Stalkers, Stormborn, and On the Hunt while ignoring the Howl nodes. Gathering Storm also had some back-and-forth and may yet still depending on how the mana situation is later on. Pretty happy with its damage and crowd-control aspects so far though.

    For the Thorn Druid build I eventually decided on going the 24/7 shifter route. It will be some time until I can see if Swarmblade is worth it, but right now the Totems (and unleveled Wolf) combined with Spriggan Form’s Vines and Spirit Thorns just massacre enemy groups. I’ve been using leveled Gathering Storm with the staff bolt and physical shift nodes as a placeholder so far to decent effect, but plan to replace it with Summon Spriggan once that’s unlocked and start using unleveled Upheaval as the main attack (assuming my shapeshift uptime is still lacking at that point).

    Next up is the Ethereal Marksman, who seems to wield something closer to a machinegun than a bow. Flurry is fast. One of the ‘late bloomer’ builds, you’re going to have some difficulty with swarms early on until Multishot unlocks (I ended up using a combination of Acid Flask and Decoy to acceptable effect). Once it does you never really have to do anything other than Flurry, toss the occasional Decoy, or drop an (unleveled) Smoke Bomb at your feet if something gets close. The endgame strategy here is to Flurry everything, then if something nasty gets hit use (unleveled) Dark Quiver into Decoy and follow that up with a Flow-boosted Hail of Arrows. Time will tell if the gimmick is worth it or not.

    And last up is my Retaliation Sentinel build, which specializes as a Forge Guard. Gods I love retaliation builds. Sure it’s less than thrilling when you’re fighting something slow or physically resistant, but when you can just (unleveled) Shield Charge through multiple groups of enemies then double back to Rebuke them all into paste…. Few things can even dent my health pool through the Vengeance defense buffs, and those that do get instantly nullified by the Healing Hands auto-spam. Just crazy survivability so far.

    As for the four remaining specializations (Runemaster, Bladedancer, Paladin, and Shaman)… I’m going to hold off making any of them for the time being. I want some progress in the main quest to get a better feel for the expected progression level first.


  • Last Epoch

    Occupying a space between Diablo and Grim Dawn, Last Epoch is quite a lot of fun if you’re the type to enjoy theory-crafting character builds and/or collecting randomized loot.

    Class-wise you can choose between five different base characters (like the former game’s), each with three potential specializations (like the latter’s leveling):

      Sentinel is a mix of Soldier, Paladin, and Oathkeeper.
      Rogue takes elements from Assassin/Nightblade and Amazon.
      Mage combines Sorceress and Arcanist.
      Primalist mixes Barbarian and Shaman.
      Acolyte is basically Necromancer with some Cabalist attributes.

    Itemization is where things really stand out though, as not only is there a robust Loot Filter system in place, but there’s also a forging system which lets you directly upgrade or add/remove attributes from items. In a sense an upgraded version of Diablo‘s socket system or GD‘s runes/components. Another change is that legendary items act as personalized uniques instead of being their own drop class, which is an interesting choice to make and was presumably done to further incentivize said forging system.

    When I first started (which was quite recently, but still) I wasn’t really interested in pouring over the ability nodes and so just looked at Icy Veins‘ endgame build list to see if anything stood out. A few did indeed look fun and I promptly ended up doing some minor modifications to the build plans.

    First up was the Chaos Warlock. Only real change here is using Blood Pact (since the minion damage from Blood Aura is kind of wasted without dedicated minions) and taking a Dance of Blood point in Transplant for even more healing. Not sure those will work out…. but I can always revert them if they don’t.

    Next was the Void Knight. Can’t recall if I changed anything significant here, but it’s worth noting that early game you’ll want to focus on void-shifted Warpath and Lunge until you finally unlock your main skills.

    For Rogue, the Bleed Bomb archetype looked fun enough and I ended up waffling around with the build planner for it quite a bit. Don’t think anything too significant changed, but like with the Void Knight above in the early game you’re going to be stranded without your core skills for a while… so don’t sleep on Acid Flask or Decoy.

    The Spark Charge Spellblade was an easy choice for me when deciding which Mage build to go with, and by this point I was really getting into adding/removing points all over the place. The unleveled use of Flame Ward really stands out here as just a ridiculously useful spell for the build and gave me ~ideas~ for later.

    Finally we come to the Primalist and… I didn’t really like any of the builds they had. So this build ended up the first I created from scratch. It is, of course, not without issue. Namely that the base damage of the wolves does not mesh at all with the magic boosting nature of the spriggan. I thought that would be mitigated by the Storm Bolt triggers, but at this point it’s too early to tell. Storm Crows are the obvious solution, and I may end up going that direction (swapping out Shark Aspect for Lynx).

    Strongly gripped by the theory-crafting bug now, I quickly identified that I didn’t have any builds dealing with poison or retaliation damage. Not wanting to double-up on the classes I decided to make the next five builds Hardcore only, with the first being a Retaliation Sentinel (inspired by the Flame Ward usage in that earlier Spellblade build). While my original idea used Ring of Shields, I quickly realized that its presence would only detract from the goal of massive Rebuke and Thornshell damage. Healing Hands looks like it will work far better for automated healing.

    Which just left poison, something a Primalist-Druid seemed best to exploit (that it was my second choice for a retaliation build also played a part). The idea for general play here is to scout with Thorn Totems, then spam Entangling Roots everywhere while using Leap if anything gets too close. When encountering a boss or something else that requires more caution however Spriggan Form comes out to spam vines and Spirit Thorns from a safe distance while doubling up on spriggans for extra healing.

    Rounding out the Hardcore builds will probably be a channeling setup for the Mage, a bow-based Rogue, and some sort of Acolyte yet to be determined. I should be pretty busy leveling and tweaking these seven builds as it is though.


  • FINAL FANTASY VII: REMAKE

    Originally I had wanted to play this game when it first came out, but it was console-exclusive for a while and I haven’t played on one of those since the PS2 era. Then I sort of forgot about it while waiting for the PC port until suddenly remembering it last month.

    The game starts out quite good but somewhat quickly runs into a rather severe issue: Fate Ghosts. They’re terrible. They accomplish nothing beyond degrading the story and character behavior, so I guess the devs just really wanted a big set-piece endgame fight to go out on and couldn’t think of a better way to implement it.

    I wasn’t particularly thrilled by the combat system either. If you’re going to do real-time battles you should not force people to switch between characters during those battles in order to hit enemies’ weaknesses (or force you to use abilities for multiple characters concurrently for that matter). It’s just a giant pain in the ass and I was already tired of it by the fourth chapter.

    Normally this would be where I’d say that I won’t bother playing the next game in the series… but since the ghosts will presumably be absent it may just end up tolerable. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.


  • Cyberpunk 2077

    Picked this game up about a month ago when it was on sale for $30, since I figured that was an acceptable price for an overly ambitious/flawed large-scale RPG.

    It’s kind of weird. They’ve apparently got most of the bugs and glaring oddities ironed out by this point, yet there are still issues with general balancing, vehicle handling, and really the actual city itself.

    In regard to balancing you’ll very quickly start to overpower all your enemies if you bother with sidequests at all (or focus on quickhacking), but if you try and stick to just the main missions to give yourself a challenge you’ll end up broke.

    As for the city, the issue here is that despite being respectably sprawling and full of NPCs… it feels empty. Just a series of barren corridors lined with flashy wallpaper and inaccessible storefronts. More strange is that there’s a pretty massive amount of sex-related content on display, yet the player can’t interact with any of it beyond a single (yes, just one) prostitute and a ‘sex shop’ which sells unusable junk items with sex toy names. It’s bizarre.

    Despite those issues I managed to make it to the second act and complete all the various fixer side gigs which became available (level 40 aiming for this build), which range from extremely simple to mildly interesting. Although it did take awhile because I kept burning out. Only did two main missions so far in this part of the game (the two Goro ones), so can’t say much about how the plotline plays out just yet. Maybe it will make sticking around worth it.


  • Elden Ring – Mountaintop of the Giants & Sidequest Areas

    Noskella ended up pretty much the same as Nokron, just with a much easier boss fight. Deeproot Depths, similarly, doesn’t have much of note danger-wise (although the boss fight is tougher since you don’t have access to your horse).

    After those two areas it seemed I’d been worrying for nothing… but then I arrived at the Lake of Rot. This location is extremely unpleasant. Both because of the unavoidable scarlet rot soup you have to wade through (which will trigger rot in ~10 seconds even if you’re in full mushroom gear with double Immunity talismans) and because the enemies hit quite hard. The area’s pretty small though and the Dragonkin boss can at least be drawn over to the cliffside where you can safety pelt it with ranged attacks from above (good luck fighting the Tree Spirit though; I ended up skipping it).

    The last sidequest location at this point happened to be that formerly unreachable plateau in southwest Liurnia. Not much up there really besides a pretty nasty evergaol fight. That one took awhile, though not as long as the Crucible Knight one since at least this enemy could be easily staggered.

    Once all that was done I was level 121 (Vig 40, End 25, Str 12, Dex 50, Fai 23, Arc 30) with Reduvia +9, Great Knife +20, Eleonora’s Poleblade +8, Nightrider Flail +20, Serpent Bow +8, Dragon Communion Seal +7, Mimic Ashes +10, Fanged Imp/Greatshield Ashes +9, and Ancestral Follower/Jellyfish Ashes +8.

    Now it was time to tackle the Mountaintop of the Giants, which I’d heard was where the game took a nosedive. Personally I don’t see it. The area’s pretty unique and apart from the oddity of seeing a bunch of enemies from Caelid here nothing felt particularly phoned in. In terms of danger the only location that stands out is Castle Sol, which features spectral versions of those windy knights found in Stormveil. The boss fight features them as well and stalled my progress for some time (Greatshield summon reliably distracts the shield knight and boss, but the twin-greatsword knight kept murdering me).

    Once the Fire Giant fell (don’t see why anyone would have trouble with him, he’s just a 2-legged dragon) I was level 131 (End 30, Arc 35) and now using Rivers of Blood +9, Wakizashi +23, Dragon Communion Seal +9, Mimic Ashes +10, and Fanged Imp/Greatshield/Ancestral Follower Ashes +9.

    After a quick trip to kill Rykard (who is in fact quite hard for a melee character if you don’t use the special spear it wants you to use) and before moving on to the the penultimate area, there was one more sidequest location to visit: The Consecrated Snowfield, which in turn allows access to Mohgwyn Palace and the Haligtree.

    The snowfield comes across very much like a DLC area with all the endgame materials strewn about alongside the bizarre palette-swapped bosses. It’s pretty bad and half-assed really. Surprisingly not all that dangerous though so long as you don’t try to fight everything you come across head-on (or at all in some cases). Mohgwyn Palace meanwhile is extremely dangerous since its basic enemies hit quite hard and the giant crows in particular will chase you forever. Fantastic place to grind for Runes though, if that’s your thing.

    With those cleared it was finally time to visit the Haligtree. Heard lots of horror stories about this location… and it absolutely lives up to them. This is just a real dangerous location all-around, whose only saving grace is that most of the trash mobs are easy to kill. The boss in particular is nastier than most in that she can both heal-on-hit and has a brutal 3-second, staggered, multi-hit combo that will basically kill you if any part of it connects. Allegedly there’s a fancy way to dodge this with 100% reliability… but you’d need bullet-hell reflexes to pull it off in the given timeframe. Better to have her use it on your spirit summon, or hit her with a Freezing Pot when she starts floating, instead.

    Then the second phase starts.

    She gets her health back and starts off with a meteor strike that, incongruously, you have to run toward to avoid. After that it pretty much plays out the same as before, except she might do one of several instant-kill moves after floating upward. It’s real unpleasant overall. Took about 10 or so tries to beat her at level 156 (Vig 60, Arc 40) with Mimic Ashes +10, Rivers of Blood +10, Wakizashi (Arcane) +25, Dragon Communion Seal +10, Swarm of Flies, and Freezing Pot & Raw Meat Dumpling on my item wheel. Also had Nightrider Flail +25, Serpent Bow +10, and Fanged Imp/Ancestral Follower Ashes +10 by that point.

    All that’s left now is Farum Azula and the final boss rush.


  • Elden Ring – Alteus Plateau & Leyndell

    After clearing Nokron, which took a surprisingly long time thanks to the dual Gargoyle boss fight (ended up having to trick the first one into jumping off the waterfall edge right next to the entrance), the next stop was the Alteus Plateau/Mt. Gelmir area.

    These two areas are basically one and are overall quite a bit easier than Caelid. The strange thing is that to get here properly though, you have to either pick up the Medallion half from Caelid’s Fort Faroth, or defeat a Magma Wyrm boss tougher than the Gael Tunnel version. The only things really worth noting about this area, difficulty-wise, are the Full-Grown Fallingstar Beast (which is tricky since the battle takes place on a mountaintop) and the Shaded Castle location… although I did skip Rykard for quest-related reasons.

    I also ended up killing that previously skipped Crystalian trio while finishing Sellen‘s quest. Mimic Ashes +7 with Nightrider Flail +13 was enough, particularly after I realized that the mage could be backstabbed to interrupt its spells. When all that was said and done I was level 102 (Vig 39, End 25, Str 12, Dex 50, Fai 15, Arc 20) with Reduvia +9, Great Knife +17, Eleonora’s Poleblade +6, Nightrider Flail +14, Serpent Bow +6, and Fanged Imp/Jellyfish/Ancestral Follower Ashes +7.

    Leyndell was up next since I’d assumed it would be easier than the Noskella or Deeproot Depths sidequest locations.

    There isn’t much of note in the outskirts besides the dual Crucible Knight boss fight. Notable mostly because it was far easier than I thought it’d be: Summoned the Greatshield Soldiers and Rotten Breathed them mostly to death on the first try.

    Inside the city proper (which is lain out similar to a legacy dungeon) there’s quite a bit to discover, but nothing all that challenging to defeat as far as combat goes. The challenge here mostly lies in both not getting lost and completing a platforming puzzle in the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds if you want a particular ending. Was level 113 (Vig 40, Fai 20, Arc 25) at the end of it all with the following upgrades over the previously listed equipment: Great Knife +20, Eleonora’s Poleblade +7, Nightrider Flail +17, Fanged Imp/Greatshield Ashes +9, and Mimic/Ancestral Follower/Jellyfish Ashes +8.

    So now I’m on my way to (hopefully) clear out those aforementioned sidequest areas before heading through the Forbidden Lands.


  • Elden Ring – Liurnia & Caelid

    Liurnia turned out to be a pretty easy area with no difficult enemies of note, though I also ended up having to clear Siofra River since I accidentally skipped it earlier. Which turned out to be a fortunate occurrence since there are some pretty nasty ancestral spirits infesting that area. Anyway, after clearing everything but the Divine Tower and southwestern plateau (both of which are tied to a later quest) I was level 63 (Vig 19, End 25, Str 12, Dex 31, Fai 15, Arc 20) and still using the Reduvia/Great Knife combo (+3 and +11 at the time).

    Next up was Caelid, which is a noticeable spike in difficulty. Quite a number of nasty enemies here. The stand-outs being the Crystalian trio in Sellia Hideaway (which I decided to skip since they don’t drop anything useful to me and I had no good summons that did strike damage) and Black Blade Kindred in front of the Bestial Sanctum (had to ultimately use Skeletal Militiamen +4 as a semi-renewable decoy). Apparently Radahn was much harder in earlier versions of the game, but as of v1.03.2 at least his difficulty is roughly on par with the two previous Grand Rune holders.

    At the time of his defeat I was level 87 (Vig 31, End 25, Str 12, Dex 43, Fai 15, Arc 20) with: Reduvia +6, Great Knife +15, Eleonora’s Poleblade +5, & Nightrider Flail +12. Since then I’ve cleared the few remaining Caelid areas (besides those Crystalians) and have started exploring Nokron.

    While I don’t dislike the game at this point, it as yet hasn’t done anything to change my initial impression. So… it’s okayish as something to intermittently play while taking breaks to do other stuff.


  • Elden Ring – Legacy Dungeon

    Just cleared the first of the game‘s Legacy Dungeons (Stormveil Castle), two of which apparently have to be completed in order to beat the game.

    Did it at level 45 (17 Vig, 25 End, 12 Str, 22 Dex, 15 Arc) after having cleared the rest of Limgrave (aside from the Divine Tower) and all of the Weeping Peninsula. Dual-wielded Reduvia +2 and Great Knife +6 for the majority of the dungeon, with a bit of help from the Serpent Bow to peel stragglers off the bigger packs. It took a surprisingly long time but the only really difficult parts were not getting lost and dealing with the murder birds. Though I guess the knights with their apparently unstoppable windy homing attack combo were also pretty nasty.

    The Tree Spirit in the basement would have been hard if I hadn’t already defeated the tougher version in the Fringefolk Hero’s Grave. Neither of them hold a candle to the Crucible Knight however, who is easily the toughest enemy you’ll find in these first two zones. I ended up having to use the Spear +7 a certain NPC drops to finally beat him (the range on the charged attack is perfect for hitting him after a roll) since he’s immune to Bleed and poison arrows weren’t doing anything… besides being blocked more often than not.

    Apart from the stuff noted above, another key offensive item is the Fanged Imp Ashes I chose as a starting item. Choosing them was the best decision I’ve ever made blind. There’s two of them, they dodge, are resistant/immune to poison, have a ranged attack, and cause Bleed. Just incredibly powerful against single targets and great for evening the field against multiple targets. That said, I’ve also used the Jellyfish Ashes against the Erdtree Avatar and the Rotten Stray Ashes against that aforementioned Fringefolk boss battle.

    Now to clear Liumia next, where there’s apparently an insanely overpowered weapon waiting in one of dungeons. Which will be nice to have the next time I run into another Crucible Knight situation.


  • Elden Ring – First Impressions

    With the whole ‘open world’ thing I was kind of hoping that this was going to be more like Dragon’s Dogma than a classic Souls game.

    It’s not. It’s extremely Dark Souls in terms of gameplay (albeit with Sekiro‘s stealth system), which I consider notably inferior balance-wise to DD. The exploration/discovery aspects on the other hand are far, far better. Exploring the various nooks and crannies of the map actually feels legitimately rewarding, with plenty of unique or unusual things to find scattered about… which puts me in a bit of a bind.

    I want to keep playing to collect stuff, but don’t really want to deal with bullshit enemies or the ‘dodge 10 attacks, strike once or twice’ style of boss fight the game seems especially fond of. Well, I’ll play it by ear I guess with a focus toward a Dex/Arcane build targeted toward weapons like Eleonora’s Poleblade, Rivers of Blood, Reduvia, Ripple Blade, and the Serpent Bow.

    Some extremely important things to do right at the start which aren’t immediately obvious:

    – Clearing the Tutorial area rewards a gesture.
    – Once you get outside, head north to find a ruined church.
    – Inside is a merchant and a weapon upgrade location.
    – Follow the road northeast to reach Gate Ruins (the small cross on your map).
    – Activate a save point just north of it to unlock the leveling system and horse riding.
    – Clear the ruins to find a map and an item which unlocks the weapon enchantment system.
    – Farm levels/Smith Stones if you want, then rest until nightfall and warp back to the church.
    – A new NPC will be there who’ll unlock the spirit summoning system.

    Now all the basics are available to explore as you please.


  • A Few Games

    Atelier Sophie 2 ~The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream~ – Gameplay-wise there wasn’t any issue, it’s exactly what you’d expect from the franchise in terms of gathering/crafting and the combat is basically the same as the first Sophie game. The problem is the visuals; everything is very zoomed-in to the point I kind of felt like I was playing an emulated N64 game.

    Bravely Default II – This game, meanwhile, has a decent field of vision but unfortunately suffers from incredibly dumb character behavior. Ended up shutting it off in disgust mid-cutscene.

    Ys IX: Monstrum Nox – Chronologically taking place after the earlier Ys games (Dogi lookin’ real old) this one also features some dumb character behavior. Not enough to be a deal killer on its own, but when combined with the lack of environmental variety (you’re trapped in a single town and its subterranean tunnels) certainly starts tipping the scales in the wrong direction. A bigger issue personally however is the combat; it’s extremely fast-paced and heavy on enemy numbers. To the point where Flash Guard/Dodge can’t really be used strategically in non-boss fights and you’re often reduced to just button-mashing to clear everything out.

    Partway through the third chapter at the moment and unsure I want to bother pressing on. Think I’m going to take a break to poke at Elden Ring for a bit instead, maybe if I bounce off that game like I did Sekiro and the original Dark Souls (while I’m fond of Souls-like games, actual Souls games tend to just feel clunky to me) I’ll give it a second chance.