This spoilercast is good because it shows the 3 main playstyles of the Souls genre -Guy who's really big and has a giant axe -Guy who uses magic and gets one shot -Guy who has the best sword in the game

Also about Blaidd, he doesn't lose his mind because Ranni was his romantic affection. Dialogues from elsewhere in the game reveal he's more like a big brother figure to her- created by the Two Fingers specifically to protect her. Maliketh has the same relationship with Marika- a shadow created for the purpose of protecting an important figure. He loses his mind because when Ranni ascends by slaying the Two Fingers set to watch over her, the Two Fingers retaliate by forcing Blaidd to lose his mind. Iji even locks Blaidd up because him and Ranni both knew that the Two Fingers would do this in advance.

They did give you new moves, Bob. Jump attacks, guard counters, mounted strikes, crouching attacks (which are often way faster than a heavy weapon's normal moves), and a new combo finisher for every weapon - that exists to slow you down and fix a PvP issue, but still. It isn't much, but it's about as far as vanilla Dark Souls can go. I'm down for something different too in From's next action-RPG, but I also like what's here.

I see the "The" in the thumbnail and go "YOU CLEVER BASTARDS!"

KZ talking about Mohg was really funny because I did the exact same thing as him, but I optimized the physick flask harder and put up some buffs first, so I just big bang Kamehameha'd him all the way from full HP to nothing in one blast

For anyone having trouble doing a running jump off a small platform, if you jump and mid air hold run/dodge when you land you will be automatically running at max speed as long as you hold the button allowing for a sprint jump with only a couple inches of room. This makes lots of the platforming easier.

talking to the pot guy will make the red summon signs appear you dont need to use an item - and as a side note if anyone is having a hard time beating them - playing in offline mode will make the characters easier and unless they patched it jumping on the tree branch off the cliff usually makes them jump to their deaths

44:55 your health bar didn't change at all. What ends up happening is that the game gets weird when refilling your health after he lowers it so it LOOKS like you get more health, but in actuality it just hasn't filled back to full. Still strange but much less inexplicable.

I was having the same str woes as Feel, till I found an armor and talisman that up jump attack. Then I add royal knights resolve ash of war that gives your next attack 80% more damage. So my endgame was just constant jump attacks powerstancing colossal hammers and melt bosses.

Geniunely happy Dan, even if he didn't play it that much, had fun with it. I genuinely love this series as janky as it is, and I'm glad after his bad time with Demon's Souls he got to see the good side of the series here.

The sentient balls will actually go into Sonic mode if they get close enough to you without you staggering them...

No secret Mass Effect fade to black Dung Eater bang scene L

The 1st spell you get Glintstone Pebble is the best spell in the game with how it scales and low magic cost

If you talk to Big Jar, the red signs will appear, even though he only says '...', and if you kill them all you get the Big Jar Arsenal Charm.

After having beaten it today I do definitely feel like the combat could have better implementation of jumping like you were mentioning with very rare attacks actually only having ground hitboxes. Sekiro still has probably my favorite combat flow overall, although Elden Ring is tied with Bloodborne for me just behind it for sense of exploration and general combat.

Listening to this podcast it's honestly incredible to me how people were just playing incorrectly vs bosses around release, including myself and a bunch of other veterans of the series. JUMP. YOU HAVE TO JUMP. JUMP WHILE ATTACKING, JUMP WHILE CASTING, JUMP TO DODGE, JUST KEEP JUMPING. ITS BUSTED. Also all of them had basically no vigor, idk how they expected to not get oneshot

I used the Mimic Tear as a pure mage build and he destroyed bosses with me.

Frankly, I'm surprised you all made it through 2 hours of talking about a Souls game without mentioning Poison Swamps or the most EVIL poison swamp FromSoft has ever created: The Lake of Rot.

Adding this to my watch later queue when I finally get around to finishing this mega-giant game in another week or two lol. Here's a comment and like for the algorithm, Gigaboys!

I did Alexander's quest. The Soljar's are cool

1:01:01 you don’t have to use an item to make the signs appear, the red signs are just there.

After listening to a lot of these spoilercasts I really don't know what kind of game Bob really really enjoys if it's not DMC5.

As bad as holding circle to run is, I've always hated holding L3 to sprint. Just feels super awkward. Also for as strong as parrying has always been I think it makes sense to have it fill the Ash of War slot (not just because button economy makes it hard to put anywhere else). Though granted, since most bosses need to be parried a few times in a row to actually go down, and you can posture break to get reposts other ways, I think ER may have nerfed it too much. Also for the Big Pot dueling signs you don't have to use the item, you just need to talk to the Big Pot. You walk up to him and press Y and then they just show up. They're real tough unless you have Moonveil because no NPC invader in the entire game knows how to deal with Moonveil they just die. the Radagon cuck arc is the best it's ever been because since he and Marika are the same person it means he actually just ditched Rennala and said he was cucking her with *himself*

This being the first FromSoft game I've managed to stick with, I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking "why the hell is he doing that" for like half the bosses I've faced Thanks for getting me through another shift!

I listened to this on release and only now do I have the context for who dog Guts is.

That part about running and jumping and clawing is horrifying to me because I have always hated From Software's default controls since the day I first played Dark Souls 1. So I've always remapped the controls to resemble DMC/Bayonetta, putting R1/R2 on Triangle/Circle respectively while putting roll/run on R2. Even in games that didn't support it like Demon's Souls (even remake?????), Dark Souls 2, and Bloodborne, I just remapped my entire controller and dealt with broken UI controls. But because I remapped my controls, that meant doing running jumps felt a lot better and I also didn't need to claw when running around and moving the camera. I will never stop bashing developers who put melee attacks on the shoulder buttons.

I definitely think there will be a break of a few years until the next Miyazaki Souls game, but this sold 12 mil copies in a month, there's no way ER won't have at least 2 big expansions and another game that starts development right after those finish.

That last quarter or so of the game after the royal capital was where I went from "yeah this is probably a ten" to "I don't even know if I feel like finishing this"

no podcasts?

Was kinda wary of this with the dad jokes at the beginning, but turned out very entertaining. Glad these guys were straight up about things they missed, and their opinions about souls games in particular because 1. I can gauge my own thoroughness and 2. I am very interested in how a newcomer or a casual fan would play. You guys seem to be huge nerds with your references, so you're speaking my language.

Also I'm upset we didn't get a "I'M WORMFAAAACE"

Yall fucked up by not switching the O and the R1 button on the controller layout

I appreciate Cuphead being in the tags

The whining about the run button.

Whine fest

Malenia is one of the most poorly designed bosses I've ever seen in a video game. Souls fans are going to fall in love with her.