PixlBit

Thanks! It's been too long that the site has been in this outdated state, it's going to be refreshing to have this new version out there.

It will be! The server PB currently runs on is so old, I've been stuck in a weird spot and haven't been able to do straightforward stuff like that. Thankfully I'm shifting the whole thing to the cloud, so https is simple. Bonus is the site should stay running all the time after the move, since it's not dependent on my power staying on.

Agree on both. The whole motorcycle bit feels really underutilized and kind of pointless. Anything to give it more value would've been appreciated.

All in all, it's a fun game that I think is a fitting follow-up to Prime 3. I agree that it took far too long to release, but I'm hoping we see more consistent release output from Retro from here on out.

Definitely will stream again! Maybe Thursday night, depending on what's going on, but I'll keep everyone posted. Also it looks like I didn't have it saving my past broadcast, so I lost that footage. Going forward I will be sure to capture everything and maybe throw them up on YouTube as well.

The DLC for 3 was super fantastic. Gael and Sister Friede might be two of the best fights of the series. Plus they brought back a boss fight that involves other players like in Demon's Souls. The settings and lore were just great. It's tough to top The Old Hunters DLC, which is still my favorite Soulsborne DLC, but the complete version of 3 was just great.

For what it's worth, I played Souls 3 no shield. I think Bloodborne just demonstrated how that's the way to really play and I've gone back since and played all of the games without shields and it just makes those experiences so much better.

Sekiro was also a divisive game because it was hard as hell to learn, but once you did, it just felt so good. It reminded me of learning Souls games for the first time. Super satisfying and a really solid experience.

I might be an outlier, but I pretty much haven't stopped playing all of these From games since I first picked up Dark Souls.

Dark Souls 3 is actually my favorite. I felt like it was the perfect blend of Bloodborne and Dark Souls. Opinions on it seem divisive, but I really loved it, especially the PVP.

That said, you should totally check out Sekiro. It feels like the first time playing a Soulsborne game and there's a fresh learning curve/system to master. I totally loved it and can't wait to play a third time and get closer to that Platinum.

I review the modern day upgrade called Qix++ some years back. I had never played the original, but had played lots of Jezz Ball, which I always really enjoyed. Great review!

Awesome!

Stealth can be important at times, but by no means is it a stealth game. As someone who also loves a good stealth game, I felt like Sekiro underdelivered in this department. It has the dressings of a stealth game, but never really commits to that. It uses stealth as part of your combat arsenal to make quicker work of some of the enemies, but that's the extent of it. Unfortunately, I suspect your Tenchu comment is spot on, it's unlikely that they'd make a new one granted the success of Sekiro any time soon.

In any event, and I really don't mean any disrespect with this, but I don't think you've picked up the finer points of the combat just yet. I think you've probably got the broad strokes, but I think that the finer points take most of the game to really get down. As a matter of fact, you haven't even seen all the bits of the combat yet and they're all very instrumental to mastery of the game's systems. The basic enemies have huge parry windows and they're generally one-trick ponies, whereas the mini-bosses and main bosses really bring the broader arsenal and force you to chain together everything you know.

Hesitation comes up a lot when talking to NPCs because I think it's trying to subtly tell you that you don't really get time to think, you have to be in the head of the enemy and know what they're going to do by reading their tells. Along with the nuance to the combat, the game slowly teaches you how to read enemy tells more effectively. That said, I honestly don't think the goalposts really get shifted, you're just seeing bits of the broader experience as you progress and at the moment, because you haven't seen much, they seem unrelated even though they're not.

The lessons aren't easy and they take a long time to really sink in. I struggled through most of the game and it took beating the final boss before I really felt like I "got it". Starting a new quest demonstrated to me how effective the game was at teaching me how to play it better. I was able to blast through all of the parts that once hung me up, defeating each mini-boss and boss with almost no effort using the same tools I had at my disposal in my original playthrough. I don't say this to brag, just to give some indication of how the game slowly forces you to master it in order to complete it. You have everything you need at the outset to be successful, except the experience.

All that said, I just want to take a moment to reflect on the hilarity of this situation where I'm standing up for a FromSoftware game with you on the attacking side. I remember all those years ago when the roles were reversed and you were trying to convince me that Demon's Souls was actually fair and I was vehemently disagreeing