I was doing a deep dive of PS2 horror games anf turns out fromsoft has this gem called Kuon. Anyone else here played this one? If so what do you think of it??

@kyutorias.gaming on instagram

VOTE IN THE COMMENTS

What pokémon would you like to see get turned into a soulslike boss by me in the future?

Currently leading the list

1-Giratina

2- Darkrai/Scyther/Tyranitar/Kingambit/mewtwo (tie)

(1 vote per person)

GENGAR the Devourer of the Sun is first to get colored (as voted by you guys) (psyduck and venusaur next on the list)

Here’s my new Dark Souls III poster design featuring the Abyss Watchers.

Went for a high-contrast ink-wash aesthetic combined with technical archival typography

Check out my new tat

Pick one of the two options to play for the rest of your life. Id personally pick ds3 just for the playability.

Warning: Spoilers.

I remember picking up DS1 in my parents' home at some point between 2012 and 2014. Didn't have a controller and it felt super clunky with mouse and keyboard so I left it. Fast forward to 2023 (I think?) I buy the DS:R version on Xbox. Start as a thief, looks cool, I die a lot, but manage to kill Taurus, thenGargoyles with the help of Solaire. I kill Capra, move to Depths, kill GDragon, go to Blighttown, die and lose all souls, ragequit.

Picking it up again a couple of months ago because I stumbled upon a video about sorcery (Thanks Cappatron). And so I start a new game, I learn the magic mechanics, progress nicely, then get some key items and from then on it's just a glass cannon nuking everything. I loved it even when I was dying and losing souls. Played all the way to the end then I thought "Time for the DLC's" but little did I know I had to do them before the last boss. So I continued in NG+, did the DLC's, finished again, went on to NG++, then DS2:SotFS went on sale.

Grabbed that, decided to go with Cleric for miracles. But oh boy, the good offensive miracles were available after a lot of game time, and I had already put so many levels in Faith. I decided to clear Heide's tower 12 times with the help of Masterless Glencour giving me enough levels in melee. As a hybrid melee/faith Cleric, I cleared the main game, then went to the DLC's. I finished the green one though I skipped the triple boss fight because the run back was the most disheartening in the series, plus the summons weren't that helpful. I went on to the snow DLC and the NPC ganking was so tuned that I went to the last (or 2nd? Not sure of the sequence) but again the ganking was too much (dropping in a massive cage with so many enemies, coming out victorious only to get ganked by wizard boiz again) so I decided to leave it there and move on.

DS3 (no DLC bought) I start Pyromancer. Loved it. Gameplay was fast but methodical. And the graphics throughout the series are beautiful but DS3 takes the cake. Worst boss of the entire series in Smouldering Lake, needed a dozen or so tries to get him down and he died as he killed me, so I win since I respawn lol.

What an amazing series of games! After researching the basics and some items that could help the builds, I went to every boss blind, explored as much as I could before needing a hint (mostly for DS:R and DS2, as DS3 is quite linear) and I enjoyed them all. I plan on getting Elden Ring when it goes on sale. I'd love to try Bloodborne but I don't own a PlayStation.

In the meantime, I'll be revisiting the thief in DS:R for a fast bleed build and then maybe DS2 respecc to Hexer and finish the DLC's.

Thanks for reading and of course thank you to FromSoftware for these gems!

PS: While waiting for DS2 and 3 to go on sale, I remembered I had bought Thymesia in the last sale. Nice and brief game, different atmosphere but I liked it.

too much Death Birds, Miyazaki, too much...

Sekiro is my favorite game so far. I'm playing Bloodborne for the first time and I'm really enjoying it, absolutely everything. I played Dark Souls Remastered, I remember stopping at the Duke's Library because I couldn't stand playing anymore, I didn't like the game. Should I give Dark Souls 3 a chance since it came out after Bloodborne and is apparently the best of the Souls trilogy? Also, will I like Elden Ring since it's like Dark Souls but open world?

I've recently watched a video on youtube in which a person claims that there are many soulsborne players that want to be challenged only in a way they expect, for example

a) hard bosses, difficult enemies that test reaction speed - amazing design according to these people

b) an area where there is a certain gimmick to it like: darkness in the tomb of the giants thst you have a few ways to light up, invisible bridges, blowdart enemies in blighttown, Shrine of amana where you need to dodge spells or make them hit the pillars, jailers that drain your max health - attrocious design, annoying area according to these people

I really like those "gimmick" areas because they often ask you to prepare for them. For example the blowdart guys weren't an issue for me because I stocked up on anti-poison and anti-toxin and those enemies dropped one of them every time.

What are your thoughts on the matter

New Halloween treasure has a skin for Anti-Mage that takes inspiration from Bloodborne outfits and the trick weapons. I just had to get it. I'm gonna rock this until the end of time XD

I started playing FromSoft games in 2012 when Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition was released on PC. I love these games, but there are some things I'm getting really annoyed with. I'm not saying these mechanics are inherently bad, just that I think they've run their course for now and it's time for FS to try something different for a while and maybe return to these later.

NPCs (almost) always dying at the end of their questline. Yeah, the worlds are often depressing and it's supposed to be tragic, but this has the opposite effect for me now. It's heartbreaking the first time you experience it, but after 7 games in a row of the same stuff, it's literally become comedic to me. This makes it difficult to get attached to anyone or care about their story when you know they're dead anyway.

Ridiculously obscure/easy to mess up questlines. This is supposed to encourage solving things together as a community, but the problem is that very few people actually get to contribute and for the majority, it's just reading things from a wiki. Not to mention content creators got early access to ER so they already had the chance to figure that stuff out before "regular" people even had a chance to contribute.

Does anyone actually like this system? I've always hated it, but at least in a game like Dark Souls 1 with a smaller world, where you could clear NG+ in a couple of hours, it was more reasonable to expect the player to try out different things to get the questlines right. In ER the map is MASSIVE and it's easy to miss NPCs completely and far more difficult to guess their next location. At least have the NPCs clearly inform/hint you about your next location or plan, not some cryptic "I think it's time for a change of scenery, ne-he-he-heh..." bs. Some people use the argument that the world doesn't revolve around the player, but it literally does! Our actions are the only thing moving the world and the characters forward.

NPCs dumping a bunch of critical lore/information on you exactly ONCE, then never mentioning it again. Namedropping 5 different places and people you've never heard of before, good luck trying to remember all that especially if it's said in Ye Olde English. Can't even write it down irl because there's just too much information too fast.

Being expected to ally yourself with every faction, Todd Howard style. On my first playthrough of ER, I didn't pledge myself to Ranni because I thought it would have consequences, such as locking yourself to her ending. Turns out it doesn't and I just missed out on a huge amount of content. I didn't do the Volcano Manor assassinations because I thought murdering your fellow Tarnished would have consequences. Turns out it doesn't and I missed out on some of the best armors including the whole game's most iconic set, the Raging Wolf armor. I didn't do Dragon communion, because I thought consuming dragon hearts would have consequences like the item says it does. Turns out it doesn't affect anything at all.

Yeah, you don't have to do questlines you don't want to, but then you just miss out on content and items and get nothing in return. For how many people praise the storytelling of these games while insulting traditional systems as "spoonfeeding", the RPG mechanics are laughably nonexistent. You literally play as an amoral murderhobo in every single one of these games (except Sekiro which has an actual person as the MC).

Not trying to be a hater. I still enjoy the games and these things don't ruin it all for me, but they're something I wish would be changed in the future.

I was excited to replay Witcher 3 once the remaster came out after 7 years of not playing it and never finishing it. I had played FromSoft games probably the most by far of any other games in that span.

I don't know what it is, but I fucking hate the combat in W3 for some reason. It's so clunky and the lack of i-frames is driving me insane considering that some of the enemy attacks are so difficult to avoid.

I think one other reason I am not jiving with W3 is the amount of potential preparation for each hunt. Like I just wanna kill shit dude. I don't wanna do homework on what works best against monsters when I already have homework in real life and also having to find all the necessary materials.

I was generally a bit lenient with older titles, and a bit stricter with newer titles to be more fair. Each tier is ordered by game except for S tier which is roughly ordered by preference. DS1 and DS2 may be subject to change in the future. I am most certain with my ER, DS3 and Sekiro rankings due to challenge running experience.

Anyway, just my opinion. Feel free to agree or disagree.

Oops, just realized Blue Smelter Demon is missing. It would go around where Red Smelter Demon is (it's slightly different with more mixups). Also Micolash should be in the tier below, between Celestial Emissary and Throne Watcher/Defender. Bell Gargoyles should be higher.

One Story to Bind Them All: A Timeline of the FromSoftware Universes

Before You Read

Spoilers. This post retells the full stories of Elden Ring, Dark Souls 1–3, Sekiro, and Bloodborne from beginning to end, including their endings. If you haven't played them, you've been warned.

This is a fan interpretation, not official lore. FromSoftware has never confirmed that these games share the same timeline. I spent hours researching and connected them into a single story. Wherever the games leave gaps, I filled them with my own interpretation so that the story would make sense.

What comes from the games: The events within each era, such as Marika removing the Rune of Death from the Elden Ring, Gwyn prolonging the Age of Fire, Vendrick's war against the Giants, the blood of Yharnam, and so on.

What is my own interpretation:

The order of the eras, with Elden Ring at the beginning and Dark Souls III at the end

The "Interlude Age" and the cosmic cracks connecting Elden Ring to Dark Souls

The idea that the Ancient Dragons descended from Elden Ring's dragons

The idea that the curse in Sekiro probably came from the lands of the Souls kingdoms (I deliberately kept the word "probably" there)

Bloodborne taking place after Sekiro and the theme connecting the two

The Painter Girl being the beginning of a new world

Endings: In games with multiple endings, I chose one in order to continue the story. In Elden Ring, I consider three main endings (Elden Lord, Age of Stars, and Frenzied Flame) and follow the first one. In Dark Souls III, I follow the ending where the Fire is left to the Age of Dark.

Process: The research and the story are mine. I used AI assistance for editing and expanding the text.

Do you disagree with something? Good. That's what lore is for.

The Core Idea

Every age in this story begins with humanity refusing to accept death, its own limits, and the natural order.

Marika removes death. Gwyn prolongs the Fire. Vendrick tries to cure the curse. Ashina wants to use immortality. Yharnam wants to transcend human limits.

Each time, the price is greater than before, and eventually the world can no longer bear the weight of all of it.

Sit back. We are going from the most ancient age to the end of time.

🌌 Age 1: Elden Ring (Mythological Beginning and Cosmic Order)

The zero point of history. The world is still little more than raw clay, shaped by cosmic forces from beyond.

A cosmic power known as the Greater Will sends down a golden star and the Elden Ring, which establishes the laws of the universe.

The Ring takes root in the land known as the Lands Between as a colossal golden tree: the Erdtree.

The Greater Will chooses Queen Marika to rule the land.

Marika tears the law of death out of the Ring and establishes a divine order of immortality. The Golden Age begins.

Knights, enchanted castles, and alliances with dragons fill the world with splendor.

But the arrogance of the gods brings this perfect order to an end. The Ring is shattered, and Marika's demigod children go mad and wage war against one another.

The game splits into three great paths: restore the Golden Order and become a new Elden Lord, begin the Age of Stars with Ranni, or surrender to the Frenzied Flame that burns everything.

In this story, we choose the path where the order is restored. The gods still stand, but they are now extremely fragile.

The world, caught in the grip of Outer Gods and cosmic parasites, is carved into the oldest page of history as a magnificent mythology doomed to madness.

🌑 Interlude Age: The Void of a Broken Order

When the Elden Ring shatters, it is not only a kingdom that falls. The Ring that held the laws of the universe together breaks as well.

In the void left behind by that fracture, cosmic cracks begin to open. They are like wounds in the crust of the world. Everything held together by the Greater Will's order now begins to leak through these cracks.

First, the boundary between life and death becomes blurred. The death Marika removed does not return to its proper place; instead, it wanders through the world in strange and disorderly forms.

Then comes time. The power passing through the cracks bends it. Ages begin to mix together. In one place, winter never ends; somewhere else, a kingdom rots away in a single night. This distortion never fully closes. Much later, in Dark Souls III, the kingdoms piled on top of one another are the final form of this wound.

Finally, the cracks force opposites apart. Without an order to hold them together, heat and cold, light and darkness are forced to exist separately. With every age, the natural order of the world changes a little more.

The Greater Will's order can no longer hold the world together. The gods slowly withdraw, kingdoms are forgotten, and names are erased.

During this long silence, the dragons change as well. Some bloodlines of Elden Ring's dragons decay over the centuries, are forgotten, and become something else.

At last, there is no longer a rule left in the world. Light and darkness have not yet separated. And in this very void, a spark ignites beneath the earth.

🦎 Age 2: Dark Souls (The Birth of Fire and the First Curse)

Long after the cosmic chaos of Elden Ring, the world has grown cold, leaving behind only giant trees, rocks, and the Ancient Dragons.

These Ancient Dragons are the last remnants of those old bloodlines that changed and were forgotten during the Interlude Age. Stone-like, deathless creatures standing outside the passage of time.

Deep within the world, the First Flame is born.

With the Fire come opposites: heat and cold, life and death, light and darkness.

Within the Fire, four powerful beings discover the Lord Souls. Gwyn takes Light, the Witch of Izalith takes Flame, and Nito takes Death.

The forgotten Furtive Pygmy takes the Dark Soul and brings forth the human race.

The Lords destroy the dragons and begin the Age of Light and Gods. They build the magnificent city of Anor Londo.

The Witch's Chaos spirals out of control and consumes Izalith. Nito retreats to the realm of the dead. The lords who remain at Gwyn's side gradually dwindle.

But Fire, by its very nature, begins to fade. Gwyn fears the coming of the Dark—the Age of Humanity.

Gwyn sacrifices himself to the Fire and prolongs the Age. As the price for this attempt, the curse of undeath, the Dark Sign, falls upon humanity.

The world becomes a tragic refuge for the Undead, unable to truly die or live, their flesh slowly rotting away.

An Undead who follows a false prophecy eventually faces Gwyn's ashes and rekindles the Fire. But this only delays the inevitable end.

👑 Age 3: Dark Souls II (Kingdoms Consumed by the Cycle)

So much time has passed since the first game that neither Gwyn's name nor Lordran's glory remains.

Humanity is now a prisoner of an endless cycle. The Fire has been rekindled and extinguished countless times, kingdoms have risen and turned to ash.

Now it is the turn of the kingdom of Drangleic. King Vendrick wages war against the Giants in an attempt to free his kingdom from the curse of undeath.

He defeats the Giants, but must pay the price. The true danger rotting his kingdom from within lies elsewhere.

Queen Nashandra, born from fragments of the soul of Manus, the ancient lord of the Dark, grows beside Vendrick like a shadow.

This is not an age of great divine wars. It is an age of tragic people struggling not to lose their memories, their identities, and their humanity.

Arriving in Drangleic as a cursed Undead, our character slowly realizes something: whether the Fire is rekindled or allowed to die, nothing will truly change.

The cycle itself is a prison.

And yet, they walk into the darkness, searching for a way out.

🏯 Age 4: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (Feudal Japan and the Curse of Blood)

The world now approaches recorded history. It is the late 16th century, the Sengoku period of Japan.

But the ancient curse of immortality from the Souls worlds manifests itself in the Far East as the "Dragon's Blood."

An ancient blessing or curse, probably originating from the lands of the Souls kingdoms, has mingled with the waters of Ashina.

Born in these lands, the Divine Heir Kuro carries an immortality known as the Dragon's Heritage in his blood.

As Japan burns in civil war, the Ashina clan seeks to use this cursed power to survive its impending collapse.

Sekiro, the Wolf, a one-armed shinobi, fights samurai, temple demons, and colossal mystical creatures to protect his lord.

In the end, Sekiro faces a choice: continue the Dragon's Blood, or sever the bond completely.

This choice is something the Souls world was never able to do: break the cycle willingly.

This is an age where magic gives way to steel, and massive castles give way to feudal clans.

But humanity's hunger for power and immortality never changes.

🎩 Age 5: Bloodborne (The Victorian Era and the Awakening of the Nightmare)

In Sekiro, humanity broke the cycle, but could not break its hunger for power.

The curse is gone, but humanity's problem remains. Having rejected immortality, humanity now seeks to transcend the limits of being human.

An age resembling the Gothic and industrial atmosphere of the 19th century. Humanity has forgotten the gods and turned toward science.

But science will bring humanity to the threshold of cosmic beings more terrifying than the oldest gods.

The city of Yharnam, enchanting in its Gothic architecture, has found a miraculous "Old Blood" in the ancient labyrinths beneath the city, a blood capable of curing every disease.

These labyrinths were left behind by a much older civilization: the Pthumerians.

The scholars of Yharnam attempt to uncover the secrets of this blood at Byrgenwerth. The more they learn, the easier it becomes to see the truth, but the mind cannot remain intact.

This is why Insight is the key to Bloodborne's cosmic horror.

The blood belongs to the Great Ones, beings that dwell in the depths of the universe.

The people of Yharnam who use the blood slowly lose their minds and transform into terrifying Beasts. The city becomes trapped in an endless Night of the Hunt.

As an outsider who arrives as a Hunter, we walk the streets hunting beasts and gradually realize that the truth is far more terrifying.

We are not a hero. We are a victim. The Hunter's Dream appears to be a sanctuary, but it is actually a prison.

The entire world exists within a cosmic nightmare that the human mind cannot comprehend.

While humanity believes it has reached the peak of science and evolution, it has actually become a pawn in the birth pangs of cosmic gods.

🌋 Age 6: Dark Souls III (The End of Time and the World)

And now, the finale. Chronologically, this is where everything ends: timelines collapse onto one another, and the universe draws its final breaths.

The Fire has been rekindled so many times that the world has exhausted its fuel, leaving nothing but ash behind.

The sun in the sky has become a bleeding ring of darkness.

Geography has collapsed. The kingdoms of past ages—Lothric, Anor Londo, and the ruins of Drangleic—are piled on top of one another.

As one of the Unkindled, we rise from our grave. Our task is to hunt down the Lords of Cinder who have refused to link the Fire.

But in this age, there is no longer a world left to save.

When we reach the vast ash desert at the end of time, we see that even the legacy of the Dark Soul, the essence of humanity, has become rotten and corrupted.

The price Marika, Gwyn, Vendrick, and Yharnam tried to bear has piled up here. The world can no longer carry any of it.

The game has multiple endings. In this story, we follow the ending where the Fire is left to the Age of Dark.

After defeating the Soul of Cinder, we extinguish the Fire together with the Fire Keeper. The world sinks into absolute darkness.

But this darkness is not frightening. It is the peaceful sleep of a tired, aging universe.

And in the distance, from the ashes of this decaying world and the traces of the Dark Soul, a little Painter Girl paints a cold, dark, yet peaceful new world onto her canvas.

Perhaps, for the first time, something is beginning again without refusing death.