The Besties - We'll Be Talking About Elden Ring for a Long Time

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Consider the title of this episode a warning: Elden Ring is a game that we're gonna be discussing A LOT for the foreseeable future, starting in this very episode. Join us as we discuss what works about From Software's new open-world Souls-like, which is to say, everything. Other games discussed: Puzzle Quest 3, Steam Deck, Colin Farrell Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

The Fallen Leaves Tell a Story There were four lords from the North, the South, the East, and the West, Virginia. There was Lord Justin the Eyeless, whose visions had come to reject the sun's natural light in favor of the yellowish hue of his spectacles. There was Lord Griffin, the unsleeping, whose demand for pillows had stripped the land of its resources as he strived for a good night's rest

that would never come. There was Lord Christopher, the pedantic, whose taste for moving pictures from aeons heretofore had made him both feared and tolerated. And there was Lord Rust the Frail, who had a bad tummy. Will you seek to become a lord yourself? Well, just by listening, You're a member. My name is Justin McElroy and I'm the best game of the week.

Bryce Tarnish, my name is Griffin McElroy, I do the best game of the fucking year, don't even step to it. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I am in love with a video game. My name is Rose Frosch, and I'm the best game of the week. Hello and welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and the greatest in home interactive inter-game-ments. You okay there, Juice? It's the game of the year show. And just by listening, you, my friend, are a member. Yeah.

So excited to have you here to talk about this new release. It's called Elden Ring. Chris Plant, what is it? Open world Dark Souls, baby. Did it in one. Did it in one. Swish. Did it in one.

Swish. Let's take a break and then let's talk a lot about Elden Ring. It's so good. Yes. I think we can all probably agree at the outset that we're all pretty much smitten by this game is that fair to say it's one of the best games i've ever played yes agreed let's let's establish some parameters for the listeners at home who are interested in the game but maybe don't want to get the shit spoiled out of it uh because when you talk about it's weird because from soft has earned this like uh like taught saying anything

about their games counts as a spoiler it's not like a story beat because the story is so like weird and abstract in these games uh it's more like that one boss that has a tentacle for a butt like how about that's the spoilers these segments spoilers um well i mean even i think it's too early for spoilers i'm actually worried about you guys spoiling something okay yeah let me suggest this how about we start with let's talk to people who are on the outside of Souls games. Okay. Give them the walk up. You've probably heard people talk about these.

Maybe you couldn't get into one before or just haven't had an interest. What are they getting with Elden Ring? Let's talk assuming no Souls. And let me also add, if we have to say anything about Legends of Zelda Breath of the Wild, instead, let's just say

banana okay let's just put that let's just actually see how here's what we can say okay it's an open world game that's very good just like breath of the wild is an open world game that's very good and then banana is very good yeah and then we don't have to do that again because this game has plenty of stuff going on with it but i agree with justin like let's let's try to welcome people into this okay yes am i the person who liked dark souls in these from soft games the least of our group yeah that's probably true i think so i will okay so what i'll say about this is i have played every game from from software and i have bounced off every game from from software but i'm not the perfect person here because i actually do like them i just find them too hard and i don't have reflexes in this game my friends it's it it's

the one it's been waiting for me because uh where in the past the way dark souls games worked they were much more like metroidvanias and it's not that's not a perfect comparison i know but you would uh go around a relatively relatively linear world and you would be increasingly tested and challenged uh by more and more difficult bosses and uh it was hard you had to grind to kind of like push your way through now because it's open world i get to somewhere where i'm like you know what this isn't fun anymore and there's like a trillion other places to go i would say about like 25 of them where i am the god who destroys the weak yeah i guess you could think of it similar to banana where you could ignore the dungeons like

the main dungeons for a while same thing here you could play this game for 80 hours and never touch a boss fight literally just ignore all the boss fights and have stuff plenty of stuff to do the the the key boss fights there are four even even the soft like there's a lot of fucking stuff that doesn't do anything for 80 hours right yeah i guess what i'd say is you could play this game for a very long time. There are small bosses, tons of them, throughout this world, and the way that there are forts

in like a Far Cry game, or, I mean, any of these modern open world games. But the great thing is, once you're more powerful, if you just grind runes, which are the things that allow you to upgrade in this game you can just destroy pretty much anything especially if you're playing astrologer

which is in fact the best class yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of ways to uh there's a lot of ways to play elden ring right that is the the best thing about from soft games i think they are without like much competition the best role-playing games on the on the market uh because they are it is part and parcel of with their difficulty these games are fucking hard and so you spend so much time just looking for an edge looking for some sort of like advantage that you can eke out just to make this boss fight or dungeon or whatever just a little bit more beatable. Yeah, and Elden Ring has that, an outrageous amount of that

where you can run into an area that is filled with fuck you enemies that will put you in the absolute toilet in a single hit, but you have a horse in this game that you can just be like, deuces, I'm going to sneak by you and get that incredible staff and way overpowered spell, and now I'm going to go back to that home area and that stupid tree sentinel is going to be like,

uh-oh, you here to get blasted again? And you're like, actually, you're the one that's going to go back to that home area. And that stupid tree Sentinel is going to be like, Oh, you here to get blasted again. And you're like, actually you're the one that's going to get blasted today. The, uh, my experience was, you know, you start the game,

you leave like your starting cave. And in front of you, there's a giant castle. And, and someone's like, Hey, you should probably go to that castle. And I thought about it.

And then I got close to the castle and there was a bunch of guys in front of it and they kept shooting me and i was like maybe i won't and then i found this like little secret path around the castle literally you just go around it and suddenly i was in areas that were like much much higher level than me and as griffin said like i was able to get gear that was like not gear that i normally would have at that point and because i was casting like i could sort of like survive and manage uh getting through it without dying repeatedly and that level of freedom has just never existed in a souls game before it well it it has right there has always been ways to get get those advantages even all the way back in like demon souls but you couldn't like for example you needed to ring the three bells to move

the story dragon's tail it was a lot more linear a lot i mean there's shortcuts yeah there were there were bottlenecks right but in in dark souls specifically like every time i play dark souls i go about like the same build usually which involves like running to the catacomb of the giants, which is like a super late game. Like you can, there's a lot of, I think you guys are short selling how much flexibility, but even that said, Elden Ring is on a whole nother level where you can go virtually anywhere right from the start of the game and put together like an armor set and gear and spells and whatever. You don't even have to level up, except that a lot of the gear does have attribute requirements. But you can get pretty diesel before you face the first boss if that is the way that you want to play it.

And I think that that makes this game way, way, way more accessible than anything from software. Well, approachable. But yeah, I know what you mean. Yes, sure. Yes. That is a different terminology. So I think that's all true. The one thing that I've noticed between like myself, who is getting finally getting into this series, and like some of the other folks at Polygon who are bouncing off when it's their first time

is while it's much, much more approachable, there's still this like secret language from soft games that I have acquired over the years. Like, oh, when you see a person and you can't target them, don't hit them. That's for starters. Then two, talk to them and keep talking to them until you've seen every piece of dialogue you can. And check their store because some random item might be literally crucial to playing the game.

And those are things that most people aren't going to assume. That path that Frush is talking about, I took that too. And I only noticed it because i kept talking to somebody on a bridge who finally at the end was like hey you know what i bet you could get across this bridge without the bridge and i was like well that's a clue that's gonna help we actually heard an amazing story of someone at polygon who was playing who had never played a from software game before picked a thief class like a like a rogue class came upon the very first vendor he said something like sassy to her and she was like i'm gonna fuck

this guy up and killed the very first vendor she ran into who sells you the crafting kit who does all sorts of things for you and um sweet so yeah there plants right like there is a language that you need to learn and i agree i agree in the same way it reminds me of um monster hunter rise in that way for me where it is indeed the most accessible version of this game or monster hunter world if you will thank you approachable of this game but there are still pretty large elements even just the idea of like if you screw up your skill points you can kind of like you could pretty much screw yourself over pretty bad i fully i fully restarted after maybe five hours of playing because i hated my build and i knew i was like a few days of playing away from being able to reset. Yeah, the big thing is, like,

know what your three main stats are and do not touch the other ones for a while because while there is a reset in the game, it takes many hours to unlock. Let's not talk too much about strategy. Everybody's going to have a different approach. Also, on that note, I want to hear what everybody's builds are,

starting with Justin. I'm a sorcery guy. I like to cast spells, starting with justin i'm a sorcery guy i like to cast spells and i have a uh you can uh sort of attach these things called ashes to weapons that make them uh scale their damage scale to uh whatever stat that that they are tied to so i have like a magic scaling rapier that i keep in reserve for finishing off people or close combat i'll spoil this by saying i think we're more or less all playing the same class just by coincidence i'm i'm playing sort of a dex dexterity like katana i basically wanted to play sec

second row again okay uh but i took i took i put points into intellect for like being able to buff my sword. So I have like a spell that enchants my sword to make it like three times stronger. And I have like a very weak little baby spell that I use to basically pull mobs out of a crowd so that I can slice and dice them, which is, which is great. But also every time I watch a video of somebody like,

yeah, I'm playing this like crazy, like bers style two hands like giant sword the size of a truck build i'm like should i restart because that looks fucking that looks great um yeah i i think my like for me it's the least skill based i think using the um magic, because it's less about, like, timing encounters and more, like, picking your moment to attack and knowing when you have enough casting time. I, too, do that thing where, like, if I watch someone play a melee build, it, like, wow, that looks a lot, like, a lot of fun. But I like the strategy of, like, knowing when I can get a spell off and when I I can't I have struggled I will

say um I feel like the locking in this game can get a little hinky uh like lock on targeting which honestly like if you're using magic it basically has to be locked on I mean you can get a lucky shot off but there's not really any sort of way of targeting your spells other than locking on and that can get a little shifty especially when there's multiple enemies and you're trying to like target one of them that can be uh kind of tricky especially in the heat of the moment yeah there are moments certainly and and even in some of the bigger boss fights where it gets tricky but i do think eventually you sort of click into like oh this is something that's going to disengage the lock or going to make it a little bit harder it's never a hundred percent but it's probably as close as it's going to get don't sit

here and dismiss the the very few failings that this it doesn't bother you as much um okay so so that is the basic pitch they're hard but i think usually very fair, especially in the sense of like, I always liken it to that scene in the, I like in souls games. This is no different to the scene in the fire swamp in princess bride, where like, after they've been in the, at first he's just like getting owned by rats and falling into sand pits and

then get blazed by fire and it all sucks. But then he starts to talk about how there's a faint popping noise before you know the fire comes out and that kind of and he's just sort of like navigating it much easier and that to me is like the charm the appeal of dark souls is like well i know that this guy is going to be over here but i know that this um and that has always been the case in this game i will say the world is so expansive that there's not really nearly as much of that slowly navigating through a world,

learning its ins and outs and- The predictability. You know, the predictability and the mastery of a certain like memorization, the rote memorization of it. This is much more about like situational awareness, like being smart about how you go into situations and that really is thrilling i mean around every turn not only will you see just the craziest like vistas of like the scariest castle you've ever seen in your entire life yeah you probably need to go to and oh my god is that a fucking clock tower

on legs walking around and ringing its terrifying bell at you? And there's lightning everywhere. And now there's a dragon. It's like horrifying. But it's very much like I can be smart about this. I know that I should not be here, but I'm going to keep going. I am from software is probably my favorite video game developer currently, like, in the biz. And I have adored every single game that they have released and beaten them, like, multiple times.

I love these games. limited knowledge of how the the inner workings of games development i cannot understand how they then made a game that is like 10 times bigger than their biggest game yeah where everything is working the best it has worked like every weapon has its own move set essentially so like if you're using uh you know justin's using a rapier i'm using a katana those those weapons operate completely differently and the hit boxes in this game are really really really on point so it's not like you just you know wildly hammer on the attack button and it's going to be the same thing for everyone like you have every time you pick up a new weapon and equip it you are essentially like pretty much you have a new way of attacking things

that you have to also learn like there's so much variation in in in the weapon types and the builds that you can make in the way that you level up those builds yeah it is it's so much bigger and better than the best games they've made which are already like in in my, like masterpieces. And I would also add that like what's wild is that within this very evolved format remains like the core of the old games is still in these games. It's just not necessarily a required path. So for example, like I was doing

like a side dungeon catacomb last night that was filled with booby traps and like thieves jumping from out of nowhere and like shadow attack guys and lava and all sorts of other wild shit that felt very classic, like even Demon's Souls era. But with like, so that exists, but it's completely optional. And then alongside that, you've also got the giant open world stuff that's going on and you've also got the like super opaque quest lines with npcs that like you need to talk to a very specific time it really is wearing both hats but managing to do it quite well what's interesting about it and this may change over time but i will say right now if you look for guides or help with games like specifically with with quests i have not needed to do this with like

combat encounters but like the quest lines are opaque enough and sometimes it's interesting and you're like well i wonder where this person is that i need to go and you'll get a vague idea of the area and go check it out but like even searching on the internet right now there's like i don't know i don't know why this is happening like i gave her the potion and she wouldn't drink it well uh did you talk to this other guy i don't know i don't know why he's not there she's not there anymore she's under a bridge now okay so go find her try to give her the potion and then you got to kill the boss in there and maybe there's so much in the world that it's not exactly clear what's triggering anything like currently right now that's a huge difference between this and and dark souls for me is in dark souls when that happened i was so

frustrated because it was like well i need to keep moving and i don't know if i'm going to be back here ever again and what's going on and here my approach to these side quests often has been like yeah i'll keep it in the back of my head but more often than not i just kind of stumble back into a quest yeah which feels like a real adventure right like that feels yeah so much of this game feels like, oh, wow, this is what an adventure would feel like, not a list of things to do. Yeah, the urge to explore. I can't tell you how many times I've been like a couple hours into a small dungeon and realized like, why am I doing this? I don't even know how I got here.

I was going for some other thing. I saw a door. I'm like, oh, shit, a door. Okay, I'm going to go pop this open real quick and see what's happening in here. No idea why I'm there. The dungeon I'm currently in, I have no clue why I went in there.

Just like, I saw a door and a cliff front. Like, yeah, okay, yeah, I'll poke around here. The two main bosses that I have defeated so far, I did not know I was in their fucking house until I walked through a fog wall and they were like, what's up? Like lowering down from the ceiling, what's up, idiot?

Wrong room. And I was like, oh shit. The bosses are also like next level. Like the thing I always think about for FromSoft games is the first time the hollow dragon in Dark Souls climbs out of the pit. And it's like, what's up?

I'm a vivisected dragon that's still alive and i'm gonna eat you with my rib cage and you think that's the scariest thing i've ever seen i will never beat this in a million billion years elden ring has has plenty of those too like uh the big bosses like the the i guess they're called legacy bosses that you kind of have to do to progress the story um are so interesting and like really cool mechanics really cool ways you need to defeat them and like cooler than pattern recognition which has been sort of the mainstay of like look for this attack especially sekiro was was pretty much just that because there wasn't much rpg edge you could get on Sekiro. This is the other end of the spectrum

of their games. Sekiro is you have to get good. You have to play it this way. This game is like, I don't know, pretty cool world, right? Do what you want, man. Summon a dog that can poison them and then just kind of chill for a while. The summoning is really, I do want to talk about that.

It's like a new mechanic. You can collect ghost Pokemon. Spirit Ashes, I do want to talk about that. It's like a new mechanic. You can collect ghost Pokemon. Spirit Ashes, I think is what they're called. Well, Griffin, if you want to, I mean, I'm trying to make it relatable to people. You collect ghost Pokemon that you can summon and fight people, and then you can level up those Pokemon to, and it's like having a partner. You can't always summon them. It's usually like in a big open space. Or boss fights.

Like bosses, yeah. Boss fights, yeah. You can use. And it's really like just especially – it makes a lot of builds more flexible, I think. It can be hard if you're a caster to get the oxygen you need to get off a spell. Like especially if it's a really aggressive enemy that's just coming at you. You can almost never – it's so hard to get the – you usually have to cheese a boss like especially if it's a really aggressive enemy that's just coming at you you can almost never it's so hard to get the you usually have to cheese a boss like that because it's so hard to get the space to actually get your spells off when you have someone there that's not doing a ton of

damage but it's actually like doing a good job distracting the boss so you can cast a little bit it really makes it a lot more flexible and and and workable with with different or you can have both you can have what i have i there are named ghost pokemon who can be upgraded and yeah y'all i have they're pretty i've affected me a boss boys yeah who comes and fights with me and it rules he is my best pal i think multiplayer is maybe the best it's been in that like you no longer i mean sure the items you use are still called like the gnarled twisted finger of a witch uh but like you don't have to keep that shit straight because when you press start there's like a multiplayer tab in the menu that like collects all those items for you and you just like go in there and yeah this is the

one area that i'm gonna i'm gonna push back and say interesting okay while i like it conceptually and i think the notes for what it's worth like being able to leave notes for other players and so funny but actually and useful in certain points when they're not saying think try finger butthole um yeah which is very common but for the actual jumping is always my favorite being able to hidden wall ahead being able to join a co-op game should in my opinion be as simple as all these people are playing i want to join this person's game there is no reason no upside for it to be as arcane as it is in this game unless someone has a counter argument to that i'm genuinely the problem

with it being arcane is that when it doesn't work which again fresh and i burned an hour on this when it doesn't work it's hard to know is it not working because i'm doing something wrong or is it not working because this it's of an intended game mechanic that is supposed to keep exactly yeah it's it's if you want to play with people you know yeah it's a fucking mess there's a password system yeah that is like. Yeah. We tried it. But there are things in this game like there are, I think they're called summoning stakes that like are usually at the beginning of big dungeons and sometimes like right before

big boss fights, which is basically just like a gathering hub where you can leave your mark to be summoned to help somebody out with a boss fight. And so like I have, you know, I think I've only done that with one or two boss fights but every time that i've wanted to like it has not been hard to find a real person collaborator to go in with um i've yet to do that i've yet to um summon anybody or any of that uh into anybody's game or anything i want to suggest something for people listening if you're playing this game if you they're in the multiplayer options menu you can set multiple quote they're called like group passwords and the idea is everyone in the same group password can benefit even if they're not playing together will benefit from

people that are also using that same password so if you set your group password as besties every single time that anyone who also set besties beats one of the major bosses, you get like a small increase to your rune collection for a short period of time. You'll also see their death icons on the ground as a different color. So you can see all the besties people and where they died.

That's so cool. I didn't even fucking know that. Yeah, that's amazing. That's bonkers. That's so cool. Yeah, I don't know if I'm getting four times that's amazing. That's bonkers. That's so cool. Yeah, I don't know if I'm getting four times them up, but I made all my passwords besties,

and now it just seems to be giving multiple times. That's great. That's fun. What a good fucking game. There are some systems that I, specifically there's a crafting system that I have had no use for. I don't know if you guys have crafted it. I think it's because you're casting.

I don't really craft either. And I think it's because we're ranged casters. But if you're a melee person, you'd probably be crafting like arrows and bombs and shit. Yeah, you can craft. A big one for this game is like, and this has been in FromSoftGames for forever, is everything in the world has sort of elemental strengths. one for this game is like and this has been in from soft games for forever is every you know

everything in the world has sort of elemental you know strengths and weaknesses uh and you can coat your weapon in those things if you have the right items and in past games it's just like well i need this lightning urn if i want to like put divine damage on my spear so i can but now like i have found recipes to craft that shit or to craft a like poison grease is what it's called that I can like coat my weapon with to like give poisoning damage and being able to, I now know like if I see root resin, I pick that shit up every time

because that is my, that's my go-to grease friend that I use for. My go-to grease. Hi, I'm Griffin McElroy from the besties. This is my go-to grease friend that I use. Go-to grease. This is my go-to grease. I think the crafting system is fucking great. Because, again... I mean, it's not great.

You get a recipe and you make a thing. You're right. My opinion was wrong. I think it's fucking great. What's great about it? It's just you push a button and make grease it's useful yeah yeah i don't think that fighting is useful it's yeah i think it's fucked up that like you just press one button and it swings the sword like y'all i don't mean that i don't mean you mean great in the context of like usefulness dragon great in the context of it is another system in this game that you can eat a small

advantage out of, which is like the more of those that you have at your disposal, the better. You know what's interesting, Griff? You talk about small advantages. It is uncanny to me and I don't really understand why. I have yet to get into a situation where

the difficulty is so much that it's like unfair. Oh yeah. Like, you know what I mean? Like I get, well, I mean,

yeah, maybe it's because I've, I've, I did a lot of side stuff and like leveled up my, my core abilities before I got in the world. But like, it is not usual that I'll get into something that feels like where I'm not doing any damage. Like that was common get into something that feels like where I'm not doing any damage.

Like that was common in, uh, uh, previous games that were more linear where it was like, and I guess, is it scaling? Like, is it actually scaling the, I don't think it is just like balance. I think it's balanced. I think the game in general is just much, much, much nicer. And I have a story, a very quick story that I want to share. And I saved this. I didn't tell fresh chicken advance because I knew he'd want to hear it here.

Oh, boy. Okay. So I think the game is much, much, much kinder. But the, like, legacy of Dark Souls actually makes it more difficult than the game is. How do you mean? So I'm, like, at the point of the story, I was, like, 30-some hours into the game. And I'm, like, pretty deep in the world. And I see what looks like a decrepit medieval tower on a cliff.

And I'm like, you know I'm going up there. And there's a giant, it's like a rose tree. But it is gigantic. It is like one of the biggest tree things I've seen in the game. So I go all the way up this hill. I go over these bombard uh, like bombardments past all these like evil magicians. I finally get up to the hill and I go to the tower and it's bombed out. The ceiling is blown off and the walls caved open and there's a prison cell and inside

the prison cell, the shut prison cell is an item. i'm like well great um and i see an enemy who is very mean and i i do repeat this a couple times figuring out how to kill him and then i do that i'm like oh shit now what like the i need the item in the prison cell so i look up and i see that the tree is so big that i can platform on it with my horse right so i'm like well this is amazing i am going to plot there's a platform adventure here i'm going to platform up this tree and and i can do it like i i it's hard but i am like going up and up and up this tree and i i fall many times i end up spending an hour dying going up the hill fighting past everything climbing the rose tree i have photos of this and then finally i get high enough where i'm like okay i'm now high enough that i can jump on this

castle but it's too far away now so i'm high enough but i don't have the distance so after an hour of this i like i'm just like so pissed off i go up one more time i kill that enemy at the prison and i'm like damn it like what is what am i missing here and i walk up to the door and it says open and i open it and the items are there i didn't try i didn't try the doorknob oh that's so good that's so fucking good i i we i think we could we're gonna be talking about this game all year yes right yes i don't think i don't i genuinely including right now when i say this are we trying to wrap up no i i think that we can get into the minutiae of this game and we

will continue to talk about this game i feel like for forever and i don't i don't necessarily think i don't know do you guys want to go do like an extra super duper long episode just talking about i just wanted to tell i wanted to tell a story that illustrated uh illustrated the the scope uh russ frushtick um who this is not a dig on russ because this is just the nature of the game uh put up a post on polygon it's like how to get a great early game staff right and i found that i was like oh shit's like how to get a great early game staff. Right. And I found that I was like, ah, shit.

I love to get a great early game staff. And he's like, okay, the first thing you're going to do is haul ass forever to the East to, to get to this place. And you're going to want to go, it's going to take you a long time. There's going to be a lot of shit trying to kill you.

And you know, it's really terrifying, but like, just go for it. I'm like, well, I don't actually feel like doing that rest. So I'm going to do something else. And I you know, it's really terrifying, but, like, just go for it. I'm like, well, I don't actually feel like doing that, Russ. So I'm going to do something else.

And I'm, like, so I'm exploring around and going around the world. And then I end up in this dungeon near the starting area where I go into a basement and I kill some rats. And there's a treasure chest. And I open the treasure chest. And it's actually a teleporter that takes me to the same area that Russ had been talking about in his guide so like I just that this is how they like life finds a way yeah exactly it just sort of like oh Russ I should tell Russ to update his guide to just do this because this is very this is a lot easier than having to truck it all the way over there but that's the kind of like evolving nature of this.

And I mean, you know, people are lunatics. They will do the things they need to do to like fully detail all the different minutia of this game and how it all works. But right now it's like, and if you're not delving too deep into that, it just feels so organic and, you know, open to exploration. I will counter that by saying part of

their even though i'm aware of that teleporting chest thing i think there is value in actually doing that ride which doesn't take more than 10 minutes it's not like we're talking a half hour of riding on your horse to know a you're unlocking waypoints along the way and b you actually know where things are in relation to your starting point rather than just getting like thrown down a toilet and showing up on the other end yeah and the area you come out of that chest from yeah i would say the best spot no it is it's very bad yeah i call it a pretty shitty scene that's the silver lining right that the game gives you like many times

is it'll punish you like that you're like ha ha ha you've been fast forwarded 50 hours in the game go to hell you're like yeah i'm here but while i'm here i might as well grab a weapon from 50 hours later in the game and then just teleport back around and like there is not like that staff is very good. And I and I am still using it. I will say, though, that's like for a lot. OK, in Dark Souls, this is I think this was two. It might have been one or two. I don't remember. There was a dragon that had you guys remember this?

A dragon on a bridge that the dragon tail. Sure. Right. So and you would get if you had a bow, you could shoot the tail a hundred times. Yes, literally. Turn on a movie, shoot the tail a hundred times, and you get this kick-ass sword that you could use the whole game. There does not seem to be a lot of stuff like that. It seems a lot more like, you find stuff that works well with your build, but there does not seem to be a killer like well this this will destroy everything yes and there's a cheese well and even that sword got outclassed

after five or six hours like it wasn't the whole game to find something better but if you're starting it's it's it was one of those like here are the 10 things you need to do at the beginning of of if you want to min max this game there are absolutely 10 things like oh sure yeah the flask upgrades are just like sitting round. Yeah. You just have to like run around and know where they are and just gather them all up. And then all of a sudden you can heal, you know, a billion times before the first boss. There's a flask of, they call it the flask of crimson tears and the flask of cerulean tears.

I love this garbage. Have you guys found the flask of wondrous physic? Oh, yeah. You can like make your own potion in this game. It's so fucking cool. Okay, this is what I'm talking about. We could go have a look. We plan to do a spoiler episode in maybe like a month or so. Yeah, that sounds nice. Yeah, that sounds

fine. Yeah. Great. I think everyone should play this game. Like if you have been curious about these games and maybe even tried one and bounced off of it, like I recommended it to our dad who is like a certain type of gamer. Not a real gamer our dad, who is like a certain type of- Not a real gamer. No, he is.

He's a certain kind of gamer who doesn't love really intense- I haven't recommended any of the other ones, but I feel like this one you can have fun with. This one you can enjoy. Let's take it to the bridge. Okay, let's go. We clarified during the break, by the way, Bestie's password should be all lowercase.

That's what we're all going with. We don't know if it matters, because that is not the sort of thing where FromSoftware and their infinite wisdom would put up a guide about whether or not caps matters. I cannot imagine the incredible power of being able to play Elden Ring on the toilet. I'm so jealous of Chris Plant.

So jealous. It's outrageous. It on the toilet. I'm so jealous of Chris Plant. So jealous. It's outrageous. It's the best. That's all you need to know about the Steam Deck. I am in love with it. It's everything I wanted it to be and more. And any gripes that I have with it are so petty and minor that I hesitate to share them.

Anyway, the Steam Deck, the whole reason I love it is because I already play a lot of games on PC and have it all on Steam, so now I just have hundreds of video games that work wherever I want them to. It rules. And, like,

truly, 95% of games I've tested work fine, right out of the box. Does that mean, I know we have some listeners who like strategy games and RTS and stuff like that. I don't know. I'll be real with you. I've tried some of it. Here's the problem.

I'm already bad at these games. So I don't know if I'm just bad or if it doesn't control very well. But for the type of games that we talk about on this show i mean games that basically use a controller is what you're saying yeah but i mean games that use a controller or games that are maybe a little slower um like kentucky route zero or uh return to obredin i guess that you can you can make do with controller on this type of stuff. Yeah. But it has the capability to throw up a keyboard or use mouse controls when you want, and it feels pretty comfortable for those sorts of games.

Wildermyth would be another example of a game that works pretty okay. Chris Plant, it looks very big. Yeah, that's the good part. And you are not the strongest of folks. I speak from no personal experience you know what i i i was looking in the mirror the other day my arms have gotten a little a little you know a little a little a little a little a little it turns out carrying around a four-year-old all the time i i have dad arms and i. Yeah, I was always curious. Why did dads get decent arms?

And, you know, I'm seeing gains. But, no, the size is, honestly, its advantage for two reasons. One, I think because games are designed for PC, you do want just a larger screen. And of the Nox that I do um this the text can be quite small and they have that is not fixed for every game so that's because it's running at 720p natively but you cannot go above 720p yes well well it can't on the device you could throw it onto a tv at a higher resolution um but also, I mean, the screen's just small, and the games, unlike Switch games, were designed to be on a monitor.

So there's that. But otherwise, I mean, having a large screen does make it more readable. The other thing, though, and what I really love about it, is the controller feels like having an Xbox controller on the go. Better than the Backbone go better than the backbone better than the what is it hokey pro the worry uh split pad pro yeah better than that like it just feels like a controller and to the point where like again i'm not not good at FromSoft games. I beat the first, well, really the first two bosses, but the first boss and the first legacy boss almost back-to-back using this controller.

So it was not a problem. Yeah. It's great, y'all. I mean, that's it. I do not understand the technology behind the fact that they're able to get Windows games that were not designed for Linux working and working pretty well. Like, that part of it is totally wild to me, but it seems like it works quite well with the, whatever it is, Proton. I'll share the gripes because our sister site, The Verge, did not like it nearly as much as I did. But I think you have to come...

I don't know. Maybe I'm just being naive, but I think you have to kind of meet it at what it can do because their grants are like, well, you know, the battery life is... If you're playing a AAA game at 60 frames per second, it's like two hours.

Yeah, my gaming PC does about 30 minutes yeah or like any gaming laptop or they they complained about the um the the sound of the fan that you can hear the fan and again it is so much softer than any gaming laptop i've ever used um so like if you're comparing it to a switch does it have pc gaming issues yeah because it's a pc but if you're comparing it to a switch does it have pc gaming issues yeah because it's a pc but if you're comparing it to a gaming laptop all of this stuff is like nothing you know it is like the smallest of potatoes um so i i think it does matter what you what you're worried about i in terms of like can everybody who would just want to switch get this i i don't know i i still think the switch is is the like easier to pick up and play of of the two and if you don't already have

any pc gaming collection and you're not like a person who really cares about you know maintaining your collection for the next 20 30 years then yeah switch is probably better but if you have a steam collection already man and you have the means to to get one of these uh it's a hell of a thing unfortunately they are sold out for like a year right here yeah yeah well and and by then they'll probably have the steam deck too um so we don't know why we wasted your time with this sorry everybody we kind of talked more about like really abstract. Oh, I saw a special mushroom in the open room. You're talking about the special mushroom? Would you rather have that for another 30 minutes

or what's the deal? I think that's all I have to say. I mean, people can read the full review on Polygon. There's really not a lot to say about it other than it works. It does the thing that it wants to do. I just want to be able to not be cloistered in my office when i have to like play a pc game i can like be out and about in the living room and like see my family that'd be nice that that's what has been a huge change

for me because yeah i i last night uh steph needed to watch a movie for work. And I was like, oh, well, I want to try the new Portal spinoff. And we just kind of hung out on the couch. And I was able to get that done. And, like, that's nice. I'm a big fan of that. Do we have some reader emails? Yeah.

Reader emails. I'm ready. I crave them. this one is from hobsworth what's your favorite boss name so far i mean i don't wanna i don't remember any of the boss names apart from there's one i remember quite well because i had to fight him 500 fucking thousand times who i mean it's the first boss margaret the fell omen like that's pretty good that's some peak from soft shit yeah that's pretty good yeah i i uh i i did the into the ether podcast that uh we love and they pointed out a thing that i hadn't noticed that if god

is like you know like mr a doctor and you have god rick that just means you're fighting rick wow that's a good point wow really good point yeah it's like a real problem anyway this one's from do you oh you have one fresh no no no please continue with the reader okay okay this one's from a friend of the show sunny ross uh uh is it possible to meet someone happy in this game or does everyone have huge hungover energy? Yeah, that is a FromSoftware game where they tend to be kind of a downer. Yeah, I don't want to spoil.

There is one... Usually, if someone's happy in this game, it's because they have a really unhealthy relationship with some sort of occult god that has possessed them. They're never... If someone's like, great day, stranger stranger it's because they just fucking murdered somebody for their demon lord who lives beneath the sea there i did

meet a pretty chill night that was stuck in a pot oh yeah that's a good he was cool he was like he was everybody else is like pretty pretty sad and this dude's like hey i'm stuck in a pot i'm stuck in a pot yeah hey come hit the back of this pot help me out yeah there's a couple but yeah most of them are i i really think i i feel he said he'd be like he's got my back he's gonna go fight evil i really believe deep down in my heart that i'm gonna be on a bad boss fight he's gonna be like hey thanks for getting me on the pot i came to make this a cakewalk. So there is a character, I won't say who,

but they return from other games and they are a delight. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah, a real joy. Oh, I haven't even seen that. Yeah, a real joy. It's usually people that are just very confident in themselves and know who they are

a related note there are times where not killing characters is the answer and uh you'll know when when that time has come uh so don't always rush to kill every once in a while though you'll get a key item from one of them and it's just like i just to let off some steam you know like just to let us and see we just whack him real quick and kill that i found this old dude that had been hiding in a pot he was like take half of this medallion and take it to the princess i'm going to keep hiding here i was like ah no you're not okay you're actually taking the medallion i'm just gonna kill you real quick just to let some steam he's already dead he dies like two seconds later yeah one second in my run hey guys it's spot man i found a speed run trying to get

this ball you hit him before he dies uh it felt good uh one more this one's from gross meat any thoughts on the lack of map markers when given a quest or the general quest uh structure i love not skyrim walking my horse just blindly towards a marker and having to actually consider uh the train and listen to npcs yeah you can mark the map yourself um but you do not get like a waypoint marker which i i love um yeah because it lets Unless somebody... It happened to me one time so far. Someone physically marked my map. Like, took my map and put a mark on it. They were like,

there's no way you're ever going to find this thing. Yeah. Let me help you out, bud. I think it's great. I think it encourages you, as Grossmeat said, to really explore the terrain and pay attention. Mm-hmm.

I agree. I don't think we've been doing anything else. Have we been doing anything else true i i i have a uh a sad report which is that puzzle puzzle quest 3 came out oh oh but yeah oh it's it's not it's not uh it's not what i want it's not what i want it It's very, it's out on Steam, and I know it's out on iOS. It's probably out on Android, too. And it's just, like, very games-as-service-y in the mobile way,

where it's like you just, like, you know, play the same fights in order to get new gear to increase your gear score and get upgrade tokens and treasure chests that you need keys to open. Those keys cost actual money or you can send this animal to open the chest, but it's gonna take four hours

unless you spend gems to spend. Thank you. It's not the worst. I've played a couple hours and it's not like terrible about that stuff in the like grand scheme of games that do that shit but like i just want puzzle quest baby yeah i would have seen that stuff and been like no no no no no so i mean i don't i i am not inherently turned off by games like that if they are like if there's still game there to play and there is, it's just like, God almighty,

it's a fucking bummer. Cause the gate, like, I feel like every game in that genre is that now. And it's wild to me that there are not just match three RPG. Like that is not a very difficult needle to thread. It is so well established how to make a good game like that. And,

and yet like, uh, the ones that are out there now just do not do it for me and sadly puzzle quest 3 has has gone in the wrong direction making games is easy says griffin mccroy not making games is easy but like making a puzzle quest game should be pretty fucking easy compared to other stuff compared to elden ring you match the colors together to get shit to cast i'm just saying if somebody made elden ring somebody else should be able to make a good puzzle it doesn't fair that seems fair yeah it's not asking that what else we got uh i it's it's colin farrell weekend y'all are you ready

for this have you have you been preparing for colin farrell weekend can i guess is it the lobster is that what you're bringing to the table no No, it's Colin Farrell Weekend. Colin Farrell, Global Treasure, has two movies. Yeah, Batman. And The Batman, please. The Batman. Am I going to watch The Batman? Yeah, you're definitely going to watch The Batman.

I probably am, right? Yeah, definitely. I feel like I probably am going to watch The Batman. And he's also in After Yang, which looks awesome. And they're both coming out this weekend. It is the whole spectrum of things I enjoy. I love my Grim Indie movie. What accent is he going with in After Yang? I don't know.

Because in Batman, he's going hard. He's going hard. You know what I like is that they make... It looks like he was in the makeup chair for like three days to look like the penguin, right? Yes. And then he made the movie and they were like, you know what? It was fun doing that to you. What if we made you do a TV show?

And he's like, sure. I live for this. I live for the pain. So now we're getting the Batman TV show spinoff just about the penguin. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. I think they're making like four spinoffs in that movie. I don't get it.

I am ready. I am ready and waiting. I've just been playing Elden Ring. It's fine. Elden Ring is fun to play with your four-year-old, by the way. Really? Here's the tip. If your walks in there like every time Cooper sees you playing Elden Ring she wants to get in on it it's like that's fine like it's just really hard so what we have found

that actually works really good is actually kind of fun is on the pc I will let her she made a of course she wanted to do a naked guy naked a naked wretch named who doesn't for some reason and with a with a big bushy beard who just runs around and hasn't upgraded anything and doesn't have any items that doesn't know what he's doing but she i give her the controller and then i have the mouse so she can do everything and if she gets close enough to an enemy i can attack them so it's like we're kind of working collaboratively uh like that which is which is fun yeah it's kind of cool um i meant to mention this actually uh horizon i want to shout out last week has a uh like a second like a co-pilot mode where a second controller can be

paired and like, that's a great way to play with kids. I wish more games would do that. Like just help, where you can quickly help them pass like

stuff they struggle with. Viva Pinata is the first one that I remember having. Oh yeah. But I wish more games would do that. I think it's really cool. Cool.

I wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews about the besties. We have Zagary, Lockwood, Papa Dapa Palapa ss rojo and less sep less sep less kep uh anyway thank you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts uh thank you to everyone else who has written reviews uh feel free to write one yourself

we'd love to see them thank you games we mentioned we mentioned. We talked about Elden Ring a lot. We talked about Colin Farrell after Yang and the Batman. We talked about Puzzle Quest 3. Next week, we are doing Triangle Strategy, I believe, on the besties. Oh, no way. Why? Because we like good games. I didn't know that that was out already.

It comes out Friday, which is today, which is the day that this is airing. And then on the rest of you next week, we're talking about Aperture Desk Job, which is like a spinoff of Portal. I'm looking at screenshots of this triangle strategy. I don't like it. Justin, I think you might like this one.

I've heard very good things. I'm... This is like Octopus Traveler. I remember... This is what it looks like to me. I'm ready for it. Is that it? Is that it, Justin? That's gonna do it for us this week. Be sure to join us again next week for the best

games, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!