I’m an executive husband in my household. As a matter of fact, I’m the CEO of husbands at home. There isn’t a higher ranking husband than me in my place of residence.

Fair enough. I played DS1 after DS3 and thoroughly enjoyed it, but my experience probably wouldn’t be everyone’s. If someone is planning on playing the whole series anyway, yeah start with the first. But if they’re not really sure, I think DS3 is a safer bet. Though now I’d say Elden Ring.

That’s true, but I find the sluggish pace (by modern standards) and the second half of the game feeling a little unfinished or rushed makes it a toss up with newbies. I’m a massive fan of Dark Souls 1, but I can see why some people would find it dated. Dark Souls III on the other hand feels like a modern game still, so for someone used to mainly playing modern games I can see why they’d be turned off. Personally I mostly play games from the 360 generation so DS1 doesn’t feel dated to me, but I totally get it.

Good to know, I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks!

I love all of those. I’m excited to play it tonight

That’s a good point, I hadn’t thought of it that way before but you’re right. As much as I love Sekiro and Dark Souls they don’t really encourage you to do better, more just punish you for messing up.

In Demon’s Souls, when you died the first time you were stuck at 50% max health until you regained human form, and dying in human form darkened the world tendency.

In Dark Souls, if you got cursed your health was capped at 50% until you removed the curse which wasn’t free. In the original build of the game the curses stacked all the way to 1/16th of your max health but thankfully they changed that.

In Dark Souls II you lost a fraction of your max health after each death until you were down to 50%.

In Bloodborne, your heals didn’t replenish after death so each time you healed and died you lost that heal and would have to go around finding more heals.

Dark Souls III wasn’t too punishing, I can’t think of anything at the moment that was super punishing about that game. It was my go-to recommendation for beginners until Elden Ring for that reason.

In Sekiro, every time you died you lost half your money and couldn’t get it back. You also had a chance to make a random NPC sick which would prevent you from continuing their quest until you healed them, which wasn’t easy or cheap. The chance to get someone sick also increased the more you died. I think the baseline was 13% chance to get someone sick, and increased every subsequent death until it capped at 50% each death, though there was a way to reset that number.

Elden Ring is kind of like Dark Souls III in that it doesn’t really punish you for dying, which I think is the right approach. If you go with Elden Ring and love it, and do the DLC and love that too, I’d strongly recommend going to Dark Souls III next. It’s the closest to Elden Ring.

Cyberpunk is on sale for 65% off so I finally picked it up (and its DLC). Currently downloading, I’m looking forward to checking it out. I tried it out shortly after launch, I think a demo or a friend’s house, but it never clicked for me so I didn’t get it. It was also incredibly buggy. I heard it’s far better now though, especially with the DLC, so I’ll give it a real shot.

Personally, I’ve never played the Ace Attorney games so I can’t comment on them, but between Elden Ring and Lies of P I’d suggest Elden Ring if you’ve never played it. Lies of P was fun but it never quite hooked me the same way. Also if you’ve never played a Soulslike before, Elden Ring is a fantastic place to start. The DLC is also amazing, and is probably my favourite add-on content of any game ever. It was a bit controversial at launch for being very difficult, but I think that’s kind of the point.

Elden Ring is definitely the easiest to get into, but I think by the end becomes the hardest of all the Souls games on a normal playthrough. Due to its open world though it is easy to trivialize the game if you’re really struggling, with the exception of the final boss of the DLC who is just a brick wall no matter what (or at least was at launch, I haven’t played the DLC in a little while so that might’ve changed). Elden Ring wasn’t my first Souls game, but it was for all my friends who played it, and they all loved it just as much as I did. I’d put it in my top 3 of all time, maybe #1.

With all that being said, Lies of P is still a really good game, and I’m sure other people feel differently than I do comparing the two, those are just the thoughts of a massive Elden Ring fan so maybe take it with a grain of salt.

I’m starting to read the Hobbit to my wife’s pregnant belly. My daughter is due in September so hopefully I’ll have read the full book by then. I’ll then read the Hobbit to her again when she’s old enough to retain it

A good number of games on my PC.

Anywhere from 3-100 books of sheet music depending on the books.

A bunch of used blu-rays.

A ton of used records.

A new set of speakers for my record and/or home theatre setup(s).

A new amp for my record setup.

A new pre-amp for my record setup.

A little over half the parts for a new gaming PC.

Around 3-5 vintage watches for me to fix up.

Some new tools for fixing up vintage watches.

About 7-8 pocket knives.

A new kitchen knife set.

Some new pots and pans.

Does alcohol count as a hobby? If so then 5-10 bottles of scotch.

Shit, I have a lot of hobbies. No wonder I have no money. There’s probably stuff I’m forgetting too. Damn.

I have no issues with dying repeatedly to learn a game. The modern FromSoftware catalogue are my favourite games ever. Maybe it’ll go on sale during the steam summer sale in a few days and I can pick it up then.

I don’t use a whole bunch of software honestly, so it’s pretty easy to remember everything. I’m also dual booting still for a bit, so my windows partition has all the software too. All my games are on an external hard drive (I mostly play older games so the slower speed of an external HDD doesn’t really matter too much).

Adding to this, I’m a new Linux user, and I’m distro hopping a bit. I started with Mint, now I’m currently using Bazzite (basically Fedora Kinoite with some drivers and apps preinstalled for gaming to basically be plug and play), but I find rpm-ostree to be more confusing than whatever Ubuntu is based on so I might switch to another Ubuntu-based distro. It’s fun to discover what you like best though, so OP if you’re reading this, that’s my advice as someone in the same boat as you. Bounce around and see what works best.

That’s pretty cool! I never heard of it before but it’s on my Wishlist now. I’m definitely curious to check it out.

For me I’d probably say 1-3 were all really good. I’d probably agree that 3 was the best of those, but Ezio > Connor for sure. 4 was absolutely excellent, probably my favourite AC game. I enjoyed Unity, though I played it after the bugs got fixed and I never cared much about getting 100% so the micro transactions didn’t bother me too much. Same goes for Syndicate, I quite enjoyed that one too. I already mentioned my opinions on Origins and Odyssey, but yeah, both awesome games, just not great AC games. I wish it was a different franchise. Valhalla was way too bloated in my opinion, and was the first AC game I didn’t complete. I haven’t played anything after except for a couple minutes of Mirage, maybe at a friend’s house or a demo or something since I never bought it. I thought it was pretty fun, I might have to try it if I can find it for cheap sometime.

The only spinoff I’ve played is Chronicles: India I think, which I thought was pretty fun but I never finished it.

I haven’t tried any other AC games, so if I’m missing any it’s because I didn’t play it.

I really enjoyed Origins and Odyssey. Neither should’ve been called AC games though. I think if they rebranded them under a new series, and removed the micro transactions, they would be seen as really good modern lite-RPGs. Especially Odyssey. They weren’t bloated like Valhalla, and I think had some really interesting elements. I haven’t played them in a few years but have fond memories. Maybe I should replay them to see if they’re actually good or there’s just a bit of nostalgia or rose tinted glasses or whatever.

And still stop and go anywhere near rush hour

I used to love playing BBT on the 360 with a friend of mine. Enjoy, it’s a very entertaining game

I’m currently replaying the first Dishonored (switching beteeen Dishonored and Hitman at the moment), that’s gotta be one of my favourite games I’ve ever played. The whole series is great but that first one especially is truly special.

Funny, that’s one of my all time favourite games. Some of my favourite ever bosses are from that game, and the lows aren’t nearly as annoying (to me) as the lows of the original Dark Souls. I’d still say I prefer Elden Ring and Sekiro to any DS title, though.