kensei

Fighting mounted bosses is like a jousting mini game. Horse up, run at them and time it so your strike hits and theirs misses. Obviously I also cheat by distracting him with the doggo gank squad, but it's great fun. Done two so far.

So what's going to change. He's going to coach them better than the man that turned Philips into a Euro finalist and Patrick Bamford into a striker that could knock in 15 Premiership goals a season? I wonder if another English club will come in for Bielsa.

Given our success is entirely based around his system which we've played for the guts of the past 4 years, I am at a loss as to how a new manager is going to turn it around in two months. We're going to hear a lot of shite about being organised and the like and then we'll get beat 1-0 instead of 6-0. I've just realised we are Sheffield United in every sense. Limited investment, injuries to key players, difficult second season, sack the guy that got you there, zero class. Currently 7th in the Championship for reference. See you next season.

Just feel done with football for a while.

I have found reasonable enough amount of weapons and now am rocking my standard Zweihander, but armour seems a lot harder to come by. Few merchants but it is very expensive.

I have atrophied my skills and am terrible at bosses. Fortunately I have the doggo gank squad to back me up.

Had one crash to dashboard on Xbox so far. Frame pacing is a bit variable but fine, but console games should it hard crash.

So I don't think Bielsa is above criticism. Some of his decisions on playing people out of position can be divined only by him and he absolutely won't compromise - doesn't matter how many players are out, he might rejig the players to be more defensive but the system is the system. There's definitely a case for some pragmatism or a Plan B at points. That said, I think we'd have been out of trouble if we'd had a full squad or maybe even just Bamford upping our scoring ratio. I sort of think we're like some sort of high performance car. When it is finely tuned and running perfectly it's amazing to watch. But if it gets a bit out of kilter it risks spinning off the track. But he's has given the club a bigger heart inside and out. The absolute decency is the thing I'll miss most. But more importantly he's dared big things. Something like two more wins and we'd have been in Europe last season on really limited money. I'll take that gamble every time. We'll never gain be a top 6 side unless we are bought out by blood money or vultures. I don't want to be either. Just gutted.

A lot of people are talking like Bielsa's sacking is done, including the Athletic. We're currently on course to get relegated and have just shipped more goals in a month than anyone else in Premier League history and I feel like someone has died.

I think it's three from Leeds, Brentford, Watford and Norwich. Newcastle have spent enough money and got form at the right time to get out. Our loss that kicked it all for them looks catastrophic in retrospect. Burnley have games in hand and this isn't their first rodeo. Everton also have games in hand and look like they've too much quality. We're in absolute free fall as are Brentford and the other two never really climbed off bottom. We've a run of games where in theory we can pick up points but looking at how bad the defense is I am not sure we'll manage.

Philips March maybe, Bamford god knows. All this "other teams look doomed". We look doomed. The hidings are a risk of how we play but chain them together and we're in real trouble. But the damage was done with Newcastle and Everton. Rumours Bielsa is going to be fired. I think that's mad short termism. If we can't survive relegation and maybe yo yoing for a bit, we've learned nothing and deserve everything we get.

You could look at the run of games and think we're really unlikely to get anything out of that run of games. But the manner of the beatings were taking is draining all confidence from the team. I can't see what breaks it unless we get Phillips and Bamford back. Think we are indeed heading to the Championship thread.

I think this is a true sequel to Dark Souls in a way 2 and 3 weren't. Good games, especially three but they refined the combat at the expense of the exploration, typified by having to warp right at the start of DS3 to get to the first area. They lost a lot of the exploration and sense of exploring a world, and the "Oh Shit!!" after stumbling into something completely unexpected. This banks the combat improvements and ups the exploration. It's not Breath of The Wild levels but that game had a supernatural ability to direct you around that I'm not sure even the sequel will recapture. But it lets you go off in any direction and head toward anything that looks interesting. No let up in the difficulty either - if anything enemies and bosses are much more aggressive earlier and for all the accessibility push the game still let me completely miss the ability to level up and upgrade weapons and instead wander into a dungeon for two hours.

The Zweihander has the DS3 moveset and not the DS1 moveset. There will never be a weapon as great. I assume I'll eventually hit a greatsword. Just wandering over the map. Found a few bosses that are a mite too tough at the minute and plan to come back to. One was called And had super ominous music so straight noped out. From early game locking weapon upgrades by making them super soarse annoys me because it stops experimenting. Also not seen a summon sign, despite crafting and using the item.

Managed to avoid learning how to level up, get my horse and do magic summons because I went a way From didn't expect. Top work, that could never happen in an open world. Best bit so far

Ah traditional start. I can take this thing Ha ha ha ha nope

If I set my Xbox to Australia, will it let me play this?

Dark Souls early patches allowed you to be a Zweihander welding, Havel ring fast rolling, Big Daddy monster. Hoping for that level of brokeness. And at least one weapon as satisfying as the DS1 Zweihander. The feeling you get when it literally flattens an enemy is unsurpassed.

Think we'll be hitting the relegation zone in the next few weeks. Spurs are going to be very keen to make a statement after the Burnley result and we are incredibly leaky. Not buying in January is looking an increasingly stupid decision. Maybe Philip's return might bring some relief - he has always been really important to the side, but he's probably not fit to April. Just hasn't worked this season. We'll be lucky to escape.

Is the worst thing about getting beat Twitter's stupid non linear algorithm that insists on showing me random snippets of us getting beat commentary for the next two days? Once again it's the hope that kills you. I struggle to see where we're adding points any time soon. We've no defence.

But more importantly

The problem is that Tolkien's world is much closer to "Feudalism was fine, actually". When the King is good and just, the Kingdom is good and just and all is well. GRRM explicitly calls this out as something he wanted to avoid in Game of Thrones. However, I think you are well off the mark on the class / genetics thing. Again, you have to see the religious influence coming through. Elves do extraordinarily bad things. Not in just in great grandiose ways, but in small ways too. Where they are presented as better it's due to them being closer to God - they listen to the Valar, have seen the light of the trees etc. Dwarves are even more of a mixed bag - Thorin's actions in the Hobbit for example and all races have similar sort of feudal hierarchies. Orcs are a bit of a hard one. Dragons, giant spiders, balrogs are all effectively demons. However orcs are specifically created by Morgoth corrupting elves that didn't escape to the West. That raises all sorts of awkward questions I don't think the stories can stand up to, but again the religious reading is the intention. They are ruined by the actions of the devil and are evil in so much they are ensnared and cannot break free of his influence. Everyone being white I think is a product of the time and the influences and you have to be careful back applying modern readings onto a story that his it's roots pre WW1. There's probably a touch of imperial assumptions. The above doesn't necessarily make for happy modern liberal readings either, and people place too much weight on stories which Christopher Tolkien even earned in the Simarillion could not bear them. But I think you have to capture at least some of that to get Tolkien, otherwise you make something else.

Losing to both Newcastle and Everton was a disaster. Seriously tough run of games coming. I'd say we're 50/50 and probably depends on how bad people around us are. Bielsa is still the man.

Oh and as for annoyance, Lewis is reported to have said at one of Tolkien's readings "By God, not another bloody elf" Which is the fairest review possible of all Tolkien.