RPG – MRAAKTAGON

Jagged Alliance 3 – the game we’ve been waiting for since 1999

I just finished JA3 after a long time of on and off play. The game is absolutely brilliant, a fantastic homage to JA 1 and 2 and most importantly, the most playable and best Jagged Alliance yet in the modern era after quite a few unfortunate missteps since… 1999. Is this the best and most playable Jagged Alliance game? Read no further if you want the answer TL/DR: Yep!

In the early days of PC gaming, Jagged Alliance was one of the first CD-ROM games that I remember fanatically playing (the other was Holistic Design’s Hammer of the Gods) and my 486 had only a floppy disk! So, in summer of 1995, when I should have been outside running amok after college, I was sitting crouched over my mom’s PC crammed into the dinning room goofing around on the island of Metavira with Biff, Skitz, Reuban and Ivan. I played this A LOT and realized once I moved out of the house, which was just weeks away, I would not be able to play the game without a CD player, something I wouldn’t be able to afford for months. Hence, I played JA for days straight and was completely enthralled by the game, it’s characters and the silly Metavira island.

Core Gameplay

Given some of you may never have played any Jagged Alliance game, I’m going to start off with the game-play which, while a critical piece of what makes JA3 good, is not the most important part of the game compared to other games in the genre (Xcom for example). Jagged Alliance 3 is essentially a party-based RPG with a substantial strategic layer where you manage your team’s non-combat operations, equipment, finances, read emails (!?) and negotiate contracts. In addition to your main character, you hire mercs into your ‘party’ and travel a large map exploring and destroying as you go. Outside of the strategic view, JA3 is real time while exploring until battles begin at which time it switches to tactical turn based combat. Unlike Xcom, Trouble Shooter, and JA: Deadly Games, your party can walk around the map sectors rather than just going on various combat missions and then sitting at home at base.

For the core combat engine, what JA3 brought to the table is a massive improvement of the tried and true skirmish game mechanics of Xcom: Enemy Unknown from 2012. Stripped down to the bare bones, the 2012 Xcom still managed to deliver and extremely satisfying tactical challenge and has been copied by many other games since (just like the 1994 version was). I feel that the JA3 developers were extremely thoughtful in what the added onto the basic Xcom 2012 set of mechanics and got a delicious mix of JA peanut butter in Xcom’s chocolate. I had a blast with Xcom 2012, but I think JA3 is far better in every way.

Instead of just 2 actions per turn, like Xcom, JA’s mercs have action points that they can spend on movement, reloading, shooting, and lying on the ground, et al. This allows the game to have enormous nuance around conditional effects, fatigue and differentiation between different mercs. Buns for example is an extremely slow mover while having the same level of action points for shooting as Dr. Q, who in contrast can run circles around nearly every other merc (and then karate chop them). Mercs can run, walk, duck and lie down on the ground to take cover. They can hide and sneak around, climb and jump of stuff in addition to weapon actions.

Shooting is based on physics, in contrast to Xcom, and a bullet, bomb, mortar, missile or knife is an actual thing in the game world that lands or hits somewhere, regardless of whether or not it hit it’s target. Like having action points, this engenders massive nuance to the game world, where bystanders are hit, bullets can shoot through cover and people, can hit gas tanks and break windows. Every shot does something, even if it’s just kicking up some dirt or sand or in some cases, causing massive explosions!

The nuanced combat engine is a lot to take in at first, and I was a bit worried it was too much complexity, but once you get rolling an take your time through the first island fights, you will come out of it knowing almost everything you need to know to succeed.

Weapons

I would be remiss in any review of a game like this without mentioning the vast weapon selection. There are a LOT of guns in this game and like 6 different types of grenades. All the weapons are circa-mid 90’s like the other tech, so Uzi’s and MP5’s abound. While you can buy weapons from Bobby Ray’s, there are rare and wonderful weapons to be found /looted off the map (and some come with certain mercs) and you are well rewarded for a bit of searching around in corners of the map board.

Each class of weapon has some special thing it can do to differentiate it from the other weapon classes, for example there are run and gun options with submachine guns and extra aim actions with rifles, heavy machine guns need to be set up to fire and have very different mechanics than all other weapons (much like ‘overwatch all the time’). This is another brilliant nuance to the games systems that really gets you thinking tactically about how to arm mercs and how to run them in the field.

Late early game through the mid game, my combo was to have a sneaky close combat fighter, a machine gunner and a couple of snipers to tap out anyone that was exposed. If I had enough mercs, I would have a couple of fast sweepers with grenades and the best automatic rifle I could get to finish things off. There were a few guns I found pretty useless in most situations, so even when you get beyond the starting game crap, there are some traps in the weapons you find (maybe they are more optimal with certain mercs?). Do NOT discount pistols in the mid/late game though, as some of them hit really hard and often at close range. Late game you get all the toys so there are oodles of heavy weapons that will AOE enemies who are then ready for the mop up, also due to ‘hardened’ enemies with heavy armor there are tools to hit them with status effects with gas grenades, flashbangs before getting in on a good shooting.

Map design

The strategic map is HUGE. When I finished the tutorial island I was astounded at the size of the overall map and the fact that every single sector has stuff in it to interact with and the variations of terrain are extremely distinct. There are underground caves, deserts, jungle areas, swamps, semi-mountainous regions and cities that have actual buildings with multiple floors (all of which can get blown apart!). Lots of places have little villages or points of interest and even in the most desolate desert regions there will be a burnt out car or truck or cave region to explore. In this you can get totally lost in the game and forget that you need to make cold hard cash to pay Buns to work with Fox! Cash comes from mines, and since they are the center point for most of the non-set piece battles in the game, each of the mine maps are distinct and create varied tactical challenges. Some mines have lots of buildings, others are in deep pits and others are super open with very little in the way of cover. This is critical to the game as you will be fighting over these areas again and again and again.

Strategic movement is pretty easy once you have access to a port or two, but if not, your mercs have to hoof it across some fairly inhospitable regions.

Story

Without any spoilers, you find yourself embroiled in a multi-faction struggle for economic and political control of an area of Western Africa called Grand Chien (big Dog) which is a fantasy mixture of French post-colonial and German post-WW2 gulash filled with all sorts of wacky characters, funny accents and stuff to shoot at. There are nazis, evil pharmaceutical companies, evil mining companies and rogue mercenaries in addition to the inhabitants who are just trying to get through the day without being shot up. The game starts where you have been hired by the President of Grand Chien’s daughter to enact a rescue of the President who has been captured by a mysterious figure.

Along with the main storyline there are countless side quests and some very strange events that happen (not so strange if you played JA2 though) for this rather hapless part of Africa. While the game is an homage of sorts to JA1 and 2, the story is not derivative, despite quite a few easter eggs from the older games.

Characters and the Mercs!

Ahh the JA characters… this is the meat of the JA franchise and why I feel so hollow sometimes with my faceless soldiers from Xcom and other games in the genre that don’t go this far with their character development. This JA has a huge roster of malcontents to deal with, all with tons of dialog, varied skills and specials and unique weapons and traits. Obviously certain mercs hate each other and others end up trying to do each other all the time, some are perfect pairs with tons of mutual dialog with each other. The hiring and firing and managing your team is a huge part of the game and should not be ignored for efficiency, that just wouldn’t be Jagged Alliance now would it? Not to give any spoilers, but if you have never played, you must start out with both Fox and Buns and ride that rollercoaster to the end.

They could have completely screwed the pooch with this part of the game, but it was fantastic– my only small complaint is that they didn’t get the voice actor for Ice quite right…

Challenge Level

JA3 is a challenging game and while the initial island is a bit of a cakewalk, once you get onto the mainland (a must to start making money) the game can start to get very harsh with constant attacks from various factions and the inability to keep up with threats as well as exploration. One thing to note is that you do not have to hold many sectors to make tons of cash, it can be cool to light up most of the map blue for your control, but it is just not needed. Get a mine quick, plan your attack to get your next mine, scout it out, then get it taken. Train militia (Raider is great for this) and then get rolling out.

Synopsis

JA3 is one of the best computer games I’ve played in a long time and is both homage to the older games and pushing the tactical turn based genre forward in terms of core gameplay, unique character/RPG elements and is damn fun to boot. This game blows Xcom away (as it should more than 10 years later). I cannot recommend this one enough.

Advanced FASERIP, now with more BLACK TERROR!

Ah the Marvel Heroes FASERIP game from the 80’s, the Superhero game we should have been playing as kids instead of Champions and TMNT– well maybe not TMNT, that deserved roll in the hay or three. While I haven’t played the FASERIP rules in several years, I developed a short campaign for it awhile back but never had the players go for it (and I got lazy and just ran DCC). The version we played was the retroclone called FASERIP by Gubintroll Games and came out in 2015. It was great BUT had one major issue– compatibility with all the Marvel Heroes stuff (and there is a LOT) from the 1980’s and early 90’s. Self-contained, it was a blast and I loved the push your luck character generation system, there just wasn’t anything out for the system to pick up and play, so while we played it, I jetted over to the older game.

That said, there is a NEW edition called Advanced FASERIP that cleans up some rules (which were already streamlined from the older game) adds some more combat options and best yet, comes in a hardback book from DrivethruRPG for a mere 25 bucks!

Why would you want this when there are so many other Superhero games on the market? If you haven’t tried it the Marvel Heroes game where FASERIP came from is excellent, and is by far the most OSR superhero game (rulings over rules) AND has the only meta-currency (karma) outside of Japanese RPG games that makes sense. FATE and other games got their bennies and chips from FASERIP, but IMO, FASERIP does a better job with it than it’s children. Give it a spin, generate some randos and go to town!

13th Age 2nd Edition Kickstarter is live

My second longest ongoing campaign was 13th Age and it’s a goddamn fine system for high power D20 madness. I’m not sure it even needed a 2nd edition as the first was really on the $$$, but designers learn a lot when their designs are out being hammered by the real world and I no doubt that happened even with these seasoned designers (Heinsoo and Tweet). Yes you can make parties of muppets and the art is of the ‘generic fantasy’ extraordinaire (all very 3E style as it has the same artists), but despite this, 13th Age has it where it counts for both player TOYS for their character classes and it is extremely easy to GM compared to ALL other D20 RPG’s in this mechanical weight class. I can’t recommend it enough, though it does not have anywhere near the adventure support of DCC or Pathfinder.

Preview HERE.

Kickstarter HERE.

This is what it’s ALL about:

Unicorn Overlord – first GOTY candidate for 2024? Yeah.

Vanillaware are naughty, naughty sumkas to be sure, with their cute but sexy Odin’s Sphere leading into their side scrolling answer to Diablo, Dragon’s Crown, with the largest breasts on record for a playable character. You’d think a studio so obsessed with giant barbarian woman’s thighs wouldn’t be able to crank out such good games time and time again, but they certainly have in the past and have done it again!

Before I gush all over Unicorn Overlord, I would be remiss if I did not mention that I did not like Vanillaware’s last game, 13 Sentinels, and wished I had never bought it. The story was Soul Nomad and The World Eaters level confusing with the difference being that the story parts completely got in the way of the combat. The early game the sequences where you run around as various characters in frustrating side-scrolling puzzles were so long and arduous as to negate the fun of the tactical mech combat once you eventually got to it, and even then, it was far to short in the mech, and way to long out of it. Even my kids that tend to like those sorts of games on the Switch just won’t bother with 13 Sentinels. Luckily, that is the past as we now have a game from Vanillaware that does the exact opposite: has a story and it gets the fuck out of the way for the joy of the tactical combat!

Unicorn Overlord, for those that may have never heard about it yet, is a modern Ogre Battle, which means it is an RPG with tons of different characters that are organized into battle units. Each of these units ends up having different capabilities in tactical as well as strategic contexts. Characters level up and have light item management (nothing like Dragon’s Crown/ Diablo though) and also grow affinity with their different combat groups over time. Choosing the right battle group for the right job at the right time is critical to success and building out those ‘right’ battle groups is half the fun of the game, the other half is the slaughter parts.

There are so many games around to put time into, why play this over other games? First, it’s absolutely gorgeous. For a tactical battle game, the art, character design and animation is over the top. Player’s have an option to skip battle animations but I almost NEVER do, just to see my plucky characters in all their animated glory.

Second, the core gameplay loop is done extremely well. You unlock new characters during the story and can combine them with existing units, form new ones and then try them out vs enemies or in practice. The strategic aspects of positioning, blocking, the action point economy and special leader/member powers on the strategic map is all just superbly done. As a fan of Ogre Battle/Soul Nomad and the World Eaters style games, I’m going to hazard to say that this is probably already my favorite in the genre.

Lastly: Tits. Everyone loves them. Every man, woman and child on earth. Vanillaware knows this.

Negatives, and there are a few, consist of a bit of chaos and confusion during the real-time strategic portion of the game, where, especially on the Switch, it can be hard to see what unit is next to another unit. I did get into a forever loop situation where two units, both out of action points, were constantly going to fight each other and neither could harm on another. One unit was up against the side of the map so the loser could not be pushed back. Lastly, while this is minor, the main character and his best friend are the most GENERIC anime fantasy characters imaginable, which is odd since Vanillaware typically has such cool designs for the main characters in other games.

While I haven’t finished the game yet (it’s long), I already highly recommend the game to everyone that likes this style at all.

Tactical view of a battle

Some basic tips

Do not line characters up in a row where possible, they will get hit by attacks that effect everything in the row, and your soft-bosom’d witches will get dropped in one shot, and we can’t have that!
Use the 20th level horse guy to help level up your weak dudes. He pounds ass early game– use him.
Restoration deliveries to harbors allow access to islands that have neat stuff on them.
Do not rest if you can help it on the strategic map. Units can defend with 1 Action Point FOREVER, so you can just sit there and get attacked all you want. If your unit is in a resting state when attacked it’s fucked.
Do not set the difficulty to Normal. Go to Tactical at least.

This is only out on consoles (Switch/PS5) and not the PC. Looking for something like this on the PC? Check out Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga.

Malenia, Malekith and me

Finalment! I have beaten the Elden Ring, which took me months too long and many, many tries against Malenia, the Fire Giant and some other boss I can’t remember any more.

It goes without saying that the game is a masterpiece. The attention to detail, the unbelievable scope, the number of bosses, the incredible amount of build options and weapon combos, the multiplayer (both partying up and PVP) and especially the rather interesting purgatorial storyline. It is a really good time to be alive and able to wield a mouse and keyboard or controller, I will say that much. Is it my favorite From Software game? No. I think even after all the fun Elden Ring is, Bloodborne is still my number 1, but I need to go back to it and play again and see if it stands up to ER.. and then finish Sekiro or Armored Core… did I mention it was a good time to be able to play video games? Will I play through ER again? Certainly, with stupid builds that can only make it with tons of help from other people.

One of the issues for me is that the game is… too long. I feel like the battle with Morgott should have been the natural end of the game, and the first DLC should have been up to the Fire Giant, Malekith, Malenia and the Elden Beast. These are generally good bosses, but for the base game? I had my fill of ER when I beat Morgott in May of 2022 for awhile and set it down except multiplayer with a second or third toon to jagg around with. It took me a long time to get back to the game and when I did, I think it wasn’t with the same fervor as the first 2/3rds.

That said, the final battle with Malenia, the probably 100+ tries against her were really epic, attempting different tactical paths, failing, trying new ones, failing, going back and beating up bosses I missed to get certain items, then going back and failing and finally running into the fight with no spells and just the GUTS Sword (and a mimic tear…) and getting a bit lucky with dodging the Waterfowl during her second form and then blammo– the hardest From boss in the can!

Unlike Bethesda games, From doesn’t necessarily care if you miss a bunch of stuff, so they hide their big dungeons quite well in ER, and the first instance of this in Stormveil Castle was pretty eye opening for me– the majority of the castle and dungeon beneath was not only totally optional, but fairly difficult to find to boot. This theme continues throughout the game, which is both good and bad. Good because the sense of exploration and discovery is certainly there all the time, especially after stumbling across the giant hole left by Radahn getting his arse kicked. Bad because– you miss stuff. If I didn’t have Nathan around mid-game for multiplayer, I would have missed tons of dungeons, just walked right past them. Later I was a bit more careful and was looking for particular items for my GUTS sword build. I think a bit more GO THIS WAY for some of the dungeons would have helped so I wasn’t looking online for hints all the time.

Favorite Bosses list:

Radahn – worth buying the game for just this

Redwolf Radagon – yeah, easy fight but really fun boss.

Godrick – just a jerk that needed to be put down for good!

Godskin Duo – Made me think of some other skinny and fat guy…

Malenia – can’t deny it, this was a good fight.

Well that’s it on ER for now. This is a lifestyle game for many people and for good reason, it is absolutely excellent. I can’t wait for the DLC and it’s hard to imagine what they could even do that they haven’t done before.

Russ Nicholson has passed away

Along with Dave Trampier, there is one other TITAN of the old school D&D art, and that is the incredible Russ Nicholson, who brought to life the entirety of the Fiend Folio as well as gobs of other art for games throughout his career. While the original Monster Manual’s art was a huge inspiration, the Fiend Folio took both the monster designs and art to a new level.

Unlike Trampier, who quit doing any art in the early 80’s (and missed the MTG cash cow that he would have fit into perfectly), Russ kept on doing art for OSR modules, DCC and other games his entire career. RIP Russ!

Crusader kings 3 FTW

Block of text from Reddit with no context because NONE IS NEEDED.

Bleeding Kansas – Mythras

I didn’t want to spill the beans before the sessions up North last weekend so didn’t go into any details other than it was “old west” stuff, but this scenario is set directly in the early months of the Bleeding Kansas proto-ACW era. We had a very solid couple of sessions over the weekend and I had a lot of fun as the GM for a few reasons. First, Mythras (Runequest 6) makes everything just work and I’ve played enough where I don’t need the book much at all. I love about 3 other systems (DCC, 13th Age, FASERIP), but Mythras is the numero uno. Second, the excellent Call of Cthulhu old west supplement by Kevin Ross called Down Darker Trails. It’s an excellent sourcebook for the genre and easy to read (very easy on the eyes too). Third, the Firearms supplement for Mythras– just made it easier to run gunfights with the custom special effects. Why Mythras over Call of Cthulhu 7? It’s just better.

Buy IN

The initial events for the characters began on a train headed to St. Louis in April, 1855. The rear car was detached, unbeknownst to the passengers, and after it slowed to a stop, it was then boarded by miscreants who stated that it was a robbery, yet, it clearly wasn’t. The ruffians were after the daughter of a soon to be legislator in the newly organized territory of Kansas for reasons explained below. The girl was accompanied by a bodyguard and her nanny, the former being instantly shot on sight when the ruffians entered the train. The characters being of a violent sort, the guns (and knives) came out instantly and the PC’s, none of which knew each other, were then united as so many parties have been in the past in a shower of lead and wholesome violence. The heist set up was three men enter the train, shake down the passengers and grab the girl. Two waited outside in a carriage and one shooter perched 100 yards out from the train was to peg off anyone that tried to follow the carriage or run off. Once the girl was away the others would grab some hidden horses and be off.

This didn’t go as planned. The PC’s knifed and shot the three men on the train, leaving two stone dead and one with a gutshot, unconscious. They were then pinned down by the outside shooter but were able to shoot one of the men from the carriage (blowing his leg clean off) who came to investigate the shootings inside the train. The man in the carriage rode off top-speed at that point and the sniping shooter outside the train called it quits after taking a hit to the arm from another passenger and then being nicked in the head by one of the PCs.

From a combat perspective, this was very exciting with the length of reloads on all sides, maneuvering and using distractions in order to get the drop. Luckily only one of the PC’s was hit, and it was but a minor wound. I wanted the players to understand, outside of using luck points, they could be gunned down in a single round and needed to be cautious–the opposite of nearly every other RPG we play with the exception of DCC funnels and LotFP. Always use the firearms supplement actions and special effects in Mythras, even when just playing with bows and crossbows.

Now stranded between somewhere and St. Louis with two ruffians still about, they hid with the other passengers in a nearby dell for the night waiting for the next train or some help to arrive. They kept watch all the next day and the ruffians didn’t make another appearance. Eventually a train arrived and they were interviewed by the marshals on the incident.

The Hook

This lead to the big hook of the scenario where the players were interviewed by one Judge Morris who asked them to handle a sensitive mission to accompany three slaves through Missouri to the Kansas territory, using whatever guile, tricks and violence they needed to to make it to Lawrence over the border and meet with a contact there. This seemed simple, except one of the “slaves” happened to be an Englishman of mixed birth who was carrying a packet of papers that would be difficult to hide if he opened his mouth or was allowed to act normally (remember in these times, a slave would never meet the eye of any white folks present unless directly spoken to and would walk in a non-threatening manner as to not draw attention to themselves). The other two were skilled tradesmen and would be set up as freemen in the new territory. Morris explained that this was a test of what may occur if other slaves in larger groups tried to cross into Kansas via the route they chose. The group was given an enormous sum of money to equip themselves and I was pretty scared as a GM that they would simply run off, but the prize at the end per-person was enough to start a business or some sort of racket, or innumerable bottles of whiskey, countless nights with whores of any race, creed or persuasion, so they agreed to pick up the soon to be freed slaves. They went to purchase materials for the trip (including a trunk full of ammunition) and while waiting for it to be delivered, went to pick up the ‘contraband.’

I made an apocryphal small town where they were to pick them up called Forsythe which was influenced by the “porters quarters” area of Gainesville where all the porters who all worked in mansions (not by modern standards) downtown, but lived in the middle of the town in an area with shacks, dirt roads and little running water. When I was there for college the area still had gravel roads!!

They picked up the slaves at a festival in the town that was just beginning and made off into the fields straight away, the biggest issue at first that that Englishman was wearing a suit, but realized they had a tail of a couple mounted men, and that’s where we had to call it.

I wanted to introduce some moral quandaries with the characters, but not so early in the scenario so they didn’t know what to do and didn’t follow story flags. The people who are sponsoring the slaves getting to Kansas by our standards would still be considered racists (maybe these days everyone born before 2001 would be considered one anyway), let alone your normal inhabitant of Missouri, but culturally things are on a continuum and not black and white, and this is a period where multiple groups came together to politically and violently oppose human bondage, even if they themselves felt they were superior to all other races (and were still in the process of wiping out the Native Americans). Like the article in the last post, if you want characters to talk to NPC’s and have political shenanigans, you must have a VERY deadly system, otherwise everything just gets attacked and overwhelmed when people get tired of talking. Within this backdrop of oncoming disorder and madness, the characters are thrust, with huge potential for both profit, roleplaying and being gutshot and left for dead or strung up on a tree limb in the middle of nowhere. Likely their involvement will throw gas on the fire and we will get some double or triple Hendersons out of the whole thing as we go on or they will just take the (ample) money they have at the first sign of danger and leave the foppish Englishman and his two companions to their fate…

Mythras Old West this weekend!

Here we go. This weekend is our annual camping trip and when the weather is bad or after sundown, we get some roleplaying in the deep dark northwoods region.

This year, inspired by a lot of stuff, I’m going to do Old West with Mythras. While the characters take a long time to make (PC’s, I can generate NPC’s pretty quick), the combat system was just too good to not try out for a least a couple sessions. I’m using the Mythras Core rules plus the Firearm rules. I’ve been wanting to run something like this for a long time reminiscent of both our days with Call of Cthulhu where we started to ignore the mythos and run rum as anyone in the 1920’s should and this excellent blog post about boot hill.

Dark Souls on the Switch – it’s good*

Right after Elden Ring came out I had to take a trip and was away from my PC. I grabbed the Switch for my kids but remembered I had Dark Souls on it. The Switch, from many, many hours of whatever the fuck the kids play on there was messed up with a really bad drift-stick on one of the sticks that made DS nearly unplayable. Somewhere at some random Walmart in Indiana, I found a HORI Split Pad Pro and not only did that solve the drift-stick, it made Dark Souls a far better experience to play without the stock controllers. Very much recommended for everything unless you are worried about it fitting inside your little case (like if you have to shove it up your ass when you are sent to prison), otherwise the HORI sticks make everything play better.

Build

I was mulling over the build to use but when Pinwheel dropped the DAD mask (1/3rd chance), I knew what had to be done– Giant Dad with a fucking Chaos Zweihander. It’s a LOT of work to get all the pieces, and for new players of Dark Souls it is NOT worth it, just get the rest of the stuff and do a lightning Zweihander instead. Why? The Chaos Zwei scales off HUMANITY which means you have to run around with 5-10 humanity all the time. If you drop your souls and can’t get them back, you are farming fucking RATS in the depths for hours and hours to get what you need to hit hard enough to win.

Rings: Havel’s Ring, Wolf’s Ring

Armor: Giants + the Dad mask

Shield: Grass Crest

Weapon: Chaos Zwiehander, a bitch to create, and a bitch to use but hit’s so hard…

Bosses

This is my second time all the way through the game so I was familiar with just about all the bosses I fought. Most of the bosses I thought were scary the first time were pushovers and some I thought were easy earlier were challenging.

Fatty Demon: Easy, but punishing later versions make me still hate this guy (like the Erdtrees)

Taurus Demon: Super easy.

Capra Demon: STILL a bitch to defeat, took me a lot of tries, not because of the Capra, but because of the dogs

Insideout Dragon : a tough fight, but the first real “boss” in the game so it better be. I lost a lot of souls during this battle for sure.

Bell Gargoyles: this was really easy, and I remember emotionally suffering in my initial playthrough.

Iron Giant: Not too bad but took me a lot of tries.

Queelag the topless: I used the summon because that one is so silly (a lady with a cleaver with a sack over her head) and she wasn’t too hard. Took me a few tries for sure and of course, that’s after Blighttown so you are always emotionally drained before fighting her, but at least there’s cleavage.

Ceaseless Discharge: this is a trick boss, so really doesn’t count. He’s easy if you know what to do and just a sad sack of fiery shit really.

Smough and Orenstein: Well… I summoned the Sunbro for help and followed the basics: Kill Orenstein first, don’t get hit by Smough and it worked out. This took me countless tries the first time through so I made sure I was good and ready for this battle, including walking in there with 10 Humanity so the Zwei was hitting hard. Big risk, big reward of the beautiful chest ahead.

NITO: one of my favorite bosses in the end game because he’s pretty easy and also scary. Advice I got was to not go in the room to trigger the big skellingtons. Getting to NITO was terrible for me though…. ugh, Tomb of Giants was worse than Blightown this time.

SEATH: This one was tough, but I just stayed near his leg and kept circling and took him down. I had forgotten the whole prison thing so that was again a surprise!

FOUR KINGS: Super easy. I remember having a ton of trouble with these guys the first play through. Just hit them again and again.

hey I’m one of the good guys right? right? …

Demon Firesage: what an asshole. I kept getting the RNG on his AOE and it just killed me over and over and over. This boss I didn’t like too much because it felt ALMOST unfair.

Fire Centipeed: I lost 10 humanity the first time fighting this jerk, but summoned Sunbro again and we took her down.

BED OF CHAOS: this is my least favorite fight in Dark Souls. Just being constantly pushed off a cliff is not great fun. You can’t do anything but just suffer through this one and get it over with.

SIF: funny doggy. Not a tough fight. Maybe he’s the only good guy among all these bosses and you’re the bad guy.

Gwyn Lord of Cinder: For the final boss, he seems intimidating at first even for my second play through the game, but after playing Bloodborne where you MUST parry as part of normal play, this was a very easy fight that took only two tries! I just parried him over and over and had enough health to tank the shots I missed on… and the chaos zwei with 10 Humanity.

Final verdict

The Switch version of Dark Souls is excellent, plays great, performance is fantastic. It’s all there and right in the palm of your hand and really good if you get the Hori controllers. If they work well with DS, they will work well with Breath of the Wild and everything else.