143: Shadow Tower: Abyss (with Adelaide Lohkamp)

00:00:00.00 Dave Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Jackson, and you're listening to Tales from the Backlog. This is a video game deep dive review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss. My guest today is a friend of the show, a returning guest, and she has arrived from the abyss special for today's episode. Welcome back to the show, Adelaide Lohkamp. 00:00:28.73 Adelaide Hello, hello. 00:00:30.29 Dave Welcome back, it's good to have you back. We do ah once a year. This is not kind of a horror game, not really a horror game. We're almost breaking you out of typecasting. 00:00:40.68 Adelaide I know it's so funny because like when we were initially talking about it, I was like, oh, yeah, maybe we should like maybe I should do something not spooky. And then we kind of fell back into an atmospheric spooky game. 00:00:52.00 Adelaide So I guess I'm just kind of stuck here. 00:00:52.39 Dave Kind of. 00:00:55.60 Dave Well, ah you know, next time might be the time when we get out of, like you said, atmospheric spooky stuff, but we do have something along those lines again today. ah The past episodes that we've done together, if listeners are not familiar, we did Silent Hill 2, that was episode 10. We did The Last Door, which was episode 48. And then we did the Resident Evil remake, which was episode 90. 00:01:21.23 Dave So a bit of a trend, we're trending toward less outright scary stuff and more just vibey stuff in this one. 00:01:27.16 Adelaide Yeah. 00:01:28.14 Dave Today we're talking. Today we're going to talk about Shadow Tower Abyss, which is a first-person action RPG developed and published by From Software for the PlayStation 2 in 2003. 00:01:41.52 Dave And Shadow Tower Abyss never received an official English localization, so we both played a fan translation, which was released in 2011. If this is your first time listening to the show, thank you for stopping by. And the thing that I want you to know right now is that we're not going to spoil the story and ah memorable moments we'll say in Shadow Tower Abyss in the first section of the episode per usual, although this game is extra light on story. So the spoiler section is there. It will probably be shorter than the average spoiler section, but we do hold to that policy. So if you want to go play Shadow Tower Abyss, we are not going to spoil anything for you here. 00:02:24.02 Dave ah Quick note, there is a lot of From Software in the podcast's back catalog. There was an entire month of episodes dedicated to Elden Ring back in 2022. Most recently, there was the Elden Ring DLC episode on Patreon for Patreon subscribers. 00:02:40.99 Dave Dark Souls, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, and then boss tier lists of all three of those games, special episodes, and also Kingsfield 4. It's another PS2 From Software game. 00:02:52.41 Dave So a lot of From Software in the show's history, a lot of From Software in the show's future as well. ah People know me, I love some From Software, so we're back at it with another one. 00:03:02.39 Adelaide and 00:03:02.67 Dave But Shadow Tower Abyss is one that a lot of people may not have heard much about, seeing as it never got that English localization. So we have quick elevator pitches per usual to tell you what Shadow Tower Abyss is. And Addy has the, like the smart one, and I've got the, I've got the um the lizard brain one. I say Shadow Tower Abyss is Kingsfield with guns, baby! 00:03:30.71 Adelaide And that's not an inaccurate description, by the way. 00:03:34.14 Dave No, no, not at all. 00:03:34.26 Adelaide That is very much true. Mine was the connective tissue between King's Field and Demon's Souls. 00:03:41.35 Dave Absolutely, yeah. And that's something we'll talk about um throughout you know some of the mechanical systems, storytelling style, and some of the backstory and lore in the spoiler section is there are a lot of connections, obviously. This was one of the fantasy games closest to Demon's Souls releasing. um I think Kingsfield 4 was 2001, this was 2003, Demon's Souls was 2009, I wanna say. 00:04:08.70 Dave So we're on that, like that kind of lineage here. So there is DNA that goes into the future games. And there's a certain thing about the lore we'll, so we'll save for the spoiler section, but that really connects to the ideas behind Elden rings lore in a really interesting way. 00:04:23.59 Adelaide Listen. 00:04:26.32 Dave So a lot of stuff here right on with that pitch. So we both played this emulation. It took me 11 hours to beat. Um, how long did it take you? 00:04:35.60 Adelaide I think it was more like 14 or 15 hours for me. I feel like I definitely got it, I feel like I got lost a lot more than you possibly. 00:04:45.70 Dave possibly yeah, I did follow well, not necessarily follow walkthrough because there are not really they're not text walkthroughs for this game. There is one there's some there's some let's plays I don't want to like shortchange everyone who's done a let's play but there is one video walkthrough where it's like stop this is how you get through this area here's the lore um I'll reference that a couple more times that video is by a youtuber named elucidated by fire and it's like a really really excellent video walking through the game 00:05:07.64 Adelaide Mm hmm. 00:05:17.95 Adelaide Yeah. 00:05:20.87 Dave Um, so shadow tower abyss, I think it's been so long now, but I'm pretty sure that when we were talking about like, what's the next game you're going to come on the show and do with me, I gave you a list of stuff and we eventually settled on shadow tower abyss. And like, I'm pretty sure you have heard of this before. So was it something that you really wanted to play already? What was it that kind of spoke to you as the game you wanted to do this time? 00:05:46.18 Adelaide Um, so a while ago now, um, when I had a PS3, I had on, on a whim, uh, picked up the original Shadow Tower because it's on the, um, the PS3 classic collection or whatever. Um, and I had poked around at that, but never really made any significant progress. I didn't really understand it. Um, it definitely feels much more like a King's Field game. 00:06:14.69 Adelaide I've never had a particularly good time with those games. 00:06:17.13 Dave Aha. 00:06:17.74 Adelaide um So like you know i was i of course, my next move was to like you know go to Wikipedia and be like, OK, well, because FromSoft usually doesn't have like like dead-end games, even if they aren't like a full-blown series, like you know Kingsfield or things like that. 00:06:38.49 Adelaide There's usually at least like one more iteration. you know um And so I was looking, and you know sure enough, I came across Shadow Tower Abyss. um And I tried poking around at it a little bit. 00:06:51.12 Adelaide um This you know it was like at least two or three years ago, so a while ago. I tried poking around at it. And like it seemed really cool, but like just it's kind of impenetrable um in the way that like Souls games are. 00:07:02.62 Dave Mmhmm. Mmhmm. 00:07:05.80 Adelaide you know And so I never really made too much progress with it. I think um I died a lot in the opening area and just got frustrated and moved on with my life. ah But when I saw it come up, because I think what happened is you had a poll running and you were like, hey, like if you know if this game gets on the poll, do you want to jump on for the episode? 00:07:28.30 Adelaide And I was like, yeah. 00:07:28.74 Dave Yeah. 00:07:29.77 Adelaide And then I think it ended up being a different game. And I was like, well, you know if you want to end up doing this anyway, like I would love to get the the like Excuse to actually like play through and like dig into this game 00:07:42.65 Dave Yeah. Okay, so I had forgotten, or maybe we hadn't discussed, that you had poked around. It's like this ah this era of From Software, like the PS1, PS2 is not great for dabbling. like You gotta sit and really explore and like figure out, especially this one, because like the manuals in Japanese, like there, there is no manual. 00:08:06.50 Dave Like we had to find extra sources to explain what the stats mean and stuff like that. So this one in particular is really bad for just like, Hey, I'll poke around for 15 minutes and see what happens. 00:08:12.79 Adelaide right well and even i think even worse than like you know from soft is pretty well known for their you know oblique uh games i i bet if you tried really hard or not if you tried really hard like king's field is popular enough that i'm sure there's more information out there about like king's field one two and three then there is about this game this game in particular has like 00:08:17.27 Dave You know, 00:08:37.16 Dave Yeah. 00:08:43.07 Adelaide almost no internet presence in a way that you don't really see with games anymore. 00:08:45.38 Dave Yeah. 00:08:48.50 Dave Mm hmm. 00:08:50.93 Adelaide it's very. It's funny because it makes the game itself mysterious in the way that the game wants to be. you know 00:08:59.88 Dave Yeah, absolutely. Like I remember first. I think it was either bonfireside chat or it was an iron pineapple video that was like, you know, both of them bonfireside chat did like, I want to say two podcasts about this and then iron pineapple did a video on YouTube but and both of them like were my introduction to this. 00:09:24.63 Dave And I think it was especially the iron pineapple video that really like I got to see it and 00:09:30.40 Adelaide Yeah. 00:09:31.56 Dave You know, like the first time you're walking like you have a sword and then like you pull out a gun and I was like, what the fuck? OK, this is crazy. I should probably look more into this. 00:09:41.91 Dave And it was one of those games for a while that I liked. I could have played because I know, you could emulate PS2 anytime since 2011 and play this game in English. 00:09:51.35 Adelaide Mhm. 00:09:52.06 Dave But ah it was one of those games that I just kept finding like excuses to push it back. Like I had it. tentatively on the podcast schedule for at least six months. 00:10:03.19 Dave And I just kept like something else caught my eye and be like, Oh, push the shadow tower back. 00:10:06.11 Adelaide Mhm. 00:10:07.42 Dave Like it, that happens with certain games. 00:10:08.47 Adelaide Mhm. 00:10:09.40 Dave Uh, but I put it on the backlog resolutions, uh, thing for 2024 that we're doing in my discord server. And that was the thing. That's one of those games that I like, I needed a little something extra. 00:10:22.44 Dave to actually be like, we're gonna do this, got Addie lined up to guest, it's time to finally play this game. 00:10:22.43 Adelaide Mm-hmm. Mm 00:10:28.87 Dave And so here we are, I did play it. 00:10:30.33 Adelaide -hmm. 00:10:30.90 Dave And um for quick, you know, top level opening thoughts here, ah number one, everything that I liked about Kingsfield 4 is in this game, as I loved King’s Field 4. 00:10:41.86 Dave Everything about that that I liked is in this game, plus this game is just weirder than Kingsfield 4 is. This is probably the weirdest From Software game I've played. And I haven't gone into a lot of the more obscure PS2, PS1 era, but of Kingsfield 4 and then every single you know game since Demon's Souls that I've played, this is definitely the weirdest one. But I thought it was, you know, 00:11:11.08 Dave a really interesting experience to go through for a lot of reasons. I really enjoyed playing it. 00:11:15.90 Adelaide Mm 00:11:16.61 Dave And it was also fun to stream. I streamed about five or six hours of it, just because there are a lot of people out there that are curious about what From Software was up to on the PS2 now that they're so big. 00:11:19.22 Adelaide hmm. 00:11:30.02 Dave They're like one of the biggest studios out there now. 00:11:32.47 Adelaide Yeah. 00:11:33.10 Dave And they have a long history, much, much longer than Souls and things like that. So I really enjoyed this. 00:11:43.38 Adelaide Yeah, it's so interesting. like I have a big place in my heart for like ah flawed games that have really interesting ideas. You know I like a good underdog. 00:11:53.05 Dave Yeah. 00:11:56.17 Adelaide So like playing this and and like you know coming from backwards from like a position of being really familiar with Souls games and like how they've changed across that separate ah series. I think really like it's so cool to see like ideas and little bits of mechanics that like have changed or have like stuck in the games as kind of like a vestigial ah element. or you know it's It's such an interesting 00:12:30.86 Adelaide game from a place like you know historical context. 00:12:34.42 Dave Yeah. 00:12:34.75 Adelaide um And you're right. It's just bizarre. it's it's it's like I know like in some of the King's Field games, I want to say like in the second or third one, isn't there like I feel like they I might be talking out of my, ah I might be making things up. 00:12:51.91 Adelaide So don't come for me. But I feel like I remember um in one of them, you end up like going into a computer simulation to kill a dragon. or Or, you know, like the the twist on old ah The Ultima series is like they really there's like supercomputers ah and also medieval fantasy ah But you but you don't really see stuff like that a lot um And like it's it's really cool. 00:13:19.72 Adelaide I always think it's fun to see that sort of intermesh of like You know, this is like a very straight straightforward fantasy, but There's also like all of this weird like technology and stuff that's like out and about in the area. 00:13:37.42 Dave Yeah, this is a really weird mashup of like traditional sword and board fantasy, but also sci-fi. And it's one of those things that the game is not going to present to you a lot of like straight up sci-fi, except for like when you walk in the hub area and you're like, this looks like an alien. 00:13:53.65 Adelaide Yeah. yeah 00:13:56.48 Dave place. Other than that, it doesn't look like a sci-fi game. And the guns that you get are real world guns. Like you don't get laser rifles or anything like that. 00:14:04.73 Adelaide and 00:14:07.41 Dave But the extended lore of the game from what we understand from the one person who bothered to translate the strategy guide. um There's sci fi in here. 00:14:18.87 Dave This is a sci fi mix with fantasy in here, which is cool. 00:14:19.46 Adelaide Yeah. 00:14:23.23 Adelaide And I will say like there are definitely some zones outside of the hub area that feel explicitly like sci-fi areas, but there's certainly like less than what you would 00:14:30.67 Dave Mm hmm. 00:14:33.95 Adelaide consider typical fantasy biomes. 00:14:37.36 Dave right yeah and you're definitely right with something you said earlier like you can play this and pick up stuff that was carried into the more famous from software games in the future and we talked about this in the case field four episode way back when but this game was made I believe before ah Miyazaki even worked it from software so like it 00:15:01.07 Adelaide I think that's correct, yeah. 00:15:02.45 Dave It's a gentle reminder that Miyazaki gets a lot of credit, and rightly so, for making From Software into what it is today. But the things that you may associate with From Software's gameplay design and storytelling and things like that, those were there before Miyazaki was there, which was always interesting to see ah in Kingsfield 4 and then in this game, and I assume if you go further back, um it's just just cool to to see that history. 00:15:31.98 Adelaide Yeah, it is really interesting um because, you know, I mean, like by this time, it's probably something of a like a well-known fact, but like You know, the idea behind the, like, soul storytelling, right, is commonly attributed to the fact that Miyazaki, like, growing up, read a lot of English, like, picture books, like fantasy books, but he didn't know English. And so that's why you have the, like, you know, the sort of, like, storytelling in the visuals and also in the, you know, in the text of the, like, items and stuff. but like 00:16:04.92 Adelaide Again, like you said, like that's still happening in the older games before he's involved. right like This game has little to no story present in the game itself or in the item descriptions. 00:16:10.48 Dave Yeah. 00:16:16.90 Dave That's right. Yeah. 00:16:17.52 Adelaide And as far as I'm aware of the other Shadow Tower and King’s Field games, like you get like opening crawls and stuff. And maybe you know there's um obviously like a lot more NPCs to interact with. 00:16:28.92 Adelaide But beyond that, there's really not a lot of like story in-game as well. 00:16:34.46 Dave Yeah, so it's like. 00:16:38.93 Dave So there are things that are like there. We'll talk about it, but like you know the looping level design that we associate with the Souls games and Elden Ring and stuff like that. That's in Shadow Tower Abyss. 00:16:49.92 Dave So like there's a bunch of stuff like that that was here before. 00:16:50.42 Adelaide Yeah. 00:16:53.05 Dave And then there's a bunch of stuff that you can see like Miyazaki found an opportunity to like to put storytelling in those item descriptions, because they're not in this game. 00:16:57.48 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 00:17:03.20 Dave so um We ah we've opened up a bunch of strands of conversation that we're going to tie off for now and we will. I'm not sure how I'm going to do music breaks. That's a problem for me in the future me. There's no music in this game, ah barely. So ah we're going to take a music break or maybe it will be the sound of footsteps going through a quiet level and then we'll come back and we'll set up the story of Shadow Tower Abyss. 00:17:33.19 Dave Shadow Tower Abyss begins with an opening story cutscene, kind of giving you a little bit of lore about the backstory and what your character is. So in the lore of the backstory a long time ago, there was a king that found a magical spear. 00:17:48.89 Dave ah The spear is shown in the opening cutscene. It has a living eye in the hilt of it, so might be bad news. Who's to say? 00:17:56.59 Adelaide some 00:17:57.48 Dave ah Supposedly, there is a secret ceremony that gave the king great powers, and along with the spear, the king ruled over this area for an age of peace and prosperity. 00:18:09.32 Dave ah But the kind of ceremony and the way that this all happened was a secret to everybody else. However, as time passed, knowledge of the king and the spear faded into legend and your character that you play as is a security guard for an archaeological mission going to the ruins of this king's civilization. So Like, you know, many of the games that From Software made, especially these fantasy games, you're going to this place well after the fact, ah well after the story took place, we'll say. So that's something in common. 00:18:48.87 Adelaide Yeah, and it's so funny, like even even the typical, ah not even just like you're going to and an ancient area or you're like an outsider who's come to this world for a different reason, but like down to the like, this is a this is a former prosperous civilization in some form or fashion, you know, there's there's a king that ruled it, 00:19:13.03 Adelaide for a long time of peace and prosperity but now that's like left them via like you know in this case it's like the loss of power from a magical item you know in other souls games it's right like the the fading of the flame or whatever but it's so it's it is really like i feel like even the king's field games are like that right like you're a prince or you're a mercenary or whatever and you're going 00:19:17.54 Dave yeah 00:19:25.14 Dave Yeah. Uh-huh. ah so 00:19:37.78 Adelaide to an island or ruins or whatever to you know that have been long abandoned used to be super cool but aren't as cool anymore. 00:19:47.38 Dave Yeah, ah so you're going to these ruins on this archaeological mission. There is this old man that's guiding your group in there. ah When you get to the front of the ruins, the temple kind of like opens up and swallows your character ah down underground. 00:20:05.66 Dave while the old man that was guiding you bows in reverence to the temple in a voiceover says quote another human is swallowed by the darkness. So ah inside there's a slate on the wall that reads the king dwells in his tower but he no longer visits us. 00:20:22.77 Dave you who were offered to the darkness seek his spear only he who commands the spear can command us and only he can leave the abyss. So we have our goal we need to find this king we need to find this spear ah we are trapped down here in this abyss and this like kind of continues as you 00:20:34.47 Adelaide I think. 00:20:43.31 Dave go through the opening forest area and you get to the shadow tower ah where these fucked up guys in the kind of nexus area tell you in order to claim the spear, you must climb to the top of the tower and defeat the seven lords and quote, become the destroyer. 00:20:47.91 Adelaide but 00:21:00.29 Dave So this is your goal, climb to the top of the tower. 00:21:01.28 Adelaide Right. 00:21:06.18 Adelaide And that's, I mean, like, again, like, that's what a like, soul's ass plot line, right? Like, 00:21:13.05 Dave Yeah. 00:21:13.28 Adelaide you have to you have to defeat all of the lord's right like literally lords so like you've got lord souls or you know ah lords of cinder or whatever and like you know claim the position of power for yourself 00:21:28.63 Dave Yeah, so like this like a plot outline or outline of what your character is doing, like your role in the game is something that continues throughout. 00:21:39.63 Dave ah But the difference in Shadow Tower Abyss as opposed to those future games is this is where the direct storytelling stops. 00:21:48.65 Adelaide Yeah. 00:21:49.05 Dave ah its It's like you get into like the Nexus, the hub area, like this tower, in the first hour or so, maybe in the first two hours of the game. And then after that, there are a couple of NPCs that you can talk to, but they like their, 00:22:06.08 Dave not on, well, one of them's on the same quest that you are. You meet one person who knows this king, and then there's this mysterious scythe woman named Ruru Fon, who seemingly has her own objectives. 00:22:21.08 Dave basic So as far as storytelling goes, she's not a huge help. 00:22:21.41 Adelaide yeah 00:22:25.52 Dave There's another guy who is on the same quest as you are to get to the top, he's not a huge help as far as telling you what's going on in the story. You get some like, I guess the biggest form of storytelling to me that you'll come across in this game is you'll come across messages written in blood on the walls of like people's last words, basically. 00:22:39.57 Adelaide Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, um every once in a while, um you'll ah like bosses when you walk in will have like a blurb of dialogue. 00:22:57.73 Dave Yeah. 00:22:57.74 Adelaide Sometimes that means something, sometimes it doesn't. 00:23:00.83 Dave Yeah, sometimes they're just like, how dare you come into my arena? 00:23:01.21 Adelaide i 00:23:04.35 Adelaide Yeah, exactly. 00:23:04.48 Dave That's it. 00:23:05.23 Adelaide Yeah. 00:23:07.37 Dave um Like we said before, the items have descriptions like the later From Software games do, but they don't tell stories about the items or the people who might have used them. 00:23:18.66 Dave ah You'll pick up a... like you ah you'll pick up a Tomahawk handgun and the description will just say Tomahawk handgun and then whatever gauge it is and that's it. 00:23:30.75 Adelaide who 00:23:30.86 Dave That's the description. So we don't really have that in this game. 00:23:33.14 Adelaide Yeah. 00:23:35.67 Adelaide Yeah, sometimes they have one thing that's a lot more common in this game that obviously gets phased out as you go farther into Souls is it's very common for items to have special magical properties. 00:23:47.59 Adelaide So oftentimes you'll come across a sword that's like, oh, this is like, you know, a two handed great sword, but it'll say like plus poison. 00:23:48.10 Dave Yeah. 00:23:57.45 Adelaide So that means, you know, yeah Ostensibly, if you attack somebody enough, they'll get poisoned. ah I never saw a status effect proc on an enemy, but I'm sure it must happen. 00:24:03.29 Dave Yeah. 00:24:09.01 Dave I'm sure it happens sometimes. Like I think I did poison somebody, but I think a lot of the items I used didn't have those effects. So it is good that those descriptions tell you that that's going to happen um like in very simple terms. 00:24:16.59 Adelaide yeah 00:24:25.44 Dave And that's something I think in common with the rest of this translation in general. um it is a we'll say it's like it it's a good effective workman like fan translation like there were no doesn't seem like there were any like creative liberties taken with you know the names of areas or the names of items or um you know descriptions for like I can't remember there's like a bestiary in the menu and I don't remember if those have like descriptions of the enemies or not 00:24:40.12 Adelaide Yeah. 00:24:56.69 Adelaide Yeah. They're not like flavorful descriptions. They're, well, some of them are, but usually it's like, Oh, this is a gulp. 00:25:08.92 Adelaide This is like a weird little dude. And then it'll be like baby gulp. 00:25:10.91 Dave Yeah. 00:25:13.85 Adelaide The only one that I remember is baby gulp because it's called that multiple times in various videos. But it's violent after birth. ah But you know they're not, they're not particularly helpful. 00:25:21.39 Dave Uh huh. Yeah, right. 00:25:25.32 Adelaide They're just like, this is the guy. 00:25:25.63 Dave Yeah. 00:25:28.38 Dave Yeah, like when we talk about the lack of direct storytelling in here, part of it too, and like obviously can't comment on what the Japanese is like, but ah we're playing a fan translation that seems like it was done fairly literally. 00:25:38.04 Adelaide Mhm. 00:25:43.64 Dave like As long as the literal translation made sense, that's how it was. um 00:25:48.83 Adelaide Yeah. 00:25:49.70 Dave You know, it's good because like you don't read something in the fan translation and be like, that's not the way English speakers would say it. There's nothing like that. 00:25:57.81 Adelaide Right. 00:25:57.98 Dave But there's also no love, it doesn't seem like a whole lot of creativity. 00:26:01.54 Adelaide Mhm. 00:26:02.31 Dave But beggars can't be choosers. I'm not saying that this person did a bad job or something. It's just like, this is the storytelling in Shadow Tower Abyss. 00:26:11.45 Adelaide um And one of the interesting little background notes about this game is apparently like it. It is one of those classic games where there was almost a complete translation done and it was canceled at the last minute by Sony. 00:26:21.95 Dave Yeah. 00:26:25.08 Adelaide um And I'm curious like if there's any like vestiges of that out floating in the internet and this like I i would want, I would be, it it would be really interesting to see those translations like side by side, you know, to see like how similar or how different they are. 00:26:37.38 Dave Yeah. 00:26:41.41 Dave Yeah, now that being said, um like we said, that one YouTuber who took the time to translate both the manual and like the official strategy guide, um they, and again, this is, it even that that person, ElucidatedByFire, said this in their video, like, please understand that I'm using an AI tool to translate these scanned pages. What popped out makes sense to me and fits with the game. 00:27:11.05 Dave But of course, you know, they're not a translator. So don't, you know, take it with a grain of salt, basically. Um That being said, what they came out with from that strategy guide and stuff is really, really interesting as far as the lore and backstory goes. And we'll talk about that in the spoiler section in case anyone does want to go into this fresh. um And it it can go into a little conversation because I think, again, it shares some ideas with the lore of Elden Ring in really interesting ways where like maybe From Software was working on Elden Ring's, you know, backstory and thinking like, do we have any ideas that we want that we didn't fully explore that we want to maybe have another crack at because it definitely feels like that knowing what's in that strategy guide. 00:27:42.02 Adelaide Uh huh. 00:27:55.08 Adelaide Uh huh. Uh huh. 00:28:00.87 Adelaide Yeah, I agree. It really does, because I know they've always been pretty vague about like, you know, we understand that George R. R. Martin was like a pretty integral part of the writing of like, you know, the the story Bible for Elden Ring or whatever. 00:28:17.14 Dave Yeah. 00:28:17.35 Adelaide But like, it is then interesting that there are these like, connective story elements. And it makes me wonder what specifically he added to it. 00:28:27.63 Adelaide um Like, you know, 00:28:28.31 Dave Yeah. Yeah, just just interesting to see and like, um 00:28:38.61 Dave When we get to talking about gameplay and stuff, I think it'll be more talking about like Shadow Tower Abyss kind of on its own and just kind of mentioned like, hey, this is something that was in later games and less of a like comparison as we've done here. 00:28:52.57 Dave But I don't know, I just feel such, I have such strong connections with From Software's games that it's really hard to play an old one and not be like, hey, this is like the newer ones or something like that. 00:29:03.44 Adelaide Right, yeah. 00:29:04.71 Dave ah But um it is interesting that in the game itself, and then in the manual, because I read a translated version of the manual, there is very little of actually explaining what's what is in this world. 00:29:19.35 Dave And then if you look at that strategy guide, and kind of like, piece together what you saw in the game versus what you read about this backstory, it makes perfect sense to me. 00:29:30.43 Dave And it's also really interesting and weird, which is very cool. 00:29:33.04 Adelaide Mm-hmm. Yeah. 00:29:36.09 Dave um Visuals and music in Shadow Tower Abyss looks like a PS2 game. um ah The levels themselves, I think, are pretty standard, like Fantasy Fair, you know, you got a forest, you've got tunnels, ah you've got, you know, insect tunnels, you've got a bunch of caves. um Some of the later levels do get a little bit more sci-fi, like you said, like there's the one with like the, 00:30:03.41 Dave like the neon, purples and blues and stuff like that going on. 00:30:06.00 Adelaide Mhm. 00:30:08.10 Dave um There's an outdoor level with some cliffs, which is cool because most of this game is ah inside. ah The big visual standout to me is the hub area, the nexus where you actually see this tower. 00:30:14.22 Adelaide Yeah. 00:30:18.14 Adelaide Mhm. 00:30:21.34 Dave and you go in there you take elevators up and down it all connects together if you want to backtrack you can do that um but that nexus area really stands out because you you go through a ps2 forest level then you go you take this boat 00:30:36.42 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 00:30:39.68 Dave you know, this river that goes into this opening in the tower and it has like that distinctive symbol that's on the game cover. 00:30:41.78 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 00:30:46.20 Dave And then you have this alien looking area with this fluid with this fluorescent blue green lighting. 00:30:53.06 Adelaide Mm 00:30:53.93 Dave And there's this big central eyeball looking thing shooting a giant laser down into the abyss below you. 00:30:57.70 Adelaide -hmm. 00:31:01.60 Dave And ah it's really striking. And it's definitely the most memorable thing visually from the game. 00:31:07.32 Adelaide Yeah, I agree. um i Again, I want to draw connections between, especially like the visuals in this game and Demon's Souls. I feel like there's a lot of crossover, like specifically the hub area. And Demon's Souls always struck me as very visually distinct because it does look more like a high-tech zone. you know You've got all the magical sigils everywhere. ah You've got the weird alcove with all the little children. I forget what they're called now. ah Whatever. um you know like And then you've got like you know the floor that does the little like water ripples when you walk across it. It just looks like, in compared to everything else that you come across in Demon's Souls, it looks very expressly like 00:31:59.05 Adelaide sci-fi in the same way that like in this game your hub zone where the little like weird frog guys are like you know interacting with magical sigils or you know they've got like like little hologram interfaces that they're like tapping away at or you know doing whatever they're doing like it feels very similar 00:32:22.04 Dave And speaking of those frog guys and and visual design will say, if you like, you know, fucked up little guys, as people like to call them these days, ah From Software games are like the perfect place to find fucked up guys. 00:32:36.61 Dave And I'm pleased to report Shadow Tower Biss is just chock full of fucked up little guys. 00:32:41.34 Adelaide Yeah, yeah, definitely. 00:32:42.80 Dave Yeah. 00:32:43.19 Adelaide And actually, I don't know if you poked around at the first game, but that game has some of the most wild and diverse enemy designs I've ever seen in a frog software game. 00:32:48.02 Dave I haven't, not yet. 00:32:56.34 Adelaide like I was really excited about Bloodborne and Elden Ring because they specifically kind of swing outside of like what the typical sort of fantasy design is for. 00:32:56.88 Dave Nice. 00:33:05.76 Dave Yeah. 00:33:07.01 Adelaide Souls games, but I feel like a Shadow Tower is really like really out there also. 00:33:13.30 Dave Yeah, ah not fighting human enemies in this game. um No skeletons, at least not that I remember. um It's definitely more just like, just draw your weirdest creatures. 00:33:27.42 Dave Like, is it that you know a humanoid thing that only has one giant arm? Let's All right, let's do it. 00:33:33.18 Adelaide Yeah, exactly. 00:33:33.38 Dave but's Let's get those. um These weird little like, p Cyclopsian, ah, real monsters looking things that you fight in the first level in the forest? Like, sure, bring them on. 00:33:44.57 Dave Those are our goblins in this game, you know? 00:33:46.66 Adelaide Yeah. Yeah. All sorts of weird, like, invisible, ah like, fish that have weird, like, halo bone structures coming up. 00:33:55.47 Dave Yeah, yeah, little ah flying stingray horseshoe crab looking enemies in one of the later zones, ah even like the harpies and stuff, which is, you know, harpies are in a lot of fantasy games, but the Shadow Tower Abyss harpies look different and they're they're real weird. 00:33:56.09 Adelaide Talk about them. 00:34:12.48 Adelaide Or... Yeah. 00:34:14.06 Dave So yeah, ah enemy design, big win, as they usually are with From Software. Um, already mentioned before, but this game barely has any music. So this is one of those games that, uh, most of the game, you're just going to hear your footsteps. Maybe some environmental ambiance, if it's like, you know, this area has running rushing water. So we'll, we'll hear that. But in the tower area, in the forest, stuff like that, in some of the more. 00:34:45.86 Dave like cave zones, there is just the sound of your footsteps and then any gameplay sounds that you hear. ah You get like a little musical sting every time you enter a new area for the first time. It's like a five to 10 second little thing. Like, um you know, they're interesting. I'm not sure how they connect with the area that you're going into, but they do sound cool. 00:35:13.07 Adelaide Yeah, it's very similar to like, you know, again, ah I'm going to be doing this the whole episode, so get over it. um The way that Souls games have title cards for every zone, right and you get that distinctive Dark Souls like sound effect when you get the title card, right and it's very much like that, except it's a different sound effect each time. 00:35:24.06 Dave Yeah. 00:35:34.88 Adelaide And you're right, I want to say that they're being you know intentional, right and that there's some sort of like, when you walk into the hub area for the first time, it's like, 00:35:45.53 Adelaide You know, somebody just kind of flopped their hand on a synthesizer. And like, ah you know, the ah bug area is like, ah just like a kind of a spooky sound. 00:35:50.12 Dave Yeah. 00:35:58.49 Adelaide Or when you get into the weird gothic castle at the end of the game, it's like this, like, you know, sort of horror string kind of melody. So it is interesting, though, that it takes the idea You know, again, like at this point, like they're already settled on like, we don't want music in the game while it's happening, right? Because that takes away from the atmosphere of it, but they didn't quite get to like, well, maybe we should at least have music for the boss fights because that, you know, adds some drama and weight to them. 00:36:35.00 Dave Right, not not really here. The boss fights are pretty anticlimactic for a lot of reasons, but one of those is we don't have that you know iconic music happening during them. 00:36:40.50 Adelaide Yeah. 00:36:47.28 Adelaide Mm hmm. 00:36:48.42 Dave Half of these boss fights would be over before a ah song would be able to get to the good part anyway, but 00:36:54.28 Adelaide Yeah. 00:36:54.89 Dave um There's two songs I think in the game, there's the one at the main menu which has like this ah this tribal percussive percussion, you know, the type where they have all kinds of drums and like the musical, like the melody of it is the different drum tones basically. 00:37:12.08 Dave And then there's a song in the credits too, which is, I listened to it before recording and I already forgot it. It's not very memorable. 00:37:19.88 Adelaide Yeah. 00:37:20.76 Dave But yeah the main menu song is interesting, certainly not what you would expect when you boot this game up. But yeah, that's what we got as far as music goes. 00:37:31.27 Adelaide Yeah. 00:37:33.38 Dave Let's talk about the gameplay in Shadow Tower Abyss. ah First person, dungeon crawling. So that's where the King's Field with guns elevator pitch came from. You have melee weapons and you have guns. But before we talk about those things in detail, this is a bit of an adjustment. If anyone out there is listening to this and thinking, I want to play Shadow Tower Abyss, be ready to feel out of sorts at the beginning while you get to grips with how to control the game, but then also how it works as an RPG and stuff like that. 00:38:12.72 Dave um The controls are weird. It uses the same default control scheme as King's Field 4, including such great ideas as a tank controls with the left stick, the right stick not controlling your camera, 00:38:24.90 Adelaide Mm hmm. 00:38:28.26 Dave um L1 and R1 strafe side to side and L2 and R2 look up and down. ah So that's how you control the camera. 00:38:34.51 Adelaide Yeah. 00:38:36.92 Dave I played all of Kingsfield 4 with this scheme. I got used to it, but when I saw that there was an option to not do this, I was like, okay, let's not do this. 00:38:46.14 Adelaide Yeah, and I think the option for the like the normal FPS controls, as we know them, is the best way to play this game. I think the tragedy of it is, though, that you lose the really interesting design for the melee controls, which is, 00:39:04.46 Adelaide that while the left stick moves your character, the right stick is how you swing your melee weapon. ah And so like in the other controls, your melee attacks are mapped to the shoulder buttons like they would be in a Souls game. 00:39:11.70 Dave Oh, okay. Gotcha. 00:39:21.30 Adelaide But with the default controls, um since there is importance in directionality in how you swing your weapon, the moving the stick left or right, up or down, 00:39:21.66 Dave Yeah. 00:39:33.26 Adelaide changes which swing you do with your melee weapon. 00:39:36.96 Dave Gotcha. So is it like, uh, do you like to click the stick to do the stab if you remember? 00:39:41.13 Adelaide I think it's So I think it's left and right are the different left and right slashes. um Forward is the downward attack, and then back is the the stab, I think is the way that it works. 00:39:50.42 Dave Okay. 00:39:52.94 Dave Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. um I played with option four, which is the one that makes the right stick control the camera like every ah FPS since Halo. 00:39:58.07 Adelaide Yeah. 00:40:03.78 Dave um I it Like that worked. um The ah camera sensitivity is way too low and you can't change it. 00:40:13.24 Adelaide Yeah. 00:40:14.10 Dave So that was a bit of a struggle. like It takes forever to turn around in this game, kind of like Kingsfield 4. It would take literally 12 seconds to do a 360 spin in that game. 00:40:24.41 Adelaide this 00:40:24.91 Dave And this one is very similar, even with the more modern ah controls. So like, be prepared to have to adjust to how to literally control the game. 00:40:36.42 Dave um Other odd stuff, even in option four, ah X opens the menu, triangle switches between your melee weapon and your gun. 00:40:36.51 Adelaide Yeah. 00:40:46.33 Dave ah The start button does not pause the game. It is your quick slot. item. So if you have healing potions there, start is how you heal. And then select is like the pause but not menu ah command. 00:40:55.07 Adelaide yeah 00:41:01.94 Adelaide And because it's, ah sorry to cut you off, ah because it's a Japanese translation, you also have the flip-flopped Japanese controls for the confirm and cancel, which is in America, you know, X is confirmed, circle is canceled, but in Japan, circle is confirmed and X is canceled. 00:41:14.73 Dave So yeah, 00:41:24.41 Dave always trips me up. um i I think if I play this game for 11 hours, I get used to it by about hour nine, maybe in this game. 00:41:32.33 Adelaide yeah yeah 00:41:34.52 Dave um Yeah, it's ah it's just an oddball. Anytime you play RPGs, especially from like the PS2 and before, before everyone had you know generally settled on like three control schemes that they're gonna use, it's just, ah It's just a crapshoot as to like, how is this game going to do controls? 00:41:58.40 Dave So this is one of those. 00:41:58.59 Adelaide Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 00:42:00.28 Dave um Once you figure out how to control your character, the first time you open that menu screen, you're going to be a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of information that's on there. 00:42:08.52 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 00:42:10.80 Dave ah This is an RPG an RPG. There's a lot of stats. 00:42:14.27 Adelaide Yeah. 00:42:15.81 Dave There's a lot of equipment. um It shows I always love when RPGs do this. It's a very lizard brain thing, but it has the little picture of your dude and then like all the different body parts where you're going to put armor on there. 00:42:27.58 Adelaide Aha. 00:42:28.71 Dave I love that. I wish every game did that. um And so if you want to switch your chest piece, you have to go over to your character's chest on that diagram to switch the chest piece out. 00:42:31.22 Adelaide Yeah. 00:42:40.50 Dave I love that stuff, but there's also like like 20 fucking stats in this game. 00:42:46.29 Adelaide Yeah, it's funny because, like anyone familiar again, anyone familiar with a Souls game will look at the stat screen and like know what they're looking at, but not be able to glean any information from it. ah Because like a typical Souls game, right you have all of your like physical and magical stats in a row, and then you have your damage stats. 00:43:07.64 Adelaide for both physical damage and magical damage. 00:43:10.25 Dave Mm hmm. 00:43:10.40 Adelaide However, what the game neglects to tell you, unlike a Souls game where you can like hit the Select button right and see like a little like help tooltip for each of the different stats, is it will not tell you what any of those stats do or mean, where any of the damage types are derived from. 00:43:24.96 Dave Yeah. 00:43:29.27 Adelaide And then there are weird ones. So you've got your like normal like strength, constitution, stamina, dexterity, stuff like that. And then the magical stats are all very strange. It's like mentality and like spirit and like concentration, I think is one of them. 00:43:46.81 Dave Yeah, it's like one of those where you would look at those words and be like those could all mean the same thing. So I have no idea what they actually mean. 00:43:56.23 Adelaide Right. Yeah. 00:43:59.01 Adelaide Mm hmm. 00:43:59.27 Dave Thankfully, a couple of people have put guides on game facts just explaining the stats so that you can um 00:44:03.05 Adelaide Mm hmm. 00:44:07.28 Dave efficiently put points in, there's an item you pick up called a soul pot that gives you skill points where you can like manual upgrade your stats. 00:44:12.11 Adelaide Okay. 00:44:14.56 Dave What's weird also in this game, which the manual tells you, but of course the manuals are in Japanese, so you have to do a little bit of extra digging if you're going to figure this out. The level up system in this game is really weird. 00:44:27.04 Dave You don't get skill points on level ups to like assign to your stats. Your character just gets stronger as you play. There is no like thing on the UI that says level up. 00:44:42.52 Adelaide Right. 00:44:42.80 Dave Here's your stat upgrades. It just happens in the background as you play. So if you like, look at a screenshot from hour two, and then another one from hour four, you'll see your stats have gone up. 00:44:54.97 Dave um I think you have to kill enemies to do this. 00:44:58.16 Adelaide I think my impression, and again, like, we'll kind of talk about it, ah but it's hard to tell. 00:44:58.21 Dave But 00:45:04.58 Adelaide My impression is that it's something like a Final Fantasy 2 or an Elder Scrolls where I think the idea is the more you do a thing, the better you get at it. 00:45:14.50 Dave Mm. 00:45:16.54 Adelaide ah But I think ah one of the kind of fascinating things about this game is not only does it not tell you anything about the stats, but they kind of don't matter. 00:45:27.12 Adelaide Like what's really like, like obviously like if you're going to be casting spells a lot, you want to make sure you have a lot of MP, right? Or if you're focusing on just attacking, like doing melee and guns, then you want to make sure your physical numbers are going up. 00:45:45.62 Dave Mm hmm. 00:45:45.71 Adelaide But that's really the only consideration that you have. You want you want you want the number to get bigger. 00:45:48.76 Dave Yeah. 00:45:51.87 Adelaide and beyond that, you really don't have to think about it that much. 00:45:55.51 Dave Yeah, I looked at so I looked at that game facts guide to figure out which stat raises my max HP and then I put every single soul pot skill point into that stat for the entire game. 00:45:59.04 Adelaide doesn't 00:46:07.11 Adelaide Yeah. 00:46:07.93 Dave I didn't mess with anything else ah because The thing that you'll realize is like your stats go up, you know, you level up naturally as you play the game, but where your big stat increases are actually going to come is from equipment and items that raise those stats. 00:46:21.20 Adelaide Yes. 00:46:23.72 Dave So ah it's like this, leveling up your actual character is not a huge concern. It will just kind of happen. And then you'll get those soul pot items to level up your HP or give yourself more magic points or whatever, but what you really need to do is just always have whatever ida ah equipment gives you the best stat boots. 00:46:39.53 Adelaide Mhmm. 00:46:46.80 Dave Just just ah equip that stuff. so um you You pick up so much stuff in this game. um just like it's like neo levels of equipment that you pick up if anyone out there has played neo like you're just constantly picking up new swords new uh you know pieces of armor and you have like eight types of armor, you know, your gloves, your head piece, your chest piece, your your boots, your rings, your your pendants and all of that stuff. 00:47:14.05 Adelaide Mm hmm. 00:47:19.51 Dave You're just like showered with this stuff. ah What kind of sucks is there's an encumbrance system. It's the original version of Demon's Souls encumbrance where it's like, or like, ah you know, an Elder Scrolls encumbrance where it's the stuff you're carrying, not the stuff that's equipped on you. 00:47:32.19 Adelaide Yeah. 00:47:38.37 Dave which is interesting, but it sucks because ah you can't tell how heavy something is until you pick it up. And then once you pick it up, you can't drop it. 00:47:46.59 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 00:47:49.24 Adelaide Yes, most importantly and most frustratingly, there is no way to jettison equipment on your own. You have to be at a store to sell it or store it. 00:48:00.37 Adelaide And in a slow-moving game, right encumbrance already takes your speed down, and that's a problem. 00:48:00.51 Dave Yeah. 00:48:07.79 Adelaide It honestly doesn't end up like I didn't ever find it being an issue for maneuverability and combat. But what it does do is it makes everything take so much longer. 00:48:19.90 Dave Yeah. 00:48:20.12 Adelaide ah And then ah the other part of that is that there is a second level to encumbrance that the game also doesn't tell you about. So the first level of encumbrance is that you move really slow. 00:48:32.08 Adelaide Second level of encumbrance is you move really slow, and you slowly take damage like poison. So now you have to get to a store to get rid of your shit, and you're also going to slowly die on the way there. 00:48:45.10 Dave Yeah, I didn't hit that level, but I did. especially later in the game when you're just picking up like amazing pieces of armor and amazing swords all the time. 00:48:54.47 Adelaide to Yeah Yeah 00:48:56.90 Dave Like every couple minutes you pick up a new thing and they're all really heavy because they're late game armor pieces or late game, you know, great axes or whatever. 00:49:07.30 Dave So like you want to pick them up because it's a cool weapon. I want to try it out. But oh, fuck that thing weighs, you know, nine pounds and my character can carry 75 pounds. 00:49:18.73 Dave maximum. So ah there's also um like, I think the reason you're getting so much stuff is there's a weapon and armor like degradation and breaking system in here too, ah which 00:49:19.56 Adelaide yeah 00:49:29.78 Adelaide who 00:49:34.74 Dave does force you to have backup plans. like I always carried a backup chest piece in case mine broke, because that's your main armor piece. 00:49:40.72 Adelaide Yeah. 00:49:42.79 Dave I also carried a bunch of different weapons because like I might have a sword that I like, but it's going to break fairly quickly. like It's not Breath of the Wild quick. but it will happen faster than breaking items in Dark Souls will happen. 00:49:57.15 Adelaide Yeah, definitely. 00:49:57.97 Dave So you do have to carry a bunch of stuff and this is good for getting you to try those new things that you picked up. ah what it What it also happens is you spend a lot of time in the menu swapping stuff out, like probably too much time. 00:50:08.65 Adelaide Yeah. Yeah, and and like it's funny because this, and we'll probably talk about this more in detail later, ah but like I think this is maybe the only time, this in Shadow Tower 1, because I know that that game deals with durability a lot too. 00:50:28.62 Adelaide ah that the only time that FromSoft has ever done anything interesting with durability, where it actually matters in the game. 00:50:35.37 Dave Yeah, yeah. 00:50:36.16 Adelaide And again, like you can see this vestigial element of the gameplay like transitioning into Dark Souls games, where it serves no purpose. 00:50:48.09 Adelaide You're almost never under any threat of equipment breaking, um especially like once you hit Dark Souls 2 and onwards, 00:50:48.20 Dave Yeah. 00:50:55.51 Adelaide things automatically repair when you sit at a bonfire. so like yes But like but like here, you are under so much pressure um because a broken weapon is useless and you can't get rid of it. 00:51:00.50 Dave ah It's. 00:51:10.46 Adelaide So it's just taking up space in your inventory. 00:51:14.24 Dave Yeah. 00:51:14.43 Adelaide um And the difference between an unarmed attack and a sword attack is pretty significant. 00:51:14.52 Dave and Oh yeah, it's it you have to have like an actual weapon for anything beyond like the first couple levels. 00:51:28.47 Dave ah You can repair stuff. Interesting enough, ah this game has a repair system where you have to go to a special merchant to do it. 00:51:34.68 Adelaide Oh, oh no. 00:51:36.30 Dave And when we say merchant, they're like these ah little statues with like these glowing crystals at the top. They're not people. um You can go to this merchant to repair, but it doesn't cost money, it costs you HP. 00:51:50.89 Dave So it will say, repair my sword, it will cost you 800 HP to repair. um For a while, I thought this was a really interesting like strategic trade off because 00:52:03.59 Adelaide Yeah. 00:52:04.35 Dave Health potions are not rare, but they're not plentiful. they're not And they don't recharge when you ah rest at like ah or when you save. like This is not an Estus thing. So it's consumable to heal. um So I did get into this interesting mathematical ah little stretch strategy session sometimes where it's like, this sword's really great. I love this sword. It's gonna cost 1,000 HP to repair it. 00:52:34.75 Dave 1000 HP, I have to use a health potion. And in order to get more health potions, I either need to find more or buy more and money's not bountiful for most of the game. So is it worth it to repair this? 00:52:46.97 Dave Or should I just use something else? Like I had those interesting little conversations with myself, which I thought was really cool. And then it stops mattering at a certain point. But ah this is an interesting idea that I'm not sure like totally works, but it does make you think sometimes. 00:52:56.54 Adelaide Yeah. 00:53:04.55 Adelaide Yeah, it really gestures towards a more interesting and well-tuned system where like right you're you're making a calculation between, like is it worth it for me to repair this and spend my HP on it? Or like there are also healing stations where you can essentially spend item durability to heal yourself as well. So like it does seem like you know there There's a version of this that is much more finely tuned that makes you really consider those um decisions. 00:53:40.80 Adelaide This game, unfortunately, like a lot of games, those pressures are only very early in the game. And then once you get to a certain point, you're either swimming in money, swimming in health potions, or there there are items that you can just buy that like heal 50 durability to, I think everything you have equipped, which is like, 00:54:02.42 Dave Yeah. 00:54:03.18 Adelaide the maximum for most items, like, 00:54:05.60 Dave Yeah, that's kind of overkill and you get to know enough of those items to use them if you're ever in an emergency. And you'll also pick up items that restore your health at some point. 00:54:15.66 Dave So like when you get those, paying to repair an item is not a cost. 00:54:16.38 Adelaide yeah. 00:54:22.85 Adelaide Right. 00:54:22.90 Dave The cost is time to sit and wait for your thing to regenerate your health. 00:54:27.16 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 00:54:27.90 Dave But by that point, you have so many fucking swords and weapons and armor pieces that I would never repair something anyway. 00:54:35.03 Adelaide Yeah, that's kind of the interesting thing about this game is like in the beginning, I feel like it really makes you think that there's going to be item scarcity. But once you can let go of the idea of equipment being important, your best bet is just to hold on to whatever you have equipped. And every time you have a store, um unless you want to back up, sell everything. You get at least two cunes per equipment piece, if not more, if it's better. 00:55:04.82 Dave Mm hmm. 00:55:04.89 Adelaide And that'll keep you so swimming in money that you really don't ever have to worry about it again. 00:55:10.40 Dave Yeah, I only ran out of money very late in the game because there was a pendant that had a very fast HP regen and it was really expensive. So I used all my money to buy that. 00:55:20.08 Adelaide Oh yeah. 00:55:21.44 Dave But after I bought that, I had nothing else I needed. I don't need to buy health potions. My HP regenerates very quickly. So Yeah, you do kind of get to that point. 00:55:32.03 Dave I guess it's cool because at the end of the game, I felt unstoppable. Like there was no chance anything was going to beat me, which is a good feeling to have at the end of an RPG. 00:55:35.84 Adelaide Yeah. 00:55:41.05 Dave I love that. um And ah this game will give you that if you take advantage of all the cool stuff that you find. So um RPG systems are really interesting. 00:55:53.82 Dave Like they, like you said, they kind of gesture toward putting together this really complex problem, but you only have to solve that problem for about three, four or five hours of the game. 00:56:07.37 Dave ah But while that was happening, I thought it was really cool. like I'm a fan of ah durability and weapon braking systems if they make for interesting choices, which is why I'm a fan of it in Breath of the Wild and 00:56:10.87 Adelaide Yeah. 00:56:22.10 Dave In this game, early in the game, I was a big fan of it, too. Then later in the game, it turned into just like, oh, this sword's broken. Fucking I'm going to sell it. I have 10 more. It doesn't matter. 00:56:33.45 Adelaide Yeah. 00:56:35.56 Dave Let's talk about swords and melee weapons and melee combat. So the cool thing that you mentioned earlier is that this game has directional attacks, which you can do a side to side slash, you can do an overhead swing, and then there's a stab. 00:56:51.83 Dave ah Each of those have their own stats. So ah if you wanted to put your skill points into stab damage, you could. 00:56:58.53 Adelaide Yeah. 00:56:59.36 Dave um but each weapon has individual strengths and weaknesses to it, which is cool. ah The key part about this is this game has a dismemberment mechanic with enemies and body parts. 00:57:04.57 Adelaide listen Yes. 00:57:10.24 Dave So fun strategy when you come across a new enemy type, ah let's say it's the Harpies. um You can cut the Harpies wings off so they can't fly anymore and they're much less dangerous. 00:57:23.99 Dave ah You can also just pop heads off, which is, you know, 00:57:24.02 Adelaide Yeah. 00:57:27.29 Dave good for most enemies. There's an enemy late in the game that has a parasite attached to it. And the only way to permanently kill it is to cut off the parasite, which is really cool. 00:57:38.45 Dave um To give you this, you know, three different types of attacks. 00:57:38.94 Adelaide Yeah. 00:57:43.39 Dave ah If you're trying to cut an enemy's head off, the stab is probably not going to do that for you the best. So you should use the side slash. um Really cool to come across new enemies and try and figure out what's the best way to take them down. 00:57:57.05 Adelaide Yeah. um it's And again, it's so funny to see like here, one of my but one of my gripes with Souls games is like being able to pinpoint what damage numbers mean in them is very, very hard, right? 00:58:17.12 Adelaide Because each weapon has three different damage sources that are just physical damage sources. If they're enchanted in any way, they're also doing a magical damage source, right? 00:58:22.42 Dave Yeah. 00:58:26.82 Adelaide um Here, though, you have specific ways of making those damages happen, right? So if you have a weapon that's good at slashing but not good at poking, then you don't have to worry about how poking figures into the damage equation. 00:58:42.71 Adelaide You just only ever have to slash with it. 00:58:42.84 Dave Yeah. 00:58:45.54 Adelaide um 00:58:46.45 Dave Yeah, and it also makes it so, maybe you have like a hammer that does really good, like the overhead smash attack does more damage, but the hammer's broken, and all you have left is a dagger early in the game. 00:58:58.80 Dave Well, the dagger does do pretty good, like slash damage, and then if you hit the enemy right, maybe you'll cut their arm off, and so they can't swing at you anymore, like in dead space, you know? 00:59:07.89 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 00:59:10.05 Dave And enemies will like crawl around on the ground if you cut their legs off, 00:59:13.90 Adelaide Yeah. 00:59:14.06 Dave ah so they're never like helpless but they are nerfed for sure if you do this stuff which is always awesome and then later in the game you get ah guns and you can just you know like if you're good at aiming you can just like pop heads off and it's it's really satisfying to get that 00:59:31.75 Adelaide And it's like, for not all of the enemies, but for enough that I felt like it was a consideration. like There are enemies that you want to be doing certain types of attacks to them. 00:59:43.46 Adelaide so like ah For instance, there's an enemy that's like a flower that shoots laser beams. 00:59:43.82 Dave Yeah. 00:59:48.69 Adelaide and the easiest way is to kill them a bunch of different ways, but the easiest way to get them is to walk up to them and do like a horizontal slash, and that cuts them off. at the base and then you can get rid of it without having to worry about being attacked. 01:00:01.25 Dave yeah 01:00:03.41 Adelaide Or like you mentioned, like the first couple of enemies that you run into, the easiest way to get them is to get a headshot on them. It's an instant kill. ah you know So like it does make you think about what your weapons are good at and how you're using them um you know in a pretty tangible way. 01:00:23.66 Dave Yeah. 01:00:27.50 Dave Yeah, absolutely. um What's also interesting is like in Kingsfield for melee combat. kind of devolved basically until very late in the game, ah just circle strafe forever and the enemies will turn, but probably not be able to keep up with you. 01:00:46.98 Dave And in and you just know whack while you have the stamina attack, stamina recharge as you circle strafe, attack again. And in Shadow Tower, you have this extra level of strategy for how you approach each enemy, which has never been repeated in any of the modern From Software games to this level. 01:01:08.02 Dave Like obviously there are better ways to fight certain enemies but aside from a few bosses where you can cut their tails off like there's never a consideration to this level. 01:01:15.66 Adelaide Right. 01:01:18.78 Dave So the melee combat is really simple like you don't have combos or like special weapon arts or anything like that but you do have a strategy to approach each encounter. 01:01:31.14 Dave And later in the game, some of the enemies hit hard, or maybe there's an environmental effect that's sapping your health. 01:01:38.53 Dave And so you do need to kind of think about combat. um for most of the game ah eventually you'll get like the best equipment and you're a god but after that uh the other part about the combat is uh guns so i laughed like early in the game um or like sometimes i get in you know melee encounters because i like to have my big sword or my axe or something and then like an enemy will get a big hidden on me and like 01:01:49.17 Adelaide Right. Mm-hmm. 01:02:05.56 Adelaide right yeah it's definitely uh it can be like the the like indiana jones in the marketplace moment right like the enemy jumps out and does their 01:02:09.12 Dave you know, take a quarter of my health away. And so there are a bunch of situations where you get hit and you back off and pull a gun out. And it's like that meme where it's like calling an ambulance, but not for me, because I just pulled out an M16. And, you know, it's time for you to go down. um 01:02:33.29 Dave Yeah. 01:02:35.24 Adelaide like fancy flourish and then you just pull out your handgun and shoot them in the head. 01:02:39.16 Dave Yeah, ah there's not a lot of enemies that feel equipped to deal with guns in here and I remember on bonfireside chat they kind of posited that maybe the guns were added late in development here. 01:02:45.10 Adelaide Yeah. 01:02:53.65 Dave It's like there's no enemies that will jump side to side to dodge gunshots, except for a couple of bosses who will do that. um There's not a lot of enemies that have ranged capabilities of their own. 01:03:05.40 Adelaide Right. 01:03:05.62 Dave There's those flowers that have lasers. ah There might be a couple others that shoot little you know blobs of yuck at you, but there's there's no one else that has 01:03:12.91 Adelaide Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 01:03:18.05 Dave heavy ranged capabilities. So like a lot of times you can enter a room and just kind of like pick everything off from a distance if you have the bullets for it. 01:03:26.58 Adelaide yeah Although I feel like that's kind of balanced out by how ponderous it is to use a gun in this game. Like, I don't know. 01:03:38.03 Adelaide It feels like it's a lot harder to aim and shoot. And like, especially with the couple of enemies that are expressly, like, require you to use or not require, but it's infinitely easier to use a ranged weapon with. 01:03:55.29 Dave Yeah. 01:03:55.34 Adelaide um Like, they're mobile enough that unless you really have an idea of where you're shooting, you're going to end up missing a lot. 01:04:04.62 Dave Yeah. 01:04:05.23 Adelaide So for as powerful as the guns are, I think they're kind of balanced out by the fact that they're difficult to use effectively. 01:04:14.11 Dave Yeah there's no aim reticle on the screen so the guns always just shoot at the center of the screen like the exact center so once you get the hang of it you can kind of like i'm fairly precisely but um it's not easy especially early and ammo is 01:04:33.13 Adelaide yeah 01:04:36.23 Dave somewhat limited, especially when you only have a couple of guns. 01:04:40.18 Dave Ammo is fairly limited and it's expensive to buy, um like top up on it. Later in the game, you have so much money and you really have nothing to spend it on except for things like great pieces of armor or bullets. 01:04:54.14 Adelaide Yeah. Yeah. 01:04:54.18 Dave So I didn't run out of ammo later in the game, but while you're still learning how to aim, it's kind of odd. um I think the hit detection is pretty generous too, which helps you, you know, maybe you can't aim within, you know, a fraction of an inch or whatever, but the game does kind of help you out. 01:05:15.00 Adelaide Yeah. Do you mind if I run to the bathroom really quickly? 01:05:17.54 Dave Yeah. 01:05:18.19 Adelaide Okay, cool. 01:07:03.53 Adelaide Okay, cool. 01:07:04.99 Dave Cool. Let's see. So we're just wrapping up talking about guns. 01:07:11.75 Adelaide Oh, so I will say that like I feel like the last part of the game really wants, it feels like it really wants you to be using guns more often than not, ah especially because like I feel like the last couple of zones, right like the the water or the cliff area, um the 01:07:20.55 Dave Mm hmm. 01:07:32.28 Adelaide the the fog area like all have almost exclusively flying and the moving platform zone um all have like almost exclusively flying units so I did feel like I was like kind of running at a deficit at that point but 01:07:39.26 Dave Yeah. 01:07:48.09 Adelaide um yeah Like you said, you can just pour all of your money into buying, and in fact, probably should, even if you're not currently using it, pour all of your but excess money into buying more ammo if you don't feel like you need a better equipment piece, and that should keep you sort of topped up for the most part. 01:08:09.10 Dave um your I think your mic is a little bit further away than it was before, so you're coming in a little bit quieter. 01:08:13.00 Adelaide Oh. Sorry. Was that better? 01:08:17.02 Dave Try talking at your normal volume and we'll see. 01:08:19.64 Adelaide um So I feel like ah the game is really balanced towards the end of it, is really balanced for you to be using guns more often. um A lot of the enemies in the cliff zone, the fog zone, and the moving platform zone, which are kind of like the three last big areas that you go through, have almost exclusively flying enemies. ah So unless you're leaning really heavy into the magic system, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, in a second, 01:08:48.99 Dave Yeah. 01:08:49.26 Adelaide and you're probably mostly using guns, um which did have me feel like I'm running at a bit of a deficit. um But like you said, ah ah since you're kind of you know running at a high amount of money, if you're taking advantage of selling equipment that's broken or that you don't need, what you can do is turn around and then turn that money right into ammo. 01:09:12.55 Adelaide So as long as you're doing that like regularly enough, I feel like you're probably in a pretty good spot. 01:09:13.56 Dave Yeah. 01:09:18.98 Dave Yeah, for sure. I basically just bought like, you know, late game merchants, it's like any M 16 ammo that they have. 01:09:28.59 Adelaide Yeah. 01:09:28.92 Dave I'll buy that any um I don't remember if it's like an AR 15 or something like there's an assault rifle type gun. 01:09:35.77 Adelaide Yeah. 01:09:36.25 Dave um I'll just buy whatever ammo they have for that. And then any extra money I might buy healing potions, or I might just, you know, save it for later. um But The guns that you get late in the game are really really strong so they're like by not by far because some of the late game like legendary melee weapons you get are really good too but um the guns are so strong and you can just stand out of the distance and shoot stuff. 01:09:50.87 Adelaide yeah 01:10:05.40 Dave um That's definitely the way to go later. You mentioned the magic system. I didn't even write this in my notes because I did not use this. um Magic is tied to rings that you pick up. 01:10:17.38 Dave So your character doesn't learn spells. 01:10:19.33 Dave You'll pick up a ring that shoots fireballs, for example. And the rings have durability too. and durability, if it says ah durability eight, that means you can cast the fireball spell eight times and then the ring is broken forever. 01:10:35.45 Dave Um, I didn't use this because frankly, I didn't need to. There's one zone that has magic resistant enemies, but I, like in that walkthrough, uh, we both watched the person say, like, I used all this magic here because the enemies are weak to magic. 01:10:53.87 Dave And I went in there just with my great swords and, you know, cut arms off and stuff. And it didn't really matter. 01:10:59.01 Adelaide yeah 01:10:59.74 Dave Like. Doesn't matter if you're resistant to magic if you have no arms or legs. So that's not much you can do as far as the enemies go. ah So did you use the magic much? 01:11:09.20 Adelaide Yeah. Not really. Like the first couple of times, you get um initially you get rings as like boss rewards in addition to the progression item. 01:11:18.93 Dave Yeah. 01:11:21.47 Adelaide um And so for the first couple of times, I did use them. um And they're interesting because not only do they cast ah they have an MP cost, but they also have like a stamina-like system where you have a certain amount of casts before you have to wait for it to recharge. 01:11:38.74 Dave Yeah. 01:11:39.10 Adelaide um But by and large, I didn't really touch this. And by the end of the game, even though you get some super cool like powerful spells, um I found an item that severely boosts your physical stat but stats, but keeps you ah permanently in a steel sealed status effect, which makes it so you can't cast magic. 01:12:01.89 Dave Yeah. 01:12:04.21 Adelaide So I i felt like it was just strictly easier to play the game that way than like brother and and the problem with magic again like is it has the gun problem as well where like you don't have any sort of a we read it cool cool and you don't really even have like a weapon for reference so like you have no idea like how to aim your shots you kind of just have to hope that you're like like you say like center the enemy as much as possible 01:12:23.31 Dave Yeah. 01:12:33.09 Adelaide and then hope that the projectiles go out of your character in a way that hits the enemy. 01:12:38.20 Dave ah yeah 01:12:38.45 Adelaide ah And so like and like magic potions aren't very plentiful. They're less plentiful than health potions. 01:12:46.49 Dave Oh yeah. 01:12:46.94 Adelaide like You can find them as enemy drops, and you can buy them. But I definitely feel like it was much rarer to find than it was and health potions were. So overall, I just feel like it wasn't it wasn't really necessary to engage with. 01:12:57.45 Dave Yeah. 01:13:03.13 Dave Yeah, part of the issue, because I found that item too, that gives you the seal in exchange for boosting all your physical stats. ah The problem with that is the seal status effect puts this yellow filter over the screen, which made it really annoying. 01:13:18.14 Adelaide Oh, yeah. yeah ah 01:13:21.28 Dave You can like, put that on and then put on an item that like counters seal or maybe it's vice versa and it will like, it will nullify it so it doesn't matter. 01:13:27.22 Adelaide Yeah. 01:13:32.21 Adelaide Yeah. 01:13:32.25 Dave um I found a ring late in the game that is basically like this ring can't do magic, but it will boost all of your stats. 01:13:39.87 Adelaide Oh, that's right. If you. ah spoilers i guess maybe if you there's an optional boss shall we say that you can fight ah towards the end of the game that you get that from yeah yeah yeah 01:13:47.03 Dave Yeah. 01:13:50.75 Dave Yeah, so that's what I did. Once I got to that point, I was like, it's clear I'm not really using this. I don't know what's going on with my magic stats. I'm just not going to use magic. So um last thing about playing the game, the experience of playing it that I want to get into before we wrap the non-spoiler part is um it's a game that's easy to get lost in. 01:14:16.25 Dave um Part of that is that there's no map in your menu. ah There's a thing in your menu that says map, but all it will do is show you completion percentage of each level. 01:14:20.47 Adelaide Yeah. 01:14:24.45 Adelaide for Yeah. 01:14:28.31 Dave um The maps you get are drawn on walls by you know long dead or long gone NPCs. They will not show you the entire menu or the entire level. 01:14:40.03 Dave They will just show you, you know, the immediate area and you can't you don't copy them and take them with you. They're just like I'm going in this hallway. 01:14:48.10 Adelaide Right. 01:14:50.40 Dave There's a map drawn on the wall. Let me see that to just get a quick idea of what the layout of this place is. You know, you know, three rooms in a couple of combat scenarios. 01:15:01.42 Dave I've completely forgotten the map and image that I was holding in my head. 01:15:01.75 Adelaide Yeah. 01:15:05.72 Dave So they're kind of helpful late. There's one level like there's a desert level late in the game where I thought those maps were very helpful, but um only in that immediate area where you find it. 01:15:13.72 Adelaide yeah 01:15:21.74 Adelaide This game is ah really interesting in the sense that, like, like dark demon souls, um it's like split up into very express like zones. 01:15:22.44 Dave But yeah. 01:15:33.29 Adelaide So like once you get out of the hub area, right you take an elevator or you can go into either the insect zone or the weird cyclops people zone. 01:15:33.70 Dave Yeah. 01:15:43.24 Adelaide Then once you've cleared those, you take an elevator that takes you to another, ah you know the scouring wastes or whatever it's called. 01:15:43.38 Dave Right. 01:15:50.95 Adelaide ah So like it isn't it isn't really like sprawling the way that like you might think of a king's field or even even the way that like the original Shadow Tower was. 01:16:00.40 Dave Right. 01:16:03.70 Adelaide I felt like it was really easy to just wander around. um But it still is difficult to navigate ah like level designs. 01:16:17.50 Dave They're not neat. 01:16:18.84 Adelaide No. 01:16:18.91 Dave Like it took all of my mental energy to like mentally map and like try and remember landmarks and stuff like that. 01:16:27.99 Adelaide Luckily, I think for the most part until the later zones, they're reasonably linear. You're both mostly like going forward, you know, and maybe like you can loop off a couple of directions. 01:16:44.56 Adelaide But there are, um there's both hidden walls that you can ah like in like interact with to open and there's also breakable walls. 01:16:50.70 Dave Yeah. 01:16:56.65 Adelaide um And sometimes they are mandatory. there's you know so And given the way that the game is rendered and lit, sometimes it can be really, really hard to tell. 01:17:00.74 Dave Yeah. 01:17:10.95 Adelaide like Sometimes it's super obvious. like You can see the different texture, and you're like, OK, cool. I can break that or open it. um Sometimes you're in a dark cave, and you could barely see like you know an inch in front of you, and you just kind of have to sort of swing wildly at the walls or like mash the interact button until something happens. 01:17:33.35 Dave Yeah, I was always like, reticent to do that because of the durability system with ah weapons. And I wasn't sure if hitting walls would decrease the durability. 01:17:44.32 Dave My guess is that it does. So I didn't it didn't mess with that a whole lot. 01:17:46.47 Adelaide Yeah. 01:17:50.12 Dave um Luckily, like I think the most important breakable walls in most levels are shown with cracks or like, 01:17:56.94 Adelaide Mmhmm. 01:17:57.95 Dave they're only covering most of the walkway but not all of it so like ah there's always a clue to hit this but I did get stuck and like turned in circles in several levels because I missed a breakable wall that should have been obvious um or I think a lot of those ones where you you open them by like pressing the open door button on 01:18:02.00 Adelaide Mmhmm. 01:18:23.09 Dave you know a cave wall or whatever. I think most of those just lead to treasure, so they're not like mandatory, but there's a fuckload of those. 01:18:29.47 Adelaide Yeah. 01:18:31.23 Dave like You might think that you were being thorough exploring a level, and then you look at that level completion screen, it's like, how am I only at 60%? 01:18:31.66 Adelaide Yeah. 01:18:41.92 Dave And it's because there's 25 hidden doors in the hallways in this level. 01:18:49.24 Adelaide Yeah, in the beginning, like the opening area of the tutorial, you might consider it. and there's that completely optional area that I didn't even know existed until I watched um the lore video that we were talking about. 01:19:05.30 Adelaide And he's like, oh yeah, there's this whole separate section and you can see the weird fucked up little babies and stuff. 01:19:05.51 Dave Yeah. 01:19:10.96 Adelaide And I was like, what do you, what? 01:19:13.56 Dave Yeah. 01:19:14.10 Adelaide And like, I just, apparently I just totally missed out on that. It's just behind a breakable wall. 01:19:20.41 Dave Yep, a lot of that. um I found that when I was streaming because I was really lost in that forest and I was pretty desperate and it looked suspicious. 01:19:22.09 Adelaide Yeah. 01:19:26.00 Adelaide Hmm. 01:19:32.64 Dave Let's just go hit it just to check and it was and it led to this zone and that led to me thinking that was the critical path which made me even more lost but 01:19:40.94 Adelaide Yeah. 01:19:41.94 Dave ah Part of the deal, I think, in this game, um there are maps on game facts if you want to like look at an entire level map, but I think that like just poking around, following the paths that you find, trying to mentally map and like remember landmarks and like ah Here's a merchant statue here. 01:20:03.17 Dave So this is like a place that I will remember. And if I loop back to this place, I'll remember this room and be like, that will help me mentally map it. There's a lot of that stuff, which, you know, is one of my favorite things about From Software is their level design. 01:20:17.43 Dave And I think the level design here is in that vein too. 01:20:17.91 Adelaide Yeah. 01:20:21.27 Dave It's good. 01:20:22.28 Adelaide Yeah, I think the only area that was really egregious in terms of bubble design is the sand area or the red. sandstone caves or whatever it's called, where um like it truly everything looks the same. 01:20:34.01 Dave Yeah. 01:20:38.03 Adelaide And your critical path lies through a lot of breakable walls that all kind of loop around and connect to each other so that you could really feasibly go in circles for a very long time. 01:20:38.82 Dave Yeah. 01:20:53.72 Adelaide um And that's, in fact, one of the only places that an ah ah ah wall cave painting map actually helped me because like um there there's like a particular land bridge that you go over. 01:21:01.12 Dave yeah 01:21:06.67 Adelaide And to get to the critical path to the boss, you have to like to step off to the left side. um And so like I could figure out where I was in relation to that land bridge. 01:21:16.78 Adelaide And I was like, OK, cool. i know I can go this way, and it's going to take me to where I need to go. 01:21:22.70 Dave yeah yeah so like those cave painting maps are helpful but they're not giving you the entire picture which is which is cool um also that that red sand area that is the easiest place to get lost i got lost there even with 01:21:22.77 Adelaide But I don't think I, like just organically, I don't think I would have figured that out on my own. 01:21:34.68 Adelaide Yeah. 01:21:43.64 Dave the many cave painting maps. That also has a damage over time environmental hazard. 01:21:45.59 Adelaide hu Yes. 01:21:49.24 Dave So if you're lost, ah that's a bad place to be lost if you don't have the right equipment to heal yourself in regen. 01:21:52.33 Adelaide Mm hmm. 01:21:56.36 Dave So um there's another place that has like ah an ever present poison effect in there. 01:21:56.94 Adelaide Yeah. 01:22:01.99 Adelaide Mm hmm. 01:22:02.89 Dave So I manage your HP and try to map places out and do little runs between like the safe room. And I'm going to go explore like this passageway, and then I'm going to loop back to the safe room, heal up, buy some potions and then go out for another run. um I thought that was a fun area. So um the levels may not look special, but I did have a lot of fun exploring them. 01:22:33.85 Dave um poking around in corners, getting cool weapons and armor, always felt rewarding. Finding money feels rewarding. 01:22:42.85 Adelaide yeah 01:22:42.96 Dave ah If you know you go into a place and you find like three cunes, which are the currency, that's a nice find for you. 01:22:51.59 Adelaide Yeah. 01:22:51.88 Dave So all that felt really good. 01:22:55.28 Adelaide Yeah, I definitely feel like we're not quite into the time where you could go around the quarter and find a really useless item and be disappointed with that. like Everything that you pick up feels worthwhile. The only kind of bummer is, like we we mentioned, you know since you're getting equipment at such a high rate, 01:23:18.39 Adelaide um sometimes like picking up more loot can really be a pain, especially if you're far away from a merchant. 01:23:28.69 Dave Yeah. 01:23:28.69 Adelaide but like the thing that kind of ah clues me into the fact that this is like an interesting system to engage with is I always wanted to pick up the item. 01:23:41.50 Adelaide I never wanted to leave anything on the ground, um unless there were there were a couple of times where I was like really 01:23:42.37 Dave Yeah. 01:23:48.68 Adelaide Like, you know, I was having a hard time progressing and I was just like, okay, I'm just going to save state before I pick this up to see if it's worth picking up. 01:23:56.98 Dave ah yeah 01:23:57.06 Adelaide And if it's not, I'll just reload and forget about it. But for the most part, um, I wanted to be picking up things if for no other reason than you could turn around and sell them for money to feed back into, you know, buying healing potions or, uh, ammo or like better equipment. 01:24:15.00 Dave Yeah, for sure. and um you know Anyone who's going to be playing this in English is going to be playing it on an emulator. So you do have the ability to save state before you pick something up. 01:24:27.15 Dave You have you know you might, depending on where you're playing it, might have the ability to fast forward if you over encumber yourself and just need to walk back to the merchant. 01:24:36.06 Adelaide Yeah. 01:24:36.89 Dave uh, instead of taking like five to 10 minutes of real time to do that, you could fast forward and like run back and and sell your shit. 01:24:39.91 Adelaide Mhm. 01:24:45.66 Dave So, uh, modern conveniences that I don't feel bad about because they never, uh, never gave us the chance to even buy this game. So there we go. 01:24:53.55 Adelaide Right, yeah. And it's funny, I was thinking as we were talking about um stats and and like how they affect the game, I wonder how much your experience playing the game would change if you just played it in Japanese. 01:25:09.78 Adelaide um Because like obviously, you would have missed the opening narration, right? 01:25:09.93 Dave Oh yeah. 01:25:13.95 Adelaide And you wouldn't have any of the NPC dialogue. But in thinking about the experience of playing the game, like none of that stuff is really important. And like we've talked about, like really your stats are negligibly important, right? 01:25:28.72 Dave Yeah. 01:25:29.34 Adelaide you just want You just want numbers to go up and you could figure out what your stamina dots are, what your health is. 01:25:32.17 Dave Yeah. 01:25:37.31 Adelaide You could probably suss out what magic is. Like I wonder if that would almost be more, I don't know, like true to like a more immersive experience. 01:25:49.22 Adelaide Because like that's what your character is experiencing, right? as He's being pressed into this world where nothing matters or makes sense. 01:25:52.85 Dave Sure. 01:25:56.99 Dave Yeah, it's not like, you know, a lot of games where it's like you'll play it, you know, in a different language or something. Like I recently tried out a Korean RPG that I was interested in and like, I don't speak Korean well enough to like reading a game tutorial in Korean. 01:26:13.13 Dave So I missed the tutorial and then I didn't have any idea how to play it. Well, Shadow Tower Abyss doesn't have a tutorial. So you're not gonna miss out on anything that's, you know, in the game. 01:26:20.35 Adelaide Right. 01:26:25.53 Dave you would be looking it up outside anyway or just figuring it out by doing stuff like you get a soul pot and you have skill points and you literally like well what happens if I put points in this stat and the difference is not the answer is not much so ah it might be you know if if you're one of those people that doesn't have the self-control to lay off the save state button or the fast forward or something it might be a little bit more 01:26:38.21 Adelaide aha Not much yet. 01:26:53.51 Dave immersive, but you got to get a fucking Japanese copy of Shadow Tower Abyss. 01:26:58.60 Adelaide Yeah, for sure. 01:26:58.93 Dave Who knows how many of those are out there. 01:27:00.99 Adelaide Right. 01:27:01.13 Dave So i just go with the emulation in ah in my opinion. 01:27:05.13 Adelaide Oh yeah, for sure. It was just like an interesting sort of thematic connection that I thought about. 01:27:11.96 Dave Yeah. And again, but it's not like you're missing out on information that the game gives you because the game gives you almost nothing. 01:27:16.44 Adelaide Right. Yeah. 01:27:18.50 Dave Um, so good, a good segue into our recommendations section here to wrap up the non-spoiler part. So, uh, it's an interesting one. And of course, anyone who's interested in playing it in English will have to emulate it. 01:27:32.36 Dave But with that caveat, you know, out of the way ahead of time, who would you recommend play shadow tower abyss? 01:27:39.96 Adelaide It's funny because this is such a weird niche game and yet I feel like it's easier to recommend than a King's Field or even the original Shadow Tower if for no other reason than it has the Modern Control Scheme and and like it needs it too, you know, like ah 01:27:51.00 Dave Hmm. 01:28:01.54 Adelaide like aiming is really important in this game. So this isn't a game like a Quake or a Doom, where you can just kind of rely on auto-aim to take care of it. 01:28:13.76 Adelaide um You really do have to be able to swing your guns or your magic all over the place, which means that aiming with the shoulder buttons is never going to feel good at all, ever. 01:28:25.19 Dave Yeah. 01:28:26.24 Adelaide um So with the modern control scheme, even with the oddity of like where the attacks are and where the menu buttons and stuff are, like it immediately feels more accessible, um at least from my perspective, I guess. Because for me, like you know I don't really care about ah graphics. you know i've been alive and gaming long enough that like I've experienced the whole like gamut of graphics. So old graphics don't really bother me. you know the the 01:29:00.40 Adelaide old console stuff doesn't really bother me. But the controls, if it feels like it plays well, um is what is like one of the biggest barriers. And so like with this game, like it almost, to my sensibility at least, feels like it has more of a mainstream appeal, just because you can play it like a regular first-person shooter. 01:29:24.28 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And I don't think we mentioned this, we should have mentioned this way earlier in the show, but I don't think this is a difficult game. like From Software has their reputation, of course, ah but this was easier than Kingsfield 4, and it's easier than any of their modern games, I think. 01:29:33.76 Adelaide No. 01:29:41.26 Adelaide Mm hmm. 01:29:44.12 Dave like There's a little bit of tension with resources early on, but Like I said, ah you never finish Elden Ring or something feeling like your character is literally invincible. And that's how I felt at the end of Shadow Tower Abyss. 01:29:59.79 Adelaide Yeah, it's really interesting because all of the difficulty is front loaded. Which is not to say that you won't go through patches where it's harder. right like The damage zones, those are going to be hard. um Patches where you have low resources or you really feel like you're close to the wire, you know that ratchets the tension. But the farther you get into the game, 01:30:25.12 Adelaide You really do have to know, you don't have to worry about healing potions anymore. You don't have to worry about weapon durability. You don't have to worry about money anymore and it comes pretty much like way more quickly than it does in most other games. 01:30:39.07 Dave Yeah, the boss fights especially are their jokes in this. 01:30:42.77 Adelaide Oh Yeah Yeah, they're I mean like they're basically like they're like beefy enemies and 01:30:44.79 Dave they 01:30:50.46 Dave Yeah, and somewhat beefy, like it is not like a boss fight that has 20 times the health of a regular enemy, like maybe like five times or something like that. 01:31:00.50 Adelaide Right. and 01:31:03.19 Dave So ah it's really not that difficult. The difficulty, like you said, comes in, it feels a little bit stiff. um The default controls are odd. 01:31:15.11 Dave Like I said, I played all of King's Field IV with those default controls. this one, you know, it's a first person shooter, I would like to play it like a modern one, and you can so you can do that. So I don't know, like, was there a specific type of person other than obviously like the, the from software fan that wants to dig into their past, that, you know, this game would appeal to? 01:31:39.14 Adelaide I think if you were a person that was more comfortable or familiar with older first-person shooters, I think you would have a pretty easy time in this game. And actually, like I think there's a certain amount of shared DNA with like older ah Elder Scrolls games, because they have a similar... I don't know if you've poked at anything like pre-MoroWin, but they also have a similar system where you like to attack melee attacks in different directions, you click the mouse and drag it in a direction when you have your weapon ready. 01:32:12.91 Dave Hmm. 01:32:14.34 Adelaide So they even have the same sort of directional attacking. I don't think it's as important. but So people that were familiar with an older-style sort of dungeon crawl game might find a lot to enjoy here as well. 01:32:29.45 Dave Yeah, that's what I was going to say too. So it's the From Software fans who want to dig into their past and see that that DNA and that lineage of like where all these mechanics and storytelling ideas came from. It's back here in Shadow Tower Abyss. 01:32:44.85 Dave and you know further back in the Kingsfield series and stuff like that but also just if you like old RPGs this is a this is an old RPG and like if you like the first person dungeon crawling um I'm not as familiar with like the PC era of, you know, first person dungeon crawlers, the blobbers and stuff like that. 01:33:07.13 Dave ah But this style of this time, like this is the same year that Morrowind came out if I'm remembering w right. 01:33:12.84 Adelaide Mmhmm. 01:33:13.58 Dave So I like that style of first person RPG. with you know tons of stats and tons of equipment and you know very little tutorial and you know this one especially because even the manual is not in English. 01:33:24.30 Adelaide Mmhmm. 01:33:25.57 Dave So if you're up for that and like the way these games control and kind of esoteric stat systems and stuff like that, if you can get down with that, I think you'll have a good time with Shadow Tower Abyss. 01:33:37.69 Dave like And it helps again, like there are these things to to get acclimated to when you play this, but it's not a super difficult game. like If this game was punishingly hard, it would be a lot harder to get to grips with the controls and how stats work and stuff, but it's really not. 01:33:57.00 Dave So um you just have to be up for the type of game that it is, or you have to be up for you know 01:33:57.32 Adelaide Yeah. 01:34:03.63 Dave The history of From Software. If you're a huge fan, you should play this ah because it's interesting to go back and see those elements that you wonder how far back they go. And it turns out a lot of them do go back pretty far. 01:34:16.55 Adelaide yeah agree 01:34:19.14 Dave So ah recommendations for the right type of person for Shadow Tower Abyss. I am the right type of person. 01:34:25.53 Adelaide so 01:34:25.65 Dave Again, I really enjoyed this game. um So a little bit of housekeeping here, always starting with the guest and where people can find them. 01:34:27.93 Adelaide Yeah. 01:34:34.68 Dave So Addy, where would you like to direct people? Where can they find you? 01:34:39.75 Adelaide So I do have a YouTube channel that's kind of ah on mothballs for the moment, because I don't really have a setup to produce content. But that is ah back on my BS if people are interested in more of me specifically. 01:34:57.86 Adelaide Like we mentioned at the top of the episode, I have been on this podcast three other times, um as well as um I am a frequent guest on a mutual friend, Jala Chan's place. 01:35:12.56 Adelaide People can find me on episodes, both ah episodes surrounding gender and identity, as well as different media properties. 01:35:12.93 Dave Yeah. 01:35:24.42 Adelaide um I also am fairly active in Jala's Discord as well. So if people want to interact with me there, I am also there. Pretty much every way, I am intentionally disconnected from the internet public spaces. 01:35:42.42 Dave That's a smart move, way to be. 01:35:42.72 Adelaide yeah 01:35:44.61 Dave ah Hang out in the places that make you happy and completely disregard the ones that don't. 01:35:49.58 Adelaide Right. 01:35:50.39 Dave um Yeah, definitely recommend, of course, listening to the past episodes that we have done on Tales from the Backlog. 01:35:56.65 Adelaide Mm hmm. 01:35:57.83 Dave Also recommend checking out those Jala-chan's Place episodes as well. And all I'll link a couple down there. Jal has been on the show a couple times. I've been on her show a couple times. It's definitely a shared friend of ours and someone we would recommend. 01:36:12.50 Dave so ah We'll put all that stuff down in the show notes, the YouTube channel, all that stuff so people can find you in the few places that you choose to be ah findable. 01:36:19.42 Adelaide Exactly. exactly 01:36:21.46 Dave So um For this show, ah the same plugs as always. We would really appreciate ratings and reviews if you're listening on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podcast Addict. 01:36:32.78 Dave YouTube ah likes and comments are helpful. um All that stuff, it helps people find the show and that's what we want. And Shadow Tower Abyss has a little bit of content out there, but not a lot. 01:36:44.55 Dave ah So it might be one where like, hey, if you leave a rating and review, ah if you like and comment on YouTube, people might actually find this one. So ah that would be helpful. 01:36:52.74 Adelaide Yeah. 01:36:54.53 Dave um I also have a Discord server that is a lively and friendly community. We would love to have you join, especially if you're a From Software fan. There's lots of us in the Discord server. ah Hop on in and join. If you're not, that's cool too. Thank you for listening all the way through about a From Software game. But we would love to have you join the community nonetheless. And there's an invite link down in the show notes for you. 01:37:19.76 Dave I have another podcast, it's called a top three podcast where we do top three lists and we draft fun topics using community submissions for our draft pools. Those are fun. And last but not least, you can support me and the show monetarily at patreon dot.com slash real Dave Jackson. 01:37:38.82 Dave where I do polls each month for patrons. They get to pick a game that I play on the show. ah There are bonus episodes. There's a bonus retro gaming series on there. A lot of stuff. And that's much appreciated if you can. 01:37:51.59 Dave If not, that's cool. If you're hearing this, I already appreciate that you listened this far into a podcast. So with that being said, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll have a somewhat short spoilers section for Shadow Tower Abyss. 01:38:27.30 Dave Awesome. All right, we're back and it's full spoiler time for Shadow Tower Abyss. And as always, it's not a chronological walk through the story. So real spoilers coming soon. So don't, ah don't stick around if you don't want to be spoiled. Now, I want to start by talking about that backstory from the fan translated strategy guide. 01:38:51.63 Dave by again by youtuber elucidated by fire i'm going to put the link to the video down in the show notes so people can watch it it's just a really good video about a game where there are just not a lot of things made about it so information is somewhat scarce and no information is more scarce than what's available in this strategy guide so 01:39:14.05 Adelaide Yeah. 01:39:15.39 Dave Even for people who played this game, you would not get any of this from the game itself unless you are super smart about environmental design and stuff like that. Especially like where you fight the final boss is the only place that looks like what we're about to talk about. 01:39:34.35 Adelaide Yeah. 01:39:36.28 Dave The backstory, the tower, the shadow tower is actually a plant hive mind alien that ah in the backstory, they relied on energy from the beings of this other world. 01:39:53.90 Dave And those beings and the ones that live inside the tower itself rely on the plants. So it's that we have a symbiotic relationship with this large structure and then all the creatures that live within it. 01:40:08.12 Dave The tower is also a spaceship and the strategy guide has like ah it's like a diagram of it in flight mode. so 01:40:16.84 Adelaide Yeah, there's definitely no way around it. 01:40:17.97 Dave um Yeah, it came here from an alternate world after something threatened its existence in the world that it used to live in. ah It formed the tower, this flight mode form, and flung itself off into, it says, the abyss. now um When it entered Earth's solar system or the Earth equivalent or whatever, I believe what happened is the power of the sun kind of fucked with this ship. And so it stopped functioning as a ship and it says that its propulsion organ failed, leaving it to drift and eventually crash down on our planet. 01:40:59.66 Adelaide yeah 01:41:00.62 Dave So to me, ah yeah we have all this talk about the abyss. ah There are actual creatures that mention the abyss in the tower. They say, we came from the abyss. 01:41:11.96 Dave This has to be space then, right? 01:41:12.34 Adelaide Right. 01:41:16.31 Adelaide Yeah, that's the thing that makes the most sense to me also, um despite it never really being explained. And another thing that I think is kind of implied is like, so everything that lives in the tower is also sort of like a passenger as well, like as I mean, like that maybe originally the frog people lived there only, or there was like one race that lived there. But I think the idea is that all of the different individual biomes are supposed to be like different cultures or species that it's kind of like hovered up as it's traveled. 01:41:57.46 Dave Yeah, it could be. Yeah. Like, and I know they say like, your character is trapped in the abyss, and you can only exit the abyss by getting the spear or something. 01:42:08.18 Dave So maybe that doesn't line up with my, you know, space hypothesis, but it is an alien ship that crashed on the planet. 01:42:10.54 Adelaide Hmm Right Yeah 01:42:17.91 Dave um on the planet it can't create energy in the same way or they're harmed i think it says they're harmed by the sun uh and so it's underground away from the sun um and it's it's basically just trying to keep this cycle of life alive like it needs this hive mind needs the creatures in there to survive the creatures need it um but if it's being harmed by the sun they you know, they need to figure out something else. So it's an intelligent species as well, ah from what I can tell. um They, this is in the strategy guide, they tried to design a new form of life that can live on earth and sustain them. But this failed, and that species had to leave. 01:43:09.62 Dave And if I'm understanding this right, that species eventually became humans. So this is the origin of humans here. 01:43:14.78 Adelaide I believe so, yeah. Yeah. 01:43:19.23 Dave um So the plants are still trying to figure out a way to survive. They create a magical tool through which the humans can receive the will of the plants, and that's the spear. 01:43:32.88 Adelaide Yes. 01:43:33.11 Dave ah which is given to the king. and And so in return for this magical power, the king needs to keep providing humans to the plants, because the plants are still trying to do these experiments to figure out like a new form of life that can help them, basically. 01:43:51.02 Adelaide Yeah. 01:43:55.93 Dave There's a couple things that I like picked up in the game that tie into this. ah That part in the forest area that you missed with the babies. 01:44:04.87 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 01:44:06.28 Dave There are some of those little gout creatures that are non-hostile in there, which I didn't know because I killed everything I came across because I'm playing a video game. 01:44:13.69 Adelaide Right. Right. 01:44:17.88 Dave But you can talk to a lot of them and they'll tell you ah some weird stuff. like um They are kind of born from adventurers that wander into the tower or are swallowed up like your character is. 01:44:34.99 Adelaide who 01:44:35.22 Dave And then they're kind of reborn as these little creatures that just kind of live around there. um And it's kind of a fucked up little like horror story when you find like the webbed up bodies and the babies and all of that stuff. 01:44:48.01 Dave Kind of weird. 01:44:49.38 Adelaide Yeah, it's actually kind of worth noting in this game that I forgot to mention while we were in the main body of the episode. It's like there's actually a fair amount of NPC enemies that pop up. 01:45:02.98 Adelaide And there are some of the Cyclops ones that throw fireballs that are also non-hostile and you can talk to. And it's interesting because like be beside be ah you know despite their sort of like alien and and bestial sort of like appearance, all of the creatures, except for maybe the insects, which don't seem to have much of a personality or like cognitive thought, 01:45:33.26 Dave Yeah. 01:45:33.42 Adelaide two seem to be intelligent creatures. 01:45:39.60 Dave Yeah, even these, the Galps, which are like, you know, your basic goblins and your RPGs or something like that. um So I missed their dialogue. 01:45:46.78 Adelaide yeah 01:45:48.87 Dave I got a lot of it from the, you know, the lore video. um The other thing I picked up is that you're picking up a lot of items kind of chronologically through history a little bit. 01:46:03.32 Adelaide Mm hmm. 01:46:03.85 Dave So like you pick up medieval weapons like bows, even late in the game when you're picking up advanced guns, you're still picking up bows and then crossbows and um you know swords and stuff like that ah while also picking up guns. 01:46:20.94 Dave So like we've had this continual history of people trying to work through the tower and then dying at various points. 01:46:31.25 Dave And um it's really cool that side by side, you might find an adventurer who was, you know, a dead body with a sword. And then in like a couple other rooms later, you'll find a dead adventurer with a rifle. 01:46:44.99 Dave ah So like we have millennia or centuries of this history of people going into this tower. 01:46:45.37 Adelaide yeah 01:46:50.85 Adelaide Yeah Right and they don't ever really expressly say it um but It's implied that the spear king has been doing this for an extremely long amount of time um You know so that you have this whole 01:47:04.15 Dave Yeah. 01:47:08.64 Adelaide vast swath of like human history that's been like given to the tower for experiments or as sacrifices or or whatever, um even up to the point where like you find somebody that's a retainer or like a servant of the ah of the Spear King. 01:47:19.17 Dave Yeah. 01:47:30.77 Adelaide And he even mentions, I think, that he's been trapped for 100 years or something like that. 01:47:35.58 Dave Yeah, that would be something that like in a demons or Dark Souls or even a later game like that NPC would be a quest that you could like he would pop up at different parts in the story and he doesn't like he's when you see him he's like I can't get through that room because this immortal bug is in there and it's blocking the door but you can't kill it. 01:47:46.26 Adelaide Yeah. 01:47:51.26 Adelaide No. 01:47:59.69 Dave ah So he teaches you how and you go kill the bug and then you go talk to him and he doesn't, it's just like, you know, the way it's coded and written out, like he doesn't realize the bug is dead. He doesn't move on. um You just kind of leave him back there. ah But yeah, um the thing about the Spear King is, um so we have this history where the Spear King created an empire yada, yada, yada. 01:48:26.40 Dave But at some point, the plant stopped communicating with him. 01:48:31.36 Adelaide Right. 01:48:31.40 Dave So he stopped receiving orders through the spear. And then he got old and anxious, just waiting for the next ah communication. And then one day, he believed whether it's real or not, that he heard something from the spear. 01:48:46.50 Dave So he went back to the tower, and it was never seen again. 01:48:49.44 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 01:48:49.61 Dave um And I think And I think actually the lore video we watched like didn't mention this, not to say it's not true, but the boss that you fight right after you find the spear to me felt very natural that that's the king, just like hollowed out basically to use a soul's term. 01:48:59.34 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 01:49:04.80 Adelaide Oh. Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah. 01:49:10.69 Dave Cause you find the spear and it breaks into pieces. And so it's like the spear has abandoned him and he's cursed to just wander in circles until someone can kill him. 01:49:13.56 Adelaide Right. 01:49:19.72 Adelaide Yeah. I mean, that that feels also like not only thematically a piece with this game, but thematically a piece with, you know, it's... 01:49:28.47 Dave everything they've ever done. Yeah. 01:49:30.23 Adelaide ah Yeah. 01:49:32.67 Dave um That was kind of cool. It was a cool moment to be like, I finally found the spear and it just crumbles into dust when you touch it. Yeah. 01:49:40.43 Adelaide Yeah, it's not even like a weapon you can use. It's just nothing at this point. 01:49:44.64 Dave Yeah. um So, you know, in the story, um the power of the spear is something that can like be transferred. And what I came to think is that at the end, ah when you see Ru-Rufan out in the forest in that closing cutscene and her eye blinks and it has the same eye as the spear eye. 01:50:09.35 Dave It's like now the power of the spear is within her and she's, 01:50:09.61 Adelaide Yeah. 01:50:13.40 Dave set loose on the land or whatever plan she has um out to go do that or something like that. 01:50:17.04 Adelaide o It is really funny that that ending cutscene is ah is treated like it's supposed to be like a stinger like you know ah like an end of multiple movie reveal and it's such a nothing cutscene because like we don't even understand what she's doing there in the first place like she's going down the tower like you are and spoilers for the end of the game she's kind of there's a version of her that is kind of the final boss 01:50:31.42 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:50:50.32 Dave Yeah. 01:50:50.50 Adelaide um But yeah, i don't i don't i don't it doesn't mean anything to me that she survived or that she has like the will of the tower. 01:51:01.61 Adelaide ah No. 01:51:02.69 Dave yeah You don't know anything about her. like she you talk to her in between like main levels of it but she either taunts you for being human and then she like expresses surprise that you made it this far and then she asks you to go kill the guy that's like the proto Patches 01:51:15.54 Adelaide Yeah. 01:51:24.35 Dave in this game, and then she begs you to kill her at some point. So I did. 01:51:30.61 Adelaide Yeah. 01:51:30.70 Dave um And then she's back in the ending cutscene. So it's like, it's one of those things where it's like, there's so little direct storytelling that even one of the three prominent characters in the game has almost I know nothing about what she wants. 01:51:47.05 Adelaide Yeah. 01:51:48.52 Dave Uh, maybe she was a being summoned by the tower or something like, cause like, I don't know that if that's how these like plant versions of her come out during the final boss fight, is she like an avatar or a champion for this, this will or whatever. 01:52:02.21 Adelaide It does it does seem like maybe that's what they're they're trying to imply because I think the part where she tells you to kill her I think that's that's why is because she feels like she doesn't have like control over her actions she's just been like doing what the tower tells her to do. 01:52:27.70 Dave It could be, but, you know, she gets reincarnated or a version of her gets reincarnated during the final boss fight. 01:52:32.43 Adelaide Right. 01:52:35.03 Dave And then the ending cutscene, whether you kill her or not, she's out there. So who knows any. It's all speculation as to even what her deal is in the first place. 01:52:45.39 Adelaide Yeah. 01:52:49.85 Dave let alone what she wants or how she's there or any of that. She's just, she's just there. So, um, the cool thing about this backstory and what I was, you know, leading up to is number one, this is why your character is here is this ritual sacrifice. You're one of, you know, thousands across time sacrificed to this tower. Um, because it, one of those cool things were like, 01:53:19.30 Dave The reason for the sacrifices is gone. 01:53:24.16 Adelaide Right. 01:53:24.22 Dave um I think the way it was described was: The plant stopped communicating with the king, but the king was under the orders or the impression that the sacrifices must continue until the next contact. So that's just what happened, um which lines up to me with my understanding of the Lorian Elden Ring, where we don't have sacrifices per se, but this idea that somebody is receiving divine instruction 01:53:57.48 Dave at regular intervals. And what we learned in the Elden Ring DLC is that those transmissions stopped a long time ago. um And people are operating on Like the instructions that they're then passing on to other people are either super outdated or they're just making them up. 01:54:19.09 Adelaide Hmm Right 01:54:19.27 Dave um Which was kind of cool what I understood from this one too. Where like the king stopped getting orders but continued to carry out orders forever. 01:54:30.92 Dave The difference here is that the king is waiting for the next one, expecting something to come. Whereas I think in Elden Ring, Merica just went off on her own way um with these instructions. But ah this same kind of idea that someone is receiving this divine order, and then the order stops at some point. And then what do they do after that point? 01:54:54.99 Adelaide Right. Well, and also, I mean, even just down to like the alien tree, right? I mean, like that's kind of like what the Earth Tree is supposed to be, right? 01:55:00.66 Dave Yeah, yeah, exactly. 01:55:05.19 Adelaide It's almost like a parasite that grows on the planet. 01:55:05.53 Dave Yeah. 01:55:12.51 Adelaide So. 01:55:13.52 Dave Yeah. 01:55:14.28 Dave Interesting to, um, you know, seeing these games 20 years apart in From Software's history before Miyazaki and working with George RR Martin was ever, you know, a hope of a wish, but, uh, to see these parallels here is pretty cool. 01:55:30.95 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 01:55:32.27 Dave Um, did you get tricked by the, uh, the Patches character? 01:55:36.85 Adelaide I did. I hate to say it. And it's funny, because it's so, again, like it's so classic, like literally the same formula that they use for each and every game, right? 01:55:49.41 Dave Yeah. 01:55:49.39 Adelaide like You find a guy, and he's like, oh, there's some cool treasure in this room over here. And you go over, and it locks behind you, right? and then 01:55:58.94 Dave Yeah, there's, there's a bunch of dead bodies in the room. 01:55:59.47 Adelaide like you ah And then later you find him and he's like across the bridge and he's like, oh, I'm so i'm so sorry. I ah and locked you in that room. 01:56:12.38 Adelaide ah Come over here and I'll make it up to you. And then as soon as you're on the bridge, he drops the bridge and it's just like the only thing that's missing for him to be like a canon Patches as the voice actor. 01:56:18.47 Dave Yeah. 01:56:26.31 Adelaide Like it's so interesting to see that they already Like again, devoid of Miyazaki's involvement, they already had that idea for a character archetype in place. 01:56:37.68 Dave yeah And it does play out the same way, like the promise of treasure, the tricks, the quivering apology when you finally like to catch him, um it's all it's all there. 01:56:44.32 Adelaide Hmm. 01:56:48.54 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 01:56:50.87 Dave I did not get tricked by him because you have to initiate conversation multiple times for him to ask you for the money ah to give him to trade for the key that opens the door. 01:56:56.34 Adelaide Hmm. 01:57:03.69 Adelaide Mm hmm. 01:57:03.79 Dave ah So I didn't do that because I talked with him once or twice. However, many times that you're supposed to minus one. Uh, so I didn't get that right away. So I went back and did it, but by that point I had already cleared out the waterfall area. 01:57:17.72 Dave So his trick couldn't work. 01:57:18.24 Adelaide Oh. 01:57:20.39 Dave Uh, it's interesting. 01:57:21.09 Adelaide Oh, 01:57:22.21 Dave If you go in the waterfall area without patches involved, the bridge is just out. 01:57:31.90 Adelaide oh interesting. 01:57:32.84 Dave So you still have to go through the whole level in the way you would if he pulled the bridge out from under you. um So there's that. And then he's dead and in the like right in front of the spear. He's the one who's also on the quest for the spear alongside you. And so like it's a little rivalry thing. um And it's funny, when you see his dead body, Rurufan standing over it. like He had wronged her in the past, too. 01:58:01.06 Adelaide ahha Yeah, I think it's implied that, ah so like, She talks to you on every main floor where there's the branching paths. And like on the second time, she mentions, oh, like there's this guy that stole something from me. 01:58:16.92 Adelaide you know And you can like either say you'll get it back or not. 01:58:17.39 Dave Yeah. 01:58:20.30 Adelaide um I don't know if that specific plot line wraps up. like If you kill him instead of interacting with him and then go back and talk to her if anything happens. 01:58:31.83 Dave She does. She gives you something. um Yeah. 01:58:33.96 Adelaide Oh, OK. But it's interesting because like I actually, like so in that red zen zone, there are just like bodies falling all over the place. 01:58:45.06 Adelaide like It's fairly common for a desiccated body to just fall out of the sky in front of you. 01:58:45.45 Dave ah hu yeah 01:58:50.50 Adelaide So I didn't even notice that it was him until later. But it's cool that you can look up and see her then and get that sort of NPC quest line closed. 01:59:04.96 Dave Yeah, so I wasn't sure if he died in some other way and she just found his body and was kind of looming over it or if she actually killed him right there. But um it's a you know as close as we get to NPC storylines in this game in particular. 01:59:20.60 Adelaide I know you can also, you can find the guy that's the Spear King's retainer. 01:59:27.72 Dave Oh yeah, he's dead later too. 01:59:28.80 Adelaide You can find him dead in I think the opposed poison zone or like one of the other areas, but yeah. 01:59:36.22 Dave Yeah. So true to, uh, from software fashion, the stories don't end well for anybody really. 01:59:48.37 Adelaide Yeah, yeah, you're kind of cutting in and out. 01:59:48.43 Dave We have internet trouble. Okay. All right. We'll give it a second. 01:59:54.60 Adelaide Okay. 01:59:57.90 Dave Well, we seem okay now. 01:59:59.89 Adelaide Yeah, I think it should be good. 02:00:03.06 Dave So were there any other parts of the game that you wanted to shout out? You know, spoilers be damned. Anything else that was really cool or, you know, memorable? 02:00:12.44 Adelaide It's interesting, like, I think um For as unique of a game as this is, I don't think we really missed anything that stands out to me. um I think the the last the boss last boss fight is really cool because, it again, like it's such an in-between zone between like demon souls and Kingsfield, which has a more traditional 02:00:42.98 Adelaide final boss fight, or even later Souls games, right, which have a more traditional penultimate boss fight. But in this game, you know, you have the like, you've gone through all the stuff, and now you're going into the heart of the tower. And you do a little fight with them, like the beefed up Rurufan, but it's not really like she's as ah she's as difficult as any of the bosses have been. 02:01:09.13 Adelaide ah You can kind of just nuke her with grenades or guns or whatever you want to do. 02:01:09.47 Dave Yeah. 02:01:13.94 Adelaide And then you're just left with the beating heart of the tower. And I think that that's really cool, just as a visual, but also, like again, to see so much of this like early DNA that would appear later on in the games. 02:01:28.95 Dave Yeah, that was pretty cool and that area is the only place that distinctly looks like plants. 02:01:36.35 Adelaide Yeah. 02:01:36.39 Dave It's green and the doors all kind of look like leaves or ah you know other plant parts and stuff like that. So um you know If we are believing the story about the alien plant hive mind, um it does make sense that as you get to the final boss and like the heart, it actually does look like a plant in there. 02:01:58.58 Adelaide Yeah. 02:01:59.33 Dave yeah 02:02:00.12 Adelaide um The other thing I wanted to talk about really quickly is the thing that neither of us have really touched on because neither of us played the first game to any great extent. 02:02:10.70 Adelaide But this game also sort of functions as a soft reboot of Shadow Tower. 02:02:16.91 Dave Yeah. 02:02:17.29 Adelaide ah You could maybe generously say that like when the Tower or the manual talks about the Tower coming from an alternate dimension, you could maybe say that's the Shadow Tower in the other game. 02:02:17.80 Dave Okay. 02:02:29.90 Adelaide But like in that game, there are a lot of similar aspects too. 02:02:30.24 Dave Okay. 02:02:35.24 Adelaide So you have, again, like a Tower that has like some sort of sentence It gives an artifact with an eye. In this case, I think it's a crown to an important king who rules in prosperity for a long time and then disappears. 02:02:50.81 Dave Hmm. 02:02:53.82 Adelaide Your character is a mercenary who's going home to visit his grandmother or something and realizes that the town surrounding the tower has been leveled. 02:03:06.38 Adelaide And so he goes into the tower, ah you know of course, which seals behind him. ah There's even a bit where he talks to an old man who tricks him into going in, ah who's like, oh, all the people from the village are in the tower now. 02:03:23.39 Dave Hmm. 02:03:23.43 Adelaide So it's interesting to see how they took the same basic ah like framework and just completely did something totally different with it. 02:03:33.84 Dave That is interesting. I wonder if you could look at it as like, it's that same tower. I don't know. I don't know how that game ends, but like in a different age or something like that. 02:03:45.33 Adelaide Yeah. 02:03:46.60 Dave I don't know. But yeah. 02:03:47.66 Adelaide Because the thing about that game is it expressly takes place in like a fantasy world, whereas this game, Shadow Tower Abyss, I don't know if they ever say the word Earth, but like they talk about humans specifically. 02:03:54.70 Dave Hmm, okay. 02:04:04.24 Adelaide So um I think we are to believe that it is happening on Earth. 02:04:04.85 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. 02:04:09.80 Adelaide um So yeah, I don't know if. Like, and, you know, there are slight differences, like, in shadow in Shadow Tower, you're going down the tower, whereas in Shadow Tower abyss, you're going up, I think, or maybe it's vice versa. 02:04:25.56 Adelaide But, you know, like, there are little ways that it is, like, a little bit different, but... 02:04:30.94 Dave Yeah, I suppose you must have got sucked real deep down at the beginning of this game ah to then go up and then at the you get to the top and emerge at the surface at the end. 02:04:44.44 Adelaide Right. 02:04:45.06 Dave So anyway, a couple of things I wanted to shout out just quick hits before we go. 02:04:45.38 Adelaide Yeah. 02:04:51.58 Dave um I thought it was really cool that in the cave area, it's called the white wall area. ah before you fight the boss in there, there are these roars that come out from the distance and you can see every enemy in the area will cower in fear when the roar happens, which is cool. And then the boss was, you know, easy. The closest thing to a soul's boss, you know, you jumping around, shooting magic at you, stuff like that, like on all fours, like a lion beast type thing that you fight. 02:05:31.57 Dave So that was kind of cool. And then the last level just visually is outstanding, the black ah gothic castle, especially after playing the Elden Ring DLC and the Shadowkeep in there. 02:05:33.19 Adelaide Yeah. 02:05:42.72 Adelaide You mean the illusion area. 02:05:46.74 Dave The illusion area. Yeah. 02:05:51.22 Dave Like we said, the literal translation of the name of the area. 02:05:54.74 Dave But yeah, that castle, um, I got very lost and, uh, turned around by the puzzle in there, but visually it was outstanding. 02:06:01.69 Adelaide Yeah. It has some weird mechanic that I don't think I ever really understood, where ah there are like door gates that are unlocked somehow. And it's either by killing a non-aggressive enemy that's a special type, or killing enemies that are clones of the boy, the final boss, the one that's like the lord of the castle, or maybe the lord of the tower? 02:06:33.83 Dave It's both. ah Both, well not not the lore explanation, but the puzzle is both. 02:06:34.96 Adelaide Okay. 02:06:38.95 Dave So there are doors with the flames on them, and for those you have to kill like the knight, the elemental knights that you fight. 02:06:39.20 Adelaide Oh, okay. 02:06:43.25 Adelaide who 02:06:47.73 Adelaide Okay. 02:06:49.14 Dave But then for the teleporter um things, you have to kill the non-aggressive enemies. They drop the little slate key that you can move around. 02:06:57.47 Adelaide Right. 02:06:58.83 Dave And I got just i got very mixed up by like how many keys I had and where I had been before and like I must have gone to the same you know because it's like ah a hub and spoke and I must have gone down the same spokes like eight fucking times um trying to figure out like because you have to put them in a specific things to unlock like 02:07:08.41 Adelaide Yeah. 02:07:18.17 Adelaide Yeah. 02:07:24.48 Dave You know, this route, you need the yellow, the white and the green teleporters on. 02:07:30.18 Adelaide Mm-hmm. 02:07:30.33 Dave And I just like, it took me forever to figure out what that wanted from me. So I spent a lot of time circling in that area, taking in all the, you know, the best visuals in the game for sure in that area. 02:07:35.71 Adelaide Yeah. 02:07:43.02 Adelaide Oh, yeah, definitely, yeah. 02:07:45.57 Dave So at least that was good. 02:07:47.17 Adelaide ah One also sort of interesting bit of note in that area is there's stone faces that talk to you. 02:07:57.65 Dave Yeah. 02:07:58.03 Adelaide And they actually like to actually animate too. 02:08:01.76 Dave Yeah. 02:08:03.21 Adelaide I don't know what that means for the lore of the area or the game, but they're pretty cool looking. 02:08:08.28 Dave They are pretty cool looking and they speak in, you know, undecipherable tongues. You have no idea, like you can understand what they're saying, but you can't, like capital U understand what they're saying. 02:08:20.03 Adelaide Yeah. 02:08:20.90 Dave Right. 02:08:21.34 Dave So it's like, uh, just weird vibey dialogue from them. 02:08:28.58 Dave Yeah, so yeah, Shadow Tower Abyss, ah spoiler section. I really just wanted to talk about that lore because I think it's really cool. And then also, you know, talk about patches, but um ah really interesting game. 02:08:40.77 Adelaide Yeah. 02:08:44.28 Dave And especially like, I don't think I'm going to replay this. Not that I like, you know, wouldn't enjoy replaying it, but you know, there's so many games to play. 02:08:54.92 Adelaide yeah 02:08:55.67 Dave having the knowledge or the idea that this is a you know a sentient plant hive mind and knowing the story about the sacrificing of humans and so like every dead body in there like what storytelling that is And then knowing this whole thing about the plants and they're experimenting and trying to create this new life form that can sustain them or maybe help them leave or something like that. 02:09:24.89 Dave Playing with that knowledge in mind might be interesting. I wonder how much more there would be to pick up. 02:09:28.16 Adelaide Yeah. 02:09:31.07 Dave Like maybe I would talk to those little fucked up dudes in the the Nexus, like the first part of the tower that you go into where there's a bunch of NPCs and maybe I would understand their dialogue a bit more. 02:09:44.16 Dave Because like it's they seem native to the tower. 02:09:44.27 Adelaide Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I i think that's or they're as native as anything is like, I think one of the first ones you find says that like, 02:09:53.29 Dave Yeah. 02:09:57.09 Adelaide explicitly it's their job to like to watch or mind the tower. So I 02:10:02.62 Dave Yeah. So having that knowledge in mind, I wonder if I like surely you'd pick up on some more stuff, but 02:10:11.10 Adelaide i would think so. And you can buy a new game plus it if you really want to. 02:10:15.91 Dave That's true. 02:10:16.47 Adelaide I feel like it would probably make the game so easy that it almost doesn't bear playing, but you definitely could. ah Actually, before we close, 02:10:23.67 Dave Yeah. 02:10:26.70 Adelaide I will shout out really quickly if I love that they include a bestiary with stats. 02:10:33.40 Dave yeah 02:10:33.38 Adelaide I think every game and, you know, people will be like, oh, this speaks to the game too easily. I think that's dumb. Every game that wants you, that expects you to make informed decisions has a responsibility to give you the information to make those informed decisions. 02:10:49.67 Dave Mm hmm. 02:10:49.75 Adelaide So like one of my big gripes with Souls games is you have all of these like magical and elemental and damage type properties. And you will never know, never ever know which ones are good and which ones are useless without doing experimentation on each and every enemy each and every time. And that's never going to be worth your time except for our bosses. um So like if they gave you a bestiary, then you could kill an enemy and be like, oh, if I have to come back through this, you know, I'll just whip out my bleed weapon, and that'll work particularly well, or something like that. 02:11:23.65 Dave Yeah. 02:11:25.13 Adelaide Or like if you're trying to farm you know drops or something like that, like i just I'm a big believer in having a BC area in video games. 02:11:35.50 Adelaide And so I'm very appreciative to see it in this game. 02:11:39.56 Dave Yeah, it was cool. um two they tell you, like you said, the elemental weaknesses and resistances and stuff like that. So again, it's one of those things where like if this game weren't as easy as it is, you might have to actually use that and be like, ah in that Red Sand area, there's a bunch of those enemies. They're really resistant to physical attacks. They're resistant to guns. 02:12:06.35 Dave And so like you're getting hit constantly like when the boss of that area yells, that that hurts you. That's the environmental hazard. It would be cool if the game was harder and you had to be like, I need an efficient way to fight these enemies so that I can get through this area. 02:12:25.51 Adelaide Right. 02:12:25.67 Dave But by that point I was a God and like, so I'm, I'm setting up two separate trains of thought because I've already said, I like the fact that at the end of the game, I'm a God. 02:12:28.45 Adelaide Yeah. 02:12:36.30 Dave It reminds me of, you know, the end of Morrowind or I assume the end of Skyrim where nothing can hurt you. And that's a great feeling to have. Cause you put in the time in RPGs to get to that point. 02:12:46.13 Adelaide listen 02:12:48.80 Dave Um, but it would also be cool if a lot of these mechanical systems actually mattered. 02:12:55.19 Adelaide Right, or it would at the very least make a second playthrough be worthwhile, right? Because you could go back with all of the knowledge that you've accumulated in your first playthrough, kind of like you would do with the Souls game. 02:13:00.31 Dave Yeah. 02:13:08.22 Adelaide And you'd be like, okay, you know, I know that I need to do these kinds of damage types um because it gives you information on bosses too. You can be like, okay, like this first time I barely got through this fight. 02:13:21.34 Adelaide Now I can come in fully prepared. I know exactly what I need to do and then do it and feel really good about that. 02:13:25.46 Dave Yeah. 02:13:28.69 Adelaide I mean, not, you know, again, not that the boss fights are ever like a particularly difficult undertaking, but a more difficult game. 02:13:35.91 Dave Right, yeah. 02:13:38.44 Adelaide then 02:13:40.02 Dave But the reality is that if you did a new game plus, you would have an AR-15 for the entire game and nothing would matter at all. 02:13:47.25 Adelaide Yeah. 02:13:48.79 Dave So it's just ah just an interesting you know wish. 02:13:49.11 Adelaide Yeah. 02:13:54.34 Dave So it's ah it's an interesting game and it's you know the mechanical systems are a bit of a mess once they all start, you know, 02:14:03.84 Dave either not mattering or, you know, mixing with each other in weird ways, but still a really enjoyable game and one that I'm really glad that I played and had a fun conversation going through with someone else. 02:14:16.81 Dave So I appreciate you taking the time. 02:14:17.27 Adelaide Yeah, absolutely Yeah, I'm really glad that we chose this game because I think it is one of those games kind of like you were saying. It's like I've always been vaguely interested in coming back to it, but like I don't think I ever would have actually sat down with it. 02:14:32.18 Adelaide And even if I had, I don't think I would have had the patience to push past the early game when the game is actually very difficult. 02:14:40.16 Dave Mm hmm. 02:14:40.41 Adelaide um I probably just would have been like, these controls suck. This kind of feels like an old game. I feel like this isn't worth my time. 02:14:46.10 Dave Yeah. 02:14:47.89 Adelaide ah So I appreciate the motivation to keep pushing through it. 02:14:48.29 Dave ah Yeah. 02:14:52.54 Dave Yeah, of course, I love when i'm when the show can help people like find that reason they needed to play that game, they've always been vaguely curious about playing. 02:15:03.63 Dave But, you know, we all have so many games that There's a bunch of stuff that I'm going to live the rest of my life not having time to play, even though I want to play it. 02:15:14.03 Dave So getting that extra reason to actually play it is always always fulfilling for me as someone who's asking someone to beat a game to come be a guest on the podcast. 02:15:14.43 Adelaide Yeah. 02:15:24.88 Dave I hope that I'm at least doing that for you. 02:15:24.89 Adelaide Right. 02:15:27.24 Dave So yeah. Cool. 02:15:28.79 Adelaide I know, right? 02:15:28.95 Dave Well, um good conversation as always. I appreciate you as always and taking over two hours to look at us. Saying earlier, we think it might be a shorter one. 02:15:39.20 Dave We're over two hours. So it's a tale as old as time, but you know, um I appreciate you taking the time. It's been a good conversation and I appreciate everyone who has listened to the end. 02:15:52.45 Dave As always, if you're hearing this, you are my hero. and ah check down in the show notes as always for everything that Adelaide is doing out there, places where you can find her. And as always, tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.