It’s been another whole month since the last time we played, and like last time much has been added to the game since last we played. Specifically, a whole new expansion has dropped.

Darkness looms over the realm, but for us, it is nothing to fear. Rather, it is our weapon, to be used to decimate our enemies before they ever have a chance to attack us.

With Veigar and Senna at our side, our foes will know the true terror that lurks in the dark.

As always, thanks to Mobalytics for the decklists.

Deck list: CEBQOBIKAQNDCXK6MKTACAIBAUUAEBIFBAEQGAIFAUFQGBIKAGMADUIBAECAKOAA

At its core, the deck’s goal is to use the Darkness cards the various creatures and our champions can generate and use the damage from them to keep our opponent’s board clear long enough to overtake them with value. Once we have, we can close the game either by attacking with our remaining creatures and/or using a leveled-up Veigar’s ability to start pelting them in the face with Darkness. We’re a control deck whose odds of success improve as we extend the game.

To the end, we also have several ways to cycle through our deck. Hidden Pathways is the clearest example, letting us draw 2 cards, with a discount that is easy to activate. The Pokey Sticks can also take down 1-drops with ease while replacing itself for net card advantage. And with Aloof Travelers, we can sift through our deck while denying a valuable card to our opponent.

And of course, we also have a removal suite to go with our champions. If Senna happens to be in play, these spells get even stronger due to their fast speed. And with Stress Defense and Minimorph, we have tools to deal with big problem creatures and keep our own units alive through removal or block.

As far as control decks go, this is as solid as it gets.

We’ve progressed at a clip, taking down a number of bosses in Boletaria, Latria, and Stonefang. None of them stood a chance against us. And even if they did, we only need to emerge victorious a single time.

And yet, we find ourselves taking in upgrade materials for our quality weapons, so let us proceed deeper into Stonefang Tunnel in order to procure the items we need.

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

We are unfortunately tackling some of the more annoying stages of Demon’s Souls, particularly the second area of the Valley of Defilement. The stage isn’t frustrating by any means. In fact, it’s fairly easy when compared to its most famous future iteration in Dark Soul’s Blighttown. However, falling off the platform spells a ton of wasted time in trying to find our way back to the main path.

And then there’s the second stage of Stonefang. Again, it’s not a hard stage, but one that is needlessly difficult to navigate due to the lack of recognizable landmarks to orient yourself with. The challenge is less to fight our way through and more not getting lost, since the enemies don’t really fight back.

Thankfully, we managed to bolster that by starting one of the most fascinating areas of the game: The Shrine of Storms. The boss fights here all tell us a lot about the local legends in Boletaria and its surrounding lands. One of the choices I appreciate most is the one to allow us to find the Adjudicator’s Shield before we encounter the Adjudicator as a boss. The item’s description, which depicts the legend of the Adjudicator, allows us to get an idea of the fight before we ever enter the boss room. And if we’re playing for the first time, we can have that experience of being blindsided by the boss’s identity.

And the bosses of the Shrine of Storms only get cooler from here.

PS: I’m growing more and more concerned with Twitch’s response (or lack thereof) to the ongoing hate raid/bot spam phenomenon. I had to block over 25 bots from the start of this stream to the end of it. The bot follows also occurred up to 15 minutes after I had finished streaming.

Fix your platform, Twitch. Or else people will start leaving over experiences like this.

Every now and then, a target from our past returns to gives us another excellent opportunity. This time, in the spirit of Gluttony, that target is The Food Critic.

I had challenged this same target over four years ago, in January of 2017. Back then, I failed. But times have changed, and I’m better than I once was, so let’s give it another shot.

Now, it wasn’t the type of victory that I was hoping for… but it is a victory and I’ll take it.

One of the most amusing aspects of this mission is how we’re lead to believe that since he’s a food critic, the obvious answer is to poison his meal. Except he doesn’t actually eat the food, so you need to think of a different strategy to deliver the lethal blow.

It’s extraordinary how irksome a couple of well-placed guards can be in the course of the average Hitman level. And that’s on top of how open and exposed his table seat is. I’m positive that there’s one weird mechanic or interaction that, if I knew/remembered it, I could get an easy Silent Assassin despite the crowd.

But sometimes, the target needs to go out with a bang.

Our journey has been off to a strong start, easily scaling the castle walls of the Boletarian Palace to unlock the main gate. Once inside, we defeated the Phalanx, starting our adventure off in truth.

Now, we find ourselves in the Stonefang Tunnel, on our way to fight another powerful demon. Beyond, who knows what untold horrors await us as we claim Demon’s Souls.

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

It occurs to me that I never explained why we needed to kill that NPC on the right side of the cathedral’s walls, with the sigil in front of him. Had we defeated the Fool’s Idol before dispatching him, we would not have slain the demon. Instead, it would have been resurrected, forcing us to fight the Fool’s Idol again at a later date. Killing him prevents the Idol from returning to life, allowing us to truly eliminate it.

One of the things that From Software does better than almost any other development studio is subtle worldbuilding that encourages players to explore, discover, and learn about the setting at their own pace. Even in these early days, before Dark Souls put them on the map, you can see their deft hand at work.

Rather than leave a note that explains the lore, what we get are fragments in the names and descriptions of the items that we pick up and enemies we fight. There is significant meaning behind the first boss in the Tower of Latria being referred to as the “Fool’s Idol” instead of something like the “Queen of Latria”. The name tells us a lot about the boss and its position in the world and its story. Further compounding this is the addition of the old man resurrecting the Idol, in order to keep it alive as an object of worship. Taken together, in context, implies that there is something far more sinister behind the scenes than we might otherwise suspect at first glance.

What separates this from something like Dark Souls is the time period that we inhabit. In Dark Souls, Lord Gwyn and his allies had already seized fire from the dragons, starting their crusade against the dark. The events that define the player’s quest had already transpired long before we reach Lordran. Here, the apocalypse that set the wheel of fate in motion is still in progress. Many of the people involved are profound figures, but not the stuff of myth and legend that someone like Dragonslayer Ornstein is in Dark Souls. They are the people we meet, work with, and occasionally oppose.

Hopefully, we’ll get to see more of that as the run continues.

Piggy has spoken, and we’re to provide the necessary ingredients for his upcoming meal. Naturally, as we embody Agent 47, each ingredient is lovingly extracted from the bodies of our victims.

The Seasons of Sin continues, and September is the month of Gluttony.

I’m not sure how I feel about this Escalation, even now. The issue with this particular mission that I kept running into is that all of this was dreadfully familiar. I haven’t looked back at all of the content I’ve done on the Chongqing map, but every step of that final phase was something I recall having done before in either a previous escalation or an Elusive Target or something similar.

Obviously, that’s expected to a certain degree. Once we understand the map, we’ll know how to traverse it in order to get where we need to go. And yet, I can’t help but feel that missions like this could be stronger if elements of the map were remixed or rearranged to force players to rethink their tactics.

I don’t feel accomplished because I more-or-less went on auto-pilot for this one: A shame.

We’ve explored the depraved horrors of Snaktooth Island and the inner working of the world inside my PlayStation 5, but now it’s time to go on a real adventure.

An epic quest awaits us in the Northern Lands of Boletaria. With no one else able to step up to the plate, we must take up the mantle of Slayer of Demons, that the Old One is once more lulled into slumber. Whatever King Allant is planning, it can’t be good.

This is Demon’s Souls.

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

I was torn on doing this for the channel, and it’s not because I dislike Souls game. This happens to be one of my favorite Souls games, in fact.

What made me nervous is how long it can take to complete a single run of the game. I try to avoid games with large completion times because I don’t want to spend months on end faffing about and getting nothing done. I’m hoping the fact that I’m so familiar with the game, along with its more reasonable length compared to the average Souls games, will bring that down to a more manageable number. That said, I do expect this to be a longer length than my average Let’s Play stream series.

Having said that, I’m still incredibly excited to go through Demon’s Souls. While it doesn’t pull off the “connected world” idea as much as Dark Souls did later on, but there’s still a strong sense of place in every region of the game. Additionally, as we go on, I hope I can talk about and demonstrate how it has some of the best boss battle design in all of video games.

This is going to be a good time.

Another Elusive Target has been activated, this time in the mansion of Dartmoor. Our targets, for there are two of them, are guilty of defiling the dead and feeding the meat from their corpses to unsuspecting patrons.

Let us make sure their latest meal is their last.

With what time we have remaining, we also start the Gluttony contract, as the fifth of seven deadly sins crosses our path.

I’m still amazed that I’ve been playing these Hitman games since 2016, and only now am I learning that we can use our gun while standing on a ledge outside a window. I’m still surprised that completing this target was so easy. I guess that’s what happens when you’ve memorized a map.

As for Gluttony, we’ll go into it more next week.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve had just playing through a solid, well made and paced platformer. Sure, it’s only three or four hours, but those hours are phenomenal.

It’s a perfect excuse both to bask in some good ol’ PlayStation nostalgia and talk about old gaming trivia.

In a way, this is a game that was almost custom-designed for me and people like me. I grew up mostly on PlayStation, not even dipping my toes into PC gaming until about 2015. As much as I enjoyed playing Halo with my friends, I could do that over at their house and PlayStation always had the better exclusive games like Ratchet and Clank. This means that I’m getting a lot out of these references to old titles, basking in the nostalgia.

It also helps that it’s an old-school platformer like the ones I’ve always enjoyed growing up too. Certainly, the variety of gameplay types on display is purposefully crafted to showcase the features of the new controller, but that doesn’t take away from the joy of using those mechanics. Further, all of these playstyles keep the play fresh and interesting through the playthrough.

Next week, we start Demon’s Souls.

Not that we’ve spent confronting eldritch and other horrors out to kill us that it’s about time we deserve some time in peace. And that’s why I’ve chosen to play this little game: Astro’s Playroom. It comes pre-installed on every PS5, ostensible as a tech demo for the features on the new controller.

Despite that, it’s a surprisingly good platforming game. Even better, there are a ton of nods to the history of PlayStation from across the years that are just perfect for people like me.

I’m excited to share it with you.

One of the joys of playing a game like this, especially with an audience, is the ability to recount the personal stories I have with some of the games being referenced and artifacts that we’ve found. Either we get to bond over our shared history, or by sharing pieces of our past with each other.

It’s also a great way to remind myself of my inevitable demise to the ever-encroaching vortex of time and space… if I were so inclined.

Fortunately, I’m not.

There are days where one simply needs to beat up monsters in order to deal with their inner turmoil and get paid to do it. And on other days, you simply want to hang out with your enby goth scythe.

Thankfully for me, Boyfriend Dungeon allows me to do both. Let me show you what I mean.

It has come to my attention that Rowan is non-binary. I apologize for the confusion and mistake in the video.

Having said that, one of the things this game has become known for was the controversy surrounding its content warning. Previously, the game opened with a warning that users “may” be subject to depictions of stalking, kidnapping, and emotional abuse. The language implied that it was possible to play while avoiding those subjects, but that is not the case as those are major themes and plot points. Since then, the content warning had been changed to reflect those criticisms.

The thing that sucks most about that is that while the criticism is valid, it overshadows all of the many positive game design choices made to maximize inclusiveness, ensuring as many people can truly enjoy the game as possible. LauraKBuzz already spoke at length about it on her Access-Ability show on YouTube, and rather than repeat her points I’ll encourage you to watch her video.

What I do want to talk about is how the game puts in the extra effort to include people that are otherwise criminally underserved in the dating sim genre. I am an aromatic and asexual man, which means I don’t experience romantic or sexual attraction the way most other people do, even among the LGBTQA+ spectrum. While I don’t balk at them, I won’t lie that there’s a part of me that gets uncomfortable taking part in even fictional romances. Despite being a dating sim, Boyfriend Dungeon affords me some peace of mind by allowing me to stay platonic with the various weapons in my arsenal.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I have a friend who is both non-binary and polyamorous. Not only does the game allow them to use they/them pronouns, but there are several non-binary people who are datable options. Additionally, the game allows players to date multiple people at the same time, without passing judgment upon the player for doing so. Rather than forcing players to choose one character as their destined soulmate, Boyfriend Dungeon is perfectly content letting us date any number of them, 0 or more.

I’d like more dating sims and games that include dating sim elements, like Persona as a capital offender, to allow for this increased range of options available to the player. They’d be better experiences for it.

Addendum: During this episode’s recording, I mention that hate raids have become common on Twitch of late, and that the company isn’t doing enough to stop them. It is for this reason that no stream has occurred on #ADayOffTwitch (the date of publishing), in support of the movement against this surge of discrimination.