We tried the first trial again, at lvl 71, reported monster level 22. Doesn't matter, it doesn't want to work in co-op. The shared honor bar sucks, as well as the gauntlet rooms where you either are in each other's way, pushing the other, or getting dragged from the edge of the screen if you try to go separate. So we were down to half of the bar for the end boss which didn't die fast enough for both of us to get 'damaged' enough from aoe bs to run out of honor. Our health never even moved :/ Does that only work with ranged spells?

Anyway still zero ascendency points and got to beef up my monk's defenses now. I'm doing plenty dmg but one hit kills in the chaos remain a problem.

Ascendency trials are the killer of fun anyway, start over from the beginning. But I'm guessing missing those upgrades will hurt us in the end game levels.

Exactly. Stellar Blade used UE4 and it looks better than UE5 games even in performance. No excuse at all. Would love to know what the problem is. 

Personally, I think UE5 has so many baked-in functions that developers use that they don't spend nearly as much time tweaking various aspects of the engine, animations, and effects. Lumen is terrible for reflections, at its base level, and since most games using it look poor in this regard, I assume they're not tweaking it. Poor animations is another common complaint in UE5, which would indicate the same issue; they're not working on them separately the way they used to. Standardized functions built into an engine will usually be a less costly, but poorer, fit overall. I really can't see any other explanation right now. UE5 was supposed to solve the issue of cratering performance, it only went and made everything so much worse. To make matters even worse, a whole slew of UE5 titles have zero personality when it comes to visual design, once more clearly using the basic assets and functions. Helluva time.

Just finished Ender Lilies on the Switch. One of the best Metroidvanias Ive played. Highly recommended if you enjoy Hollow Knight.

Yeah, we were promised higher FPS at little loss in image quality and to what you said it could be the devs not knowing how to do anything other than what they already know how to do. Nearly as big of a sham as Raytracing regardless of what's causing it. 

Not really a game as much as a demo of the game. The Last Beserker Khazan. Watched reveal and thought yeah looks good but dunno.

Played the demo and loved it so much I pre-ordered it. Still in starting area and it feels more linear so far compared to souls games but combat is really good. Love the gritty dark story and the venom like voice controlling you.

Seems to have the nioh loot concept which I love as it makes replaying and making builds a lot of fun. Can't believe it's only £42 brand new which is a refreshing change from £60-70 releases

DKCRHD

What did you just call me?

It's the weekend and I'm feeling unwell so it's a long ass gaming session. Still maining Cyberpunk and replaced Blavk Myth Wu Kong as my 2nd in rotation to Final Fantasy 16 again, it's not great but it's effortless and that's what I want atm, pretty much an film with light gameplay elements, wasn't feeling Wu Kong at the moment, early game is like The Witcher 3 combat but without all that's great about TW3 attavhed to it, I'm sure I'l fall into it and progression opens up more avenues for combat variation but not right now. Chipping away at my ever green game, Army of ruin but it became so difficult to stay alive I assume there is grinding to be done, might swap it out for something easy like Crash Bandivoot 2 cause it looks like it'll be many hours of grind.

I take bavk what I said about Ginal Fantady 16. The combat is actually more involved than I considered, I completely missed the skill system and cool Downe. Still feels basic, a lot like MMO combat.... actually, this whole game feels like it is an expansion for FF14 but without the social aspects.