I recently bought the game “Elden Ring,” an open-world action RPG based on the Dark Souls/Demon Souls formula. IGN rated the game 10/10, a masterpiece, and it has got a lot of attention as a new AAA game. I haven’t played any of the previous ones because I’m not generally a fan of the difficult gameplay, story-sparse genre. But the game world is large and beautiful, and provides many hours of fun adventure. The open-world aspect allows you to spend time advancing your character in new areas before fighting the first boss. In normal games, this would probably just be called grinding, but it felt a little different here because of all the other zones you could travel to for items and experience.
My strategy in games recently is centered around “the best defense is a good offense.” In a lot of the games I play, I can forego any investment into defense if my offense is strong enough to make the battle short. I have a bad habit of trying to get as many strikes as possible into an exposed boss, only to overstep my bounds and get hit back. It seems the longer the boss fight is, the more likely I am to get hit with a fatal strike, so it’s best to minimize the time by making the battle as short as possible. So far it has worked reasonably well. I leveled up a bunch, got the axe from the tree sentinel at the beginning of the game, upgraded it like five times, and was able to make it through the first three story bosses like a hot knife through butter. Let’s hope it continues this way.