We Miss Elden Ring Nightreign - Kinda Funny Gamescast 02.21.25

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: We Miss Elden Ring Nightreign - February 21, 2025

In the February 21, 2025 episode of Kinda Funny Gamescast, hosts Tim Gettys, Greg “GameOverGreggy” Miller, Blessing Adeoye, and Andy Cortez delve deep into the highly anticipated multiplayer expansion for Elden Ring—Elden Ring Nightreign. This episode offers an insightful exploration of the game's new features, host experiences, and community reactions, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of what to expect from this latest addition to the Elden Ring universe.

---

Introduction to Elden Ring Nightreign

The episode kicks off with the hosts addressing the ongoing buzz around Elden Ring Nightreign. Greg Miller sets the stage by highlighting the unique aspects of the expansion, emphasizing its departure from traditional Elden Ring mechanics.

Greg Miller [08:47]: "We were sitting around saying, what do we want to talk about on this Gamescast? … what's the topic, what’s it?"

Gameplay Mechanics and Features

Elden Ring Nightreign introduces a streamlined multiplayer experience compared to its predecessor. Blessing Adeoye provides a detailed breakdown of the game's core mechanics, making it accessible for both veterans and newcomers to the Souls-like genre.

Blessing Adeoye [12:07]: "Night Rain is just kill the thing, level up and don't worry about what stats you're leveling up. You just level up. Whatever class you are, you hit the level up button and it makes your character stronger."

Key highlights include:

• Simplified Leveling System: Players can level up their entire character without focusing on specific stats, reducing complexity and speeding up progression.
• Character Classes: Four initial classes—Tank, Rogue, Mage, and Wilder—each with unique abilities and ultimates, designed to promote varied gameplay styles.
• Boss Rush Mode: A multiplayer-focused mode where players team up to tackle a series of randomized bosses within a limited timeframe.

Andy Cortez expresses excitement about the simplified mechanics, noting how they enhance the overall experience by removing the steep learning curve often associated with Souls-like games.

Andy Cortez [14:44]: "I love the idea that you can just press a button and it just levels your everything up."

Multiplayer Dynamics and Challenges

The hosts discuss the intricacies of multiplayer in Nightreign, sharing personal anecdotes and highlighting both the strengths and limitations encountered during gameplay sessions.

Blessing Adeoye [20:31]: "You always have to keep... You drink the milk."

Greg raises concerns about the network stability, especially during complex boss encounters, which Blessing and Andy address by emphasizing the game's robust design despite initial network test issues.

Greg Miller [46:02]: "One of the things you all talked about was, is the network gonna work when people are reviewing it, Is that gonna hamper scores at launch?"

Blessing reassures listeners that the closed network tests were primarily to gather essential data and refine the multiplayer experience ahead of the full release.

Blessing Adeoye [47:11]: "And I played it and I was like, oh, I'm a dummy. Is like a lot of freaking fun."

Boss Encounters and Strategy

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the diverse range of bosses introduced in Nightreign. Blessing elaborates on the unique abilities and strategies required to defeat these formidable foes, contrasting them with those from the original Elden Ring.

Blessing Adeoye [22:25]: "It rocks. Sony, Roger. We got to get you."

The hosts share their experiences battling bosses like Margit and the Duchess, highlighting how teamwork and strategic use of abilities are crucial for success.

Blessing Adeoye [26:17]: "That's when I'm struggling, you guys can laugh at this dude who ran away."

Andy Cortez adds his perspective on the game's balance, appreciating the blend of challenge and accessibility.

Andy Cortez [29:35]: "I'm so excited. I'm so excited."

Community Reception and Fantasy Critic Scores

The conversation shifts towards the community's reception of Nightreign and its impact on the upcoming Fantasy Critic scores. Greg Miller emphasizes the importance of community feedback in shaping the game's final reception.

Greg Miller [47:38]: "I think you'll see some nice... nice scores."

Roger Jacobs weighs in on potential score outcomes, suggesting that while the game may not reach the lofty heights of Elden Ring, it is poised to receive favorable reviews.

Roger Jacobs [47:55]: "It’s a solid, solid pick... It’ll definitely be on Kinda Funny’s top 10 game of the year."

Future Prospects and Closing Thoughts

As the episode nears its conclusion, the hosts speculate on future updates and expansions for Elden Ring Nightreign, expressing optimism about the game's longevity and potential for continuous improvement based on player feedback.

Blessing Adeoye [44:35]: "I think it will... It will have a lot of hours in it."

Greg Miller wraps up the discussion by reaffirming the show's commitment to covering the ongoing developments of Nightreign and other major gaming topics, encouraging listeners to stay tuned for future episodes.

Greg Miller [57:53]: "It has been our pleasure to serve."

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Conclusion

The February 21, 2025 episode of Kinda Funny Gamescast provides an in-depth analysis of Elden Ring Nightreign, exploring its gameplay innovations, multiplayer dynamics, and community impact. Through engaging discussions and firsthand experiences, the hosts offer a balanced perspective on what fans can expect from this exciting expansion, positioning it as a noteworthy contender in the evolving landscape of multiplayer Souls-like games.

Listeners keen on the latest in gaming developments will find this episode both informative and entertaining, capturing the essence of Kinda Funny Gamescast's commitment to delivering comprehensive and engaging content.

Transcript

[Greg Miller]

What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Friday, February 21, 2025. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller, alongside Christmas in February, Joey Noel.

[Joey Noel]

We have a problem. Everybody. Not we, including me. We mostly them.

[Greg Miller]

I mean us as a company.

[Joey Noel]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Us as a society, a community. What's the problem, Joe?

[Joey Noel]

I don't. Why there's so many Tiktoks Tic Tacs on this table.

[Greg Miller]

Brad said right before we went live, I need a Tic Tac. And I thought he was joking. And then he sprinted off and came back with these Tiktoks, which are Tic Tacs, which he claims are office Tic Tacs, which I've never seen. Talk.

[Joey Noel]

No idea.

[Andy Cortez]

Well, they're in the. They're in the little cabinet right there with all the chips.

[Greg Miller]

Well, so is my rice, but that doesn't mean it's rice for everybody.

[Andy Cortez]

But also there's Jesus there. And then Blessing thought that that was for the office. So he's been needed. Some of them.

[Greg Miller]

That's fine.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

I keep my Cheez its in my desk drawer.

[Joey Noel]

Yeah, those are Nick's cheeses.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Joey Noel]

And then bless cheese that's in the.

[Greg Miller]

Cabinet I'm always going to have. You know what I mean? Then Andy. You came all the way back then Andy ran off and brought back Rainbow because.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, because then I brought him a fruity flavor that I saw in the. In there. But then he was like, no, I don't like that fruity flavor. I have a specific food flavor that he probably. Probably has like his own set of Tic Tacs.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Fruit Adventures. The. Well, I bought these at the corner store this morning.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay. You have a lot of Tic Tacs in the office just like laying around. They sent you a bunch. Like, why don't you just use that supply before you get more?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Because I already ate all of this supply. Okay.

[Joey Noel]

It's a Fruit Adventures.

[Andy Cortez]

Gotcha.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But it's like buying the big variety Flamin Hot Pack and you eat all the hot Cheetos first. And it's like, well, what's left? You know?

[Joey Noel]

Remember all the purple Alani that I left in the fridge? Because I don't like that flavor.

[Greg Miller]

For me, it was always this little cereal boxes. You get excited for a camping trip and you get that. Yeah. Then you get the end. It's like, I got cornflakes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Got three boxes of cornflakes.

[Andy Cortez]

I gotta get there, put some peanuts in there. Boom. That's what I used to do.

[Greg Miller]

No.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Shut up. No. Peanuts into cornflakes? Yeah. Are you eating milk?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, that's disgusting.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's disgusting. Every.

[Andy Cortez]

Every morning for my breakfast, I would have corn flakes or I would have Cinnamon Toast Crunch or whatever. I would just put a bunch of salted peanuts.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What?

[Joey Noel]

In your cereal.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The. Are you talking.

[Andy Cortez]

I would have a.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's like.

[Greg Miller]

If you were like, it's dry, I could. I'm like, okay, that's not oats.

[Andy Cortez]

Was my favorite to put a bunch of salted peanuts in there. And if I had unsalted peanuts, I would add some salt in there. You know what I mean?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't even like good things.

[Andy Cortez]

Even.

[Joey Noel]

I don't know if you.

[Andy Cortez]

It's a little bit. It's a little bit of salty, a little bit of sweet. It's perfect. Find a. Yeah, just like. Just put that in there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What the.

[Andy Cortez]

It's great, guys. You guys try it.

[Greg Miller]

Is that one of the things where I like. I. It sounds. Did What?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Do the nuts sink? Do they sink?

[Andy Cortez]

You mix it up. You got to have to keep it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You always have to keep.

[Greg Miller]

You drink the milk.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You Milky nuts with a bowl and that's good.

[Andy Cortez]

People boil peanuts. You know what I mean? Like, there's a lot of things you.

[Joey Noel]

Do in Dr. Pepper.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Exactly.

[Andy Cortez]

See who's weirder?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Baseball game. Peanuts. Like, yeah, I'll take some. And you got milk with you? No, sir.

[Greg Miller]

That's my own.

[Andy Cortez]

That's my drink of milk.

[Greg Miller]

You any corn flakes? Oh, this place sucks so good.

[Andy Cortez]

Just a little bit of salt.

[Greg Miller]

I only got through Joey. I was ready. Intro. Like, wait a second now. We. Of course, he's the taste maker.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't know.

[Greg Miller]

After we say that he's the taste maker. Roger Picorn.

[Andy Cortez]

You guys are going to try it out. You're going to know. The final boss is back, by the way. Come on, put that out there. Final boss is back.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I know. Tonight on smackdown, let's see how he fucks up.

[Andy Cortez]

He's going to be like, hey, guys, WrestleMania 41. Not going to be there. WrestleMania 42.

[Greg Miller]

I got some things. Mama Rose. Now, really. This is the test. If in the next three days, Hideo Kojima puts up a little phone playing Caroline Polachek and then a bowl of Frost Mini Wheats and fucking goddamn peanuts. Well, no, they do it differently in Japan.

[Andy Cortez]

You know what I mean? I feel like he would. He would appreciate. He gets culture. He understands it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't think. I don't think so. He's doing that with the smoke. Mike DVD try with me. No. Well, I don't eat the half on me hang out. He's already gone.

[Roger]

Whenever Mike leaves, Roger just slowly forms into him.

[Greg Miller]

Somebody's got to fill the void. Of course, he's the Hispanic heartthrob Texas street Latino hit God, he just took like 19 tic tacs. Latino heat clicking heads and ripping under stress. The glow trotting head shot and rootin tootin'three point shootin'from Nitroval from Twitch tv. Andy Cortez almost choked on one. I was gonna say you were? I, I today I was driving and for some reason, all of a sudden my Apple carplay I need to like disconnect. Like, like when I say hey, Siri, she just ignores me. So like I was driving and it started into Predator in Review and I let it play because I was like driving on the, you know, I was fast. And it got to the point where it's like you're talking about like not wanting to chew the big league chew into the microphone, but here, you just ate 19 tic tacs as I was introducing you. Like, you couldn't have picked a worse time to fill your mouth a little. Little fucking balls TGIF, you know?

[Andy Cortez]

That's true.

[Greg Miller]

That is true. There's 900 donuts out there. They're really good, though.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They're so good.

[Greg Miller]

If you didn't know everybody, this is the Kind of Funny Gamescast. Each and every week, four, sometimes five best friends gather on this table to come talk about video games and the biggest topics therein. Whether they be reviews, previews, or just conversations we need to have, we have them daily live on YouTube.com kinda funnygames, Twitch TV, kindafunnygames, and of course, podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do. Like so many of you, you loved Yesterday's Kind of Funny Games Cast with Matt Piscatella. Thank you all for your love and support on that episode. It was very cool to last night go into the comments and see a comment from Matt Piscatella. Like your face when you show up to the comments. And they're all very nice. Thank you. Thank you for being into this conversation. Check it out if you missed it. Thank you so much.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I went to go leave some mean ones because of that. Don't get too excited.

[Greg Miller]

Why is this headset so big? Of course.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Is that landing a plane?

[Greg Miller]

If you like what we do, yeah, pick up that kind of fun. You could get all of our shows ad free. The ability to watch us live record the afternoon podcast like yesterday's Predator with all the costumes. And of course, get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller in a series we call Greg Way. No books toss our way, no big deal. Like subscribe share YouTube.com kindafunnygames. You know, still go to patreon.com kindafunny of course, go to Twitch TV kindafunnygames. Get Apple, get Spotify. There's memberships all over there. You're having a great time. You're supporting us. And if you wanna support us while we're on this show live, talking about Elden Ring Night Ring, talking about the Fantasy Critic, talking about your questions, it's a Friday. It's a grab bag mailbag. Get in there. We need some YouTube super chats. Go to YouTube.com kindafunnygames and leave your super chat while we are live to be part of the show. Perhaps housekeeping for you. You already got The Final Fantasy 7 Rebirths Redemption Episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily. Of course, after this you're gonna get Game Showdown because it's Friday. Carl Jacobs will be joining us then. Thank you. The stream is a sponsored like a Dragon Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii Takeover, where Roger is gonna walk me and Joey through the game. If that was enough for you, three packages have arrived out there that are sealed that we're gonna open. They're from Sega. We're gonna open them up and see what they are. This stream, see what we got out there. That'd be fun.

[Andy Cortez]

This is gonna be the best day ever. I'm so excited to show you Tic Tacs.

[Greg Miller]

You got donuts with you for lunch?

[Andy Cortez]

I have a bunch of frozen chicken and broccoli, but have more than that.

[Greg Miller]

Broccoli?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I can just kind of put.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It on your phone.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, it's together.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. If you want to split my lunch with me.

[Greg Miller]

No, I have the chicken, I have the rice, but I keep forgetting my broccoli at home.

[Andy Cortez]

I think my chicken's better than yours.

[Greg Miller]

I probably mine. It's just a bag from Costco.

[Andy Cortez]

Let's split our lunch. Let's split our lunch.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Let's have some donut pieces in that.

[Greg Miller]

Let's put some peanuts over, put some.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Tic Tacs in there.

[Greg Miller]

And then of course, for your housekeeping, don't forget that Blessing and Mike are in Chicago right now for Magic Con. If you're around the convention center, of course you can find them and say hi. If you're in the Chicago area, they will be holding a meeting up at Portillo's Off Canal and Taylor tonight at 7:30pm on Friday. So come hang out.

[Andy Cortez]

It's exciting.

[Greg Miller]

If you're.

[Andy Cortez]

I didn't interrupt you.

[Greg Miller]

No, it was Joey me. Joey was making the move like she had something to say.

[Joey Noel]

Oh, no, I don't have anything.

[Greg Miller]

I was like, get her. Get him, Joey. You know.

[Joey Noel]

Oh, about Ro. I'm not coming for Roger.

[Greg Miller]

If you're a kind of funny member, of course you can get my Greg way momentarily about how everyone else at Kinda Funny duped me and you. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twany, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Karen Lindener. Today we're brought to you by Built Rewards Factor Stash. But we'll tell you about all that later. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be topic of the show. Not only is there the Tic Tac thing where he's like, it's tgif, it's this lean back he's doing. He's off the mic. He's just like, ah, man, he's not here to critique my performance.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Half in, half out.

[Greg Miller]

We were sitting around saying, what do we want to talk about on this Gamescast? We had this motley crew of video game folks here. And the problem we've run into, of course, is that it is review season all the time. You can smell it. And so a lot of us are playing redacted and can't tell you about redacted until redacted.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's like a mahogany and so it.

[Greg Miller]

Gets in the way of it. And then, Andy, what happened? You told this entire story on Games Daily. I'm just setting you up to say it again.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, yeah, we do. We. Well, like, suddenly Joey was like, oh, we could play it. We could talk about Elder Ring Night Reign. I was like, oh, my goodness. We didn't talk about that as a group.

[Joey Noel]

We talked about it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I talked about during my preview period. But we didn't like, as a group, get together and be like, wow, we had a full weekend of it. What did we think in the, in the weirdest, you know, hour times, our slots, I, you know, I got, I played at 3am to 6am sure.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, you have to.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Wild.

[Joey Noel]

I can't believe you did it. You and Mike both.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He did it. The first one. Yeah, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

So that's the thing I'm most interested in to start with is the one, the only Joey Noel.

[Joey Noel]

Oh, I thought you were gonna say Andy.

[Greg Miller]

No, no, I've heard enough about Andy. Trust me, for a lifetime Joey, you know, you and I are. You and I are close. And when we talk about Venn diagrams of games, it's not a full circle like me and Janet.

[Joey Noel]

No, but it's.

[Greg Miller]

It's close. Like, Janet just has FIFA on her outskirts and I just have wwe. But every other game we're going to be aligned on, right? You and I are very usually in line with. Why in the microphone are you shaking him? Why are you shaking them in the microphone? God damn it. Tic Tac.

[Joey Noel]

We have to ban Tic Tac like we ban Nerf guns.

[Greg Miller]

I respect Elden Ring. Yeah, it's not my kind of game. I picked Night Rain for my fantasy critic. You know what I mean? I want to know if I was a good pick. Some of you were like, oh, no, I did not expect you to be at the meeting. Like, yeah, I played a lot of it. I've been playing a lot with the girls Lauren loves. And this. What the hell's going on through. How any of this. How do they get you?

[Joey Noel]

Because throughout all of the, like, state of plays and stuff like that, Marie has been like, paid to break it to you guys, but I am going to pull the friend card favor and make you play this with me. And I was like, shoot, okay, everyone gets one. But then, you know, everybody has their thing that they're like, I really want to play this and I need people to play with me. So, like, this is part of friendship that we have to do for each other. So, yeah, we jumped in. Well, we tried to jump in Friday night, but then they didn't have custom matchmaking open. So we're like, well, I'm certainly not going to be playing with strangers. Especially hearing you two talking about how much you're just yelling at these people that are running around not knowing anything, especially not having played Elden Ring. I'm like, I am. This is not an optimal thing. So when they finally opened it up on Sunday, we played for like that three hour period. I had like a. I did not have a fun time. The first game that I played, I.

[Greg Miller]

Was like, why not?

[Joey Noel]

This, this is hard. I don't know the buttons. And if I don't. If I'm not, like, instantly kind of good at something, especially video game related, I'm never going back. But the girls were like, well, we could just. We get to hang. We haven't hung out at all. Or we haven't, like, played games together in a while. So what if we just played for this time? And I was like, oh, fine. And then I actually like had fun by the end of it, so.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, so you're saying you had a bad time when you were solo?

[Joey Noel]

No, no. Oh, just because it's like Lauren didn't really play a ton of Elden Ring. Maria is the only one. I think she platinumed it. So it's like she's having to like teach us all very basic fundamentals of the game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The nice thing, which I'm sure I.

[Joey Noel]

Still am like not playing correctly at all. But I'm more interested in going back to figure it out because I did have fun.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But I think it's great. It's a great onboarding for nobody. For anybody who hasn't played a Souls, like I think for anybody who hasn't played from software game because it isn't, you know, worrying about equip weight. And like, what if I told you, Joey, that in Elden Ring or in any Souls game you're. If your carrying capacity is 63, I don't know, pounds or whatever the hell that if you are 75% of that 63 pounds, you will roll a lot slower and be way slower when you roll a fat roll. And then you have to be within this certain, like this systems get very confusing. Yeah, it's a light roll, medium roll, fat roll. When you're fat rolling, it's like, I gotta take off this piece of armor, whatever. So I could be within below the threshold. So it. They have so many systems that can get really confusing. But Night Rain is just kill the thing level up and don't worry about what stats you're leveling up. You just level up. Yeah, you. Whatever class you are, you hit the level up button and it makes your character stronger. And that's. And healthier and bigger stamina bar. You know, it kind of makes your. If you are the magic class, it will make you, your character better at doing magic things in addition to giving you a bigger health bar and stamina bar. And I love how simple that they've made it for somebody like Joey who's like, sure, you probably don't know a lot of the nuance of knowing. All right, I should be backing up right here because my stamina bar is out. I should be. But still, that. That comes at time, you know.

[Joey Noel]

Yeah, that's the stuff that's, I think, easier to pick up the more and more that you play. So I'm excited to get back into it.

[Greg Miller]

I feel you think you're coming back. You know, these three hours turns you around enough where you're like, okay, yeah.

[Joey Noel]

I think I had enough fun where even this week I've been like, trying to figure out, like, what I want to play, what do I want to watch, like, balancing it all kind of out. And I was like, oh, it's kind of a bummer that we can't play that anymore. And they just took it from us. What if they just let us, Let us keep playing, you know?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, it was really, really sad. Did you have any interest in this?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I have a lot of interest in this one. Specifically for everything you're saying, right. Like, it seems like a more streamline version of what I liked about Elden Ring. I put about maybe 15 hours into Elden Ring when it first came out, but then once we started getting really deep into the systems, I was just like, this is too much. There's too much going on here. I always had the feeling of, oh, I'm missing out or I'm not min. Maxing this weapon correctly. I don't know where to go. I don't know what's going on here. So everything you're describing from your preview seems really interesting. The idea that you can basically hot dropping and you're figuring out where to go and, you know, I love the idea that you can just press a button and it just levels your everything up.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Andy Cortez]

Like, I do have like that fear, at least for like the hardcore gamer like you of, like, is, how long is this going to last? Like, in terms of fun? Like, are you going to like hit a wall? Where it's like, oh, well, this is really cool and simple. But, like, I want it to be that deep Elden Ring experience to a certain degree. Like, do you have that fear?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, not at all. I think it's because. It's. Because it's a complete experience.

[Andy Cortez]

Sure.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I. Because it's a completely different experience. You are essentially playing a bit of a different video game. Greg, this is the best analogy that somebody said in chat the other day, okay, I was playing this, they said, so. And call your name out, please, because you're probably here watching this as well. Greg Miller, they said, oh, so this is like. This is like the NFL red zone.

[Greg Miller]

Just it's Boss Fights.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The NFL red zone channel is all just touchdowns. It just switches to whatever team is close to scoring a touchdown. And it's all. It's like all killer. No filler. Not saying that to me. Elden Ring, of course, filler. I fucking love it for what it is. But this is a. This is the energy drink version of Elden Ring.

[Greg Miller]

So if I can just Pull us over for one second. You've done a great job introducing all of this. And can you give me the synopsis of what Elden Ring Night Reign is? I know it's multiplayer Elden Ring, but even the description off of the Steam pages. Elden Ring Night Rain is a standalone adventure within the Elden Ring universe, crafted to offer players a new gaming experience by reimagining the game's core design. How many people are playing? How many people are playing? You say? We're just picking a class. Like, what is it?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Bear, give me the reverb in the lands between. There's no reverb. We don't have that. We put it in post.

[Roger]

I was gonna try to figure it out. Also, this show is live. There is no post.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's unfortunate. The. So you solo or up to three friends. Not two friends or. Or two friends. Two friends. Or you can't play a duo.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, you can't.

[Greg Miller]

So we can be three or four players, but not two.

[Joey Noel]

Just correct.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But just three. They were. No, no. You could play one solo, just not during this. But no, fourth period. Not four. Yeah, yeah. One or three player synopsis. It was a lot better. It was a lot better. One or three players.

[Greg Miller]

Got it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But they are considering duos because there's been a lot of.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, really?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's like the number one thing they've been seeing and they already address, like, all right, we're not going to say no to that now. Like, it still may not happen, but we're thinking about it. You know, it sounds like it's maybe a lot more likely to happen, but either you playing solo or you and two homies, a trio, drop into the lands between this. What excites me the most about it is it's a multiplayer, like Boss Rush, you are dropping. You are level one. You're weak as you go kill some enemies, you get some runes, and you find your site of graces around the map to level your character up. The four classes can either be the big tanky boy, who's a bird, he has a big old shield, moves a little bit slower, has some awesome move sets. Every character has an ability and then an ultimate. And one of the characters is a fast kind of rogue character named the Duchess right there. There's the recluse, who's like a mage character, and the Wilder, who's kind of like the, you know, jack of all trades. This dude can kind of do a lot of things. Maybe not any of them incredibly perfect, but, you know, you could just Kind of roll with three Wilders and still be good for a match.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You don't have to worry about filling out every role. I don't think this game is necessarily like that. You might benefit more in some ways. In some ways not. I think a lot of it comes down to what characters do you feel more comfortable with. And plus with there being. With this being sort of a roguelite experience where you go out and you try to fight as many enemies and you try to fight bosses. And if you lose to the bosses and your. And your run ends, you go back to your lobby and you get rewards that will help you buy permanent upgrades for the class specifically.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So every. You know, these four different characters so far, there will be four additional. When the game either comes out or when all is said and done, there will be four additional characters. So up to eight different classes of characters, you have like these colored gemstones that each. The bigger the gemstone, the more traits that they have. And certain characters can only accept certain gemstones. So if you're like, all right, well, my Duchess only has three gemstone slots and they're all green. I should put the green ones on her. Meaning I'm probably going to want to play Duchess because I heard that character is more leveled up.

[Greg Miller]

Got it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Let me go out as a duchess again for another run. See what these new abilities are all about. Because it's giving me extra damage when I do this. It's giving me whatever the hell. So you get like permanent upgrades. And here's. Here's what the gemstones look like. So the wilder has two red slots and a blue slot.

[Joey Noel]

And I didn't do any of this.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, so much easier for you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Well, what's funny is, like, I always. I also just took for granted that people knew how to play the game. So when I was in the playing with randoms for the first several tests, you're playing with people who are just hopping in for the first time that didn't know. Oh, to res my homies, I have to attack them, which I think is the coolest mechanic ever because it's their dead body. Not boring. Your character's just on the ground crawling Fortnite style. You're downed and your homies just have to go up and attack you. And it's so cool and fun instead of just standing there. And so I had several times where I would go down and my homies would walk up to me and just be like, trying. And you're like, ah, they don't know. They don't know to attack me. Right. But, you know, once all that stuff becomes more learned. How did you.

[Greg Miller]

How did you deal with that? Like playing with people who didn't necessarily understand the game as well?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Well, the runs are really quick, so you might just all die. One person quits out because whatever, they're frustrated or something, and then you just start another run. Okay. Tic tacs are pretty good, huh?

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, they're so fun.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Yeah, they are, doc.

[Joey Noel]

And it's probably that those randoms seeing you like hit the down people and being like, oh, this is what I.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

[Greg Miller]

I just want to call out and maybe this should have been in your one on one. But like, you know, in the chat, it goes by all the time like we're, you know, kind of funny as community by being better to each other. So I was kind of taken aback to see Cameron Kennedy in the chat say, y'all see Andy yelling at that chatter the other day at the end of his marathon stream? And then super Novocaine says, what happened? And does like, the weird eyes. And Cameron Kenny goes, he's getting so mad at someone in the game, not realizing he was playing someone in the chat.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. So a few runner throats about this one.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I did mean to. I didn't mean to send that person the link because they left the comment in my YouTube channel and we're like, I really want to show my wife this part. Like, is there any way that you could upload this? Because it was hilarious.

[Greg Miller]

What happened?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Great moment. I put it in random as well. Time coded. But unfortunately the twitch thing isn't working because it's like an 18 hour VOD.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's kind of hard to isolate out, but essentially I'm at the end of my big birthday extravaganza marathon. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. And by this point, I'd already played 11 hours of Dark Souls 2 and I had already done the first session of elden Ring from 11:00am to 2:00pm and we're getting close to 3:00am it's like, oh, the next play session starting. I'm exhausted. I'm tired.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I team up with a recluse who is the master lady.

[Greg Miller]

Oh.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then the Duchess, who is like the fast. Like she's like super fast and awesome abilities.

[Greg Miller]

How many times on stream did you do this?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But what's really. Let me just quick aside the. The coolest ability that the Duchess has, she can replay any damage that's been done in the last second and a half. So when you're fighting an enemy and you see the enemy take a big chunk of health. You hit that ability and it replays that damage again. And the enemy takes like double that.

[Andy Cortez]

But, like, just from you or like from anybody.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Anybody.

[Andy Cortez]

So if you and your whole team, like, like, you guys, like, coordinate, you guys get a big chunk. Press that button. It rocks.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It rocks. Sony, Roger. We got to get you.

[Andy Cortez]

That's so sick. I'm excited. I'm so excited.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So the. I noticed that me and the recluse lady, or because I'm playing with people in chat, because this is the first session where they finally allowed you them to matchmake with the homie, where you make a room code and tell the person the room code and they hop in, right? And by this point, they had not allowed that, but they put a stipulation. We're like, only join with one friend and play with one other random. You can't play with two friends. Your lobby will not work. So I was like, all right, cool. Playing with one people for chat. First game, I play with send nuggies. Second game was this other person. J92 Allen will never forget their name. Rest in peace. And I'm running the whole time, all of us as a trio, we're dominating. And then I suddenly notice that it's just me and the recluse. And then we get invaded. There are these random events where a boss will invade you. And for this network test, which is the most limited this game will ever look and perform. So that's why I feel like if you had even a little bit of fun, you're seeing the most bare bones version of it.

[Joey Noel]

Because there's no in the chat.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There's no procedural world. Chill. Oh, by the way, J92 Allen, the VOD is now viewable, so you can watch the VOD on the Twitch channel. But I didn't upload it to YouTube.

[Greg Miller]

If you'd find it, get us the time code and we'll get it up. J92 Allen, I'm happy you're not there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Bad.

[Roger]

I think I have it ready to go whenever you want. Whenever we want to.

[Greg Miller]

How much more? Yeah, set up the. It's like now we're like on late night shows set up.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Well, you get it. You get invaded. And when you get invaded, the world kind of turns dark and you hear a boss. And in this case it's Margit, who's one of the first bosses you fight. It's like, I'm gonna you up, man. And like, everything turns red.

[Greg Miller]

And I Can see why people love the writing so much in this game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But one of the coolest, this boss will not stop hunting you unless you kill them or if they kill one of you. And if they kill you, they disappear. And for the rest of the run, whoever they killed has a. Like a debuff.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, and this guy, dude, it's crazy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's crazy. So this dude's hunting us, and it's me and the recluse. So the whole time I'm like, me and J92 Allen, my homie, we're here fighting. Where the fuck is our Duchess at? Why are you running way over there, dude, we need you here. This guy gets over the microphone. This guy grabs a loudspeaker at. At Costco and is like, I'm gonna come kill this dude. Like, you heard him. Invade. I need your help. And open up the map. Dutches way. The running away. Here we are struggling, and I'm talking quietly because it's 3:40 in the morning. And this moment to me being like, where's our Duchess, dude? Those are goddamn Dutch touches Duchess. And it's so hard for Bear to even try to fast forward because if you fast forward one pixel, it's like, I know it's gonna totally out the cliff. And we're struggling. And eventually I die. And I'm like, duchess, you piece of. I have no words. And the Dutch is like, ping something. I was like, don't ping anything, Duchess, you piece of. And the chat's like, man, what an Duchess. And eventually. Jane. Jane, where the the are you? D You the. Over here. I'm looking at the map. They're way over there. You heard this man speak over the loudspeaker. Go yourself. And then, damn it all, the chat's laughing at this dude who ran away. Then J92 island pops in the chat and is like. Like, I'm the Duchess. Andy. Chat. Right. No, no. And then I had to.

[Greg Miller]

What was this excuse?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So then I doubled down. The excuse is like, why pinged it earlier. Okay. But we're getting invaded in a ravine. We're in a ravine being evaded. I need you, J Night. So, like, I. Of course I doubled down. But the cool thing was J92 island also popped off. And we ended up having a successful run. We won. And he was like, I redeemed myself. I was like, don't go too. I wouldn't go that far. You still really pissed me off, Jay and I have two hours.

[Greg Miller]

So my question is based on what we've seen right there. And what you're talking about is how long is a run?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

A successful run is anywhere from, like, 40 to 45 minutes.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, wow. Okay. Okay.

[Joey Noel]

So explain the nights.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. So it's comprised of three different nights, very much Fortnite style, where the wall is closing in, and it continues to close in after periods. It's a wall of rain, the night rain. And eventually it will start to close into a spot. And as you're getting closer and closer to nighttime, you will see a little. If you look at the compass up top, you see the little tree icon, and, you know, the tree icon pops up. That little golden sort of thing on the compass. Wherever you see that tree pop, you're like, that's where the final fight's gonna be. I need to head towards the tree.

[Greg Miller]

Got it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Because we've leveled up so many times, do we have enough time before the boss drops to level up one more time?

[Roger]

Yeah, we do.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Let's go take on this encampment. But the wall's kind of closing in there. Maybe it's not worth it to lose the health, because if we're in the zone, we will get, you know, you will take damage in that. In the night rain or whatever. And then the night happens, and you get sort of a mini boss, sort of, you know, interaction where a bunch of little smaller enemies will pop up and they indic. They let you know what the big boss is. They. That you're gonna have summon right here after it. And so, again, the thing that's so cool about this game is, like, I found so much enjoyment in it. Enjoyment in it. And it's still insanely limited because it's the smallest pool of bosses that are randomized.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And the world that we experience in this closed network test had no procedural level changes, which will happen when the game comes out, where every time you drop, there will. There might be a volcano or a swamp or whatever. And this we experience none of the procedural stuff. We experience the tiniest, small amount of. Of boss randomization. And there's going to be so much more in the. In the normal game when it actually comes out.

[Greg Miller]

And that's May 30th.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

May 30th. Yeah. So the night happens, you kill a bot, you kill the boss, and then you will get. If you kill that boss, you will be able to select from one of three different perks. Some of the perks kind of suck. Me and Alana both mistakenly chose the same perk at one point when we were playing with Blessing, and it was really, really bad because the, the perk was when you walk sort of a star or like a cloud pops above you that rains like magic. And so we're fighting a dragon and you just see me and Alana like walking on the battlefield trying to summon this like rain thing and blessings fighting for his life over there. I was like, all right, this perk sucks. I don't love that one. But there's other perks. Like whenever you start your sprint, an ice thing forms around you, or whenever you dodge red lightning strikes everywhere, kind of like in your vicinity.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There's a lot of cool like that in addition to the usual suspects from a Roguelite. Like, you know, get health back on.

[Roger]

A critical or whatever, like stamina stuff.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Stats and changes like that. But yeah, there's a lot of cool ways to kind of. And it's the thing that I will always bring up whenever I talk about roguelites and what I enjoy about them is like, I love being in the middle of a run knowing that like, oh, this run is sick and I'm. I want to see how far we can go with this run.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And it's something that I never ever felt with God dang, the 80s. No. The sort of top down game where you have your. You bring back the dudes Cult of the Lamb, you bring back dudes to your camp or whatever. Which Cult of the Lamb had, you know, the sort of road glide assets, but I never ever felt during that game. Wow, this run is cool. I'm going fire all this run. I'm going bleed whatever all this run. And the things that I love about Roguelites are when you're in the middle of a run, realizing that you're kind of crafting towards something.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And you feel really good about it and awesome and powerful. And that is a feeling that I always had throughout all of my runs, which again, extremely limited. So whenever there's people commenters being like, yeah, but where's the content? I'm not fully seeing the vision. It's like, well, this is also the most limited version of the thing that you will be getting. So if you enjoy eldering combat and you're enjoying this very limited look at it, the full release of the game is going to be pretty spectacular. Yeah. Bear, what do you think of it.

[Roger]

In the network test? Like, I was having a lot of fun with it. I only did two of the like three hour windows, the normal times, not the, you know, 3am times. And yeah, I only played with Randos because I knew all of you already had like your Your squads that you're already playing with with. And I was having a goddamn blast. But it was eventually like, all right, I'm seeing the same bosses over and over again. I'm seeing the same enemy placements over and over again. And then the last kind of three hour chunk, which I think was a Sunday night, right. In that last like hour and a half, a lot of things started changing. And it was like, oh, like I finally got invaded by Margaret. You know, like the areas started getting rarer loot.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right?

[Roger]

I. Yeah. And we started getting like more rare loot. You know, like the areas where, you know, you've got the big fire head dudes and you go jump up and you just like kind of like strike down on them. Those areas had completely different mini bosses and all this stuff where it was like, oh, I didn't realize, like it was going to be randomized like this probably in like the full release of this game because I was starting to get like, all right, this is starting to feel samey and all this stuff. And then, yeah, the night one boss was always the weird scorpion.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Roger]

Centipede demon thing on night one. And then night two was always Margaret. Right. And then the last run that I did, which I unfortunately got kicked out of in the middle of the Night 2 fight was like, it was like a tree sentinel backed up with like two other like night dudes, which was insane. And then like the first night was a big wizard dog with like a tiny man who was really good at sword fights. And it was like, oh, shit. Now I'm starting to see why I would want to go after like maybe the three headed beast like over and over again. Because I was starting to think just through the beta tests or network test that like, oh, a run towards the three headed dog is always gonna look like this when in fact, like, no, it's not. And I'm like, okay, I'm starting to see the kind of like the lifespan of this and it being much longer than I was anticipating.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And before you start off on any run, Greg.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You always select the final boss that you want to fight.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, nice.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Regardless of whether you get there or not. Right. And we, we only ever had the one. So that's why I know that I'm going to be playing this game a lot because I want to fight all of the what will eventually be eight bosses. Eight final boss that you can choose from. And we've only ever seen the one so far, which is the only unique boss that has been in the game because all the other enemies are reused from Elden Ring or some of the boss fights you fight are Centipede demons from Dark Souls 1. We we've seen in the first trailer reveal of it when we when we all sort of freaked out like another fromsoft what's going on? We saw the Nameless King who is From Dark Souls 3 so they are bringing in all a lot of their sort of catalog of bosses.

[Greg Miller]

The Rogues Gallery.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah and I got and based on what we saw with Nameless King, it looks like the Nameless King is an invasion type enemy like Margit was where he just pops up out of nowhere. It's like oh this dude has a bounty on you. He's trying to take you out.

[Greg Miller]

I want to ask about this because I get it. The invasion. It sounds cool. But before I do, I want to remind everybody that we wouldn't be here without your support. If you love Kinda Funny and daily video game talk shows, we'd love it if you Contributed over on patreon.com kindafunny YouTube.com Kinda funny games, Apple or Spotify. On all four places you can get the Kinda Funny membership and get all of our shows ad free. Get the ability to watch the afternoon podcast live as you recorded and get your daily dose of me in a series I call Greg Way. But you're not using your benefits right now, so here's a word from our sponsors.

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[Greg Miller]

And we're back. All right, so you're talking about invasions, but then it's bosses invading, but you hear a guy over a loudspeaker. So what is it? Basically like I and my game do something to send you a boss and then on your game, I have to go like, you're all. You're all fucked.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, no, it's just a random boss that kind of pops up that will verbally announce. And you hear the voice cue, they're like, ah, we're getting invaded by whatever boss it is, you know, here. But there was only ever two. You get Margit. Or you had like essentially a big platoon of ants. Gigantic ants. So big, so many of those ants that fall from the sk. But that's not. Somebody got it. Somebody, you know, sending a. You know, like back when you thought.

[Greg Miller]

It was like deathly kind of.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, I was gonna say destiny gambit, like how you play the gambit mode and you can like invade other people's runs or whatever, but when you're doing. Oh, when these. One kind of neat sort of strand like thing in the game is that you would. You'll see other people's like dead bodies with weapons that they had. So it's like, oh, this person who died here is like somebody else who was died in a run that now I can pick up there.

[Greg Miller]

Are y'all leaving notes like in the other Souls games?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, it's so fast paced.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It is a game that initially, early on, kind of tough to find your bearings because we're talking about. Joe, you are a mile a minute. You're going to the next spot to the next spot. You're trying to. You know, there are so many different pois in the game where you know that like, all right, if we find the churches on the map, we'll get an extra flask charge. And that's great because you have more times that you can use your learning so many things. There's a certain tower that will help you find a map piece and the map piece shows you more things on the map that you could go find in loot or whatever.

[Greg Miller]

So even not knowing all this, Joey, you were having fun.

[Joey Noel]

Yeah, because we're just like running around exploring and like, I'm sure we're finding those things, but we're not knowing the connections of what's doing.

[Greg Miller]

What were you guys winning? Were you beating the bosses?

[Joey Noel]

I mean we never like beat all three nights. We did have like some connection issues. I think we beat night one like like twice. And then I got kicked mid fight of night two.

[Greg Miller]

So we.

[Joey Noel]

They didn't really have like a huge shot after that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, PlayStation had a lot of issues and I gotta assume it's either over congestion or maybe remnants of the PSN outage or something. But the first night PlayStation had a lot of problems, so I had to swap over to Xbox. But even then we weren't playing with friends anyway. We didn't get to play with two other friends until the legitimately last test. And you'd look at their Elden Ring Twitter account, they'd be like, the next test is going to take place at these times across these different places in the world. And they would follow up with the tweet. No matchmaker is disabled. It's like, ah, come on, man. So you just go in solo and hope for the best.

[Andy Cortez]

I saw a question in the chat that ran by. I don't. I don't know who said it, but is like the Margaret. Margaret Margit Margaret fight, is that like the same exact fight, like, same moves as Elden Ring, or is it, like, remixed a little bit?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, remix.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, interesting.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. The bosses, Margaret has, like, different moves that. That, you know, he doesn't have at all in the normal game. And they do that just to kind of like, make things a bit more difficult. So this is the. The Night two. One of the Night two bosses that you could encounter. And. And you would kind of know where the zone is leading. Whenever you would see the water, you're gonna be like, all right, we're gonna find Margaret. Everybody get ready. You know, that kind of what to prepare for. But when the main game happens, I. I think it's going to be a lot less likely that you can kind of predict. Predict what's going to happen and what enemies will drop because it is going to be such a large pool of bosses that they can pick from. Wow.

[Roger]

Question. Similar to that that chat was talking about, I think, before the ad break. What bosses would you. Do you really want to see from the Soul series?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, Millennia has to be in here, of course, because she's just probably the most popular. Yeah. Boss of recent memory. I'm excited to see Nameless King, and I hope Nameless King is maybe not a boss, but is a. Is one of these invasions that just kind of randomly happens. I think that these. These fights kind of lend themselves to. Especially with the newer boss. It really feels like three players works really well for it for the larger bosses. So I would love to see some of the more massive enemies that they've had in the past. That. And how do they remix those? You know, that's one thing I'm super excited about. The enemies that are, like, larger than life in scale, where they're just as tall as a building. It's like, oh, and they're gonna have new movesets as well, which, you know, seems like a lot of these enemies that we've seen already are gonna have newer movesets.

[Roger]

Do you think we see Headless Apes at all?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, I don't think we see anything, Seiro.

[Andy Cortez]

Really?

[Greg Miller]

Really.

[Andy Cortez]

I don't think we see a DLC one day.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, in a mod maybe, but I. The reason why, you know, when we talk about how amazing and how much fun we had with the Seamless co op mod and the. The next line of thinking is like, oh, can you imagine, like a seamless Dark Souls 3? Or like a seamless. And whenever people bring up Seamless Sekiro, it's like, it doesn't work. Sekiro is so wait, there. It's a 1v1 fight. Except the headless. The second time, when you fight like this headless ape and his wife really.

[Roger]

Up crazy, it's up.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But when you're fighting these enemies, such a 1v1 fight where you are. I need to predict every time to go, perry, Perry, Perry. All these attacks. And I don't think that a lot of bosses in Sekiro, unless you're talking about, like, Demon of Hatred, really work out for a Dark Souls fight. Because a lot of Dark Souls fights are just. You can't parry to, like, you can't perfect parry to bring up a staggered meter or whatever. A lot of these larger enemies, you just can't parry at all. You just have to kind of like dodge, roll, and just know, all right, you're not a 1v1 fight. I'm gonna put my shield away and just two hand the sword because that's more damage that way. Did you know that, Joe?

[Joey Noel]

I did not.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

2 Handing a weapon gives you more damage. Keep in mind.

[Joey Noel]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Ynrb. Hit the ynr.

[Greg Miller]

Roger. Is this. Do you. You've seemed excited throughout this conversation. Is this doing something for you in terms. You want to check this out?

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, yeah, I'll check this out. It's just a matter of, like, how long am I gonna check this out for, right? Is it. Am I gonna find my crew? Am I gonna be, you know, obsessed with going through this, or is this. I can also see this doing the thing where I'm enjoying this. Should probably go back to Elden Ring. Probably should finish that one and then I kind of go there and then I just get lost in Elden Ring. And then night rain again when the next update comes out and I just. Just am in an endless loop forever. I just never finish either of those games or I have anything.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think the thing for me that doesn't feel like this will just be a quick fall off for me personally is because the eight bosses, the carrots on the stick, knowing that like I have to take all those out.

[Greg Miller]

Yep.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And taking all those out, that seems like a probably 40 hour, 30 hour experience. You know, if you're failing and, and you know, maybe having an unsuccessful run and plus we don't know how they may scale things if your character is more powerful. Like, I just don't know what the full, you know, what the full bounds are that they are willing to go with this. So the fact that there are eight big bosses that you can choose from feels to me like I'm going to have a lot of hours in it.

[Greg Miller]

So then, based on all of this, what you've played so far, these network tests, et cetera, the preview, how does.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This fare for me?

[Greg Miller]

What does this do to Greg Miller? Everybody knows, of course we do. A fantasy critic here. Kinda funny. It's our annual tradition. You can keep [e-mail] KS League 2025 of course I'm trying to get revenge. Two years ago, you all remember, I won. Then last year, Tim had to go and win at the last second. You know, nobody's fucking goddamn reviewing Marvel Rivals. I gotta do this tomorrow. Hussein Gamespot waiting to post it in 2025. Pissing my ass off. Anyways though, when I drafted Elden Ring Night Ring Night Rain with my number one pick, there was a okay. But there was a mmm. Because people were like, I don't know. We. It's a multiplayer souls game. And one of the things you all talked about was, is the network gonna work when people are reviewing it, Is that gonna hamper scores at launch? Da da da da. It doesn't sound. The game sounds really impressive, but the network seems to be an issue. Andy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't know if it was just these initial beta tests. I think that's what these network tests are for. The fact that this wasn't called a beta, this was called a closed network test. And they had it for certain time periods to gauge when certain parts of the world would be on. I hope that they're gathering all the data that they need, but I think that if anything, this thing being so limited and them having issues showed them that, all right, we got to really ramp up that side of things because FromSoftware has never been particularly great with anything multiplayer. For the people wondering why isn't there crossplay? I'm like, look, the Fact that this thing exists is a miracle in itself. Crossplay is like, we're really begging for some extra.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Which they don't have that technology, which is ridiculous.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I understand. Like, no game shouldn't not have crossplay. Right. But it's like that. This is crazy that it exists at all. Right. Like, when I was talking about this game and loving it every. You know, I. All the comments in the live chat were like, of course Andy's gonna love it. He loves from software. Like, I think I was the biggest doubter of this game when I first. When we first saw the glimpse of it and when you voted for it and you were like, man, Andy, I'm surprised you didn't pick this. I was like, well, I don't think I'm sold on it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then I played it and I was like, oh, I'm a dummy. Is like a lot of freaking fun. Right. I think it will. I think people will still possibly look for reasons for it not being a completely fulfilling experience. And maybe that is what gets you some of the lower scores. But I don't see any scores being like below a 7 or something like that unless the network is completely just shit.

[Roger]

Yeah, I don't think it does like Elden Ring numbers.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No.

[Roger]

But I think it's like playing the network test. Like, I could see it getting in like those mid-80s roughly after everything said and done with maybe a lot of like seven from like, from sevens and nines.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. I think you'll see some nice.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can live with that.

[Roger]

So I think it's a solid, solid pick. Maybe not first round pick, but still a solid get. And it'll definitely be on kind of funniest top 10 game. Game of the year. It'll be crazy that Elden ring three out of three of the last four years will be on our top 10.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They're the goats, man.

[Roger]

The goats.

[Greg Miller]

While we're talking about the fantasy critic, shout out to Barrett. Courtney leading the pack right now, obviously very early in the year. Only February, but Barrett does have the lead right now with 26 points, getting 15 points off of Citizen Sleeper 2, Starward Vector, and 11 off Rift of the Necrodancer.

[Roger]

How you feeling? Not great, obviously, being in the lead, but it's February. Yeah, well, 26, it's.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, Roger got all of last year, but Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, wait till you get to mine. You know what I mean? You guys. You guys are all right.

[Roger]

Well, you have four games that might not even come out this year.

[Andy Cortez]

Remember that but like.

[Roger]

And Monster Hunter Wilds hasn't even come out and I'm excited for, for that to come through. But I did have to drop my second round pick, which was Andy, it just got canceled. Celeste developer Earth Blade, that was my second round pick because I felt it in my bones that that game was coming out this year and it was the exact opposite. It was getting delayed forever, AKA canceled. And then I also dropped the Sea of Stars dlc. Not because I don't think it'll review poorly, but it's just one of those, like, I don't know how many outlets are going to take the time in such a busy year to actually review DLC for an indie game. And I did kind of do research on like how often does do indie game DLCs get reviewed enough to even get an aggregate score on Open Critic and it wasn't looking great, so I dropped that. But then I picked up Rift of the Necrodancer, I think was one of the early things that I bid for after our initial draft. Everhood2 I'm feeling good about because the first one was, was solid and I picked it up fairly cheaply. Blueprints is another indie game.

[Greg Miller]

Yes.

[Roger]

That just got shown off at PlayStation, which I'm. I'm very excited for. Again, that was the one that the inscription creator was saying based off of the demo from last year, that it was like the best thing he played. And then Shinobi Art of vengeance. I bid $1 more than one Tim Gettys.

[Greg Miller]

It was so mad because he assumed.

[Roger]

I was just gonna bid a solid 20 and I thought that that's what he was gonna assume. So I bid $2 more. And there I go, three spots left with I think 50 bucks left.

[Greg Miller]

It's funny you bring up the PlayStation showcase because right behind you of course, is Nitro rifle games with 23 points, getting 11 points off of Sid Meier civilization seven and 11 points off of Avowed. But what I like, Andy, is it you did the damn thing. I was watching that state of play and I was like, hell is us.

[Andy Cortez]

Same.

[Greg Miller]

Sounds fucking cool. And it's like, it's like still we don't know we haven't touched it. But I look at it, I'm like, I want to play this game. It's got such talented new studio behind it. It's got a lot Texas doing the voice, like maybe. And I talked myself out of it. And then I saw you picked it up and I was like, damn, Andy's doing it.

[Andy Cortez]

As I was watching, I was Like, I feel like Andy's gonna pick this one and he'll regret it. And I just felt it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think it's such a crap. I don't know about this one. Right. But it was like I wanted to get it before it even showed again. And I was gonna pick it up for like five bucks.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Because it was one that was just like. I wasn't even sure if it was gonna come out this year. But the fact that the more and more of the marketing is. Yeah, no, it's like June or whatever.

[Greg Miller]

May even. Is it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, something like that. And so I was like, I think after this showcase, I think I put in like a bid for 11. And I was like, no. I don't know. Maybe everybody else is, like, excited about this one. So I just wanted to go for 21. I'm like, I need it.

[Greg Miller]

Got it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I want to get it. Because it's like, I feel like it's. It's an all or nothing move with this one, you know?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I. I lost my football manager. 2025. That game got canceled. Has to drop that one. And who would have thought that Sid Meier decides to put out a bad game that wasn't, you know.

[Roger]

Well, okay, enough. But civ games also don't ever launch the best.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know, I mean, I just look at all the other Civs and they're always like, high 80s.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

In terms of what.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

This one. People are a little.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Pretty bummed out about it. And again, as somebody who, you know, for anybody who's like, ah, Andy just, you know, wants to hate on Nevada like this. This shit's on my fantasy creator. I need this game to be better. And. And 81 is all I could ask for because when I was at the Elder Ring Night Rain event and I heard other people from other outlets whispering to each other about.

[Greg Miller]

About.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

In separate conversations, what they were feeling about. About. I was like, oh, this game's gonna bomb. Because not only am I not loving it right now.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But everybody. Every other conversation, people are like, ah, it's just not, you know, you know, the. The freaking, you know, companions aren't great. I'm like, oh, man. Everybody kind of feels the same way that I do. This isn't good. And I'm glad that a lot more people liked it now.

[Andy Cortez]

Not to, you know, talk out in the open. Let's talk out in the open. Open. When you had to drop football manager, they did say that there will be another football manager this year.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I keep on looking for Football Manager 26 and it hasn't popped up.

[Andy Cortez]

Dude, just be on the lookout and open. Let's call him up. Let's call the guy up. Let's just call the guy up for it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Because I'm like why? Why wouldn't they just. You know they have so many games.

[Andy Cortez]

They should just given you 26 for free. You know what I mean? They should just change the name.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Also.

[Roger]

How do you feel about bidding so highly for Hell is Us now knowing that the second highest bid was only $4.

[Andy Cortez]

Ah that's fine.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know it's all in. You know you got money, you should.

[Andy Cortez]

Look at mine because I was.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I. I was.

[Andy Cortez]

I was been a lot of money and no one else was for a lot of things. I was just wasting my money.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, you're what? How much money you got? I did $23 left in the budget.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Yeah. And I put $56 for Ninja Garden 4. You know what I mean? Just got to put the. Put the money down. Put swipe the card a little bit.

[Roger]

That's one of those games that I'm not fully convinced actually comes out.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

You know so I get the money. I get the money back. I get the money back for double what everybody else. No it is. I get the money back. I about to drop it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I've been Ninja Gaiden for 20 bucks. I don't think that bids should be private. I'm going to talk to the CEO about this.

[Greg Miller]

Wow.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean it's a bid.

[Greg Miller]

It's a silent auction.

[Roger]

It's a silent auction.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But like. But I saw an auctions don't they still like just like raise like like yeah. I'm going to go higher.

[Greg Miller]

Depends what kind of salad auction.

[Joey Noel]

It's the one with you writing on.

[Greg Miller]

You write it on paper.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Cuz like the whole thing about a bit like shouldn't it be like oh Rogers wouldn't have spent that much on this game. That maybe I care about a lot, but not that much now I'll let him take it for $60. Yeah, I'm not willing to pay that. Like shouldn't you.

[Greg Miller]

I hear you. I don't know. I don't know. Legitimately thought this conversation auction at a town square thing a few months ago and it was like I wrote on a piece of paper. So I saw what somebody else is bidding. I don't know. Then in third place right now Snowbike Mike. He has 19 points off of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. And then what I love about his is look all the locks on there.

[Andy Cortez]

Where like, I looked up.

[Greg Miller]

I'm terrified. I locked in Grand Theft Auto against him. And then, you know, like, counter picks. Yeah, yeah. So like I. Yeah, I take two. So very much like. No, no, it's coming out.

[Andy Cortez]

Great job, Andy, with Counterpick on Hyperlite Breaker right there.

[Roger]

Like, that's not getting a review.

[Andy Cortez]

That was fire.

[Greg Miller]

And then how do you feel, Roger? You counter picked Expedition 33. But the more we see that, the more we're like, hey, wait a second. This kind of looks.

[Andy Cortez]

I don't know, man. I'm up in the air about it, right? I mean, they showed a lot about it and they're very confident in it. Xbox at least. But, you know, know, I don't know. I could see that going either. It's such an unknown, right? Like it has so much budget behind it. It looks good, but also it is very lofty. So I could see that being, you know, fucks, Fucks me. And it's 84 or whatever. I could see the also being 77 or something like that. So I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. I'm a little nervous. A little nervous.

[Greg Miller]

Well, we will keep track throughout the year as we go. Of course. More reviews are coming.

[Andy Cortez]

Just look at mine. That's a stack list right there. I've got Ghost of Yote. I got Metroid Prime 4 south of Midnight. That's like. Like the one that I'm like, I think it's going to be good. But you know, you never know with that studio. Slay the spire 2. I just learned that's early access, so that might me. Yeah, just learn that. But we'll see. Xenoblade Chronicles X. That's gonna be fire. Gears of War. But I get my money back. Get my money back.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's not how that works.

[Andy Cortez]

It does. It does. I asked Blessing. You told me the Talos Principle reawakened.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You can't just make the Talos Principle.

[Greg Miller]

You asked Blessing questions about the fantasy critic and he doesn't know the actual answer.

[Andy Cortez]

So Talos Principle reawaken. That's fire. That's why the last game got like an 894, something like that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I love that. Roger has three remakes on this. Oh, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, that's the game. That's the fucking game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's the fucking game.

[Andy Cortez]

Ninja Gaiden 4, you know, come on. And then unannounced Elder Scrolls Oblivion remake.

[Roger]

Also not coming out.

[Andy Cortez]

You don't know that, bro. You don't know that, bro. If it comes out, you know you're fucked. You owe me a pizza.

[Greg Miller]

Right now.

[Andy Cortez]

Pizza bet means.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Which one?

[Roger]

Which one?

[Greg Miller]

Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remake coming out this year.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Why aren't you wearing your biggest loser thing? I didn't.

[Andy Cortez]

No, that was a fucking mic thing. Mike just made the shit up.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Well, you have to like do something as the.

[Andy Cortez]

No, that was not a thing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That was not loser. I thought it was that.

[Andy Cortez]

It comes out this year.

[Roger]

Pizza bet that unannounced Elder Scrolls Oblivion remake will not come out in the year of 2025.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, there you go.

[Andy Cortez]

Coming out this year.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Way too much shaking there.

[Andy Cortez]

Way too much shaking.

[Joey Noel]

Okay, Prolonged shaking.

[Greg Miller]

Ladies, gentlemen and enbies, of course you can keep track kindafunny.com kfleague2025 as we go and these games continue to come out, you can look for all sorts of reviews next week and through the rest of our lives, I'm sure on YouTube.com kindafunnygames, Twitch TV, kinda funnygames and podcast services around the globe. Cause we're talking about video games each and every day, live all the time and having a great one. You got a bunch of banger gamescast next week. But your programming day isn't done here. We're gonna do a game showdown right now featuring Carl Jacobs and then after that we are doing a like a dragon pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Sponsored stream.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I said it.

[Andy Cortez]

He said it.

[Greg Miller]

I got the words in the right order. Can I just. Can we start there? I said it. Games Daily.

[Andy Cortez]

You can drill. He's only reviewed seven of these games.

[Greg Miller]

Back in the day when I was reviewing them, I just got the right. I didn't have to say anything. God damn it. I didn't memorize any of it, how to say it.

[Andy Cortez]

I've done your video reviews.

[Greg Miller]

God damn it everybody. This has been your kind of funny games cast. We love you. Couldn't do without you. You please consider picking up a kind of funding membership on Patreon, YouTube, Apple or Spotify. And I hope you have a great weekend. If you aren't joining us for the other shows, until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve.