Running an Elden Ring around the Skywalker Saga for a week
So this has been my break. A week off from work. Nothing IT-related has been on my mind for most of a week. Instead, I relaxed with Rabbit, chilled with some games and shows, and recharged. It’s been good.
What I ended up not doing was playing any board games this week. I was hoping to, so this surprised me. Keen-eyed readers may notice I tweaked my Board Game challenges to reflect what I was hoping to do.
Destinies is one I want to get in quickly, mainly to see if I want to back The Dark Quarter. From what I understand, Destinies will be good with Rabbit, and Dark Quarter will be better for me solo. Either way, we both love Chronicles of Crime, so the heritage is there – but do I need all 3 series?
There will be more board games than normal next week. I will be getting a few board games this week, but I will write about them later
The amount of Skywalker Saga I played during my break surprised me a lot. I thought I would play a bit at night, but then the glare from the sun on my TV made Elden Ring hard to play. So switch times – the brightly lit LEGO game in the day, Elden Ring at night. But then I kinda kept playing LEGO…
Friday night I had realised something pretty hard though. I am going back to work next week. My window for playing Elden Ring while relaxed was closing rapidly. And it was coming up to a week since I had played – I didn’t want to lose muscle memory at this stage!
So I jumped into the game, braced myself, and jumped back into Stormview Castle. I know I have to take on Godrick the Grafted to continue the next section of the story. I felt I had levelled up enough to take on the fight, so it was time.
Spoiler – Godrick smashed me. 🤫
Yeah, this hurt a few times. His AOE attack can one-shot me.
Between Enzo playing with me during some big fights and messing up a couple of battles, I lost about 18,000 runes. That hurt, that’s a couple of levels there. But Enzo was super cute!
I have ranged out and found a couple of new things. I finally found a Sacred Tear so my life juice works a bit better, and I have defeated a few mini-bosses. So I ranged out a bit to see what was around. I remembered there was a sealed door right at the start of the game, so having some Stonesword Keys, time to explore!
What I found was a Zelda like dungeon, and at the end of it the angriest tree I have ever come across!
Trees shouldn’t be able to breath fire
This boss fight took a few goes (nothing unusual in Elden Ring), but I managed to get through it. This actually started a bit of a spree of fights I have been putting off.
Not only did I take down the Tree Sentinal, but I also managed to take down the Flying Dragon Agheel. I won’t say it was an easy run of boss fights, but I was happy I did it. When you decide to start punching things as a way to end the night and keep winning – it’s an amazing feeling!
I activated this fight exploring the lake near the start. I wonder if Agheel will come back?
To say that I am enjoying Elden Ring would be more than fair, but I am so tempted to start looking up a guide on what to do. I am sure I am missing out on a lot of things, both basic and secret.
Secrets are a thing, and I don’t mind overlooking them if that happens, especially on my first run. Elden Ring is like any other From Software game – there are no clear directions for hunting things.
But the basics are annoying me. I am not using Ashes of War at all, and I know I should be. Sure not constantly, but against fights like Godrick I am sure would be useful!
I will see how I go next week. Hoping I can get in at least 3 hours in the week, and if I can’t, then I will look up some guides on where to go. If I can, I will enjoy bumbling my way around the Lands Between.
At least if I can get through Elden Ring, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is looking good for that backlog achievement!
So this week, I finished LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. Episodes 4 to 9 story missions finished, with True Jedi reached in each. I am still a long way from Completing them though – right now, only Episode 1 and the planet Dagobah are 100% complete. A literal drop in the Skywalker Saga ocean!
It’s a little hard to explain, but the episodes in the Skywalker Saga are changed from the source stories. The changes make things very fun, and allow challenges in knowing how to continue the story.
For example, in Episode 4 there is the sequence where the heroes rescue Leia. It’s an iconic sequence, culminating in Han Solo’s “Boring conversation anyway”. In Skywalker Saga, you need to get the lifts working again to get to Leia’s cell. It looks like there may be multiple ways to achieve this, but I laughed out loud at the path I chose.
The scenarios are different, but the humour is similar
As Ben Kenobi says, whether I played the right way or not depends on a certain point of view. I did discover that in some ways, I completed the Skywalker Saga in the ‘wrong’ order.
While playing the early episodes, it was obvious there were skills I missed to get to some extra areas. Nothing to stop you from finishing the story. Areas where you could nab Kyber bricks early for example weren’t accessible.
Figuring I would need to put some thought into it later, I let it be. Making my way through Episode 8 though revealed the truth. Until the story unlocks some powers, you can’t do anything, even in Free Play. So if I had played in film release order, I could have done some bonus things faster.
Some skills aren’t available until the story unlocks them
Now that I have finished the story, I began the task of collecting everything for a Platinum run. Here, the true scope of the Skywalker Saga hit me. Hard. I played for almost 3 hours in Mos Eisley on Tatooine (one of the game areas), and I am still not 100% done with that area.
If I had been following a guide, I could have reached the level of completion in about half the time. I would have also known that some solutions required completing items off-planet. There is a huge amount of items to collect, and a vast amount of area to explore. An entire Galaxy, to be precise!
Luckily, the humour of the Skywalker Saga still keeps me interested. The entire game is full of ‘little things’ that are as fun to find as the actual collectables. Some things you need to be looking in the right place at the right time, like Grogu’s idle animation.
Others are sprinkled through the levels, such as a Raiders of the Lost Ark callout in Episode 7.
There are plenty of in-jokes and Easter Eggs to discover
I have thoroughly enjoyed playing Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. The question I have to ask myself now is simple – how much do I enjoy playing it? Do I enjoy it enough to go for the Platinum trophy?
There are hundreds of collectables I need to find. Most of them are scattered around the galaxy now, but I still have story missions to complete. Story missions are particular tasks you need to complete, and doing all of them unlocks a brick. I also have to find all the mini kits scattered around the missions for the Kyber bricks and ships.
Even with a guide, there is a good chance there is at least another 50 hours of gameplay ahead of me. The number of collectables is now overwhelming me quite a bit right now. That said, the Skywalker Saga is also quite relaxing to play through. So a few nights destressing once I am back at work might work well.
So much to explore and find, and all over the galaxy!
What about you? I hope you got some great games in. Or are you looking forward to a new one? Let me know!
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