Gamer Peak

Ailing Loran: An Unskilled Guide

Advice is going to get flimsier from here on out. Ailing Loran onwards is where self-doubt and despair can kick in, and any amount of guidance can be more annoying. Telling you ‘you just have to’ or ‘just practice x’ or ‘git gud’ and so on just fuels frustration.

Whilst my guide won’t frustrate you by being complicated, or a lot to remember, or assuming you have any skill whatsoever… at this level of dungeon my advice is more of a confident shrug than a confident nod. I know I beat this dungeon and I can kind of explain how I managed it, but it’s kind of the opposite of an over-detailed, comprehensive guide.

On the plus side, you’ve fought two of these bosses before. More than once. So the best advise is essentially “do the same again but be more careful”. Oh, I’ll elaborate, but still.

[Confident shrug]

Prince John – Greatest Disney BBEG?

I’ve made a point of not doing Disney sequels. I didn’t care about most of the sequels even when I was little, and many have the same villain or no villain at all. If I get to the end of my list and I hear someone make a claim for a sequel villain being great, I will revisit them.

All this is to say, that I’m skipping past The Rescuers Down Under, which is a small shame because I watched it the other day and McLeach is a much superior Big Bad Evil Guy to Madama Medusa. He’s not getting on the leaderboard, but he’s better example of a villain.

I’m not too upset about overlooking him though. Now I get to talk about Prince John.

Lower Hintertomb Bosses: An Unskilled Guide

Both visits to Hintertomb are largely optional if you’re heading to the Trophy, but there’s useful stuff here, and compare to what’s to come things are a little easier. It’s good practice.

Madame Medusa– Greatest Disney BBEG?

More research required. I’ve definitely heard of (or at least, I have convinced myself I have heard of) The Rescuers. If you showed me a clip of the movie, there’s a very small chance I would guess that I’m looking at The Rescuers. If you showed me a clip of the second movie I would also guess it was The Rescuers because I had no idea the sequel existed.

So if I was going to review whether Madame Medusa is a great Big Bad Evil Guy worthy of your Tabletop Game, I’d need to watch it. So I have. I certainly had more fun with this than I did with Meet the Robinsons, but from the get-go I hypothesised that Madame Medusa wasn’t making the top 10.

Lower Pthumerian Bosses: An Unskilled Guide

So you’ve manage Upper and Central Pthumeru and maybe dipped into Hintertomb. You might be feeling confident, like these dungeons might be manageable. This is going well so far!

I’m sorry. You’re about to be beaten up. A lot. It’s about to go from unfair to unashamedly mean really fast. I’ll help as best I can but if you make it to the other side… you are going to be a different person.

Dr. Facilier – Greatest Disney BBEG?

We have another magic villain. It’s very common in D&D for the villain to be of the arcane persuasion. Archmages and liches make good baddies because they can throw out spells your party haven’t seen before. Magic makes a villain larger than life, sometimes literally. Human villains that simply wield weapons can be extraordinary Big Bad Evil Guys, but fixing them up with magical attacks is a sure-fire way to ensure they are impressive enough.

Unfortunately for Dr. Facilier, his magicks make him more of a tickster than a destroyer, which is fun, but might not improve the final showdown.

The One Reborn: An Unskilled Guide

I’m usually so far behind the wave of excitement about a game. I still haven’t got around to Elden Ring, and shan’t be going near it until I’ve finished my backlog and the game is on offer. But with Demon’s Souls, I ended up jumping on that when it first emerged. I can’t remember why, but for once I was the “I was doing X before it was cool” guy.

It’s well known that playing any FromSoftware game gives you a confidence/ability boost for the next game. But for the One Reborn, I was more prepared thanks to a specific boss from Demon’s Souls.

Governor John Ratcliffe – Greatest Disney BBEG?

I’m a big fan of the Inexcusable Villain. It’s nice to have a “Thanos was right”, or a “Snap Out of It” type bad guy from time to time, but we’re saturated with them of late. We need our truly, inescapably Big Bad Evil Guys too. I had a friend state recently: “they’re aren’t any Marvel villains anymore, they are all on redemption arcs”. Which is interesting, sure, but we need Villains-with-a-capital-V too.

So it’s so lovely to revisit a man who is unashamedly evil. Who sings a full song about his own greed. Who hands a firearm to a teenager so they’ll murder a man for him. Who is still being evil when ever other person around him is telling him to chill out.

Rom, the Vacuous Spider: An Unskilled Guide

Who named you, Rom?

“Vacuous” checks out – sightless eyes, listless movements, living in an empty void.

“Spider” on the other hand, does not – having many legs does not make your a spider. Did you pick spider? Because it sounds cool?

Captain Hook– Greatest Disney BBEG?

Is Peter Pan one of the only Disney movies where the villain is actually less powerful than the protagonist? Peter may have the body of a child but the ability to fly immediately makes him a serious threat. If he ever picked up a bow, the pirates would be done for. In D&D, flying+range = a really dangerous low-level enounter.

But I digress, this is not a blogpost about how unfair the antagonist has it in Peter Pan. No, this is a much more important and academic question on whether Captain Hook would make a great Big Bad Evil Guy for your table top game. Though his threat level is a part of that discussion, so we’ll see.