Use cheats mang. I just wanted to be done with it because I spent too much time at the pentultimate boss wondering why it became so difficult, where I eventually went back thru the entire dungeon to do the necessary upgrades because it's unbeatable otherwise.
I've already uninstalled the game and moved on, but I can perhaps be persuaded to reinstall- what do you mean cheats and upgrades? I did every side quest up until that point, and most of the NPC journeys are "complete." The first form wasn't too difficult from a mechanics perspective, but she hits like a fucking truck, so every misstep is a huge impediment to my ability to fight the second boss. She also does a fuckload of stamina damage, so even with one of the heavier shields, I can't survive her three hit combo without taking a good 40% of my health bar in damage.
By the time I beat her and get to the second form, I've already eaten through enough of my gourd swigs that the second form becomes hard to recover from. The second form is also hard enough that I need as much of those resources as possible, and on top of that, the run to the boss room + the length of time it takes to beat the first form means there's a good ten to fifteen minutes between each attempt I can make on the second form, and that's simply not worth the frustration. It disrespects the player's time in a way that people accuse Soulsborne of doing, though I don't actually believe those games ever do. Ashen, however, commits this design sin in a few sections, and this particular example is definitely the most egregious. It's annoying and demoralizing in a way that a game, even a challenging one, shouldn't be. I'm old enough that I don't need to be wasting time hitting my head against a wall like this. It's unfair and shitty. I got twenty good hours out of the game (okay, fifteen good hours and five frustrating ones), and if I don't get the achievement for beating the final boss, I'll be fine.
Ashen is a game that takes the Soulsborne mechanics and drastically simplifies them. There's definitely room in the market for that sort of product, and this game's success (and my enjoyment of it, for the most part) is definitely testament to that. However, in simplifying the Souls formula, they keep certain things, and lose certain things in a way that creates imbalance in the game's difficulty and pacing. In Souls, no matter what, I'm always going to be able to find a different way to tackle a boss or section. Between different specs, magic systems, and gear, Soulsborne offers you a massive variety of ways to even the odds. By eliminating a lot of the periphery and minutia, Ashen loses that "Swiss Army Knife" approach, and so the moments of the game a player like myself might find particularly hard to overcome only have so many options with which to overcome it, and if none of those options are working for the player, they're simply shit out of luck.
