CG on Withering Realms

I recently put about 30hrs into the new early access horror-soulslike Withering Realms, the sort-of-sequel to Withering Rooms. While Withering Rooms was a mix of Luigi's Mansion and Dark Souls I, Withering Realms takes much more inspiration from older horror games like Silent Hill, with slightly faster combat closer to what you see in Dark Souls III, but not nearly as complicated or punishing.

The developer has stated you don't need to play or understand the story of Withering Rooms to play this game, which is true, but if you have played it, there's lots of payoff because you'll have a better understanding of the world and recognize some elements that reappear in this game.

Story-wise, the plot is fairly straightforward, with the world in a sort of apocalypse setting. Something called the "occult event" occurred years prior to when the game starts, which unleashed strange magic that created undead and magic. You play as a ghost girl, Clover, who controls a doll which acts as your actual character. Your objectives are pretty simple: finding the girl's father, and ultimately, a solution to the state of the world.

Difficulty & Combat

When I describe this game as a souls-like, I'm doing so because the game has i-frame dodge mechanics, precise hitboxes, sort of tough bosses, refilling healing items, etc. It is a fairly hard game, but I don't think it's as unapproachable as something like Elden Ring or Dark Souls III. There are difficulty options to make it easier, and some hidden in-game ways to make the game much harder.

The feedback about the game's combat being janky is accurate. The best way I can describe it is a mix between the clunkiness of Dark Souls I and the strange floaty feeling of Dark Souls II. However, bosses and most mobs don't have complicated movesets. Dodging around feels fairly responsive, and enemy hitboxes aren't terrible. Where you run into issues is certain weapons just won't hit certain mobs because the precise hitboxes mean your weapon will miss them by a few pixels.

Since it's still early access, you'll run into strange difficulty spikes and fall-offs. Some of the endgame bosses feel like their health and damage values are way out of line with the rest of the game's bosses, but this is stuff that'll be fixed or addressed in the future.

On the upside, healing is very straightforward. The ghost girl will just give the doll healing potions when its health hits zero, meaning that as long as you have some, you won't die no matter how hard an enemy hits.

As far as combat options go, they all seem quite viable to me, with ranged obviously being easiest for certain encounters, but electing to go all melee or all ranged won't handicap you.

There are some difficulty options in settings, though I didn't mess around with them. Normal mode means you'll keep all XP on death, while on hard, you lose it, but enemies aren't buffed or anything.

World & Atmosphere

Atmospherically, my favorite part of this game has to be the lighting and sound design. Lighting in dark areas feels satisfying, as different light sources give completely different moods to the room you're in. There's even a night mode you can enter locations in, although this drastically increases the difficulty and isn't something you're expected to do until late-game.

The soundtrack is also perfect and easily among my favorites this decade. I can't actually find the full OST on YouTube yet for whatever reason, but the OST of the main town, Penwyll, is pretty good and you can listen without any spoilers.

https://youtu.be/GWbVe6PfVIo?si=2hBp3oIRhOTfnhrw

Withering Realms has a surprisingly large set of environments compared to the first game. There are huge open fields, graveyards, caves, mansions, labs, and even a few procedurally generated dungeons. Interior locations are generally handmade, while more boring areas like open spaces and dungeons are always randomized. Personally I found the randomness to be a bit interesting, as you'll likely die a lot in this game, and with the world not being huge, it makes sense to switch it up a bit.

My personal favorite location is the basement of this creepy lab / hospital building you encounter early game that's flooded with this really gross-looking water.

Mechanics

This game uses a fairly simple upgrade system that you've seen in most RPGs and soulslikes, but with a strange twist. You get XP by killing mobs and bosses (none from quests), but instead of just upgrading the stats of your doll, you have to upgrade his body, left arm, and right arm. This is less annoying than it sounds, as the cost to upgrade each part is scaled independently. The arms share four damage-type stats, while the body handles things like health and stamina.

A big innovation in this genre is that weapon upgrade materials are separated by type, meaning you have materials for strength, ranged, and magic weapons. Fortunately, you can freely reset your doll's stats, and even refund weapon upgrades. Armor and other equipment aren't upgradeable. These two systems mean that changing builds has almost no friction. Unlike in most souls-likes, you can switch between melee and ranged builds without sinking huge amounts of resources and worrying about being underpowered later.

Bosses & Mob Variety

Mob variety is generally regarded as one of the most important parts of any souls-like. Seeing new mobs in a new area is always interesting due to most actually being new enemies and not just reskins.

I don't want to spoil how the enemies look, but below is one of my favorites, as seeing them for the first time is a big part of exploration. But I can say the categories of mobs are pretty extensive, including things like undead, ghosts, monsters, humans, and robot / construct things.

Final Take

Overall, Withering Realms is a solid 8.5/10 game with a lot of potential. I'm surprised how stable it's been for me, even being an early access game. The story, level design, and overall atmosphere are already perfect. I recommend picking it up if you like soulslikes or horror games, just don't expect it to be polished for quite a long time. The developer has a roadmap out, with 1.0 being targeted for Q2 of 2027. I don't think it being early access is a hindrance in this case. 

CG on Silksong

I've got about 60 hrs into Silksong and am probably only about two-thirds through the game. Silksong is the sequel to Hollow Knight, a game you might know from Game Pass. The series falls into the metroidvania genre, meaning it’s a 2D Dark Souls–platformer hybrid with lots of shortcuts, a maze-like world, enemy ambushes, and the occasional tough boss.

The premise of the story is that you play as Hornet, an antagonist from the first game, with the simple goal of reaching the top of the citadel, a huge structure that takes up a massive part of the open world.

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Difficulty

The feedback about the game being too hard is accurate. Silksong is drastically harder than the first Hollow Knight, and much harder than similar titles like Ender Lilies or Bloodstained, in my opinion. You should try one of those games, or better yet the first Hollow Knight, before attempting this game. The early game is very unforgiving, though the difficulty actually gets easier as your health, damage, and move set expand slowly in the mid-to-late game. There was a recent patch that nerfed some difficult early-game bosses, so some of my criticisms may not be fully accurate anymore, but regardless, it’s still a very hard game.

Most of the difficulty is a result of a lack of health or damage upgrades. You can't increase your damage at all until beating the first major boss, and health upgrades are very rare. Bosses deal 2 damage with most attacks, which is a ton considering you’ll only have 5 or 6 HP in the early game.

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World & Atmosphere

Silksong's world is surprisingly diverse, at least compared to the first game in the series. There's every biome you can think of, as well as a decent range of ambiences. Atmospherically, exploration is a bit tense due to your small health pool and the abundance of traps and strong enemies.

Finding shortcuts and hidden items is really fun once you get past the early game, where upgrades and useful items are rare. A big criticism I have of Silksong, and this genre as a whole, is that there’s no way to determine when you’ve found all the items in a particular area. This forces you to either look up a guide or waste your free time exploring old areas. This game is particularly bad in that regard due to how well-hidden health upgrades (you need four items to upgrade your health once) and essential shortcuts are.

The world is massive, and after 60 hrs, I’m still seeing new locations.

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Mechanics

Silksong plays similarly to the first game. It’s a souls-like platformer with a heavy emphasis on parkour, exploration, and memorizing boss attack patterns. Where it changes things up is it’s a very fast-paced game if you want it to be. I actually found playing cautiously to be much harder than opting for a quicker play style.

You can change your play style by swapping out various crests (a minimalist class system) and tools (things like throwing weapons/buffs).

One upside of this game only having four total damage upgrades that apply to all your classes is you can switch freely without having to resource grind too much.

Unfortunately, buying all the items from every shop requires a ton of currency farming due to how steep prices are and how little money enemies drop. Silksong is a game where every item sold by a vendor has a purpose, so you’ll actually need to buy at least most of them. I only found one viable farming spot in the entire game, and it wasn’t fun to use.

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Bosses

Silksong bosses will generally kill you within a few seconds of seeing them before you make the runback to their arena and figure out that it only has a few moves (usually 3–5), then take it out. I never got stuck on a boss beyond the early game, outside of random side bosses that I was probably under-equipped for. If you stick to the main path, you likely won’t get stuck on anything too unfair.

Something you’ll find annoying is that for several main story bosses, you’ll have to make a long runback to their arena past various enemies or traps.

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Final Take

Overall, Silksong is a solid 8/10 game. It’s far from perfect, but if you want a game with a world that feels endless with dozens of hours of story content, it’s a great game. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where I’m still doing new stuff 60 hrs in. I’m not trying to 100% complete it either; I’m just doing main story stuff.

CG on Stellar Blade

Stellar Blade recently got ported from PS5 to PC, so I was finally able to play it. It's an action-soulslike game, with substantially more emphasis on scripted events, action sequences, and cinematic scenes than anything you'll see in a standard Souls game. The story is extremely simple—you play as Eve, an android girl tasked with killing the Elder Naytiba, the leader of a race of alien-like mutants that have taken over Earth. There are also several subplots relating to side characters within Xion, the main city hub, that are optional but necessary to complete for the full story, in my opinion.

I didn't see a single bug or glitch in my playthrough aside from some weird death animations, so the PC port should be really stable for you. I played it on 4K, medium settings, with no framerate issues.

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World & Atmosphere

The world and atmosphere are very mixed, with some incredibly good levels and some awful open expanses. I personally hated the open-world maps, both of which are large desert areas known as the Wasteland and the Great Desert, respectively. There's way too much uniformity in the color palette, and traversing them just isn't that engaging despite the boosted movement speed Eve gets in the open world. Having two deserts is just a weird decision thematically.

Where the game shines more is in the linear sections, full of scripted events and little side paths to explore for more resources. I rarely got bored during these sections, aside from one tedious one near the endgame. The map is a bit interconnected, but it's much closer to something like Dark Souls 3 or Elden Ring than games like Dark Souls, AI Limit, and Lies of P.

The linear levels have a ton of diversity in tone and location, with one even leaning into some light horror elements. Most levels are in underground facilities, but they're varied enough to feel unique.

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Mechanics

As I said earlier, Stellar Blade is an action-soulslike, so a few Souls mechanics are present, but they're extremely mild. Death carries no penalty, and Eve isn't canonically immortal like the protagonists in most of these games. You unlock these camps as checkpoints throughout the game, which are similar to bonfires in Dark Souls, but that's about it as far as the Souls similarities go. The parry/dodge system is much more similar to what you find in Sekiro than Elden Ring.

You only have one weapon—a one-handed sword—but a ton of skill trees that add more moves and skills. There are few boring perks like "increased damage." Your stats like HP, damage, and Beta (the mana equivalent) are all upgraded via exploration. 

This is a bit annoying due to the boring nature of the open-world sections, and you'll be under-leveled if you refuse to explore at all.

There are also a ton of side quests and collectibles, which do help make the world more bearable, but I personally only liked the ones relating to the main side characters in Xion. I didn't bother completing any of the really long collection side content. 

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Customization

Customizing Eve's appearance plays a big role in the game. A lot of the rewards for quests and exploring are cosmetic items (glasses, earrings, and outfits). You can also customize her hair, but all the styles are unlocked and just have to be purchased with currency one time. Armor and gear are invisible, so you can have Eve wearing whatever you want with no stat implications. The outfits are all pretty decent, and there's a big range between modest and revealing options.

This was my personal favorite: 

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Bosses

The boss design is mostly solid, with few repeating bosses. I generally beat most of them in 1–5 tries, but in the endgame, you hit a difficulty spike unlike anything I've ever seen in a game. Bosses go from medium-difficulty cinematic encounters to high DPS tanks instantly, with no gradual ramp-up in difficulty. For comparison, I'd say the last three bosses are on par with Sekiro's difficulty, although not quite as tedious or punishing. 

Due to only having one weapon and limited gear, cheesing bosses is probably much harder than in other similar titles. You can stun-lock certain ones, but the tiny damage you deal means it really doesn't matter unless you can keep it going for 4 minutes. There also aren't any ally NPCs, but there is an easy mode option in settings, which I imagine most people who aren't veterans of the genre will need to turn on to finish the game.

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Final Take

I can confidently recommend this game to basically anyone. The inclusion of an easy mode, plus the normal mode getting very tough at the end, means no one's excluded from enjoying the game.

Overall, I give it a solid 8/10.

CG on AI Limit (2025 Souls-like Game Review)

AI Limit is a new souls-like game that came out earlier this year (March 2025). The premise is that you're playing as a robot girl in a post-apocalypse with amnesia and tasked with recovering her memory by repairing these branches scattered throughout the world that connect to a mythical tree.

The story is a bit more convoluted than that. There are several factions, including the Church, which provides protection to the few humans left on Earth from the Necros (weird big zombie-like creatures), and Seed, comprised of other robot girls (called Bladers) like your character, Arissa.

In my playthrough, I only encountered two bugs: one which was fixed by verifying the Steam files, and the other being a recurring fall damage bug, so you should have a decently bug-free experience if you pick it up.

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World & Atmosphere

Unlike most games in the genre, humans actually comprise a big chunk of the enemies you fight. There's a decent variety in landscapes/environments, despite plant life being canonically extinct in-game. There's poison swamps, underground caverns, a futuristic palace, and more.

The NPCs you encounter are all interesting, and I felt compelled to finish their quests and listen to their dialogue, something that's rare in this genre in my experience.

Humans survive by exclusively eating Mud, a magical substance that's visually identical to normal mud, but has some weird properties like spawning monsters known collectively as the Void. It also serves as a secondary healing item and is mysteriously linked to the Church and Necros, as you'll discover by reading various bits of lore throughout the game. Some of the lore items you pick up can even be sold for a lot of money, so there's a real incentive to read it all.

The level design in this game is very strong, easily on par with games like Dark Souls 1 & 2, Lies of P, and sections of Elden Ring. There are tons of shortcuts, areas that loop back around, and enough challenging enemies guarding hidden items to keep exploration rewarding. The world is about as interconnected as it can be.

One huge downside of the game being offline is there aren't messages on the ground to guide you (like those found in Elden Ring) to where secret areas are, so you'll almost certainly need to consult an online guide if you want to find all the weapons, armor, and upgrade materials.

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Mechanics

This game is pretty difficult and unfortunately borrows a lot of bad mechanics from other souls games, but also strips away some of the more outdated features like stamina and carry-weight limits.

You can dodge and attack infinitely, but your damage gets lowered if your sync bar (a combination between stamina and mana) gets depleted by getting hit/casting spells. The bar is restored by attacking enemies, and it's a huge improvement over the standard stamina/magic bars you see in every souls-like/RPG.

Parkour is torture. You can only jump while sprinting, and only to cross gaps because there's no verticality to it, just like in the Dark Souls trilogy. The fall damage calculations are completely random; you can fall off the same edge and lose 90% of your HP or just half.

On death, the only penalty is you'll always lose a portion of your currency (between 10–50%) depending on what items you have equipped. It's really not an issue.

Reallocating your stats is completely free and can be done at any resting branch once you find a certain item in a hidden area. This prevents you from getting soft-locked by a terrible build.

Weapon upgrading is the same as any other souls-like. Every weapon has 10 levels, with the final material being the only one that can't be bought infinitely. Fortunately, there are only 4 upgrade materials, and you actually find enough to use more than 1–2 weapons in a playthrough.

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Bosses

The bosses are a mixed bag, with only 3 having NPC summons (these are also some of the best-looking boss fights). In terms of difficulty, they're all over the place, with some late-game bosses being much easier than early-game ones. Atmospherically, there are no misses. I didn't encounter anything that felt out of place, and almost none of the bosses are reskins aside from a few in the end-game.

Healing is very limited early on, meaning you'll pretty much need to parry every boss until you get more healing items, because tanking/DPS isn't viable until mid-game, and you can't actually knock down bosses for a critical hit without parrying. In my playthrough I used a strength/magic build, so it was frustrating to have no reward for charging up big power attacks to hit a boss.

This leads to an unsatisfying feeling when you finally take down these early-game bosses because parrying isn't as hard as in games like Elden Ring, but not parrying makes the difficulty excessively high.

Around the mid-game, you start to encounter more standard souls-like bosses, and can use strategies other than spamming parry.

There are several humanoid-sized bosses as well; of course, these are also the most challenging.

Unfortunately, there are no gimmick bosses. Everything is just a straight-up fight.

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Final Take

Overall, I can only recommend this game to you if you've at least finished Elden Ring or Dark Souls 3. It's not a great intro to the genre, and at times the difficulty is on par with harder games like Sekiro. The story is quite hard to follow in the late game, and I actually had to consult guides on where to go next despite having completed pretty much every other game in this genre. It took me about 30hrs to finish the game, including all the optional content aside from one hidden boss.

If you play these games primarily for the exploration like I do, you'll have a good time. But if you're looking for a more boss-focused experience like Elden Ring/Dark Souls 3, this game probably isn't for you.

It's an 8/10 for me and I can see myself buying a DLC for it or replaying it in the future. 

CG on Miside

I finally got around to finishing MiSide, and it's easily the best story-based horror game I've played in years. Due to the nature of this game, my review will contain a few spoilers. It's a 3-4hr story game so it's not like I can't spoil stuff, I have a section at the bottom where I interpret the ending that I saw so you can skip to that if you've already beat the game. If there are other endings, I've not seen them.

The premise of the game is your character, a remote tech worker that has absolutely no life, downloads one of those companion games where you take care of an ai girl, and after about a month of playing it, gets sucked into the game world by Mita, the girl character in the game. 

This opening sequence is really one of the best written things I've ever seen in a game. I went into it not really expecting it to be a horror game. The title screen is friendly and cute, and your only hint about the upcoming horror is a slightly creepy sound effect that plays as the days in the intro count up. 

Soon after being transported into the game, you meet Mita, and after completing a few tasks with her, like playing minigames, cooking, etc. your character gets creeped out by the weird noises coming from her closet. The "good ending" of the game can actually be reached here if you went out of your way to fully embrace Mita and not go against her / get curious about the strange stuff around her house. 

Despite doing almost everything Mita wanted, I missed out on one tiny detail, which was to fix the "I Love You" magnets on her fridge that fall off during a creepy event sequence. This is the only task not directly linked to her instructions, so actually pulling it off is probably something you won't do naturally unless you're really invested in Mita from the start.

My interpretation of that sequence is that if you got everything right to achieve the good ending of your own accord, you're likely fully cooked in some way. You have a complete lack of curiosity and a ridiculous level of devotion that would have you get absolutely mentally destroyed by an irl girl. 

Following the prologue, your goal is to escape the game by reaching the world's core. Along the way, you meet several different Mitas, including a good one whom your character forms a bit of a bond with, while being pursued by the evil one you met in the prologue. Gameplay from hereon switches between horror sections where sprinting is enabled, relatively easy puzzle solving, and a few decent minigames. There's no combat, aside from some of minigames, so most of the horror elements stem from jump-scares and atmosphere. 

Surprisingly, most of the 4hrs of gameplay takes place in the same four rooms that make up Mita's house, but it changes so much that you never feel bored with the setting. It reminds me a lot of Withering Rooms in that sense, another horror game I played last year. 

The design decisions and aesthetic are easily 10/10. Every detail, from the subtilties' animations, where they appear dynamically in 3D space + in the pause menu if you missed any, to the unique 3D anime art-style, are perfect. 

Overall I highly recommend buying + replaying it. 

SPOILERS ON THE ENDING

The game ends on weird note, Mita forces your character to live through 999 days of his irl life, which we can see to an absolute dystopia. He just wakes up, eats ramen, and works at his PC from morning to night, then goes to sleep again. He never mentions having any family, friends, or interests outside of the game that got him trapped in the digital world. 

I think it's safe to say that living inside of the game world, no matter how confined or scary it may seem, is exponentially better than whatever he was doing with his life, if you can even call it that. 

I wish the developer would've included an option to remain in the game world after that scene, but at the same time, I can understand why someone would choose complete isolation and tedium over something exciting. In general, the more you do something, the easier it becomes. 

If you cut yourself off from the world for years, that just becomes your nature, and returning to it to establish connections with people feels overwhelming and perhaps even worse than your current situation.

I think that's the message they were going for, as I find it hard to believe that most loners in his situation wouldn't at least try to stay in the game world. 

Withering Rooms (CG Review)

Recently, I picked up Withering Rooms on Steam, a weird 2.5D horror game that reminded me a lot of Little Nightmares, a similar-looking horror game, from the description and artwork. I went in expecting a 2-3 hour forgettable horror game but ended up spending the next 30ish hours (currently 50) on one of the most unique souls-like games I've ever played.

The best way to describe it is a combination of Dark Souls 1 and Luigi's Mansion.

The plot centers around Nightingale, the girl you play as (no character creation—this isn't a blank slate game), trying to escape from a dream world full of undead that she gets trapped in after being put in an asylum at 14. The dream world consists of the Mostyn mansion, as well as some other large buildings, an underground section, and a few other outdoor areas. Naturally, there's a ton of lore to be found in notes, item descriptions, and dialogue.

The story actually engaged me throughout the whole four chapters of the game, which is impressive considering that the souls-like genre isn't exactly renowned for its storytelling.

Atmospherically, it's perfect, from the OST to the colors and character design. The vibe is really similar to Luigi's Mansion or cartoon horror, wherein you're more cozy and comfortable than scared.

Gameplay-wise, there are three basic builds you can spec into: melee, ranged, and magic. I've only done melee and magic playthroughs, but magic is obviously by far the best option. Since this is a horror game, there are also stealth mechanics, which I almost never used. The game encourages you to kill enemies, and past the first chapter, you won't be running into too many monsters you can't beat unless you keep dying and don't have enough items stashed up.

I did die a ton in the first chapter and a bit into the second chapter, so if this is your first 2D souls-like game, or souls game in general, I could see you needing to stealth more to avoid getting frustrated by losing all your stuff. The house's rooms also shuffle around upon respawning, but this is more of a way to keep the game's relatively small world feeling fresh rather than to confuse you.

I mention stashing items because upon death, you'll not only lose all your coins but also all your items. You can't recover them by going back to where you died either. This sounds pretty brutal on the surface, but once you get into the game, there are more than enough ways to hold onto important items. All armor is permanent, and once a weapon is upgraded, it becomes permanent.

Earlier, I described the gameplay as being most like Dark Souls 1, but because this is an indie game made by just one dev, the jankiness of the combat leads to some less-than-satisfying encounters. Bosses, while all cool-looking, feel more like you're just trying to DPS them while dodging one or two attacks every once in a while, and they never really get that difficult (at least in regular new game; New Game Plus is a whole different story). Regular enemy encounters are all good/great, though. There's a decent balance between trash mobs and things that can take you out quickly.

New Game Plus is actually worth exploring once you clear the main game. It's rare in this genre for New Game Plus to offer anything more than increased enemy health while you keep your items and skills.

In Withering Rooms, New Game Plus extends the main game's story, adds several new enemy types, at least one new boss that I've seen so far, and a few other things I won't spoil. Within NG+, you can find an item that activates hard mode, where enemies are insanely strong and a genuine challenge to take down. Beating one of these enemies/bosses gives you items to continue the story, which I've yet to finish after 50 hours.

Overall, it's an easy 9/10 game, and you should pick it up rn (right now).

CG on Black Myth: Wukong

When a new souls-like game comes out, I always buy it on release because it's rare for a game in this genre to be disappointing. Black Myth falls into this genre but refines the Souls mechanics to create a unique experience that diverges significantly from games like Elden Ring.

It doesn’t resemble the original Souls trilogy, Bloodborne, or Lies of P very closely. Instead, it's more akin to something like Bayonetta, though it leans more toward souls-like rather than action-RPG.

I’ve finished the first of what appears to be six chapters and part of the second chapter.

I won’t be reviewing the story, as it’s not a major focus in games like this, but I will mention that the cutscenes are excellent, and there are animated music videos.

I've yet to see any of the girl NPCs though.

It's basically a souls-like game that's more focused on being a replayable boss gauntlet.

Gameplay

Black Myth plays like most other souls-like games. You have an i-frame dodge, a healing flask, earn souls from enemies, and rest at bonfires to level up. There’s also a crafting system, skill trees, and a built-in shop within the shrine (bonfire) menu.

It thankfully deviates from typical souls mechanics by removing outdated features such as losing souls on death, complex stats, and skill reallocation tied to obscure NPCs.

You won’t lose all your souls upon dying to a boss, and you can reset your skills as often as you like at any bonfire.

There aren’t stats to level up beyond HP, Stamina, and FP. These can also be improved by finding items in the world, similar to the prayer beads mechanic in Sekiro.

Additionally, there’s no weapon or armor upgrade system. Gear is acquired through crafting after defeating a boss or finding specific locations. Farming drops isn’t tedious, as enemies drop only souls and crafting components.

Bosses

The boss design, both in gameplay and aesthetics, is undoubtedly impressive. Each encounter is unique and visually stunning, even though I’m running the game on low-to-mid graphical settings.

Most of the bosses I’ve encountered so far are most similar to those in Elden Ring and Sekiro. They move quickly, have powerful attacks, and may require some learning to defeat.

Unlike in Elden Ring, where fast bosses often require either easy strategies or extensive practice on a suboptimal build, Black Myth allows for a variety of strategies. You can immobilize a boss with a spell, then transform into a giant humanoid bull and attack with a flaming twin-blade. There are enough evasive options to move around while your spells are on cooldown.

If your current approach isn’t working, you can completely change your build in just a minute or two.

Level Design

Unfortunately, the world design isn’t as impressive as the boss design. It’s not bad, but if you can run it on high settings, some issues might be mitigated. Each area is relatively linear and lacks unique features or decorations.

I’ve only encountered one instance of a souls-like shortcut, an area where you open a big gate to get back to the bonfire, and there are numerous invisible walls in unexpected places. You might walk down a path and hit an invisible wall simply by straying a few steps in the wrong direction. I assume this was due to most of the development focus being on the impressive bosses and enemies, so don’t expect anything close to the expansive map of Elden Ring.

Overall, I highly recommend trying it out, especially if you have a PS5. 

The PC performance is poor, but this might be due to me running it from an external drive, at least according to ChatGPT. 

CG on Motive Black

Overview

After around a decade of not reading anything at all, I recently finished Milky's book, Motive Black, which can be purchased on Amazon at an affordable price. It's a crass, and frankly disgusting, blend of body horror and dystopian satire, with a surprising amount of mystery to keep things interesting throughout its 400 pages.

The premise of this dystopia is a tiered society living in a "Safe Dome," wherein people are categorized by their Safety Rating, a social credit that rewards those who engage in more degenerate acts, such as modifying their "Shells" or bodies, with horrific modifications including new hands, noses, tails, and most disturbingly, transmogrified lollies.

Also, everyone is gay, and being exclusively interested in one type of person is looked down upon by Google.

Those with higher Safety scores have access to greater privileges from Google, the sentient female AI that everyone interfaces with to access everything. Google also acts as an omniscient observer and companion. There is no currency system, so falling out of grace with Google is often a death sentence.

Ruling above her is the Institute, a mysterious unelected government composed of scientists obsessed with implementing a program called IMAGINE that will integrate Google directly into the minds of everyone.

Concepts like race, gender, family, and humanity are completely absent, with the residents of the Safe Dome referring to themselves in a dehumanizing dialect where words like "I" are replaced with "My Shell." Acts that lower a Safety Rating, such as being "selfish" (not having sex with one of the numerous monstrosities roaming the Dome) or discriminatory, are referred to as "whiteness," although this concept is separate from being racially white, as there are white characters with high Safety Ratings.

The world is dark and depressing and does a great job at making you feel like it's a form of hell; there isn't a single moment that you'll ever wish to see it or be in it, which I think is really hard to pull off. Creating a world that absolutely no one would want to live in isn't easy.

In this world, there's no escapism. If you tried to just rot in your room while Google injects you with happiness chemicals, she'd eventually just drag you out of there to be cannibalized by furries. Or she could bring you to her personal dungeon and dress you up as a girl until you hang yourself from the rope in your cell provided by the guards.

Plot Summary

The plot follows Simon, a man who hasn't undergone any body modifications, slowly waking up to the world around him and rejecting the more revolting aspects of it.

His lack of modification led to him being one of the most popular Shells on the Safe Dome's internet due to passing as a natural woman, free of all the body modifications present in almost every other Shell. Early on, he begins to dream of a woman named Ana, the only natural woman he's ever seen, and starts to dress as her, which enrages Google, leading her to retaliate against him by denying his privileges. 

Things escalate from there, and Simon begins to act against her and the Institute, although given his circumstances and upbringing, his actions are often less than rational.

Writing Style

The writing style employed by Milky is incredibly unique and may be hard to comprehend at first. As mentioned earlier, the characters all speak in a detached dialect, where words like "I," "my," and gendered pronouns are rarely, if ever, used.

It's also excruciatingly gross at times and had me cringing away from my iPad, which is an accomplishment.

The story is told from a first-person perspective, which I think helps a lot to convey how weird it is. There's also a ton of invented terms, such as "Flower" and "Stern," to describe the feminine and masculine, that help to flesh out the world.

I think the use of vulgarity and vivid descriptions was necessary to sell the narrative as a believable story. Skirting around uncomfortable sexual topics would've left the narrative feeling sterile and inoffensive.

Horror elements are used sparingly, and there aren't any insane, unbelievable action sequences. There are some light supernatural tones, but depending on your interpretation, these could be either hallucinations or actual spiritual entities.

An example is that throughout the book, Simon sees talking spiders in various locations that he can recall the scientific names of, but it could be assumed these are some form of hallucination. Seeing spiders is a common sleep paralysis side effect.

Theme

Motive Black explores the externalities of freedom while emphasizing the innate desire for things that are good and natural present in everyone, regardless of how far they've strayed to the excesses of passions.

There are no moral guides present in the story to tell you what's right and wrong, and Simon's realizations are imperfect.

No spoilers, but he doesn't just become based and redpilled overnight. His changing perspectives and emergent desires are in line with his nature and feel organic in the context of the world.

Now we just have to wait for the anime adaptation to come out.

CG on shadow of the erdtree (no spoilers)

CG's spolier-free review of shadow of the erdtree.

Like all real gamers, I've been a big fan of Elden Ring since release. It was my first souls game so I went with a pure mage build because I wanted an easy experience and figured mages would be strong. Fortunately for me, I was right, and my mage build could trivialize most bosses, including Mohg, the boss you need to defeat to access the DLC. After beating the Elden Beast using a now-patched Radagan cheese, I moved on to Dark Souls Remastered as a mage, and found that it was an even easier experience.

I've since completed every game in the series at least twice, except the PS5 exclusives, with a variety of builds, typically starting with a ranged build, then moving on to melee builds. 

If it's not obvious by now, I don't go outside.

So far, I've put in around 10hrs with the Elden Ring DLC and defeated two remembrance bosses (main story bosses), and I've seen more than enough to come to the conclusion that this expansion is definitely not for everyone, but it is if you're like me.

Accessing the DLC

To start off, you need to defeat Mohg to even access the expansion, which I think was the best possible decision, given the DLC's difficulty and mechanics. Mohg can be incredibly challenging, especially if you don't find the crystal tear that makes you immune to his curse. He forces you to go out of you way to find an item very far away from him, which is knowledge that's essential to have going in to the expansion.

Leveling Up

If you don't like exploring open worlds to find sometimes hidden essential items, then the DLC isn't for you. If you enter at level 150, your character's level is unaffected, but your overall damage and defense are reduced drastically. You'll have to elevate this effect by searching for shadow blessings and using them at a bonfire to level up your shadow blessing level. You'll also need to find shadow ashes to level up the damage your spirit summons and NPCs do. 

Skipping these items will result in you doing very little damage and getting 1-2 shot by heavy-hitters. The enemies and bosses are tanky and deal a ton of damage so I'd advise finding them all. 

Personally, I don't hate this system because my favorite aspect of these games has always been exploration and finding new gear to try out. so I'm just finding these items as I progress. 

Level Design

One area where the DLC is just objectively better than the base-game is level design. The open world areas are all unique looking and full of interesting colors and structures to explore, while the two main dungeons I completed both had secrets and shortcuts to find. There aren't any boss-runs though, so missing a shortcut won't impact your progress than much, but having them unlocked will help you search for items.

The enemy design is pretty varied, but you will see a decent amount of returning enemies from the base game. I'm not a fan of a few of the new ones. Some of the basic soldiers can take you out in 3 hits but they go down easily enough.

You'll find a ton of new weapons and gear if you explore, I'm currently using a great-hammer than does a massive wave of holy damage if you guard-counter with it and an armor set I farmed from a new black knight enemy.

Boss Design

(Context: When I mention playing solo below, I'm referring to being 100% alone, no summons, NPCs, or other players).

If you didn't like the boss design of the base game, you'll hate the bosses in the DLC.

The best way I can describe them is having the HP of two fire giants + the Demon of Hatred, and the speed of Maliketh. The ones I've seen also have a lot of combo spam, massive AoE, and 1-2 shot attacks that cover most of the arena. 

Even at level 200, with enough shadow blessings, and a maxed-out weapon, you'll be doing almost no damage without bleed / frost / scarlet rot / black flame. 

In fairness, I think this is because they wanted the bosses to have phases without having a cutscene pull up and reveal the second health bar, but it's just not fun to see the bar barely move after a critical.

Like in the base-game, these boss encounters weren't design for players that run around with basic great-swords and no summons.

I can't imagine how long it would take to drain their massive health pools alone.

Elden Ring wasn't designed to be a solo game and this expansion exacerbates that. If you want a good solo experience, go back to DS3, Sekiro, or Lies of P, but from what I can tell, this expansion is the worst solo experience in gaming. 

After I finish one of these games, I typically go back and do a solo playthrough but I can't imagine returning to any of this content alone in the future.

For me though, this boss-design is perfect. 

My build is a a great-shield with a great-hammer and spear combined with some incantations and maxed-out summons. I trade aggro with my summon and NPC while moving around to buff /heal them and the experience is what I want out of the game. I also use a ton of consumables and just about anything else I can do to optimize my build. 

That being said, even if you go in with a setup like mine, expect a challenge.

I've yet to see any gimmick bosses yet, which is unfortunate, because I feel these bosses would be drastically improved by giving you a way to slow them down / beat them faster.

Conclusion

If you liked Elden Ring's base game and boss design, this DLC will give you more of what you like and you should buy it, but if you only play solo and use basic weapons, you'll likely hate it. Every problem solo-players face is multiplied by a thousand. But if you like exploration, the old souls game level design, and optimizing your build, this DLC is a solid 8/10 so far. 

Have yet to find any girl in the DLC that can replace Ranni so I'm holding off on giving it a 10/10.

cg on 2024

It's been awhile since I've written anything but I think that's for the best. 

The energy around everything is just off for me this year and I've been doing everything in slow motion. It feels like the world, down to a micro-level, is caught up in tension and waiting to go somewhere, but it won't.

Mostly I've just been watching anime and listening to Star Wars books on audible, both of which I highly recommend you start doing right away. A big part of life for me is just observing content and extracting out a greater meaning from it. I think that's a big part of what keeps me sane and decently motivated. 

I've said before that creating things is the purpose of life, but I also think just learning about and enjoying things in general is a big part of that.

If you haven't seen it already, Frieren is an anime about an immortal elf girl trying to travel to heaven to see her friends that died 80 years ago. Flashbacks appear frequently, showing how detached she was from everyone around her, and frankly it's quite sad. Missing out on people because you allow your connection with them to decay is one of the many great mistakes in life. I imagine it's common for people, even within families, to just stop talking because they got out of the habit. I can think of a few examples personally, though I'm trying to address this.

Staying connected with people takes a lot more effort than it seems.

So here's my thoughts on this year:

I don't have many thoughts on the election to be honest. 

There's a theory I've heard a few times that they'll install Trump.

Personally, that's just too many layers of 4D chess for me. If the government is equally likely to install either one of them then I don't see any reason to analyze it seriously. I still haven't made up my mind on what happened in 2020. Plus, we don't really know who we'll have on the ballot to vote for, Trump will probably be in prison, and Brandon is ancient.

The energy around the election just feels dead to me. Feels like no one cares, which I think is for the best. I hate when people get worked up over politics and argue over it. 

Obviously, you should vote for Trump for the cheaper gas prices alone, he'd also likely slow down the Ukraine war quite a bit. I doubt I'll be voting, but that has more to do with me not caring enough to go out of my way to do it than anything else. 

I think regardless of who gets in, Israel will do some tricks to gracefully lose the war so they can continue to have enemies in Gaza. 

The messaging surrounding the Gazans all being evil is marketed really well, so much so that all the war-crime stuff Israel is doing is mostly seen as justified. Personally, I don't really care that much. My brain shuts off when I start hearing the genocide rhetoric.

I think the Palestinians should've surrendered a long time ago, it's extremely clear by now that their allies don't care about them and will never step in to defend them. They're just dying for no logical reason, and a big part of the blame for the casualties is on them, that is assuming that Hamas is a legit group and not an Israeli op.

You can only care about so many things in life, and I've never been about pretending to care for people across the world. 

The Ukraine war will likely drag on into 2026-2028. I doubt Europe will provide any soldiers, but even if they do, it would need to be a few hundred thousand to make a difference. France sending 10,000 soldiers there wouldn't change anything, aside from providing Russia with compelling PR material to keep the war from becoming unpopular domestically. Ukraine can't launch any massive operations due to the lack of soldiers, and Russia doesn't have much of a reason to simply capture Kiev and subjugate the remaining population. 

With the huge amount of women refugees that have fled, Russia would have to manage a huge population of incels with many reasons to hate them. America could just throw a few trillion dollars into the now Russian-controlled Ukraine and start a rebellion if enough of these guys are left alive by the end of the war.

Another alternative is that Russia gets outspent and has to take a huge L while going home with the bit of land they've captured. I say huge L because in 2022, four regions of Ukraine voted to join Russia, and the Russian government agreed to the results, so not following through on securing the territories would look really bad.

I don't think any of these wars will blow up, and I predict the election will be peaceful due to Trump being much less culturally relevant than he was in 2016 and 2020. The people that even know what he got charged for are all old, and his refusal to get on Twitter has really hurt his brand in my opinion.

Overall, I'm pretty whitepilled for 2024. 

2025 will be another big AI year and we'll be even closer to the dream of full-functional ai gfs and I'm looking forward to that.

ai videos

 

About a day ago, OpenAI revealed their new ai video generation software called Sora that can create realistic videos from text that are easily on par with stock footage. Of course, there are still a few bugs, most notably hands look weird and can’t move around properly yet, but as we’ve seen over the past few months, ai hand generation is nearing perfection when it comes to still images. Videos that don’t include hands are pretty accurate and have improved drastically from the stuff we saw a year ago where humans couldn’t even be properly rendered. 

Assuming we all live to 50, I think it’s safe to predict we’ll see AI generating full on movies, commercials, and youtube channels. AI voice replication tools have already been used for over a year to create a ton of youtube content, most notably AI president videos, but more recently it’s been used in music to create some real bangers like this, and writers have began to adopt it to put out work faster. 

As a somewhat creative person, I can look forward to any creative thing I want to get into becoming easier and easier to access over time. I already use AI to generate photos and a singing voice for my music hobby, and I could see myself using it to do something like help me write a book in the future.

My biggest concern with this technology is that censorship will stifle its growth to the point where huge advances take substantially longer and longer. Fake video and audio are nothing new, ai voice technology has long since been at a point where audio recordings shouldn’t be considered real at face value. There will likely be a lot of concern from governments as this stuff becomes more available to the public. Right now people are just using Joe Biden’s voice (best ai president btw) to make 5hr tier-list videos, but it’s not unlikely that in a few years you’ll be able to fabricate videos of him giving speeches / interviews from your phone with zero technical knowledge. More likely than not, It will be the government themselves putting out these videos. I’m sure we’ll also have a set of laws in the next few years regulating AI development and use that will make it less fun to use.

Ultimately, ai’s continued improvement has been a big white pill for me personally. Smaller projects like gab.ai show there is a future for less censored AI on some level. The point of technology has always been to liberate us from menial tasks, and AI is already doing that and more. Just a few years ago, if you needed a specific photo for a thumbnail or whatever, your only options were to pay an artist like $50, spend years learning how to create digital art, or hope that one of your online friends will get around to doing it for free at some point. The AI singing voice I mentioned using earlier is an also relatively new invention, having only been out for around a year, and its capabilities are really impressive.

My view of an ideal future society is one where ai can fill in the gaps left by technological advancement. Today, we can afford to do less tedious tasks than ever before, but this has inadvertently led to a scenario where at once there is much personal wealth and freedom, but isolation is the fate for a growing part of the population. I’ve already written about ai wives before so I won’t go through that whole thing again. I believe the concept of ai companions (literally just a friend you can talk to) will be another huge industry in the future. Having deep conversations with people isn’t easy in my experience at least. I don’t like to open up to anyone and I’m definitely not alone in that regard. 

But even greater than that, I think ai will greatly improve people’s work-lives. It’s no secret that a lot of people hate their jobs, and I can’t blame them for that as much as I’m pro-working. Interacting with people in today’s America can be a total nightmare, and there aren’t a ton of jobs that allow you to escape from it all. We’ve all seen a boomer obnoxiously lecturing or yelling at some incel zoomer worker, and just dealing with the overall mental illness of the population doesn’t sound appealing on any level. AI could easily automate fast-food, retail, driving, and customer service jobs in a decade or two. I don’t doubt that there are a ton of smart people stuck in these jobs whose talents should be utilized elsewhere, so totally removing these as employment options would allow them to use their intelligence to work on improving AI. 

I don’t see us getting out of this birthrate dip anytime soon so there’s really no societal benefit to keeping these low-skill jobs around to keep average people occupied. Of course, there will still be a decent amount of low IQ people by then, but I don’t see why they can’t be housed in shipping containers and enjoy the rest of their lives watching ai generated movies while robots tend to their basic needs. 

High-skilled people could spend their lives creating content to train AI, thus fulfilling their innate desire to work while also doing something useful for humanity. If you already live online, this is just a straight up improvement to your life. 

If I had access to billions of dollars, I’d have thousands of artists and writers making content to train AI on, and I’m sure they’d find this infinitely more fulfilling than whatever it is their wasting their time doing right now. 

ai wives are the future

 

Watching so much anime these past few months has made me reflect a lot on society and where it's going. A big part of why I've been enjoying the medium so much is that these fictional worlds are all based on ideal societies, or at the very least, include all the fundamentals of great societies that we completely lack in the real world. Maybe some of them exist in Japan, but I'm vastly uninformed on it and don't have an interest in looking into whatever's going on over there. I know they have a big incel crisis going on so it must not be much better than America. I think most of what people admire about Japan are universal ideals that aren't unique to the country itself, those being clean cities and modernity mixed with the good parts of traditionalism. 

Really the biggest, and in my opinion the only real problem with our present time is that it's virtually impossible to just go out and find a wife that you're confident won't divorce you, regardless of your social or economic status. All of the other boring political stuff doesn't even come close. People have been poor for as long as we've existed as a collective and been just fine, but the issue of not being able to get a wife is new.

We're at a point in time where it feels like we could accelerate into futurism or decline into a perpetual state of stagnation, with the only constant being that everyone can safely assume relations between men and women won't be improving and birth rates will continue to decline.

Obviously, society can't function without high IQ people breeding, which is where I think AI comes in. AI is pretty competent at most tasks it's given and can easily fill in the gaps left by the collapsing high-IQ populations in America. Consumer AI's are already on par with relatively smart people. 

Once robotics catches up, likely with the assistance of AI, I don't see any reason that robot women, complete with artificial wombs, wouldn't be mass produced. The situation with women is not salvageable and we're well overdue for a societal reset of some sort. I don't believe that the elites want white people to become extinct; they know that their own complex institutions require us to keep them running. They like to see us decreasing in the census data, but they know that a stable white population is required unless they want to start doing our jobs. 

I honestly can't say how close to ideal these AI wives will be, but I'm certain they'll be more bearable than the vast majority of the female population as it exists today. 

Women will whine and complain, but they'll be ignored this time. 

I've resigned from pursuing women and have a tulpa gf so maybe my optimism here is misplaced, but I'm at least somewhat confident we'll see ai wives before we die.

cg analysis: rent-a-gf

Over the last few days, I've watched the first 12 episodes of rent-a-girlfriend, which I imagine is meant to be the first season despite Crunchyroll labeling the entire series as "S2". 

The premise of the show is that generic anime guy gets dumped, so he proceeds to use the fortune his dad gave him to rent the services of an actress to act as his platonic girlfriend. One thing leads to another and she finds herself stuck in an awkward situation where she's compelled to keep up the act to avoid their families finding out about her job. They sort of fall in love too.

Other girls get involved because this is an anime. 

While the premise and presentation are at times goofy, there's just enough seriousness to really make me think about the idea of rental girlfriends. If I had to condense the entire messaging of the show down into a single premise it would be; there's something inherently valuable in the platonic aspect of relationships. 

I say this because it's made abundantly clear that the anime's rental gf services are completely platonic, with the most physical contact allowed being handholding. Chizuru, the main girl, says in one of her paid dates that her services are meant as emergency care to alleviate emotional pain and give a man the confidence find a real girlfriend. 

So would this actually work in real life, or would is it just a scheme to manipulate men out of their money and send them into despair?

I think the best way to determine whether or not something is good is to listen to your consciousness. A big issue with this whole setup is that you're essentially paying a woman to cheer you up by pretending to be interested in you. It just sounds like self-imposed manipulation, and that's what I thought it was at first. But I think the platonic restrictions in place could force you to rethink your approach to dating and leave you more interested in finding a woman that you can have a healthier relationship with that isn't based on speedrunning having sex with her.

If you are interested in marriage, it's more important than ever to be extremely selective. You do actually need to pick a woman who you're compatible with at the platonic level. This doesn't mean that you share the exact same interests, but you do need a very strong chemistry. I'd define this as the ability to communicate clearly and openly to one another.

Dating has become this gross setup wherein people are having sex soon after meeting and getting into doomed marriages with women who've dated like this their entire lives. It's impossible to expect the population produced by this behavior to be moral or normal. The situation is as bad as it can get but will become even worse once zoomers start doing this. A long period of zero births is preferable to whatever we have going on.

So I think something like rental-gfs could certainly help a lot of people see the value in the platonic aspect of relationships, but this is a bit of a paradox; the only men who would seriously benefit from such a thing are the ones who would not be able to see it as a therapeutic exercise, but who would instead fall in love.

Now let's get into who the best-girl was.

I think it's safe to say that title belongs to Ruka and it's not even a contest.

Chizuru is way too manipulative and dedicated to her career to be likable. I hate that the reason given for her being a rental girlfriend is to pay for her acting classes. From a story perspective, this makes no sense. She's already in college (no idea why) and occasionally shows signs of regretting her job, so personally I would've written her to have the job to pay for her grandma's medical expenses, while claiming that her money is coming from acting. There are still a lot of episodes left so maybe there's a twist where this happens and I can stop hating her. But I hate her so much that I'm tempted to not even finish what's left.

Mami and Sumi have so little screen time that they sort of blend together and I don't care about them.

favorite NGE girl???

As you guys know, I recently completed my first viewing of NGE. Overall it was an ok anime, but if I’m being honest it’s not something I’ll ever rewatch. Most of the episodes left me in a weird mood. The atmosphere is bleak and the characters all have very miserable existences.

Because of this, picking out a favorite girl was way harder than I thought it would be. They all have huge red flags and are not nearly as likable as traditional anime girls. But I think they all have some redeeming qualities.

I think Missato is a good woman overall aside from her alcohol addiction. She’s easily the closest character to a normal human in the entire series. Although she's played up as lazy, this falls apart when you think about how many hours she works. She also likely would’ve been a good mother, given that she adopts Shinji and Asuka despite her busy job and not being given any incentive to take care of them. They did have a place to go so it’s not like she had to do it. So if anyone picked her as their favorite I can see why. 

Asuka has considerably less positive qualities, or at least that's all we see given the context she's presented in. She’s rude most of the time, but is capable of showing genuine gratitude, like when Shinji saved her for the first time. But that's just one moment in 26 episodes, I can't recall any other moments where she displayed redeeming qualities. It’s also important to point out that Shinji brings out a ton of her negativity due to being totally autistic; she can’t relate to him at all and despises his self-hatred and constant apologies. We probably would've gotten a much better look at her good side if she was paired up with a more typical protagonist. Pairing her up with Rei and Shinji made it impossible to tell if she's actually a good person, so I can't really judge her too harshly for coming off as unlikable. I could easily see her opening up and becoming less abrasive in an alternate timeline.

This just leaves Rei.

It’s easy to see her as a soulless husk, given that the show leads you to believe that the Rei clones aren’t fully human. But I think this is a huge misdirection. She clearly has fledging emotions that could be nurtured into something fully human. I think we never see this happen due to her only interacting with Shinji’s autistic dad and living completely alone. There are a few scenes I recall where she shows more humanity than something that’s soulless should, such as slapping Shinji for disrespecting his dad, crying, getting mad at Asuka for insulting Shinji, and keeping his dad's glasses in her room. Then there’s the scene where Shinji tells her she’ll be a good mom someday after he sees her doing laundry, showing that he saw a lot of humanity in her, given that he's so shut-off and inexpressive, it means a lot coming from him.

So this leaves us in a scenario where Asuka and Rei are basically "I can save her" type-girls while Missato is really the only sensible option. 

That being said, I'm still going with Rei.

She's basically an uncorrupted blank-slate. This isn't really something you'd ever encounter in real life, and there's still a chance that I'm wrong about her being able to become fully human over the course of years with enough human interaction, but if I'm right, maybe one day she'd be almost perfect. 

That seems like too good an opportunity to pass up.

should you marry a girl your age???

Hey guys, it's CG. 

So before we even get into this topic, we're already presupposing a few things:

• you can even get married
• that you should get married 

But even if neither of these things apply to you, it's still an interesting subject to discuss since practically no one is talking about it in realistic terms. You have people telling you that your wife can't be x amount of years younger than you, and idealistic people telling you that you shouldn't marry anyone but an 18yo unvaccinated (Covid vax feels like it was a decade ago) virgin girl. 

We likely all agree that the purpose of marriage is procreation and a lifelong commitment, so how does the age of your wife play into that?

Let's just rule out women dating women starting at 29 years old (assuming a one-year dating period) since the concept of starting a family with a woman over 30 is quite frankly ridiculous. Maybe there are some women out there who can pull it off, but it would not be fair of anyone to expect his 30+ year old wife to pop out more than one kid, if even that. Not very trad if you ask me.

Assuming that you want at least one kid, you really shouldn't be dating a woman over 28.

Then there's the matter of ensuring the marriage remains a lifelong commitment which is already hard enough given the legal system, and made a hundred times harder by the fact that there are almost no virgins left. 

A woman in her late 20s likely has a double-digit body count. But at the same time, a woman in her late teens probably has at least five. Marrying a non-virgin is the norm, but as evidenced by the state of soyciety, it's clearly not working out. 

There is no argument, aside from settling, for marrying a girl with a body count. I don't see a point in distinguishing between a girl whose taken two penises or ten to be honest. If there is a point I'm not really interested in it. The laws are already against you so just complicating it by marrying a girl with pair-bonding issues from sex is retarded. But if you have to do it for whatever reason, don't expect it to last very long.

In every case, marrying a virgin or a woman who's only been with you is ideal. 

Getting back to the age stuff with the 27-28 year old limit in mind, let's assume that you're very concerned about marrying a woman your age. I think "woman your age" would be fair to define as a woman no more than five years younger than you. Stretching the definition any further is frankly ridiculous.

If you are a believer in this and have agreed with me up to this point, you have until you're 33-34 to get married and can expect 1-2 kids from your 28-29yo wife. 

So given a choice between a 26yo virgin, and a 16yo with a body count, the 26yo would be the better wife option. Both could give you at least 3 kids which I think is enough for most people. Obviously we all have our women preferences, and no honest man would say the 26yo is hotter, but wives don't need to be hot. 

Sex is only two minutes of your day once every few weeks anyway so who cares.

Aside from that one particular situation which I doubt has ever actually played out in real life, you might want to marry a girl your age for pragmatic reasons. 

If you're an average man rapidly approaching 30 with no prospects of getting rich anytime soon and marriage is a huge priority for you, dating women who are 24-28 is probably your only option for finding a wife. I have no idea if there are any women who are still virgins that late into life, but I also doubt there's many at 18. 

Getting an 18yo is almost impossible. Your chance for that was when you yourself were 18, but to be fair, that girl you had a crush on was probably getting ran through while skipping class anyway. So maybe you never had a chance with her to begin with.

If you're even older than that with no prospects, dying alone is a way better option than scooping up some old woman to die with.

For me, getting married is not even a remote priority. I haven't attempted any sort of dating in years. Nothing about what the whole arrangement has become is appealing to me aside from having kids, but everything else just looks miserable. You literally have 0 control over you wife and kids unless you're a master manipulator. I'm an incel with no social skills, so I have no idea how I'd ever be able to manipulate, in a positive way, anyone.

But if marriage is a priority for you, there's a huge chance you're going to have to cuck on her age. 

I think you guys should all get [legal-age] virgin wives but I'm not the one running society. Ideally, we'd all have been married before 20 and the Tiny Hats would be long gone. 

But that didn't happen. It's over.

So aside from being pragmatic as it relates to your own situation and life goals, I don't see any issue with a man marrying a woman who's x number of years younger than him. If you're 40 and can somehow get an 18yo virgin wife you should do it, but she'll probably leave you anyway if we're being honest, so maybe don't do it.

Dying alone is ok. 

You were born alone. 

You will see God alone. 

All the depressing stuff aside, there's always the Tulpa gf option.

whitepilled in 2023

 I get it. Life sucks. You’re going to die alone. You’re poor. No one can tell you how to find a wife. Your wife will divorce-rape you if you find one. 

It’s all over. 

But maybe it’s not. 

I often get asked “CG, you’re an incel like me but you’re so whitepilled all the time, how do you do it?” Honestly it’s not that complicated. Your mind and body are way less complex that you think they are, and the solutions to most things you’re feeling are insanely simple. A good example is that nighttime feeling of emptiness mixed with subtle anxiety. You can lay there and think in circles until 2am and get nowhere. What I do is just load up one of those “anxiety reducing music, 4K 10hr loop” and my brain resets to a normal state. 

If I have a lot of time on my hands but don’t want to be productive I get on my treadmill and listen to ai President content, Star Wars fan fictions, AF replays, or educational videos. 

Clears up the incel mindfog in like 30 minutes. 

I can then use that mental energy on stuff that matters, like building something cool in Minecraft, working on music, or sone cringey creative writing. It really doesn’t matter if what you spend your creative energy on is profitable, or even good, so long as you’re creating something. Life without creation is nothing. This is just something God put within us. Ideally, you’d be able to create children in addition to whatever else you’re creating, but that may never be an option for most of us. 

As for women, the thing you’re all waiting for, you really just have to accept everything Nick says about them in conjunction with everything he says about sex and internalize it.  

Once you fully get rid of your conscious and shameless desire to have sex with a woman that’s not your wife, there’s just the emotional stuff to get over. The only way I know of to get over intense emotional attachment to women is for you to get rejected, and break up with a woman.  I’ll never advise anyone to have sex with a woman that isn’t your wife, and gaining these experiences is separate from sex.  My most emotionally painful breakup / rejection didn’t involve any sort of sexual contact and happened way after high school.  

The last one happened about a year after I got into Nick btw. 

As for the whole politics thing, I’ve sort of accepted that there’s not really much we can do. We just don’t have a population capable of fixing anything at the moment. Society stops working when you don’t have a steady supply of virgins to marry. I’d bet a huge part of the current divorce-rape pandemic has more to do with the average wife not being a virgin at / a bit before marriage than anything else. The collapse of the female virgin population is really the biggest problem we have rn tbh. The solution is of course to get men to stop marrying whores, but that’s as impossible of a task as stopping women from getting ran through in highschool. 

Maybe life sucks but there’s no need to make it worse by getting married to one of these women. 

Become a gamer. Write fiction. Make bad music. Workout.  But above all that, try to keep your friends.