Not the original commenter but I do feel the same. I dislike souls games. Although I did enjoy sekiro and made it to the stupid lightning samurai guy.
The problem with souls-like games for me is the combat doesn’t feel good for the challenge and I believe you can see this in high tier players lazily dodging attacks.
The game isn’t about skill and strategy. It’s timing and flat experience to kill some bosses you just gotta fight them 600 times and learn the attacks patterns which to me feels mentally exhausting and frustrating. It’s like a glorified DDR game with swords. I have to do the right combos to win, some strategies exist sure but at the end of the day it’s DDR.
The big argument everyone has is “mechanics vs numbers” thinking mechanics is the true skill side but mechanics isn’t just what you do with a controller, it’s also what the game allows you to do.
Too many games equate difficulty with time sink. I want a game that I can be smart and play the numbers OR be skilled and play the mechanics or both. Souls games don’t offer that, they’re peg legged
Thank you, now I think I’ll have to try sekiro. For Elden Ring there is a way out of the “learn timings” chore: go hard into defence, and there will only be a couple of boss strikes that can take you down, or go into insane damage increase and just evaporate everything (counter points to this: neither is to my liking and also neither is going to happen on first play-through for most people), but that is supposed to be the “best as of now” iteration. Need to see what was before it
I think they’d benefit taking a note from the witcher but not as linear.
For instance spirit/ghost creatures have them be susceptible to salt, silver, iron, holy water and a specific wood like holly. None are required to kill it, some have advantages over others or affect certain spirits more.
Maybe then I could be sneaky and have rare wood arrows with silver tips and eliminate from afar, I could be full rogue and sneak attack with blessed iron daggers, or just a big man with a plain sword and brute force my way through.
I think if you slapped Hatsune Miku on a dark souls screen and have her dancing going “jump!, roll!, duck!” People would realize it’s not as much of a skill game as they thought.
I want a game that I can be smart and play the numbers OR be skilled and play the mechanics or both
That’s how every DS game except Sekiro works. There’s absolutely broken PvE builds for each game you can discover. There’s people who challenge themselves by coming up with builds capable of 1-hitting every boss in the game.
People come up with all sorts of broken or just extremely novel builds for PvP too, “bad numbers, no mechanical skill, but the enemy isn’t ready for what you’re about to do to them” is a perfectly effective strategy.
That usually requires you to play the game in a traditional way first to learn/acquire that information and/or bang your skull repeatedly against a boss that feels like bullshit because you failed to dodge one single ability. It’s just not my schtick.
That usually requires you to play the game in a traditional way first
Not really, I guess the first boss of DS3 requires you to beat traditionally, but after that everything opens up and you have access to various levels of cheese. Information like what boss is weak to what type of weapon and where to find such weapons requires exploration, looking for clues, and sometimes just trying different things. A lot of players don’t change their approach at all, just bang their head into a brick wall for 4 hours, and conclude the problem is the game, not their unwillingness to try alternatives.
That’s also the third game. I tried Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 and they both felt pretty much roll, jump and smack em with a stick.
I’m thinking Nioh, Bloodborne, Sekiro, stuff like that.
I also think the genre itself has become sort of weird where people will describe everything from Shovel Knight to Titan Souls to Jedi Fallen Order as soulslike which is insane in my opinion. I guess because you fight bosses in them or roll in some of them? I dunno. It has somehow absorbed all hack and slash, boss rush, metroidvania games to be labeled “soulslike”. Which is insane to me.
Not the original commenter but I do feel the same. I dislike souls games. Although I did enjoy sekiro and made it to the stupid lightning samurai guy.
The problem with souls-like games for me is the combat doesn’t feel good for the challenge and I believe you can see this in high tier players lazily dodging attacks.
The game isn’t about skill and strategy. It’s timing and flat experience to kill some bosses you just gotta fight them 600 times and learn the attacks patterns which to me feels mentally exhausting and frustrating. It’s like a glorified DDR game with swords. I have to do the right combos to win, some strategies exist sure but at the end of the day it’s DDR.
The big argument everyone has is “mechanics vs numbers” thinking mechanics is the true skill side but mechanics isn’t just what you do with a controller, it’s also what the game allows you to do.
Too many games equate difficulty with time sink. I want a game that I can be smart and play the numbers OR be skilled and play the mechanics or both. Souls games don’t offer that, they’re peg legged
Thank you, now I think I’ll have to try sekiro. For Elden Ring there is a way out of the “learn timings” chore: go hard into defence, and there will only be a couple of boss strikes that can take you down, or go into insane damage increase and just evaporate everything (counter points to this: neither is to my liking and also neither is going to happen on first play-through for most people), but that is supposed to be the “best as of now” iteration. Need to see what was before it
I think they’d benefit taking a note from the witcher but not as linear.
For instance spirit/ghost creatures have them be susceptible to salt, silver, iron, holy water and a specific wood like holly. None are required to kill it, some have advantages over others or affect certain spirits more.
Maybe then I could be sneaky and have rare wood arrows with silver tips and eliminate from afar, I could be full rogue and sneak attack with blessed iron daggers, or just a big man with a plain sword and brute force my way through.
I think if you slapped Hatsune Miku on a dark souls screen and have her dancing going “jump!, roll!, duck!” People would realize it’s not as much of a skill game as they thought.
That’s how every DS game except Sekiro works. There’s absolutely broken PvE builds for each game you can discover. There’s people who challenge themselves by coming up with builds capable of 1-hitting every boss in the game.
People come up with all sorts of broken or just extremely novel builds for PvP too, “bad numbers, no mechanical skill, but the enemy isn’t ready for what you’re about to do to them” is a perfectly effective strategy.
That usually requires you to play the game in a traditional way first to learn/acquire that information and/or bang your skull repeatedly against a boss that feels like bullshit because you failed to dodge one single ability. It’s just not my schtick.
Not really, I guess the first boss of DS3 requires you to beat traditionally, but after that everything opens up and you have access to various levels of cheese. Information like what boss is weak to what type of weapon and where to find such weapons requires exploration, looking for clues, and sometimes just trying different things. A lot of players don’t change their approach at all, just bang their head into a brick wall for 4 hours, and conclude the problem is the game, not their unwillingness to try alternatives.
That’s also the third game. I tried Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 and they both felt pretty much roll, jump and smack em with a stick.
I’m thinking Nioh, Bloodborne, Sekiro, stuff like that.
I also think the genre itself has become sort of weird where people will describe everything from Shovel Knight to Titan Souls to Jedi Fallen Order as soulslike which is insane in my opinion. I guess because you fight bosses in them or roll in some of them? I dunno. It has somehow absorbed all hack and slash, boss rush, metroidvania games to be labeled “soulslike”. Which is insane to me.