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How tired are you of every single game being compared to Dark Souls?
- Thread starter tusk
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It is ridiculous when a game has absolutely nothing in common with Souls games, like Crash. But if it's describing an actual ARPG then I'll know that I'm likely not going to enjoy it.
The soulsborne games are nothing special. They just came at a time when games were stupid easy.
All this talk about git gud and how difficult they are and I beat bloodborne, OPing a few bosses in one try and I'm like that's it? It's like people haven't played the old ninja gaiden games on NES, or turtles or whatev. The only thing the soulsborne games changed was to remind people that games can be challenging and fun at the same time.
All this talk about git gud and how difficult they are and I beat bloodborne, OPing a few bosses in one try and I'm like that's it? It's like people haven't played the old ninja gaiden games on NES, or turtles or whatev. The only thing the soulsborne games changed was to remind people that games can be challenging and fun at the same time.
Ain't nothing special about actually knowing how to play a game and learning its mechanics
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Your attitude reminds me of the Crestfallen Warrior from Dark Souls. He too felt defeated after assessing the state of the world around him.
Had to wait until post #120 for this to show up, Era is really faltering lately.
You are incorrect, based on frequency alone.
"Nothing like it" other than the previous similar titles from FROM, at a minimum. I love Demon Souls but it wasnt the fucking year zero for videogames.
Great post, spent so much pointless time defending DS2 on the "old forum". One of the big problems with DS3 is that it abandoned some of the genuinely great additions DS2 made to the franchise, sort of felt like it was cutting of its nose to spite its face.
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Is that true? Well I can believe the Rayman one lol, but more than Gears and Bioshock? That surprises me
More tired of the people who always complain about it. It is what it is at this point, no need to make it seem like such a comparison is problematic when it does often do the job for a quick comparison.
I got tired of it when I bought Bound By Flame. Everyone was like.. ohhh its souls-like. No, it was just bad. The game was hard because it was bad. That does not make it a souls like.
It's fine when it's being used to compare actual game mechanics like soul retrieval or bonfires. The difficulty comparison is funny though.
This is exactly how I felt in 2009. It's still how I feel today.
Playing this game as a longtime FROM fan in 2009 was just astounding.
Ah yes, the ol' Difficulty Action RPG with unlockable Shortcuts genre, I remember long discussions into the wee hours about them.
This type of thread attracts
A.) Old From fans that want you to be impressed they played a King's Field game
B.) People that go "well, these games aren't even hard!"
C.) dorks like OP that were forged in the fire of Ninja Gaiden and Silver Surfer or some shit
basically, a bunch of nerds that just gotta flaunt about how much hard stuff they've beaten and that the plebs have no sense of the Real Gamer culture.
This type of thread attracts
A.) Old From fans that want you to be impressed they played a King's Field game
B.) People that go "well, these games aren't even hard!"
C.) dorks like OP that were forged in the fire of Ninja Gaiden and Silver Surfer or some shit
basically, a bunch of nerds that just gotta flaunt about how much hard stuff they've beaten and that the plebs have no sense of the Real Gamer culture.
Still getting the vibe that this thread is at least three years too late to be relevant, frankly.
Not particularly.
They're hugely influential, and also carry forward elements present in a lot of older classics, so it makes sense that there would be lots of commonality with both newer and older games.
They're hugely influential, and also carry forward elements present in a lot of older classics, so it makes sense that there would be lots of commonality with both newer and older games.
Played darksouls series too. In fact I am replaying dark souls remastered bc I'm bored I only mention bloodborne bc it's a lot of people's favorites. They're honestly not hard. Will you be punished? Yes. Will you die a lot? Yes. But the conceit is learning patterns and patience. You die, you level up and then repeat. Once you learn the techniques, it's a simple game. Like literally a lot of old school games. The soulsborne series are just old school gaming foundations repackaged with a modern sheen.
They are fundamentally pretty simple games mechanics wise but they can be deep with their various classes and methods of play.
Don't let it get to you OP some people gotta swing their giant intenet-penis around by saying "Hey I completed a mildly challenging game!" when ever they compare it to another game. I enjoyed my time with the FromSoftware games but never found them revolutonary; just a little challenging.
How about a recommendation... I've played:
All of the Dark Souls Games
Demon's Souls
Sekiro
Bloodborne
Nioh
Nioh 2
The Surge 1
Dragon's Dogma
Outward
Which Soulslike game would you most recommend beyond these?
(fwiw, I like the Nioh gameplay best and think that Bloodborne has the best atmosphere of those games).
All of the Dark Souls Games
Demon's Souls
Sekiro
Bloodborne
Nioh
Nioh 2
The Surge 1
Dragon's Dogma
Outward
Which Soulslike game would you most recommend beyond these?
(fwiw, I like the Nioh gameplay best and think that Bloodborne has the best atmosphere of those games).
Dark Soul fans are the video game equivalent of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fans. I'm a JoJo Fan btw.
It doesn't happen as much any more, but it was a bit annoying when Dark Souls just hit the mainstream and suddenly everyone was expecting every Action game or RPG to pivot to this (often completely different) design ethos.
Dark Souls is a very good video game that does a lot of things well. It is incredibly thoughtfully designed and does a few things in novel ways in order to meet its own unique challenges in ways that have resonated with many people including developers, who have further been influenced by it in their work. This just means many things literally are pulled from the game or inspired by it and draw even more legitimate comparisons. A game like this is going to get compared a lot. Like any impactful example of a medium. I feel like it's a bit silly to be annoyed at but you do you.
That said, it has sort of become a self perpetuating meme at this point. And often it gets applied where it isn't relevant at all. Dark Souls being short hand for the toughest game out there probably annoys souls fans more than most honestly. It's the result of a lot of factors including when the game came out, how it sort of danced around just outside the mainstream but maintained a punishing difficulty that pulled it towards niche and sort of put it in this middle ground (Demon's Souls kind of got stuck in that niche due to bad marketing and being an exclusive, and also probably being a bit rougher around the edges), and how it sort of turned into a meme, and how further still Bandai Namco did their best to really really lean into and accentuate the idea through their marketing that it was the hardest game ever.
The difficulty is an important part of the game in creating the experience it wants to convey, but it is not even close to the hardest game you'll try playing. It is fairly strict, as in, it basically never cheats for the player or does anything for them (like how most melee based games will sort of pull you to an enemy or how a lot of times enemies will stop attacking based on if others are), but it maintains that and keeps actual "fuck you" moments pretty minimal. Everything has a solution even the worst gamers can find to overcome a given challenge. And almost all traps can reasonably be foreseen, although you'll be learning that the hard way unless you start to realize how many of them you could have avoided. (I was bad and missed most warnings but there were a couple I caught and felt like a genius lol).
That ability to find your own path to overcome something without being a completely open like, idk survival sim type game or whatever meant that a huge swathe of gamers kind of experienced a new kind of difficulty they weren't used to. Heck I HATED hard games and would always go for normal or easy before it. When people are confronted by a really amazing experience that changed their views on something, that is going to be something that sticks with them wayyyyy more than if they just enjoyed it because it fit their tastes like anything else they knew they liked.
I mean look at another game that is even more recent that kind of got the same treatment but just hasn't become a meme. DOOM 2016 is a fantastic shooter that doesn't rely on most modern things like ADS and sprint and all that. It goes for this modern take on an older style, cutting away fat. And guess what? Every time someone talks about a modern shooter campaign, SOMEONE mentions DOOM.
That's because DOOM was not only good, but it was good in a way that very much stood out. Heck it's kind of crazy because a lot of people I will talk to will say they felt Titanfall 2's campaign was better, and yet those same people will bring up DOOM in conversations way way more. Again I think the reason why you see that is because DOOM was good not just cuz it was good, but it was good in a way that either vindicated people or changed people's minds about how a modern shooter could be.
Any game that does things in its own unique way that perfectly fit it and show people a different paradigm than they're used to, even if it pulls from somewhat forgotten past paradigms and simply renews them for a modern and novel design challenge, is going to become a standard against which other games are compared. I don't even like Uncharted but I can see why everything that goes for that cinematic style for years and years and years was compared to Uncharted. Because it did things in a completely different way that games had only kind of hinted at doing.
That said, it has sort of become a self perpetuating meme at this point. And often it gets applied where it isn't relevant at all. Dark Souls being short hand for the toughest game out there probably annoys souls fans more than most honestly. It's the result of a lot of factors including when the game came out, how it sort of danced around just outside the mainstream but maintained a punishing difficulty that pulled it towards niche and sort of put it in this middle ground (Demon's Souls kind of got stuck in that niche due to bad marketing and being an exclusive, and also probably being a bit rougher around the edges), and how it sort of turned into a meme, and how further still Bandai Namco did their best to really really lean into and accentuate the idea through their marketing that it was the hardest game ever.
The difficulty is an important part of the game in creating the experience it wants to convey, but it is not even close to the hardest game you'll try playing. It is fairly strict, as in, it basically never cheats for the player or does anything for them (like how most melee based games will sort of pull you to an enemy or how a lot of times enemies will stop attacking based on if others are), but it maintains that and keeps actual "fuck you" moments pretty minimal. Everything has a solution even the worst gamers can find to overcome a given challenge. And almost all traps can reasonably be foreseen, although you'll be learning that the hard way unless you start to realize how many of them you could have avoided. (I was bad and missed most warnings but there were a couple I caught and felt like a genius lol).
That ability to find your own path to overcome something without being a completely open like, idk survival sim type game or whatever meant that a huge swathe of gamers kind of experienced a new kind of difficulty they weren't used to. Heck I HATED hard games and would always go for normal or easy before it. When people are confronted by a really amazing experience that changed their views on something, that is going to be something that sticks with them wayyyyy more than if they just enjoyed it because it fit their tastes like anything else they knew they liked.
I mean look at another game that is even more recent that kind of got the same treatment but just hasn't become a meme. DOOM 2016 is a fantastic shooter that doesn't rely on most modern things like ADS and sprint and all that. It goes for this modern take on an older style, cutting away fat. And guess what? Every time someone talks about a modern shooter campaign, SOMEONE mentions DOOM.
That's because DOOM was not only good, but it was good in a way that very much stood out. Heck it's kind of crazy because a lot of people I will talk to will say they felt Titanfall 2's campaign was better, and yet those same people will bring up DOOM in conversations way way more. Again I think the reason why you see that is because DOOM was good not just cuz it was good, but it was good in a way that either vindicated people or changed people's minds about how a modern shooter could be.
Any game that does things in its own unique way that perfectly fit it and show people a different paradigm than they're used to, even if it pulls from somewhat forgotten past paradigms and simply renews them for a modern and novel design challenge, is going to become a standard against which other games are compared. I don't even like Uncharted but I can see why everything that goes for that cinematic style for years and years and years was compared to Uncharted. Because it did things in a completely different way that games had only kind of hinted at doing.
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If it's similar to dark souls then it's fine. Saying a games like Dark Souls because it's hard is more of a meme now.
This LOL.
They are free to have their opinion and I am free to laugh at them. That's a win-win in my book.
There are a lot of games out there that drew inspiration from Dark Souls in all its difference facets, and thus the comparison seems apt. I think that series brought a lot of new things to the table and has made games in general better and more thought out - except when it comes to difficulty.
Yup. I am literally a different person because the game forced me to think about challenge than I had differently. Once I did the game became pretty easy. But it took me a long long time of constantly being bashed over the head with a game that would not play how I wanted it to to change that.
When you practice a thing, no matter what kind of thing, that forces you to think in a different way than you're used to, it's gonna have some profound effects later on. For me it ended up being really helpful. To this day I am much more often able to stop in a situation, realize I was just frantically mashing, and kind of go through my inputs in a way I just wasn't really aware of before? It's different idk. But the game took me like what 90 hours to complete the first time? I was like 130 by the end of it? So I was what you call a slow learner. But from that trial by fire it did force me to develop some better ways of thinking about challenge, and it genuinely helps me enjoy more games than I used to. And not just because it was hard, but the way it was hard. I beat Halo 2 Legendary solo a bit before and sort of hated it pretty much the whole time. i had plenty of games I completed hard modes on because I was stuck on achievements, and I never liked it all that much. I look at difficulty very differently now because the game took the time to not just stack the odds against me, but also basically say hey any solution you come up with will work, but YOU gotta come up with it, or discover the subtle hints we've created for you. And the fact that I have the reaction times of a 60 year old didn't matter, which was nice.
I genuinely don't think I have ever met someone who thought 1 was the hardest?
It is by far the slowest of all of them, and it is much more generous than 2 with stamina like with things like running. It also much more commonly allows you to kite out enemies one by one if you want.
The problem is that people often go "this is trash because it's not Souls"
Souls-like design don't appeal me at all, it's not universal.
Honestly? Man I want to say this seems so pretentious...but think about what it precipitated.
Like I mean Dark Souls alone began the slow improvement of Japanese games on PC when they saw how successful it was. I distinctly remember before 2012 when basically it was taken for granted that did not happen.
Think about a lot of games that started to lean into challenge more. In 2009 games in that generation were quickly accelerating towards mass market appeal in a way that was a bit different. It was sort of a race to the "bottom." You go back and play a lot of these games and like, you think it was a meme they played themselves but they kinda did. That said with much more breathing room now of many types of experiences I find it fun to go back to those types of games, but at the time it was kind of suffocating. And I would just drop games because man it genuinely was not fun or fulfilling. I just wasn't engaged.
It was kind of conventional wisdom that casual interests came first, and the paradigm at the time was that meant you had to have overly easy games with QTEs and extremely narrow sections you basically didn't actually play, and everything. A lot of people hated it. A LOT of people hated it. But it was successful and the conventional wisdom stated that it was just a loud minority that didn't like it. I remember just kind of thinking this and not even resigning myself to it because it was just such a foregone conclusion that that was what it meant to be mainstream.
Demon's Souls set the stage for Dark Souls, and Dark Souls came out in 2011, right at the height of this. The cinematic, super accessible, AAA blockbuster was a THING.
It completely stood at odds with what the conventional wisdom for what a game needed in order to be successful was. Heck to this day every once in a while you'll see people talk about Dark Souls as if it's niche, because it's probably just so ingrained that that isn't what a mass appeal game does. Obviously mass appeal is not bad in any way. But Dark Souls kind of stood out along with Demon's Souls before it. I genuinely feel DeS set the stage for Dark Souls to redefine how people thought about what a good video game for the modern era was, and slowly began a trickle that indirectly lead to many other developments, aside from its own direct influences.
I feel like most or at least a ton of people who play souls games eventually come across a few bosses they beat their first try. If you're paying attention and learning the game this is not uncommon.
No offense to you if not. Everyone learns differently and the game very expressly does not explain itself. It just asks you to learn from experience and figure things out.
I found Bloodborne very hard because of how fast it was, but I still managed to beat a couple my first try. Not even close to most though. But I know quite a few people found it really not all that hard, which seems crazy to me.
Yeah, OTHER people are the ones showing off their e-penis, person that goes "oh those games are pretty mild" about famous difficult series.