I kinda feel like Below could be the next 'Demon's Souls' and you guys should really try it.

[Jaxar]

The "survival" elements and crafting seem like a really bad idea.

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I don't mind the crafting but the survival stuff (hunger, thirst, cold) should have been made optional IMO, or perhaps made available on a higher difficulty setting.

With these sorts of games I really like to take my time and enjoy the atmosphere but the survival elements essentially mean you're running against a timer.

 

[jay]

So i should wait for a spiritual successor that it will be better in every way? Okay, thanks.

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No, he said it will be like Demons Souls.

 

[Complicated]

Game is amazing. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of it.

 

[pixiedung]

Honestly, I kinda feel like if this game had 2 game modes: Survival and Explorer, where Survival would be the current game as is and Explorer would relax the Survival elements and spawn you with your lamp when you died, a LOT more people here would get convinced to keep playing. There's incredibly interesting stuff hidden behind a layer of obscurity.

Also hope that Capy will add an option to zoom in a bit more so that people who play on their couch instead of on a monitor right in front of them could also see more of what's going on.

Below really evokes the same feelings I had when I played Zelda 1 for the first time as a kid and I didn't think that'd be possible anymore in todays day and age where people just look stuff up on the internet once they get stuck somewhere for 5 minutes.

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Agree utterly! It has a wonderful atmosphere. The absence though, of the items you mention (modes/zoom), put it into a tier of game that, while i have respect for, have no real interest in playing.

 

[JudgmentJay]

It's very good. Unfortunately the devs will probably cave and soften it up.

 

[Ra]

Demon Souls was a critically acclaimed (89 avg Metacritic) cult classic that launched a behemoth of a franchise, so the thread title gets this off to a really bad start. Below will not be that.

Below is not "so different than all the other stuff on the market" either. It's a Rougelike. I want to make clear that I play almost nothing but this genre because I love it. Devs in the hardcore side of the genre (where I'll place Below) stick to their visions, sometimes to a fault. This isn't even the most brutal I've played tbh. It just has some really bad design decisions. I mean a large amount of people will immediately be put off by the ridiculous zoom. Would allowing people to zoom in really have compromised the game's integrity? It's oppressive to my eyes. I'm legitimately strained.

The biggest issue is that the game just turns into a grind to get back to your corpse. The lantern is way too important for way too much, for it to get stuck 15 floors down. You have to have it. Now I'm just prepping to go get it. After X number of times I'm like fuck.

As a big fan of the genre, I have to say that this shouldn't have been a roguelike at all. Everything thrown in to be like "fuck yeah roguelike difficulty, bitch" makes it a lesser experience.

We need to stop calling games with issues that people don't like much misunderstood.

 

[Dark_Castle]

Its the best game for ants.

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This. Why is the game so zoomed out? I was interested in giving the game a shot but I really dislike how small in view the character is compared to the field.

 

[HK-47]

Journalists didn't get Demon's Souls and it only took off due to GAF word of mouth?

... It has a 89 aggregate score and was heavily praised everywhere.

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Who said it was GAF?

 

[Terminus]

It is ga-ha-har-bage and I hate it with a fiery passion. It's obtuse in ways that confer no benefit nor sense of satisfaction in their painstaking elucidation. The hunger mechanic is a ridiculous contrivance to pad out playtime. But the most unforgivable offense by far is that interminable, unbelievably self-indulgent intro. Not even the most pretentious auteur film director would find that unedited sequence worthwhile. Please fuck off forever with that shite.

I think this might be the most I have ever disliked a game, probably because of how desperately I wanted to like it.

 

[mindsale]

Yeah, I hate micromanaging a hunger meter more than I hate item encumbrance. This game is not for me.

 

[GamerDude]

It is ga-ha-har-bage and I hate it with a fiery passion. It's obtuse in ways that confer no benefit nor sense of satisfaction in their painstaking elucidation. The hunger mechanic is a ridiculous contrivance to pad out playtime. But the most unforgivable offense by far is that interminable, unbelievably self-indulgent intro. Not even the most pretentious auteur film director would find that unedited sequence worthwhile. Please fuck off forever with that shite.

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Couldn't agree more. Below is a solid 3/10 from me.

 

[I_D]

Nioh is the best soulslike game there is, but its not souls. Below isnt either.

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Just want to point out that The Surge is the best Souls-like; not Nioh. Nioh is pretty good, though.

 

[Myradeer]

This discussion does remind me of Karma Gates on Rain World which was in fact far more "frustrating", but that at least had some thematic relevance and understandable developer intent (learn how to survive reliably on the area before you can move on).

 

[mindsale]

Just want to point out that The Surge is the best Souls-like; not Nioh. Nioh is pretty good, though.

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While Mortal Kombat is a very good game, Donkey Kong is the greatest game ever.

 

[Morrigan]

I should really try this ga....



Nevermind

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lol yup

Just want to point out that The Surge is the best Souls-like; not Nioh. Nioh is pretty good, though.

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This post offends me deeply

 

[SmittyWerbenManJensen]

Game seems way too tedious and unrewarding, so no thanks. I don't have time for these kinds of games when there are so many other games out there. I am glad that lots of people are enjoying it, though.

 

[strudelkuchen]

Below hates people with bad eyesight.

 

[kpaadet]

Demon's Souls has like a 89 on MC and won several goty awards yet OP thinks it was a diamond in the rough.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Just want to point out that The Surge is the best Souls-like; not Nioh. Nioh is pretty good, though.

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The surge is pretty good, but nioh is better :)

 

[ElephantShell]

Shocked and appalled at all the roguelike hate in this thread (I'm on a big roguelike kick right now)

 

[signal]

Can someone post screens of any varied environments? Every piece of footage I've watched looks like a similar area and that's a pretty big turn off.

e: nm I'll just look up more videos. This game seems way too dark always though.

 

[DeathyG]

Sounds like literally everything I hate in a game.

 

[JudgmentJay]

It's obtuse in ways that confer no benefit nor sense of satisfaction in their painstaking elucidation.

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I think it's very fun to go into a game knowing absolutely nothing and coming out the other end knowing everything. Especially when the game tells you nothing.

I really don't think this game is nearly as hard as people are making it out to be. I die dozens if not hundreds of times in Souls games on a first playthrough. I died 3 times in Below. I never lost more than 10-15 minutes of progress.

 

[thomasmahler]

Demon's Souls has like a 89 on MC and won several goty awards yet OP thinks it was a diamond in the rough.

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Are you guys all under 20 or what? When Demon's Souls initially came out (Early 2009) in Japan, nobody at all had the game on their radar. It was seen as another weird, niche From Software game that'll probably stay in Japan. Early voices from game critics were almost unanimous that the game was a disaster. Even Shu Yoshida had the same reaction:

https://kotaku.com/5884268/this-is-...lopment-said-after-first-playing-demons-souls

It was only when people started importing the game and trying it out themselves that the word of mouth started to spread and people suddenly started saying good things about it. I believe (don't quote me on this, just trying to use my memory), that a western release wasn't even a given at that point and only got done due to the very positive word of mouth and because tons of people started to import it (myself included) due to people spreading the love. By the time the bigger mainstream news sites reviewed the game, it was half a year later and word on the street was - for a long time already - that the game is incredibly interesting. If that wouldn't have happened, I'm almost certain a lot of the bigger news sites would've written it off with a 6/10.

 

[werezompire]

Rain World seems like the more accurate point of comparison - both are unique indie games that had a lot of hype before launch & do some interesting things that had mixed reviews at launch due to high difficulty & certain design choices.

 

[Eisen Sora]

The game is hard as hell and the survival mechanics doesnt help at all. I died on floor 4 thanks to those enemies that defends and do LOTS of damage and bleeding. Then, again, I found my corpse ( this time with a girl), looted it and died a few footsteeps away thanks to another of those creatures.

Even if its hard and punish you in every way posible, its beatiful visually and the OST and fx aspects are great. I want to continue playing to discover many of the secrets but I dont know if I can with all the punishment this game puts me.

 

[jem]

Below has less than 70 metacritic?

Well that just further cements how pointless and useless game reviews really are.

 

[Deleted member 18951]

After struggling through the first few hours things started clicking for me and now I am totally engrossed in the game and the world.

 

[Deleted member 3190]

Shocked and appalled at all the roguelike hate in this thread (I'm on a big roguelike kick right now)

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Maybe because just about every indie game released in the last 5 years has been a roguelike.

 

[nib95]

Are you guys all under 20 or what? When Demon's Souls initially came out (Early 2009) in Japan, nobody at all had the game on their radar. It was seen as another weird, niche From Software game that'll probably stay in Japan. Early voices from game critics were almost unanimous that the game was a disaster. Even Shu Yoshida had the same reaction:

https://kotaku.com/5884268/this-is-...lopment-said-after-first-playing-demons-souls

It was only when people started importing the game and trying it out themselves that the word of mouth started to spread and people suddenly started saying good things about it. I believe (don't quote me on this, just trying to use my memory), that a western release wasn't even a given at that point and only got done due to the very positive word of mouth and because tons of people started to import it (myself included) due to people spreading the love. By the time the bigger mainstream news sites reviewed the game, it was half a year later and word on the street was - for a long time already - that the game is incredibly interesting. If that wouldn't have happened, I'm almost certain a lot of the bigger news sites would've written it off with a 6/10.

Click to shrink...

Please stop this terrible implication and assumption that frankly somewhat insults gaming journalists and insinuates they lack the personal insight, merit or ability to fairly access or critique something, and that instead their critique is contingent on them having some sort of hype or pre-feedback train to lean or rely on. You're literally implying that if there wasn't positive buzz around the game, big sites would have given the game a 6/10 instead of a 9 or 10/10. That just comes off as disingenuous and farcical to me. There's no basis for this assumption.

Add to that, first impressions of something are not the same thing as a full and final review. You should actually read the article you posted about Yoshidas initial impressions of Demon Souls, in which it is explained that he played only the first couple of hours of an unfinished and far less polished version of the game. When he played and completed the final retail game, he stated that it was one of his favourite of all time.

"How did Yoshida miss the boat? He says differences in development between Japan and North America produced an early version of the game that looked nothing like its finished state. In Japan, assets for a game are developed in parallel; in the U.S. "game development is typically a vertical slice." Thus the early build, "the team tried to create a small piece of the experience that resembles the final product." That version had framerate issues, among other problems."


Side note, Yoshida was horrified by God of War (2018) when he first played it too, at the time also an unfinished version of the game.

https://m.uk.ign.com/articles/2018/...hen-he-first-played-god-of-war-before-release

 

[thomasmahler]

Please stop this terrible implication and assumption that frankly somewhat insults gaming journalists and insinuates they lack the personal insight, merit or ability to fairly access or critique something, and that instead their critique is contingent on them having some sort of hype or pre-feedback train to lean or rely on. You're literally implying that if there wasn't positive buzz around the game, big sites would have given the game a 6/10 instead of a 9 or 10/10. That just comes off as disingenuous and farcical to me. There's no basis for this assumption.

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I don't think I did that. But I do think if you come into this game with your own preconceived notions of how this kinda game should work and also don't take your time to review it cause you have to play through it quickly and it frustrates you to no end, you probably won't get the experience the developers intended.

 

[Deleted member 10601]

Once a story/easy mode is in i will buy it. ;) I'm not 20, 30 or 40 anymore. :D I played a lot of Angband and Nethack variants and many other obscure roguelikes.
Having a choice between different difficulty modes is never wrong, i think. Maybe getting old lowers my frustration treshold.

 

[kpaadet]

Are you guys all under 20 or what? When Demon's Souls initially came out (Early 2009) in Japan, nobody at all had the game on their radar. It was seen as another weird, niche From Software game that'll probably stay in Japan. Early voices from game critics were almost unanimous that the game was a disaster. Even Shu Yoshida had the same reaction:

https://kotaku.com/5884268/this-is-...lopment-said-after-first-playing-demons-souls

It was only when people started importing the game and trying it out themselves that the word of mouth started to spread and people suddenly started saying good things about it. I believe (don't quote me on this, just trying to use my memory), that a western release wasn't even a given at that point and only got done due to the very positive word of mouth and because tons of people started to import it (myself included) due to people spreading the love. By the time the bigger mainstream news sites reviewed the game, it was half a year later and word on the street was - for a long time already - that the game is incredibly interesting. If that wouldn't have happened, I'm almost certain a lot of the bigger news sites would've written it off with a 6/10.

Click to shrink...

I'm 30 and still have my jpn import copy of DS. I'm not sure how much of what you wrote goes against what I wrote. Niche =/= diamond in the rough, it got great reviews and turned into a succesful series as well as inspired many devs. That's not a diamond in the rough that's just a good game.

 

[Deleted member 4976]

I don't think I did that. But I do think if you come into this game with your own preconceived notions of how this kinda game should work and also don't take your time to review it cause you have to play through it quickly and it frustrates you to no end, you probably won't get the experience the developers intended.

Click to shrink...

I came into the game with no expectations, and actually had no idea what most of the game was about and hadn't seen much of anything about it aside from some clips a few years back and found myself thoroughly bored.

 

[CoyoteSpitfire]

I can't see shit for how dark and far away everything is. Plus I'm a little irked by how long that intro was in addition to the complete lack of explanation of anything about the game. I like rougelikes and I like the atmosphere, but playing for the short time I did already seemed tedious. Gonna try more when I wake up.

 

[PeterVenkman]

so much rougelike hate, i'll never understand. this thread makes me want to expedite picking this up; the sense of communal discovery that surrounded import Demons Souls back on GAF is one of the fondest experiences I've ever had.

 

[CrashFaster]

It is ga-ha-har-bage and I hate it with a fiery passion. It's obtuse in ways that confer no benefit nor sense of satisfaction in their painstaking elucidation. The hunger mechanic is a ridiculous contrivance to pad out playtime. But the most unforgivable offense by far is that interminable, unbelievably self-indulgent intro. Not even the most pretentious auteur film director would find that unedited sequence worthwhile. Please fuck off forever with that shite.

I think this might be the most I have ever disliked a game, probably because of how desperately I wanted to like it.

Click to shrink...

On XBox, I can just do a menu action with the controller during the intro and select 'Skip Intro'. No menu options on PC or something?

 

[Servbot24]

I really want to play this, but XBox and Windows are the two platforms I don't have. Maybe I'll just get it for my crummy work laptop.

 

[Kismet]

Hunger system means I'll never play it. Let me think about food in real life. I want to explore in games.

 

[nib95]

I don't think I did that. But I do think if you come into this game with your own preconceived notions of how this kinda game should work and also don't take your time to review it cause you have to play through it quickly and it frustrates you to no end, you probably won't get the experience the developers intended.

Click to shrink...

I really don't think most journalists are that fickle that they review games more positively based on some random pre-release enthusiast forum chatter.

All anyone needs to know going into playing something like Demon Souls, is that it's going to be fairly hard (though in sincerity they don't even need to know that). Past that, people will make up their own minds as to whether they enjoy the experience as a whole, and in the case of Demon Souls, the vast majority did, hence it has the metacritic reception and also user feedback that it has. I don't think any of that reception has anything to do with any of the stuff you mentioned, rather I think the reception was simply because most journalists really enjoyed the game.

It also wasn't the first, nor will it be the last difficult game to be well recieved either. Hell I'd argue that Japanese action games have actually been known to be traditionally more difficult than many other genres anyway, eg stuff like Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry etc, so I'd imagine most gaming journalists and enthusiasts who loaded up Demon Souls for the first time, might have caught on to the fact that it might be a particularly challenging and demanding game fairly early on, just by virtue of the genre and oppressive or gothic art and nature of it all.

 

[Deleted member 4976]

so much rougelike hate, i'll never understand. this thread makes me want to expedite picking this up; the sense of communal discovery that surrounded import Demons Souls back on GAF is one of the fondest experiences I've ever had.

Click to shrink...

For what it's worth, I love roguelikes and think Below is fairly mediocre.

I disagree with almost every aspect of the OP when it comes to this game. It wasn't confusing to pick up, it wasn't difficult, just a slog.

 

[Spence]

Below is a pretty cool game but it has too many flaws and questionable design choices, not sure if I will even finish it because that would require me to replay the horrible dark floor marathon just to find 3 missing bits of light that is required to progress further in the game.

I also think it's dumb that none of the items has any description, it's not like I am going to spend hours to experiment and find out what every elixir and helmet actually does.

Not to mention the very limited inventory space or storage options...

 

[Servbot24]

Wait this is a roguelike? Dang. Nevermind then, will probably just skip. :(

 

[pswii60]

I hate how tiny your character is on the screen

Click to shrink...

I love it. You're so small, the world is so big, and it's daunting in a good way.

But I can understand those that are trying to play the game on a small LCD or 1080p screen then it's going to be a very different experience. The game absolutely demands OLED, 4K, and a big screen.

All that aside, the game mechanics aren't for me. I'm not a big Souls fan either though. But I absolutely love the visuals and atmosphere of the game, I just kind of wish it was something else gameplay-wise - just can't get on with the Rogue-like stuff unfortunately.

 

[Conkerkid11]

Nah, having literally nothing in the game explained to you is dumb.

 

[Dezzy]

I tried it, but the camera being so zoomed out makes it feel much less immersive and also makes movement feel very slow. I walked around for a bit, but didn't get anywhere useful. I ran out of time and just haven't felt like getting back into it yet. I probably will later at some point.

 

[PeterVenkman]

Nah, having literally nothing in the game explained to you is dumb.

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completely disagree

For what it's worth, I love roguelikes and think Below is fairly mediocre.

I disagree with almost every aspect of the OP when it comes to this game. It wasn't confusing to pick up, it wasn't difficult, just a slog.

Click to shrink...

how far did you manage to get? might just come down to taste - I've gotten to floor 2 and would agree nothing is exactly difficult, but I'm having a great time.

Camera being zoomed out is IMO a wonderful choice, but I have the luxury of a decently-sized tv and a huge bean bag chair.

 

[Truant]

Watched some gameplay on Giant Bomb. It seems very samey in terms of level design, but that could change later on. It was extremely dark and hard to figure out what was going on since everything is tiny.

 

[PrimeBeef]

Even though it has permadeath and hunger, two things I can't really stand, the concept intrigued me. I get dropping players in the middle of somewhere and letting them figure things out, but it need to be a bit more intuitive. The characters are too small to even attempt to enjoy this. I think it had potential but failed to hit the mark like Souls did.

Maybe if they removed the permadeath, or added a zoom I'd give it a second chance.

 

[Deleted member 18347]

Rain World seems like the more accurate point of comparison - both are unique indie games that had a lot of hype before launch & do some interesting things that had mixed reviews at launch due to high difficulty & certain design choices.

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I play Rain World every now and then.

I'll admit that I never managed to play a long enough session to fully grasp and experiment with the different mechanics, so I end up just getting frustrated and quitting. It just never clicked for me.

I've been looking forward to Below for years. It's already in my wishlist. Thanks to this thread I'll put other games on hold and give it a whirl. Probably tonight if I have enough time.