Depends what you define as a souls game. Mechanically I suppose Surge is closer with it's missionless design, though Nioh felt closer in terms of combat.
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Why doesn’t Soulsborne Era love The Surge more?
- Thread starter 100%TrophyMaster
- Start date
Depends what you define as a souls game. Mechanically I suppose Surge is closer with it's missionless design, though Nioh felt closer in terms of combat.
My favorite part of nioh was its setting. I wish more games explored samurai japan
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I greatly disagree with this—there are not many large encounters unless you are running through environments carelessly. You get a drone pretty early in the game where you can lure out enemies one by one if there are enemies in groups.
Thanks, now im not gonna even bother to install it. Lords of the Fallen was the only game i regret purchasing this gen, and it costed me 10$. Great graphics and effects, but i hated it. I think i hate it more cuz i kept playing expecting it to get better, and soon enough i was watching the end credits wanting the time i spent with the game back.
I recently played and completed The Surge, and ended up not liking it.
Regular enemies are absurdly difficult. They completely miss the mark of what makes Soulsborne normal enemies actually dangerous with their combos and sometimes mob mentality, and instead made every single enemy in the game able to kill the player in one or two hits if not stacking health augments. I used two or three health augments to boost past the 100 health to about 250-300 and there were still enemies by end game that could two shot me. For the final boss, I basically had to take nearly every augment off and stack health to over 500 just to stand a chance to take a few hits.
"Fast" combat? Yeah, maybe for the enemies. Using anything other than a one handed weapon or a staff meant looooooooooooong ass wind up swings for the player. I played through a 1/4 of the game with a slow, heavy "two handed" weapon (which is how I prefer to play melee games), but the swings are so ungodly slow that I had to switch to a one handed weapon to have any semblance of speed, and even that was still too fucking slow.
The environments were severely lacking. Boring, sterile, metal construction everywhere. When I stumbled upon the greenhouse I was floored. Holy shit! Actual flowers, plants, etc in this game! Then I left it and it went back to boring, sterile, metal construction.
The "dodging" mechanic of being able to jump or duck attacks was completely pointless. The enemies attack so god damn fast that it was nigh impossible to judge what attack they were going to use and whether to block, jump, or duck. Something Sekiro figured out with its Perilous attacks and warning system, that The Surge REALLY could've used.
The game sucks. Period.
At least the sequel looks to be addressing a few of these issues.
Regular enemies are absurdly difficult. They completely miss the mark of what makes Soulsborne normal enemies actually dangerous with their combos and sometimes mob mentality, and instead made every single enemy in the game able to kill the player in one or two hits if not stacking health augments. I used two or three health augments to boost past the 100 health to about 250-300 and there were still enemies by end game that could two shot me. For the final boss, I basically had to take nearly every augment off and stack health to over 500 just to stand a chance to take a few hits.
"Fast" combat? Yeah, maybe for the enemies. Using anything other than a one handed weapon or a staff meant looooooooooooong ass wind up swings for the player. I played through a 1/4 of the game with a slow, heavy "two handed" weapon (which is how I prefer to play melee games), but the swings are so ungodly slow that I had to switch to a one handed weapon to have any semblance of speed, and even that was still too fucking slow.
The environments were severely lacking. Boring, sterile, metal construction everywhere. When I stumbled upon the greenhouse I was floored. Holy shit! Actual flowers, plants, etc in this game! Then I left it and it went back to boring, sterile, metal construction.
The "dodging" mechanic of being able to jump or duck attacks was completely pointless. The enemies attack so god damn fast that it was nigh impossible to judge what attack they were going to use and whether to block, jump, or duck. Something Sekiro figured out with its Perilous attacks and warning system, that The Surge REALLY could've used.
The game sucks. Period.
At least the sequel looks to be addressing a few of these issues.
While your point is made sort of rudely, it's nevertheless a common complaint found in this thread, and a confirmed issue for many coming into it. In fact, book-cover Judgement is exactly the reason that it was panned to begin with.
I've always found The Surge's environent and setting VASTLY more interesting then most would ever give it credit for, and the "Boring Sci-Fi" argument always illustrates exactly why.
It's not sci-fi at all, it's literally modern day Silicon Valley, Post Crisis. You are effectively fighting your way through the central headquarters of an Amazon or Google equivalent company after a massive power surge completely messed up all the electronics in the huge compound, leading to hundreds of employees to lose their minds and destroy anyone they see, among darker repercussions. You even see all the bullshit Sillicon Valley propaganda playing at select areas of the game, it's amazing in how this stuff is presented.
A big part of the story is about how the Surge only quickly exacerbated already present issues in the company, from treating their workers as so disposable as to subject many of them to what amounts to brain reprogramming to more effectively do their job, as seen with the way Security acts as if nothing happened during gameplay, guarding rooms like there's still someone in charge, to applying their own unsactioned solution to world issues in a mix of pride, idealism and powertripping from several individuals on top, like with Project resolve, sending Several rockets into space to fix the Ozone layer, and lying about it's effectiveness to the public at large, and how key executives plotted to retrofit one of these rockets to instead destroy mankind for profit and subservience.
You gain your main currency, scrap, by liberating it from the environment and your enemies, much like leveling up in a Souls game, but with a much needed risk-reward mechanic that adds a multiplier to your scrap gains for the amount you get before resting, giving you a reason to risk your neck before heading back to a medbay to level up.
Your main character is actually wheelchair bound, and gains the use of his legs to survive post Surge thanks to the exoskeleton he was fitted with to do his new job.
You decapitate, bisect and cut the limbs off of Enemies as finishing moves to gain broken parts of their "armorset" you can then craft and upgrade yourself later!
Bosses have unique objectives that you can complete that give you a much better version of their unique boss drops in return for high level play and risk management during the fight.
Like, The Surge was awesome, and is a ton of fun to play and explore, with a pretty unique setting. It's just that Souls people jumped the gun after Lords of the Fallen bombed and declared it a pretender to the throne from the get-go and ran with it all over the web.
The Surge 2 is getting the marketing and attention that, frankly, The Surge 1 should have gotten. It wasn't perfect, but it was way more interesting then anyone gave it credit for. I sincerely hope that people can give The Surge 2 the credit it deserves when the time comes, if they learned all the right lessons from the first game, and kept and updated the stuff that made it great, we're in for a heck of a great game!
World- and level- and in part encounter design is not very good, and made me stop playing, despite the quite good gameplay. The same thing with Nioh, but to a lesser extent. Those games made me realize that I need the excellent level design as well as the gameplay, to keep me going.
I hope you're aware that science fiction doesn't exclusively equal future. Everything you just described is science fiction. Its fiction, that uses the bases of real life science and speculative technogic advancements and also potential repurcussions. A lot of the technology in the game isn't accessible to us, so its using science, to create a fictitious narrative. Its science fiction.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_Home_Interactive
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I think The Surge is solid, and I think the devs at Deck 13 are one or two games away from making something really great. It's a pretty marked improvement from Lords of the Fallen (a game I'd generously describe as "Eurojank Bootleg Souls") even if it has some of the same problems that kept me from going all the way through it. The movement feels weirdly sluggish and momentum-based in a way that I got used to, but never really loved, and a lot of the encounter design consists of throwing 3-4 guys at you in a cramped room for you to kite or immediately die.
I'm optimistic about The Surge 2, but like the first one I think it's going to be something I pick up when it hits the $20 mark.
I'm optimistic about The Surge 2, but like the first one I think it's going to be something I pick up when it hits the $20 mark.
Add me into the camp that managed to finish (and mostly not hate) LotF but just found The Surge to be incredibly laborious. The Surge should be my thing as a massive SF nerd but I found none of the environment, design, world building or narrative engrossing. The combat wasn't the worst thing ever and it certainly has potential which is why I'm somewhat looking forward to Surge 2 but it was in no way competent enough to carry the rest of the games drudgery for me personally.
You are correct, I apologize. I had made assumptions on the functional definition of Science Fiction, and in doing so completely missed that it marketed itself as such.
A majority of Sci-Fi is set much further ahead in the future then something like The Surge, and I felt like saying it's just Sci-Fi, even with it being a correct and self-titled definition, somewhat handwaves the interesting analogs to modern day tech giant politics and behaviours.
Obviously stuff like Waylon Utani and other sci-fi evil companies use some level of metaphor to link themselves to this kind of stuff in modern day, but The Surge is much more closely linked in time and in general behaviour to the tech giants of today, in a way that makes it more unique and interesting, and frankly much more apparent and thought provoking in my mind.
I'm honestly just tired of the label making anything with science fictional elements look like Knockoffs of Starwars or Alien or other highly regarded Sciense Fiction movies from a glance. That's exactly the kind of effect that had on The Surge's reception, after all.
But you are correct, it is science fiction, and it does define itself as such. I only want to clarify my thoughts on it's distinction.
I am definitely taking this way too seriously, but I'd rather discuss something and realize I'm wrong, then blurt out nonsense and never allow myself to be corrected.
The screenshots do not look interesting and it has a 73 Metacritic. I'd rather check out something else in between FROM games.
We all have our moments, you took it in strides and admitted your mistake and that's all that matters. Not really a big deal either way. Like I said before, it's not really for me, at least this particular brand of industrial sci fi, not saying its bad I just don't like it very much. But I'm glad that the devs seem to have found their footing and found a fanbase that enjoys their titles and perhaps one day they'll make something that appeals more to my tastes but if not then that's okay too.
I really liked The Surge, but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to finish the game. Maybe I unconsciously made the decision because the game didn't have online interactions like Souls/Bloodborne.
I'd really like to get the DLC but I don't understand why it is so weirdly priced every time it is on sale. I feel like it is a fuck you to players who already own the base game. A complete edition(with all the DLC) on sale costs 14,99€, while the DLCs on their own cost 10,04€(Walk in the park) and 6,69€(the good, the bad...).
A lot has been said already. Simply put, I didn't enjoy playing The Surge for various reasons. It had all the right ingredients but didn't feel satisfying. I hope the sequel somehow manages to put it all together but from what I've seen it's unfortunately more of the same just in improved form which wouldn't be quite enough for me. I think Lords of the Fallen was closer to being great so I was hoping for a sequel to that. Might still happen but again not much hope that they can actually put it together with a sequel.
It doesn't really excel at anything that makes Souls so loved. Come to think of it, it doesn't really excel at anything.
Edit: I'll respond to some of the points:
Edit: I'll respond to some of the points:
There's interesting level layouts and then there's the jumbled mess of corridors that make up most of Surge.
Hard disagree.
Well yes, it's definitely more a slave to the Souls formula. Nioh genuinely tries new things and some of them are proper improvements over Souls.
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I love all the Souls games and was interested in picking up Surge 1 but never did-- it looked dull, the samey warehouse setting was a turnoff, combat looked good but not Souls level good, enemies also looked very uninspired...Surge 2 looks like a big improvement so I'm seriously considering buying it...the best Souls knockoff to me was Lords of the Fallen
Lacks bosses / interesting enemy subtypes. World isn't very interesting (I gotta say I don't think sci-fi worlds fit this sort of formula well). Not enough enviorment variety. Seems like the DLC might have addressed some of those points, but by the time they came out, I had lost interest.
I played Surge up to defeating the second boss I think. I just thought it was pretty ok but nothing special.
My main problems with it were it's boring environments, boring enemies, boring story.
The game was also punishing in an annoying way (getting your souls back within a time limit really sucked) or facing 2-3 enemies in a small space and often the level design was confusing as it all looked the same. Bland boxy corridors.
Boss fights were pretty boring and so were general enemy designs. I don't wanna fight stuff made from metal with crap designs that look samey or humans in frames. Sci fi look of it just isn't appealing to me.
Upgrade and getting better loot was boring too. Just didn't feel satisfying to upgrade your stuff as it looked bland and generic to begin with.
It also had this extremely annoying person singing the same song when you're at a save station. I don't know what they were thinking having that in it. It got old so fast and it was a terrible song that looped and looped. Drove me up the wall. It was enough to stop me from going back to the game in the end.
The graphics were good I guess. On ps4 Pro it looks nice.
My main problems with it were it's boring environments, boring enemies, boring story.
The game was also punishing in an annoying way (getting your souls back within a time limit really sucked) or facing 2-3 enemies in a small space and often the level design was confusing as it all looked the same. Bland boxy corridors.
Boss fights were pretty boring and so were general enemy designs. I don't wanna fight stuff made from metal with crap designs that look samey or humans in frames. Sci fi look of it just isn't appealing to me.
Upgrade and getting better loot was boring too. Just didn't feel satisfying to upgrade your stuff as it looked bland and generic to begin with.
It also had this extremely annoying person singing the same song when you're at a save station. I don't know what they were thinking having that in it. It got old so fast and it was a terrible song that looped and looped. Drove me up the wall. It was enough to stop me from going back to the game in the end.
The graphics were good I guess. On ps4 Pro it looks nice.
There was similar thread recently, but basically people don't like the art style, level design and how the gameplay mechanics works. While The Surge 2 looks like improvement, a lot of people are soured after the first part and at this point prefer to just wait for the next FromSoftware title. Hence why here you see zero hype about Surge 2.
- Too much "slow-mo" for executions
- Movement and animations were a bit jank
- Environments could get repetitive
- Certain bosses were rather questionably designed
- Uninteresting lore
It was an alright game, but nothing too special. The Surge 2, on the other hand, looks to be a massive improvement.
- Movement and animations were a bit jank
- Environments could get repetitive
- Certain bosses were rather questionably designed
- Uninteresting lore
It was an alright game, but nothing too special. The Surge 2, on the other hand, looks to be a massive improvement.
In the first game you can't cancel any attack. I think it's this design choice that makes you feel someway "scripted" and had annoyed many players.
started it up a few times and it felt atrocious to play. maybe that's the point and it controls better with leveling, or something. never cared to look up how that plays out. but every time combat started up it was a huge NOPE from me
i did actually like the setting, premise, scenery ect though. yeah it's nowhere near From caliber but i thought it was cool. if i had all the time in the world i probably would've soldiered on to see where it went
i did actually like the setting, premise, scenery ect though. yeah it's nowhere near From caliber but i thought it was cool. if i had all the time in the world i probably would've soldiered on to see where it went
While the premise to it does indeed sound interesting. The reasons behind the gameplay mechanics do as well. However the game was just dull and uninteresting to play. I don't wanna explore Amazon type warehouses that consist of lots of metal boxes and corridors that all look sterile and samey.
The enemy designs were generic to the extreme. They weren't fun or intersting to fight or look at. Also as someone pointed out earlier it was punishing for the wrong reasons. Dying in a couple of hits by any enemy got really annoying. There wasn't much options other than putting more in health. It was poorly balanced as there was only a finite number of resources to do that with by the time you reach the end. Your options were limited in builds if health was gonna be the biggest priority, as the enemies were just poorly balanced.
Only fast attack animations were effective too meaning all slower weapons were next to useless. There were a lot of questionable mechanics in the game that were poorly implemented like the jumping and ducking. There just wasn't enough of a reason to carry on playing after I saw all these issues always cropping up.
Because The Surge is bad. It's like someone played Souls and tried to re-create it without understanding why people actually enjoy Souls, or what makes it great.
I have a feeling the sequel is gonna blow up a bit, both around here and critically. Looks like maybe they've learned from some of their missteps.
Not enough secrets in the game. Souls is notorious for invisible walls, hidden items, missables, secret characters that would turn on you and kill everyone if you helped them out, etc. The level design was horrid.
I hope the second game is better because the one thing they've got going for them is the graphics. It looks really good.
Oh and I also don't like the way the main character looked. Looks stupid. Oh and the gear system was wack.
I hope the second game is better because the one thing they've got going for them is the graphics. It looks really good.
Oh and I also don't like the way the main character looked. Looks stupid. Oh and the gear system was wack.
Honestly because lords of the fallen was so bad and still had defenders on here, I just assumed most people that liked it weren't really to be taken seriously.
that said I watched the recent trailer for The Surge 2 and thought it looked sick so... I'll see what the reviews say.
that said I watched the recent trailer for The Surge 2 and thought it looked sick so... I'll see what the reviews say.
I played it for a few hours and dropped it because the controls and the combat didn't feel great, the environments were boring, and it just wasn't interesting enough.
It feels like someone tried to make a Souls game without really getting what's great about those games.
It feels like someone tried to make a Souls game without really getting what's great about those games.
yeah I hope so, I actually feel the game has really good bones and I understand many of the criticisms that people May have although some suprise me.
I actually thought the intro was fairly good, I really liked the fact the main character was in a wheelchair and part of his reasoning for going to work for CREO was that he would get access to a rig so he could walk again.
It reminds me a little of Total Recall, but perhaps with a bit more publisher budget they could have made this intro a little more lively with people. The Surge is always super lonely.
The main method of armor acquisition and the cutting system is cool, but this does appear to have had a larger effect of the enemies through the game , who are also primarily humanoid.
there are maybe 3 or 4 non human enemies.
The environment, I get that. It is more varied throughout the game , with different research labs and world functions, but it is primarily very space stationary. The DLC improved massively here and this looks to be a sign of what is happening isn't he sequel .
