Souls like. There are literally situations you cannot win on the first try, like when you walk through a door and something stabs you from behind because it was leaned against a wall out of sight.
Also just don’t enjoy fighting gigantic things with ambiguous hitboxes.
Exactly, when a game on purpose disrespects your time and forces you to repeat things for no reason.
Some call it a difficulty curve, I don’t call it anything, just uninstall it.
I know I’m biting bait but I rarely got jumped by the “guy around the corner” traps because I looked before walking in. Counter intuitively, running in will also often avoid the worst of it.
I remember people complaining about the floor traps in the first game and I was like “you mean the raised tiles that are a different color? Yeah I was careful around those”. Player messages also help.
It’s okay the game isn’t for you - but “literally can’t win on the first try” is hyperbole.
Definitely avoid monster hunter if ambiguous hit boxes aren’t your thing.
FIFA and other sport team manager; Farming Simulator; Call of Duty; Fortnite and other battle royals (its just not my game mode.
Yeah, those games are lame as fuck.
Call of Duty was once good, but they chose to milk it to oblivion and now nobody cares.
Most games I just didn’t like and felt it wasn’t fair to call them out, but gambling addiction pushing games like FIFA are high on the list, especially since the annual releases seem to be somewhat identical.
I also don’t really like the sentiment of judging types of games in general; we like different things and that’s good.
But, gacha games can fuck right off. Manipulative, exploitative, addiction seeking nonsense. I’m not even commenting on gameplay or anything so it’s not a specific one… it’s the whole core concept of making a digital slot machine for children that I find offensive.
“Souls-like” games - memorise attack patterns, the game. Not hard, just tedious.
“Tactics” style games, just don’t see the fun in that sort of game.
Sony’s bread and butter for the last 20 years, the ultra-linear handholding cinematic hold-forward-to-win games. Just watch a direct-to-digital movie if you want to watch a terrible D-grade tier movie.
Persona, Ace Attorney etc type games. Just literally do not see the appeal in these at all.
I agree with your critique of souls-likes, but there was something really special about the original Dark Souls that none of its successors really captured. This was before they decided that “ultra-hard” was a good selling point and the attack patterns were far more simple. The atmosphere and difficulty were still there, but they made sense and fit with the rest of the game and its ideas very cohesively.
Not sure if anybody will understand this, but it’s like the difference between spicy food that’s spicy because it has peppers and spicy food that’s spicy because they added a bunch of artificial stuff. Spicier usually means tastier, because it has more of the flavorful peppers. But in the case of, for example, Dark Souls 2 or Elden Ring, it’s like they just added a bunch of capsaicin (difficulty) without including any more flavors of the peppers. The difficulty is beyond the degree to which it was artistically meaningful in the original Dark Souls.
Yeh I get you. It’s like when turning the difficulty up in a game all they do is make enemies take more damage to kill and do significantly more damage when they hit you. That’s just crap. Difficulty increases should be about more than that, like better AI and more/different enemies.
I love you for the spice metaphor (which I have to use all the time on friends who gift me hot sauces), but did you really think DS2 was harder than the original? It’s my favorite, and it’s because of the combat being ‘slower’ and the open vistas of the world appealed more than the first game. Hell, it introduced bosses that you didn’t even need to dodge if you learned which way to move during their windups.
I did find it more difficult than DS1 but, as in my metaphor, in a more artificial way. I’m thinking of the nerfed rolling frames (before you level ADP), more difficult parry timing, far more multi-opponent bosses, and especially the way that dying will reduce your max health. Any of these on their own would be totally unremarkable, but all together it feels like there was much more explicit focus on adding things to make it more difficult (which I believe was also reflected in the marketing of the games).
I also think that the atmosphere and artstyle of DS1 was much more serious and unique, whereas DS2 has comparatively much more ghoulish cartoony vibes, which just made it feel incongruent. Eg: the undead are now green and less scrawny, making them seem more like generic goblins rather than how they were in DS1. I just feel like there was an overall shift in the focus to be less about the unique world and its story and more about a Ghosts 'n Goblins -esque rage game.
I don’t think Dark Souls 2 is the most difficult in the series but I think it’s the first one where the difficulty started to feel unfair and like it was missing the point.
Basically here’s the vibes I get from each game:
DS1: A somber and holy journey
DS2: Ghosts 'n Goblins but 3D
DS3: Killing cool bosses is so cool
ER: All of the aboveAh, I sort of forgot about the slowly reducing max health. I think that and the different parry timing (the best mechanic in all the games, baby baby) made me quit it the first time I played. I don’t even remember it bothering me in the second time I tried, maybe because I had played elden ring and dark souls again at that point and didn’t try to horde items.
Pre-edit edit: Wait, I remember now. I played the game the way it was ‘meant’ to be played, with a giant weapon and just beating everything up before they could get me. I remember telling my friend that the openings in the boss attacks felt like they were specifically designed around the giant weapon timings. It just made everything easier.
memorise attack patterns, the game. Not hard, just tedious.
This.
“Souls-like” games - memorise attack patterns, the game. Not hard, just tedious.
Are people memorizing attack patterns? This one comes up a lot and I don’t really get it. The boss does a thing and I react, which is how most real time combat games are, I think?
I guess something like Skyrim you mostly just stand there and trade blows.
Memorizing attack patterns IS how you’re reacting though. How many of the bosses can you walk in and just wipe the floor with on the first try? You learn that a pull back to the right means you need to dodge left, now; a dash to the right means waiting two seconds, jumping, then dodging towards them; etc., etc.
I know for certain that when I go replay elden ring the only reason I can clear the tree sentinel as soon as I leave the cave is because I know just how to react to the boss’ “thing.”
How many of the bosses can you walk in and just wipe the floor with on the first try
A pretty good amount, though that’s confounded by playing lots of similar games over the years. But, like, I see the boss lift his weapon way up and I go “I bet he’s going to swing. I should get out of the way.” Sure, there is an element to “I’ve seen this before - I know if I run behind him after the big butt stomp I can hit him easily”, but that’s hardly unique to fromsoft.
What sort of games don’t have enemies that you learn their moves? Like, you play Baldur’s Gate 3 and you learn “ok, that wizard has Sleep prepared, I should keep my HP up.” Or you play Hades and learn “ok, these guys like to charge but then take a second to recover”. This complaint is not unique to souls-likes but I don’t know if I’ve heard it brought against any other game.
It’s not unique to from soft games, but it is literally the entire games “difficulty”. They usually just give them extreme levels of health and make them do tonnes of damage so you have to make few mistakes in recognising and reacting to the patterns.
Its a big reason why I don’t care about single player action games.
It’s not a complaint to me, personally, but I can see how some folks might not like it. A similar feeling for me would be the way racing games are designed, with npcs having 5-10% extra acceleration, while you have 5-10% greater top speed, meaning that you have to be far better at keeping your speed up, which entails learning each race track very well compared to just being good at racing in general.
As to the bg3 or hades, yeah, completely agree. Using enemy patterns against them is one of those things where having played other games in the past means you can play this game better. Elden ring though, specifically adds in false timings and ‘gotcha’ mechanics that punish dodging at the wrong time, or in the wrong direction. It’s much more blatant than in the dark souls games. Melania and her butterfly dance, margit and his golden hammer swing, pause, swing, the crucible knight and his sword dragging on rocks AND his double tail swing and so on. Those aren’t bosses you just walk in and fight well the first time (well, margit is such a git, so maybe him).
Yes, that’s how you’re reacting to the boss or any other enemies in games. You know that they do attack x, y, and z and then are vulnerable for 2 seconds, or which moves are parry-able to stun them, etc. Enemies in games have set move lists, and they have pre-set patterns and weak points etc.
For example when you see a skeleton you know exactly which moves and attacks patterns it has, and when to block/parry/strike to defeat them.
Gacha.
For most anything else, I can simply chalk it up as a difference in tastes when I don’t like the gameplay, or art style, or whatever. Even those shitty horror games for babies I despise are perhaps fun if you dive into the lore at the right age, who knows. I certainly have obsessed for less than mediocre games.
But no one likes gacha, or at least should like it. It’s gambling marketed to kids, preying on the people without impulse control. No “you can spend 2 hours of your life every day on this and save up 2$ in currency” is changing that, in fact that is even worse.
And yet they give hoyoverse a pass for their series, because everything around it is so high quality. Open your fucking eyes! Games are not supposed to punish you for not playing!
But of course, no accusation without confession, I am quite fond of the yugioh simulator, and used to defend it the same way. I try to resolve this double standard by doing what I feel they should do: Never gush about it, only mention it in shame, and always warn people to not pick it up.
Which is why limbus will always be the best game in the gacha genre, it rewards you beautifully for barely playing the game and ensures you can get almost everything for free if u work for it
I can’t even make the most explicit Gacha hating post without you guys saying how yours is the one, the special one that’s good.
I hate the concept. They are designed to obfuscate how much money and time you spend on them with different currencies that don’t feel like real money. They are dark pattern after dark pattern, trying to get you to look at the shop every time you boot up, and entice you with limited offers every chance they get. And this all is then defended by well meaning people like you and me with “Well, you can play for free if you grind hard”.
And when I look up if the different in-game currency thing applies to this game, I find out I have heard of Limbus company as the Korean one that got a “radical feminist” artist fired because a swimsuit didn’t reveal enough skin for the fanbase’s liking.
You misunderstood my comment. Fuck off with your recommendation.
Dark Souls type games that are just pure grinding wasting time.
I bought this shadow game that look awesome gameplay was fun at first… Then something felt off… Things were just ridiculously hard for no reason I kept dying on level one…
I was like… Wtf is this shit? Little googling and the game is made by the dark souls people and apparently this grinding over hard shit IS the appeal…
Na man, I got a job and kids and responsibilities and my one hour of playtime better be fun… And dieing and grinding ain’t it.
Same, what I hate is how many souls like games they make, it’s just cheap
Call of Duty. Yeah I liked the original modern warfare games but not enough to like the hype.
The original call of duty and battlefield games were revolutionary. If memory serves me correctly, they built off the success of Band of Brothers TV Show and gave a gritty representation of WWII in a first person shooter. Battlefield 1942’s multiplayer was absolutely top notch too with its vehicles.
They deserved their credit back then, but have been milked beyond belief. They are the new FIFA series where each game brings nothing new, but still costs $80…
I really enjoyed COD: world at war. I don’t think I cared for any after that.
Apart from the endless EA, Ubisoft and similar AAA copy/paste titles I never understood the hype around MOBA games.
I don’t get it. Its not real time strategy, but not an ARPG either, you dont create a character, instead have an insane pool of unique characters with a few abilities each. Its just feels like someone wrote down some random game mechanics and choose 5 at random.
All levels are basically the same with mild variations and the whole gameplay loop boils down to optimised fast clicking on abilities and to get strong asap.
Its super boring for me and couldn’t spend more than a couple hours with the games from the genre. Same goes for watching other people play.
Its just a cherry on top to have the biggest tournaments and cash prices, while the top players are celebrated as superstars. Also somehow the biggest MOBA communities are infamous for toxicity.
Definitely not my cup of tea.
Everything you wrote is true, and I gotta respect that you’ve at least given mobas a try. It’s not your cup of tea and that’s alright.
One thing that you didn’t mention is the team work. While there are toxic people out there, mobas tend to be games that a group of friends can play together for free. You are correct that the abilities can feel limiting - along that vein finding ways to chain spells together with your team mates was one of the most fun ways to get creative.
This is what makes watching pros play a lot of fun. There are people out there constantly experimenting with mixing items and spells to create hilarious strategies to gain an edge. There are all kinds of spells that can come off as overly subtle and dumb sounding, but you pair it up with something else and all of a sudden you have a wombo combo.
Mobas came out of War Craft 3, so any of the millions of people with a blizzard rts background will have skills that will transfer. The single hero format means you can focus all your attention in one place instead of keeping track of your army and your economy at all times. Starting with an established and automated base means that the game isn’t on a knife’s edge like RTSs. There’s a lot of stability and simplicity here over RTSs.
The games tend to be simple in concept to understand but very difficult to master. I had a lot of fun picking a handful of heroes and learning how to best use them. They all have their own quirks and limitations that may not be obvious at first. Conversely, it was rewarding to learn how to shut down heroes that had stomped me in the past.
It is very difficult to get established in these games. It can feel like one of those tv shows that you have to get to the third season before things get better. And I can completely understand people wanting games that don’t start off as rough. The high skill cap can keep people coming back for years though.
I hope this helps 😊
MOBA started as RTS mods for people who liked micro and didn’t like resource management. Add hypermonetization of everything for 20 years and here we are. I don’t get it, either, but to each his own.
I liked the old WC3 mods because of RPG-like level progression. Gave a little hit of dopamine to see a build come together and steamroll the other side. This was well before there was a competitive scene.
The genre got hyper-monetized, and I noped out of that shit.
MOBAs are shit, but they struck a chord with people who are bad at games but want to feel good.
They survive based off of MMR and obscuring people’s true ability. If most people playing MOBAs could see how bad they were, they would lose interest over night.
No Man’s Sky: I’ve tried playing it and just end up getting bored. Every once in a while I’ll go back and check it out again, feeling like I somehow didn’t give it a fair shake, but remain underwhelmed.
Maybe next time…
You might like Star Citizen when it comes out.
This was the game that made me realize I prefer story over infinite sandbox games.
Even after it started getting praise due to all the updates, it just felt… empty every time I went back.
Something about the way you fly in that game isn’t satisfying.
It was better in the beginning I think… they gave you more control now but honestly it feels less satisfying
People KEEP saying that they “fixed” that game but every time I try it it’s still a pretty generic survival game in space. I don’t see how it’s even close to what they promised.
It’s really not even a survival game.
Souls. I’ve tried em and find them repetitive and cheesy in their lack of little details that make games fun for me.
I tried Elden ring and thought it was the ugliest, most repetitive game I’ve ever played. I don’t get the hype for the souls series, it’s just making a game repetitive and difficult to justify its lack of substance
I’m going to get absolutely roasted for this, but Elden Ring. I put about 10 hours in trying to like it, but it just made me angry and miserable. And it was kinda boring.
I also don’t care for Souls games, but I think ‘angry and miserable’ is the intended experience.
I’m a fan of the Soulsborne games but gave up on Elden Ring because I wasn’t a fan of the empty open world gameplay.
I really tried, maybe 20-30 hours, but didn’t enjoy it much.
Playing as a spellcaster was maybe a mistake.
I recognize it’s a quality game though. I might try again with a melee character. Maybe modded?Dex/arcane bleed builds. Beautiful.
I can recommend a dual Strength/faith build. I did that my first playthrough and it was a lot of fun. I think the Incantations was much funner to play with than the Sorceries. They have far more variety in them. Plus there is a cure Scarlet Rot Incantation that I got a lot of mileage out of to make certain parts less oppressive.
Thanks, I might try that!
I generally like hybrid builds with more variety. Don’t know why I went full mage…
I also think it’s fine to just go full strength if you want something powerful and dead simple.
Carry a colossal sword in each hand, wear the beefiest set of armor you can without going into heavy load, and then just bonk things to death while tanking a lot of hits that would otherwise instantly kill squishier characters.
And don’t be afraid to use Spirit Ashes. There’s this weird machismo thing among players who think that real players don’t need summons, but they’re there for a reason and the game was designed around them.
I might try again with a melee character.
Maybe. The sorcery/incantation/various melee is less of a distinction than many make of it. A lot of it ends up feeling the same: you dodge, wait for the opening, hit your ‘attack.’ If the ‘learn to be a badass by learning patience and boss attacks’ isn’t your thing though, you might never find yourself liking it.
The best elden ring experience is elden ring seamless coop. It makes the game 100000000x better. If you want to play with someone, hit me up. I just got elden ring working again on linux (it had a freezing problem until I reinstalled the OS, probably the nvidia drivers borking out), and am loving it.
Souls games in general for me, but especially Bloodborne. My girlfriend at the time loved the game so much she had multiple tattoos. She was so happy to guide me through Bloodborne and tried to explain lore, but there’s so very little actual plot that anything I learned just fell out of my head. I couldn’t tell you anything about what happened despite finishing the game and DLC. I don’t get it.
Soulslikes. I am so fucking sick of hearing about them. Elden Ring and it’s jank ass UI did not deserve GOTY.
Everything with round based battle mechanics.
Genshin Impact
The characters look like sex dolls with uncanny valley face
“Mom, can we have Zelda BOTW?”
“We have that at home.”
Zelda BOTW at home: …
Hollow Knight.
There’s a couple of things the devs could have done to make things way more tolerable, like not putting the fucking shades in the middle of platforming challenges and giving health bars to bosses so you can tell when you should go somewhere else instead of face-tanking them for 3 hours.
But god forbid anyone says anything even remotely disparaging against the game, as they’re quickly mobbed by fanboys and told to “git gud” because they treat masochistic games like HK as some perverse dick-measuring contest.
And unfortunately I can’t away from hearing about it with everyone sperging out over the upcoming sequel.
Imma just lump all souls like into this category tbh.
Pretty much. They need a different genre name, like “masochist” or “try-hard”. A lot of these games are significantly more punishing than the original Dark Souls ever was
It’s not even punishing IMHO, like it’s just cheap ‘hard’ walk around corner insto death because you didn’t know whatever event was there was there, and only way to learn this was… Walk around the corner and die, now, proceed to waste your time walking back get past that corner, die on next… Repeat.
Yeah, I tried giving it a shot twice, but both times after 5-6 hours I just came to the conclusion that the game wasn’t respecting my time, and was punishing me for exploring.
The worst part is that its popularity lead to other games copying it, meaning half of metroidvanias released after it have the same issues. I started to just filter out any game that had corpse runs as it was a good indicator of how much I’d hate it.
Just looks like more indie-crap to me.
I’d wager a lot of the hollow knight fanboys haven’t played anything classic like Megaman.
i spent a couple of dozen hours with hollow knight as a fan of the metroidvania genre, but after a while the barriers to continuing were just too many. after a while, any traversal basically requires combat, and the grindy combat just slows the game to a crawl. add to that the corpse run mechanic, and at that point it’s just not worth it.
Since you like Metroidvanias, have you tried Ori and the Blind Forest? Personally I found it to be tuned very well for difficulty. I ended up beating it without realizing there was a triple-jump ability you could find.
Unfortunately the sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, wasn’t as good in my opinion. They ended up pulling a few mechanics from Hollow Knight, which detracted from the uniqueness of the first game.
yes, i really liked it. it was a bit difficult in some places (i don’t know how many times i had to re-do the tree flooding) but the aesthetic really made it worth it.
one of my more recent stand-outs in the genre was yoku’s island express, which is also a real treat.
Hmm. I’ll have to check out the demo. The screenshots of the gameplay make me thunk I’ll bounce off it, but figuring that out is what a dwmo is for
