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[Soulslike]s die way more than twice
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Thankfully, someone suggested using a human effigy, which I'd never used before (didn't realize what they did) and I got him after that.
Then took out that rat swarm in one try, and then fell to my death several times after that.
Good fun but I need a break!
There is a ring in Heide's tower of flame that can help you out with frequent death health loss as well.
And while I appreciate the traffic in the thread, the Dark Souls thread is over here. I won't stop you from continuing to post your tale here though, I love hearing about playthroughs of any of these games.
But I think it kinda shows how silly it was to do a separate thread since a lot of it comes back to Dark Souls.
Yeah it's a weird thing because Sundered really does adhere to the overall theme and style of Dark Souls while the gameplay is more action paced like Dead Cells.
I'm going to add it in to the OP for what it's worth.
I saw that the recent post was made by someone with a Spider-Ham avatar and thought, "did Karoz change the avatar again?".
And guess what . . .
On topic, what is everyone's favorite 3D and 2D Soulslike? Like, one of each. It's possible I'm looking for suggestions. Maybe.
I think we all know my favorite 3D Soulslike by now.
Looking at the list I haven't actually played many other 3D ones. Only one is Necropolis and that one is eh.
As for 2D I think overall it goes to Hollow Knight as the winner but only because I haven't played Dead Cells.
As for runner ups I'd say Sundered, Pharaonic and Salt and Sanctuary in that order.
For 2d, I also would say either Hollow Knight or Sundered. For atmosphere, Hollow Knight for sure.
The fan’s adoration of the lore and thus the castle areas of the major lore-connected bosses tends to make people forget Dark Souls has a giant hollow tree area, a cave made of crystal and a Super Mario 64 painting zone.
Plus every area had at least two truly odd enemies, not just undead soldiers—I’m talking mermaid-leech things at the bottom of a library/prison, fire breathing bug men from the swamp, and those Super Sentai diamond golem goons out in the woods.
From our collective memory DS1 is all medieval gloom, and so games derived from it are less inclined to get weird.
Get weird. Give me more weird.
Or at least that was my problem with some of the Bloodborne bosses on my first playthrough. The really "busy" models just played havoc with my mind. But for whatever reason it wasn't a problem on my second playthrough.
Edit: Oh I finally wised up and took a picture of a Nioh Clan Battle Result
So much glory.
I added a precursors entry to the OP.
I tend to think of it as closely related to Zelda and similar action RPGs, and also to things like Castlevania. Though my experience with actual 3D Castlevania is nil.
edit: I saw someone draw a straight line from Demon's Souls through King's Field to Ultima Underworld, describing King's Field is a straight up clone of Ultima Underworld. Huh.
Dark Souls (at least, the first one) makes me think of the crushing difficulty of the NES era Castlevania, with the exploration of the newer Castlevania, and with the advent of checkpoints from newer games as well as thematically consistent with the mostly medieval and dark fantasy (with a bit of goofy) from the series as well. I truly see it as a Castlevania offshoot, and I'd love to see Castlevania get more love in the manner of a more Darl Souls game.
The lock on really reminds me of Ocarina of Time's classic lock on that so many games afterwards have copied.
E: Of course I immediately think of one, but Demon's Souls is in my mind the same game.
Way worse death system though, that game was brutal.
Now, in some Rogue-likes you can keep items and etc but have to totally restart, and I've felt like that element was combined with, "but what if it wasn't a total restart?", and I'd like to see more games use that. I think it's one of the most "Soulslike" hallmarks, TBH.
DS2 and DS3 are significantly harder, presumably to match the expectation of difficulty from an audience that's already expecting a challenge but would crush a DeS/DaS level of difficulty now that they're ready for it (and have experience).
The chosen undead will die constantly, but must rise again to continue. The successful Souls protagonist is just falling forward, losing and clawing back up to go at it again until finally no foe is left.
The rogue has one shot, no extra lives, and if they fall someone else will step in to try. The successful roguelike protagonist is the last in a line of defeated rogues who by virtue of surviving to the end has made almost no mistake and is of incredible foresight.
Nothing to do with this debate, I just always found that interesting from a fictional standpoint.
But yeah it's hard to say where the line is crossed and what makes a Soulslike what it is.
Heck talking about the original Soulsborne games brings up some good points:
What exactly about these games really drew us in and created a new genre (or at least a type) of games?
I think based on which games I enjoy and which I enjoy less I can pin down a few key points (for me).
1. You're rewarded consistently and clearly for mastery of the system. Even minor competence feels great, as you go instantly from dying to the first enemy to carving your way through to the boss effortlessly. It's rare that you die unfairly--by the time you run into sketchier fights, you're already in deep. Mastery of the game in general also rewards you, as you're able to navigate and acquire the things you're after faster and more efficiently.
2. The combat system emphasizes spacing and observing your opponent. It's very akin to a fighting game, especially if you play locked on and thus operate primarily on a 2D plane. Which is pretty unique, even if combat looks superficially similar to hack-and-slash games.
3. Good environmental design/music/worldbuilding and good (enough) writing allow for a very strong atmosphere, which leaves a stronger impact than a merely well-written story would. When I think about Firelink Shrine or Majula, I feel something instead of just remembering the visuals.
4. A significant variety in viable weapons, armor, and builds allow you to find a way to play that feels right to you if you just want one go, or play over and over if you want to keep experiencing the game in different ways.
Enemies aren’t there to make you feel strong, each one is a worthy opponent (unless you’re wielding a greatsword on a pure strength run) with their own moveset.
Plus often their placement on the map makes them appear as if they’re there to stop you personally, rather than being “goombas”—just something to stand or wander back and forth without reason.
I’ve never had such in depth conversations about enemies and bosses as I have when I talk about FromSoft games.
Lastly the number of enemy types feels vast. Nothing outstays it’s welcome. When you’ve mastered a foe, you’ll not see it again.
Compare an otherwise excellent game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which feels like it only has ten enemies, and only one feels like they’re a smart, capable creature that’s actively standing in your way.
Death is expected and the game doesn't make a big deal of it. There's no dramatic animation of something eating your face that you have to sit through every time you die.
You're almost never stuck with only one way to go. The only two counterexamples in Dark Souls are the Painted World - where you don't even have to fight the boss to exit - and the tiny stretch of the Duke's Archives after you meet Seath for the first time and before you make it to the next bonfire.
There's always a safe place. Bonfires are generally sacrosanct, and there are hubs you can retreat to.
Every death resets you to a baseline state, with a certain number of healing items.
They're mechanically simple games. Every weapon has a strong attack and a weak attack, and you can wield them two-handed to get different strong and weak attacks, but there's no XYXXXXX and suddenly your character is a human fireball.
Oh, and the elephant in the room: get stuck on a boss? Hit the "PLEASE COME HELP ME" button and you get a second person in your game.
There's no - and I apologize for picking on Ninja Gaiden here, it's a brilliant game in most aspects - there's no Alma fight, where you have a massively nasty boss who is preceded by an annoying run from the closest save point and no access to a shop to buy more healing items. The only boss/boss run half as annoying is Bed of Chaos, and at least that one gives you mid-fight checkpoints that persist through death.
I think of Demon's Souls as one of the first games to come out of the "telemetry" era, where you had the first few years of the Xbox 360 and PS3 feeding back information to their developers on how far players got in their games and how they were ACTUALLY playing the games, and games started being designed around real players instead of play testers.
Dead Cells 1.1 is LIVE and this update is massive and completely changes the old meta.
Dev post and summary: https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/1701696770543706273
Full patch notes: https://dead-cells.com/patchnotes
I mean yeah I like all the component parts, but even those combined don't explain why the game and series became my favorite out of all video games.
There is one thing though that would make me like the formula even more, though I know that it will never ever happen. I want a game without any boss fights. Just exploring and fighting normal or big but still not bosslike enemies, wandering around and leveling up and uncovering the story and all that. But no bosses because more often than not they aren't fun for me.
If it was nothing but Artoriases and Gaels that would be one thing, but the vast majority don't rise to that quality and it just becomes something that frustrates me until I can push past it.
But it won't ever happen because they are required to be present if your game has combat in it.
Awesome, sounds good and welcome.
Can you tell me more about Dead Cells? I keep hearing it's good and it's on my wishlist but I wanted to understand more of its appeal.
You have to go back three decades...more than three decades... oh god the crushing weight of the years... but that's Ultima IV. I don't think it had any bosses. Really hard final dungeon, though.
Coincidentally, that's also the first game I can think of where your entire party dying doesn't mean a game over screen. You get resurrected in a safe place and lose most of your food and gold, but you keep any equipped items.
It is a very refined take on the Rogue genre. It bears more in common with modern staples of that genre then the original though, such as permanent unlocks and upgrades. The combat is very tight and responsive with a very large variety in weapons. The game uses 3 different stats you can invest in as you play through each life, brutality, tactics, and support, with each weapon and item being tied to one or two stats. Dual stat items use whichever is higher. Their are swords, spears, shields, lightning bolts, turrets, grenades, and a host other weapons and items. It also has really good movement features and it ties back into the combat. I really enjoyed getting the platinum, it took me about 50 hours, and each run was fun. It also has a simple story that is told in a similar way to dark souls, through small drips of background information.
PSN:Furlion
Dodging, even now, always feels like I'm opening myself to higher damage and more constant deaths, and I generally hate any boss in these games where "defend yourself" isn't at least a neutral-level viable option.
As for why I enjoy Dark Souls, that one's easy. It's much like life. You can fail and still try again (with most reasonable tasks), you can approach by your own angle, you can research the hell out of it or just toss yourself in and hope for the best. Some folks love playing blind, some love researching to the nth degree, even down to finding detailed maps and specific enemy weaknesses. With the exclusion of a few specific bosses, there's always a path forward in the manner you want to play.
As an example, I tried to fight Smough and Ornstein the way all the wikis and other players suggested, and I kept dying horribly, and I knew this was, like, the hard boss so it's just going to happen, but it began to really annoy me that these tactics didn't help in the least. So, what I did was I summoned Solaire, I stocked up on Homing Soulmass and Soul Spears and All the other spells I could possibly get ahold of. I was mainly spellblade in build, magic first, some fire because why not, and a pretty solid Claymore. None of it had helped, and the reason why is that everyone was saying to fight them in one certain manner. Magic was useless, was the main thing I read. But what I found was that with an ally, I could make the fight more of a one-on-one, take one down (Smough), and then step in for Solaire when he got totalled by Ornstein. I also found out that casting right behind a pillar would block large Orn's lightning, while allowing me to hit. I killed him with a sliver of life left, but I killed them my way, and the game allowed for that. It gave me an ally available even if I eschew the online mechanics, it allowed me to fight on my own terms. And because of that, it took me all of four tries to beat the duo.
It's the difference for me between something like Trine, which has an overall way it wants you to solve a problem, and something like, say, Schein which demands the puzzle be solved more or less exactly as they demand.
Which, incidentally, is why Artorias bugs me so. It's one of the few fights where you must beat the boss the way the dev wants, no room for wiggle.
On the other hand, I'm trying to get some of the trophies and I have discovered the joys of twin swords, especially twin swords that are lightning element AND fire element at the same time. And I got a charm that reduces all set bonus requirements by one piece which is just brilliant.
I'm on the third region now, which includes Giant Spiders Everywhere, or whatever the mission is called. It's a surefire way to get my wife to leave the room, I tell you what.
I was gifted Void Memory so I'll get to see where it fits in my 2D Soulslike ranking. Fake Edit: Also was just gifted Mana Spark which looks neat.
As for options, it's another reason why I like Nioh so much. Given like Bloodborne your main class is going to be a samurai/ninja/generic melee fighter in some respect because you don't have the ammunition/spells and recharges to only do that through the whole level. The game has no ability requirements on weapons (but does for armor) and lets you find the weapons that are right for you. While undeniably the improvement to skills/damage/passives with Samurai points in a particular weapon makes them much more deadly, if you really need to use that spear you just picked up you can and do just fine. Omnyo magic/Ninjitsu is a Swiss Army Knife that is ready to be taken out and used when needed. Given it might not always have the right tool for the job, but it always is a positive asset that you can grab just the passive resist bonuses from.
My Steam Profile
Just friend and message me and we'll get you past it. It was a challenge for me as well but things seem to smooth out a lot more afterwards.
Today I boot it up, get the cutscene of Geralt walking out of the boat again and onto the island. All the codex entries are unread, no skills are bought.... and I have no skill points.
Thanks. Great work with the save system guys. Perfect.
E: My weapons and items are all gone too.
I think that happened to me as well. Learned my lesson and went further into the level before quitting the next time.
PSN:Furlion
Why?
Did he just dump them overboard? Nothing happened to his ship, it was the only one that got there fine.
When you get your storehouse they’re waiting for you. But you lose them for the Japan levels.
I’ll offer my help on PS4. Just drop me a DM here and we can set up a time.
It's a weird choice, but I guess it's to put you in the Japan mindset or something? Dumping you in a new world with unfamiliar gear and what not and tasked to survive.
Gotten through most of the fishing village. I assume the boss is on the boat but i'm gonna look around more.
It's pretty fun, I think. I've mostly just killed everything with a spear in high stance but I assume that's going to change at some point as I need to try harder. Mainly I don't like how easy it is to get killed in one hit from full health or stun locked to death from full health. When I die in Dark Souls it's usually due to a series of cascading failures on my part that culminates in me not having enough resources to deal with the challenge at hand. Here I mistime a roll once and back to the shrine I go.
Just have to keep in mind that just like your limited supply of arrows/bullets, you won't have enough magic to deal with every enemy you face during a level though there are items to restore magic/ninjitsu charges like in Souls games.
Doesn't mean some miscalculation on my part doesn't leave me as a red bloodstain on the ground but it certainly improved my odds.
Edit: And while high stance deals incredible damage, it leaves you much more vulnerable than mid or low stance will.
You'll notice your high stance dodge is similar to a slow roll in Soulsborne games regardless of your encumbrance so it's much easier to get caught out and killed.
So hold triangle-> dash into opponent & triangle again, triangle a third time against downed opponent = dead revenant and tasty loot.
You can also cancel out of Twisting Spear by just releasing the charge button early, so there’s definitely a bit of learning when you can safely hold it to the end or not.
It also works very well against humanoid bosses, though it’s not as much of an instant-death combo.