Topic: Souls-likes (& dislikes)

So after getting through my Gears of War-induced funk, I was looking forward to starting something new and thought why not play one of my two annual souls-likes. This one’s a bit of a niche one for sure, particularly given the massive non-From releases these last few years like Lies of P, Black Myth: Wukong and Nioh 3… but I’ve always been one to give the underdog a chance and ended up going with a little AA sci-fi souls called Hellpoint.

It ain’t bad! By no means a classic… and if you’re not the type of person who wants to play every souls-like available, there are definitely better examples of the genre to devote your time too. It’s better than some that I’ve played though, like Code Vein, Lords of the Fallen (2014)… and probably Immortal: Unchained too. I like it more than Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order too but I’d imagine that I’m in the firm minority on that one.

Level design seems pretty good from the areas I’ve visited so far. Plenty of short-cuts, secret areas, loop-arounds and verticality. Combat is okay… it feels a bit stiff in fairness but is responsive and there are loads of weapons, most of which have very distinct move-sets and specials. I’ve only fought a couple of bosses so far and they have been on the poorer side as far as souls-likes go… but they are only the first couple, so hopefully there are some better ones to come.

Oh heeeey I remember this topic (or at least I think I do, maybe I commented on a similar but different one)
Anyways, this is still a good chance to announce that the dark souls 2 replay vid teased for well over a year now did finally take place.

My first playthrough was all over a decade ago so a revisit was due in order, given how replayable these games are. I’m playing vanilla sadly but I’ll get scholar eventually.

I don’t have a lot to share currently. It’s a hexdex hybrid build so that’s where I’m going with.

I’m surprised a lot of my muscle memory have not worn off yet, I first tried a lot of bosses, including the “old dragonslayer “, heheh, so I’m a little proud of that. I’m currently just ahead of the three sentinels.

Moving back to “soulslikes and dislikes”, it somewhat pains me to say I’m still more in the “dislikes” part than likes. Dark souls 1 and dark souls 2 are so important to me that it’s really tough finding a game that recreates the atmosphere and niche appeal of their builds. I like the hardy-hard durr aspect of dark souls, but I like it even more when my character is super strong by the end, which is a feeling of progression other soulslikes struggle to capture for me particularly.

Also year, I platted dark souls 1 on my birthday. Super proud of that and plan on doing it again this year.

For my “Soulslikes” recommendation, I plan on going with a slightly more controversial pick, but it’s only controversial due to possibly being more of a “symphonyvania” than “soulslike”

The game is Momodora: Reverie under the Moonlight, it successfully envokes basically everything I love about souls games. Great game.

While I wasn’t huge on Lies of P, I’m wanting to give the other two a go.

That’s a nice thing to know that Hellpoint seems to click, colonel! And it’s good seeing the LotF and CV comparisons, as I’m not too fond of those so it’s good knowing I may get something better.

@Yousef- I definitely agree with you about Dark Souls 1 and 2 being special games… and I’d even add Demons Souls, Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne to those. They all have that almost tangible from soft atmosphere that no one else seems able to manifest. Maybe 1 and 2 specifically stick out for you for nostalgia reasons… it is a powerful drug? One game in particular that I would recommend to people who struggle to get their souls itch scratched by non-from games would be the Lords of the Fallen 2023 reboot. It just had ‘it’… whatever it is.

Luckily for me, I’m able to get my souls-fix from pretty much anything that follows the formula. My original sig on here used to read “I ain’t ever played a souls-like I didn’t like” and that still stands true to today. Theres just something about the fundamental game-play loop of the genre that hits my receptors just right… they’re like my gaming Goldilocks-zone or something.

I just ***** hate playing the part I already "beat" again when I die and it feels like a big waste of time. So I despise the genre passionately other than it being an inspiration in small doses for the games that respects your time.

Thank you colonel, you’ve certainly hit the nail on the head, I agree with basically everything here. 😁

Nostalgia, combined with being an incredibly pedantic individual, can be quite powerful. I am however more open to being… more open! You gotta expand your horizons at one point or another. : )

While it’s definitely tough to nail down the appeal, i think a big part of it is the catharsis you get from trying to beat it so much and then succeeded in the end!

I’ll give you two stories. In dark souls 2 I had this FUDGING buggering pirate constantly shooting fire arrows at me. I swear he was harder than the area’s final boss. xD

After many retries, I got past him. Remember, there’s a decade-gap between my two DS2 playthroughs, so I needed time before my muscle memory kicked back in.

In DS1, I had a similar story. You’re a trophy hunter, I take it? Well, you oughta know that Knight’s Honor is the worst trophy to get in DS1, and it’s all the fault of tail weapons! Remember them? They’re a cool novelty, right? Well they become a massive frustration in the arse once you ye try getting the moonlight greatsword!! Utter rubbish!!! A total suffering succotash of a sword if I’ve ever seen one.

Luckily, with the pyromancy flame it should be somewaaaaht easier to get, but not by much. Have I mentioned I got the DS1 plat near my birthday last year? That was quite cathartic in and of itself. 😁

I felt like this.

So yeah, all in all, I will inevitably pick up another soulslike (that hopefully won’t be a dislike), girl gotta get that DS fix yahknow.

In my case, I’d probably welcome something short so if I don’t like it, I’ll at least feel like I got something out of it. Cheers 😃

@Yousef- I had a similar experience in Dark Souls with the silver knights in Anor Londo. Think I did rage quit after that and didn't play the game for a few months.

Have yet to play or least complete a souls like game tbh.

@Yousef- I remember hunting the tails well… they were pretty easy apart from Priscilla tbh, what with her being invisible. I managed to get it done in the end but I was a bit anxious about it, not gonna lie.

@Yousef- “suffering succotash…” 😂
Haven’t heard that phrase in a long time. Gave me total Looney Tunes flashbacks.

@Tjuz Since this reply to our discussion over on the review thread turned into a fairly Souls-specific comment, I moved it over here where it feels more at home. (I like to pull you into threads where you feel completely uncomfortable! 😂). For others passing by, we were taking about retro game design, but it’s evolved into the specific case of Souls games…

The Souls games are an interesting special paradigm of this retro styled difficulty issue. In many ways From’s games were designed to recapture that feeling from a bygone era of lack of handholding, trial and error through failure, and focus on being engineered for replayability. I believe I read something somewhere about Miyazaki even mentioning that there was specifically some retro directed inspiration in his game design philosophy.

And yet, unlike your recent Star Ocean experience, there are mountains of content online about the games, with entire websites devoted to gathering and sharing information about how to approach the games. I’ve played 4 of the 7 main Fromsoft Souls-style games and so far I found that each has had several strategic ways to ‘break’ difficult aspects of the game. And personally, for the most part I don’t consider it ‘cheating’ or ‘breaking’ the game to take advantage of it’s systems, anymore than it would’ve been to stumble across workarounds and tactics in any of these older cryptic games. That’s part of the fun of it for me.

But making the Souls games approachable does require some commitment. If you are averse to looking up wikis and build guides and doing a fair amount of research before and during play, then you will need to have a level of skill (and maybe a little trial and error luck) to progress and enjoy the games. Skill and luck, or lots of time. Fortunately if you’re not much of a build guide reader then YouTube makes it even more accessible. Sites like Fextralife (among others, as well as boatloads of common users) have easily digestible video guides to planning and making a build and strategies for specific bosses and areas: But some of the best tactics I’ve found have been in the deep recesses of forums, Reddit, and other shared user experiences. Doing the research and finding little nuggets of hidden knowledge scratches a certain itch in my brain and I get a dopamine kick from it. But it does require a different type of approach and so I find that I usually want to mix in some ‘mindless’ easier (as in more modern ‘handholding’ designed) games alongside or afterward to rest my obsessive mind. And not all modern games do handholding, Baldur’s Gate 3 would be a recent example of one that is fairly lean on player instruction and guidance. But very few modern games will withhold instruction while also letting you completely fail and flounder in the way Souls games do.

How often do you use guides or look up walkthroughs or ‘tips and tricks’ content online for your other games?