@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.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
@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.
Might not feel like it but these are your glory days.
The "salad years" you know?
Nothing is going to beat who you are now.
You can't see all the ****ed up 💩 that's looming on the horizon.
Enjoy this dude
@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?
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution You've truly done it again. Only this time it's worse! At least Final Fantasy is unlikely to give me an aneurysm from my brain exploding. I'm going to be honest and say I'd never made the connection between Souls-like games and how they interact with older design philosophy. I think I more so just saw everything they did as making everyone's life harder, coming from a sick place of sadism. Can you tell how warped my view on the genre is simply by it having the audacity to want to challenge me? Haha. What you're saying makes a lot of sense however, and totally tracks with my knowledge of how these and older games function. Not that you'd lie to me, but just that I can actually place your descriptions of them in my brain this time around!
I'm very much of the school of thought where if relying on sources of information to make your gaming experience better... it's not cheating. I'll acknowledge that actual game cheats or mods to make it easier than intended would be, but anything just utilisign the systems the games choose to give you does not! Breaking a game is probably one of the most fun parts of giving a middle finger to these Souls-like devs wanting to make you suffer! It's not something I've done much within other genres too, mostly because I am too impatient to make "optimal" character builds that could break a game's balance. That mostly goes for stat distribution and weapon customising and such however, which I think the Souls-like genre is less heavy on. As far as my frame of reference goes, you're mostly referring to using certain weapons and tactics with them to break the game in this case.
Lots of time, skill and luck... none of these are exactly my forte! I am generally averse to looking at outside sources for help, which is why it became such a big topic in my impressions of Star Ocean. I'm sure that for your average Souls-like player, it'd just be business as usual. That said, if I truly feel I'm getting stuck at one particular point (which for me is usually when I've lost to the same enemy three times or can't find my way to progress for longer than two minutes. Like I said, impatient), I will go online and search for any tips and tricks to get me through whatever obstacle the fastest. I'm assuming I'd probably be doing a lot of that within a Souls-like with my low tolerance for expected dedication to something! I always say that I avoid the genre because I think I wouldn't get the same dopamine kick that many love about them, but then I'm playing a game like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 where I'll butt my head against some boss for an hour and get that same feeling at the end. I don't know if the former was true at some point and I've just grown as a gamer, or whether my fears of it turning me off were simply always unfounded. As you can probably tell from earlier discussions, I tend to be someone who can be quite judgy or sticking to my preconceived notions despite having never given whatever it is a proper go!
All that said, in the last few months I have thought about giving a Souls-like a proper chance and hopefully being pleasantly surprised. I've mostly been proven wrong when assuming I'd hate a genre only to try it and fall in love with the game in question, so it might be the same thing here. I don't know if you've played Lies of P? I've been thinking about that one as my entry, simply because I love fairy-tale coded stories and because... well, it introduced difficulty settings with its DLC. I figure I can try it at the intended Souls-like difficulty and that if I don't gel with it but still enjoy the narrative and gameplay, I can always turn it down and hopefully still enjoy it as a failure in the eyes of many a gamer. Whether or not you've played it, do you think it might be a good place to start? Even if you haven't, I imagine you're probably more well-versed in discussions around it than myself who avoids these games like the plague!
@Tjuz Mwah-ha-ha! My evil plan to brainwash you into becoming a Souls fan and a FF fan is only the beginning. You’ll soon be receiving a tag into the Returnal thread… 😈
But seriously, in response to:
“…I am too impatient to make ‘optimal’ character builds that could break a game's balance. That mostly goes for stat distribution and weapon customising and such however, which I think the Souls-like genre is less heavy on. As far as my frame of reference goes, you're mostly referring to using certain weapons and tactics with them to break the game in this case.”
Well, not exactly. The basic ‘easy mode’ for Souls games is just overleveling and driving your stats really high, but there’s more than one way to tip the game’s balance beyond that. In the Souls games (and this doesn’t always apply to the non-From Soulslikes) each XP level you invest in really does make a noticeable difference. Just bumping one level of strength or dexterity may give you that little extra ‘umph’ to get the next boss down before you die. And similarly for equipment, as leveling up your preferred weapon can make a tangible difference with the next encounter. It’s not like these skill trees in most RPGs where you pour tons of XP into a bunch of meaningless nodes that barely do anything or unlock skills you’ll never use. Every point you invest is like gold in a Souls game. You might spend an hour farming and collecting souls just so you can bump your stamina up one point so you’ll have a little better edge on the next boss, for example.
Stat distribution is probably the main key to success in the game. And that’s what took me some time to figure out. Instinct would tell you in most games to spread out your XP points to create a well rounded character— bump the strength a touch, and then the dexterity, and then the endurance, then the intelligence etc. as you move around all the attributes evenly — and that usually will just get you killed in a Souls game. To spend the least amount of time and effort getting successful you really need to “min-max” a build. Hit the soft caps for an attribute and distribute everything into the area that you can synergize with your weapon of choice and play style. You kind of have to commit to a direction you want to specialize in or else you’ll waste a lot of leveling on things that don’t help you.
But yes, outside of the calculated exercise of distributing your levels deftly to align with an effective build and getting the right weapon, there are, as you said, “certain weapons and tactics to break the game…” The games often have a cryptic and unintended way to get an overpowered weapon early on, if you’re willing to do a little run across an area you’re not supposed to be in yet. I made it through Dark Souls weilding a late game powerful weapon I obtained by going out of my way to get in the first couple hours. It carried me through the entire game since it was basically always overpowered for where I was supposed to be since I was leveling it up all along as well.
One of the first examples of a “tactic to break the game” which I came across was in my first From game, Bloodborne. In the opening areas I was noticing how unfair it was that I was getting hit by enemies sometimes even when I was behind cover or a wall. At first I found it annoying, but then I realized that I can turn this around and use it to my advantage, and there are a few distinct areas and bosses that I remember using the game’s occasional flawed collision detection to my advantage to hit enemies through a wall or structure. It didn’t work everywhere, but sometimes I could ‘hide and poke’ until they were dead.
Another example is a simpler one which applies to Demon’s Souls and to a lesser extent Dark Souls, which is that Magic is so overpowered you can basically break the game by focusing on it. If you level up your intelligence and Magic stats and then just learn all the most powerful spells, you can sit back and clear most of the game (including most bosses) by spamming spells from a distance and never have to get even get close enough to get hit. There’s a few exceptions to this and I had a couple tough boss fights with my overpowered Magic build, but I found other ways to cheese those as well. To make the game a little more balanced and fun I did mix in a little melee for a secondary option to spice things up.
The die hard Souls fans are all about the skill of perfect dodges or parries with a big sword and shield and doing pattern recognition, but there’s many ways to build your character. The aforementioned magic, bow and arrow ranged combat, or simply pouring everything into becoming an impenetrable tank of armor and shield.
“All that said, in the last few months I have thought about giving a Souls-like a proper chance … I don't know if you've played Lies of P? I've been thinking about that one as my entry, simply because I love fairy-tale coded stories and because... well, it introduced difficulty settings with its DLC…Whether or not you've played it, do you think it might be a good place to start?”
So as far as trying a Souls or Souls-like, if I base a recommendation on my own personal experience it would be to try Demon’s Souls if you want a true From game, and SW Jedi Fallen Order if you want a Souls-like. As I mentioned, Demon’s Souls is probably the easiest of the games I’ve played, especially if you become a magic spammer. The BluePoint Remake is immaculate. The one caveat is the weird World Tendency feature which can actually make it harder and I won’t bore you with that but suffice it to say if you were to try the game be sure to understand that part of the game. It’s the only From game that used that mechanic and I found it to be slightly annoying so I’m glad they ditched it. However, the other From game that could be an even better entry point is Elden Ring. I haven’t played it yet but supposedly it’s much more approachable because of the open world design and ability to just wander off somewhere else if you’re running into enemies you can’t clear and come back to that area later. Demon’s Souls has a non-linear approach but it’s more of a hub world setup and so you can approach the worlds in any order but there’s a typical easier order, if you get my meaning.
Based purely on my Souls-like experience (which in fairness is quite limited compared to others around here) Jedi: Fallen Order is a great intro to the genre for those averse to frustration and difficulty. It has the difficulty slider to make the game fairly simple and in the case of its sequel Jedi Survivor, enabling the easiest difficulty along with a few accessibility settings (I recall for example there’s one setting that slows down time right before a blow will hit you so gives you a huge window to dodge) will make the game essentially impossible to not beat. I don’t think Fallen Order has the accessibility options that Survivor has but the easy padowan mode is quite approachable. I recall you’re somewhat disinterested in Star Wars in general, so that may be a difficult hurdle to garner interest in the Jedi games though.
So Lies of P could be a good first choice too, I have not played it so I can’t say for sure. I hear it does have a heavier emphasis on parrying, which I’m rubbish at. But it’s been very well praised as one of the most authentic Souls imitators (apparently it’s much more Bloodborne inspired, but it’s still the general genre we’re discussing). I’ve not heard how the new difficulty setting has affected players perception and I’d completely forgotten those new options existed. Might be worth a look for you. They gave it away on PS+ a couple months ago. I’m anxious to get to it myself but want to clear the FromSoft catalog first.
@Th3solution If I see a tag on the Returnal thread any time soon, you will give me no choice but to hit that ''ignore'' button! That has to be an end to the torture at some point! Just kidding... I could never do that to you. 😘
I do like to hear that the leveling up in the Souls games actually has noticeable improvements. In too many games, it just feels too gradual to notice and therefore not satisfying at all. Or sometimes, depending on the skills or classes you go for in any game, some skills will just genuinely have solid improvements while others feel like they do nothing. I still remember watching my warrior-type co-op partner in Divinity: Original Sin get stronger and stronger, while my mage-type character had endless points thrown into Intelligence and felt like they lagged strongly behind my partner's strength despite him distributing his points far more evenly. It sounds like the Souls-games don't have this type of issue at all, whether magic or otherwise, so that speaks for some balancing I truly would appreciate! The farming less so... why must the game force me onto many a difficult enemy to level up when I already resent it for the challenges it presents me to begin with?! Why aren't games catered exclusively to me? The audacity!
It's funny, because some of the tactics you describe as making the game easier is exactly what I watched my roommate do when he was playing Elden Ring. Hiding behind barely covering obstacles for the enemy AI, running deep into treacherous territory for some god-tier weapon to make early fights trivial... and most importantly, specialising in magic to beat every boss from afar. He's notoriously bad at parrying or dodging in games, so it was his way of mitigating that challenge while still being fairly challenged overall. He'd never admit it though, as he proved to me when he attempted to convince me parrying in Clair Obscur was useless, actually, and it's not a problem that he never did it because he's bad at the timing. Someone drank too much of his own kool-aid! The parrying in that game makes every fight so much easier if you can figure out the right timing and hit it consistently! Maybe my... well, I wouldn't say skill, but serviceable consistency... with parrying in that game speaks positively for my enjoyment of a Souls-game where that's half the combat.
The die-hard Souls-fans that you mention are also, and I'm not sorry to say it, obnoxious! Perhaps that's too hot of a take to bring into a thread about Souls-likes, but I don't think anyone here on the forum fits the description of the type of person I'm thinking of. I'm sure you know exactly the person I mean too. The whole ''vehemently against easy mode... because reasons'', ''get good'', ''the game already is easy actually, 'cause I'm such an incredible gamer''. That type of person. It's a smaller portion of the fanbase, I know, but they are a very loud minority that, no doubt, have done nothing but put me off engaging with the genre as a whole. People like that who seem to tie most of their self-worth to their supposed skills in a video game. Frankly, it's just sad when they're not being actively annoying in your face. God forbid more people would enjoy a game that you enjoy at a skill level that fits them better with an easy mode. Imagine being so delusional you'd actively campaign about more people getting to experience the joy you felt playing through a game you grew to love! I'm not even personally offended as much, since I'd anyway start a Souls-like on whatever difficulty is default, but I can recognise a moron when I see one. Sorry, I just realised this has become a bit of a tangent and is not a response to anything you've said anymore. Sometimes my opinions decide they need to be heard in the most appropriate of inappropriate places! I think the point I was originally leading towards was that magic is often seen by these kinds of people as ''easy mode'' already and not properly engaging with the combat ''as you should'', right? I feel like I've heard that sentiment from them before.
There's been very odd online discourse I've seen recently around the Demon's Souls remake you mentioned. Much like how you said it's immaculate, I had only ever heard great things until I've had people being negative Nancy's all over it on my timeline in the last few weeks. It's kind of funny, because as someone with no investment in either version, the comparisons they usually show between the original and new graphics feel like they prove the opposite point of what they're trying to make? It's always ''look at how good the old one looks compared to the new one!'', when nine times out of ten, I'd have to give it to the new one. I'm not sure if the nostalgia goggles are just strong on that one or if any change at all is just offensive to them. Admittedly, the new one does seem to take liberties here and there and change stuff around, but it often seems for the better even in their most egregious examples. Did you ever play the original? Did you feel any type of way about it if so?
Either way, Demon's Souls sounds like a good shot if I want to go into FromSoft proper. That said, I have been interested in Jedi: Fallen Order for a while now... and if it doubly serves as baby's first Souls-like, that might be the perfect entry point to see how I even gel with the mechanics at all without the added hurdle of high difficulty. You're right in remembering I'm disinterested in Star Wars as a whole, but it's not like I hold a grudge towards the IP or anything. I'm sure they're capable of having quality content within that franchise much like the first season of Andor. I just haven't engaged with much of it yet, and hopefully this'll be another one I can point to in the future as an example of what I consider ''good'' Star Wars! I don't have Lies of P from PS+ unfortunately (sad violin) and it still sells as rather expensive even now, so your Fallen Order recommendation is probably a safer bet as I already own it. If I enjoy the combat in that, that might then be a good sign that diving deeper into Souls-like proper is a worthy investment both time-wise and monetarily! Thank you for your detailed response!
@Tjuz You’re welcome. I’m just glad I didn’t bore you to tears. I try to contain my fan-boyisms but sometimes I can’t tell if I’m starting to sound like the adults on the Peanuts cartoons. That might be a very American reference which doesn’t make sense to you, I don’t know. Do y’all get Snoopy and Charlie Brown? 😅 Anyway, if you don’t know, when the adults in those shows speak it basically sounds like annoying nondescript gibberish background noise. Just like me talking games.
Oh, and I will eventually turn you onto Returnal. Mark my words. After I make you a Souls fanatic, speedrunning a Bloodborne run while wearing a blindfold with a level 1 unarmored character and using a guitar hero controller. But first, you’ll have to get your feet wet with baby’s first Souls-like game. Based on what you’ve said, and since you already have it, I think Fallen Order makes good sense for you. I’ll be curious to hear if or when you give it a go.
Regarding Demon’s Souls, I never played the original. While playing the Remake I’d come across footage online of the original when searching for information and I thought the original looked fairly rough, personally. At the time I’m sure it was beautiful, but I can’t image the Remake doesn’t surpass it 90% of the time visually and technically.
On a side note, I forgot that I wrote a Demon’s Souls Remake review, so I’ll just post the link below and avoid repetition. Re-reading it now 4 years later, the part where I talk about the game’s flaws comes across a little more negative than it probably should. But my final score of 8.5 feels about right. Anyway, if you’re interested, here it is:
Regarding your comments about uber-Souls fanatics, I do agree with you about the annoying gatekeeping and elitism that is present in a certain subsection of the fanbase. Gratefully, I think the number of those types of Souls fans is becoming less prominent with the increased popularity of the franchise and genre.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Yousef- I’ve mentioned this is the past somewhere, but the crazy speedrun, blindfolded Souls players actually motivated and encouraged me when I was struggling and frustrated during my first true Souls game. After seeing that some players can clear these levels and bosses blindfolded, I started to feel confident that there must be a way that even an average gamer like me can do it with my eyes wide open! 😄
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Haha, I do know of Snoopy and Charlie Brown, but they were not on TV when I was a kid. At least not the channels I was watching. I don't know if that's a cultural or generational thing, but I got the reference well enough either way! And don't worry, you didn't sound like those adults at all. I'd be hard-pressed to call out a fellow yapper with my ability to write to no end about the most meaningless things!
You truly just wish the worst for me. You better watch out, or I'm going to have to turn my Real Housewives expertise against you in return(al). If you don't want to hear about a bunch of middle-aged women arguing professionally, you better calm it right now! I will give Fallen Order a shot before anything else and keep you updated when I do. I will have to start prioritising at least one of the games we've talked about, or else I'll end up with a dedicated Sol backlog! We'll see what I'm in the mood for when I eventually make my way through Clair Obscur. Shouldn't be too long now... (famous last words)
Thanks for linking your Demon's Souls Remake review! It was a great read. The screenshots you included already go to show to me that the criticism around its visuals is highly overblown. They look fantastic. I also learnt about some mechanics I was unaware of, such as the world changing colour over time and the morality system. I see how the lack of clearness from the game regarding its mechanics would've made those systems occasionally frustrating, but it's cool to know that even by now there's still parts to these games I'm unaware of. Was this one the only one to include such mechanics or have they been a mainstay of all of FromSoft's Souls titles? It's funny you mention the whole discussion we had earlier regarding the usage of online wikis in your review as well. It shows that this for sure is a mainstay through the franchise. Not that it seems to have hurt it all that much on a reputational level, even if we have different feelings on whether this should be expected in a game or not.
The review also just validates every fear I have of Souls-like games however! The way you mention difficulty spikes, unreliable shortcuts, occasionally bad balancing with the bosses... I appreciate that you put a bit of a retrospective of the intention of the game at the front of it, because if not, I'd be inclined to believe that suffering for the sake of suffering is exactly what these developers want from me! I think this is probably one of those things where reading about it come across a lot more negatively than experiencing it, though. I think you could say all of the above for many games that are ultimately great experiences. I need to not let the negative thoughts I ascribe to what might be ''failings'' of a game cloud my whole view of a genre. Lord knows I've played plenty of games I can say the same things about... like Star Ocean itself even! With you saying that it comes across more negative than intended as well just tells me that's exactly what it is.
Thanks for the tag! I'm heavily reliant on them to be organised in my responses, so any time it fails for whatever reason, I'm a mess.
Finished off my first (& second) playthrough(s) of Hellpoint this afternoon and had a really decent time with it all told. It’s not the flashiest souls-like in terms of looks nor combat… but they’re both solid enough imo. It consistently surprises in terms of the exploration, in-game systems, lore and npc side-quests though. It really reminded me of the original Dark Souls in all of those ways… even though it wears a dark sci-fi skin rather than dark fantasy.
There are a lot of souls-likes out there at this point, so there are a lot of options for fans of the genre (many of which are probably far better overall products)… but if you’ve played all the From soft and Team Ninja games, Lies of P, Black Myth, First Berserker etc. and are still on the look out for more, this could be worth a punt.
Might not feel like it but these are your glory days.
The "salad years" you know?
Nothing is going to beat who you are now.
You can't see all the ****ed up 💩 that's looming on the horizon.
Enjoy this dude
@Tjuz To my knowledge, the World Tendency and Character morality are unique to Demon’s Souls. Most of the other mechanics that constitute a “Souls game” were present in the game, but the World and Character Tendency were not carried on. When I first started DeS, users on here told me one can just ignore the WT/CT mechanics and yes, you can certainly just play the game and ignore them, but you might quickly realize the game is getting harder the blacker you let things get. But like most Souls aspects, there’s a workaround to cheese the system from letting that happen and so I played through that way. But I was grateful that From didn’t include the morality system in future entries.
There’s a few other smaller things that didn’t make it into the Dark Souls series, but otherwise it’s very much like a Dark Souls 0.5.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Yousef- Ah, yes— this is true. That is a really nice opt in, opt out system that I used to farm souls. The way Dark Souls 2 did away with the infinite respawning was both a blessing and a curse. On one hand it was great to clear out a run up to a tough boss so that you could go into the boss fight straight from a close bonfire fully healed, but it also took away the opportunity to grind out souls in good farming areas unless you use the Covenant of Champions.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@JohnnyShoulder I was shocked to see it too! It came on my social media timeline with the Bluepoint closure. Some people seemed to be celebrating because of how badly they... checks notes... messed up the visuals in the Demon's Souls remake? Just a perspective I'd never heard previously. Like yourself, it was only ever how beautiful it looked within my circle! I'm glad Yousef was able to provide a bit more perspective on what that controversy is really all about.
***
@Th3solution Did they ever speak on why they decided to abandon the World and Character Tendency system for the Dark Souls series and on? Was it purely a design choice or was the system heavily disliked? Since the later games are so faithful to that foundation, it seems odd to me that this one particular thing was taken out rather than possibly reworked or entirely reintegrated. I do think it's a cool system on paper, but as per your review, I understand where the frustration can come in with the way it was implemented in Demon's Souls.
@Tjuz I actually have not seen anything official about why they haven’t returned to the World/Character Tendency system. I can only assume it was not a popular aspect of the game. As with any game mechanic, I know it likely has its staunch supporters though and it would be interesting to see if they could bring it back in a modified form. Other games have had similar world changing effects based on how combat turns out, like one that comes to mind is Dishonored. Even though I only played that for the opening few hours, I heard that the more aggressively you play it and kill rather than stealth then the more rats show up and infest the area, or something like that. There’s probably other games I can’t think of right now where the world and/or the enemy behavior change if you are more aggressive or kill more. I think some games have systems built in where the game auto-adjusts to make encounters easier if you fail multiple times. But I don’t suspect there’s any other games with a system where the more you die the harder the game gets! That’s basically what World Tendency is, that the more times you die, the blacker the world gets, and the more enemies show up and the harder they are to kill! It’s the complete opposite of what you’d expect! But there are benefits to having a fully black world where certain NPCs or items will only show up on a map if the world is full black (or sometimes full white), which is a pretty cool concept.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution I love Dishonored! One of the few games I've replayed multiple times (though I had to cut my third playthrough short due to a specifically run-breaking bug). It's funny to think that this Demon's Souls system is still a more evil take on that philosophy however. Where you're correct in saying that Dishonored has more enemies and dangers show up as you becoming more of a monster killing everything with a heartbeat within the level, it sounds like that's still the opposite of the suffering DS puts you through. Dishonored simply enables you to play your way, whether that be highly lethal or inexistent, by balancing the game and its encounters to work for either type of play, while you're telling me DS will actively make the gmae harder for you if you dare to suck. Two very different ways to approach difficulty, and as someone who regularly sucks... at games(!!!), I know which approach I'm sure I'll prefer.
@Tjuz So with the world and character tendency, it does eventually hit a max effect when the world is pure black or the character is pure black, so it’s not like to will ramp up difficulty to an infinite level. But still, the game was challenging enough for me, so I manipulated by deaths to keep things neutral to white. You can do that by not dying in physical form in a world, so a lot of player just jump off the ledge in the Nexus hub and only enter the worlds in spirit/soul form. Then you can die all you want in soul form and it won’t shift the world tendency. You just have to get accustomed to the slight HP debuff in soul form, for which there are a few items to minimize that effect.
But certain items and enemies will only show up in a pure black world, so I missed out on some of those. If I ever play the game again then I should try to push everything pure black and see how it differs.
I should retry Dishonored one day. Maybe it would click for me on a second attempt
Forums
Topic: Souls-likes (& dislikes)
Posts 161 to 180 of 183
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic