this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Here's the thing I never got: most Souls-like aren't actually that difficult, they're just tedious. And I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because people don't seem to notice and/or care.
I don't mind doing a boss encounter 20 times to get the move set down. I like the feeling of beating a boss by actually becoming better. But why the hell do I need to run trough a dozen enemies before I get back to him? It's like a damn unskippable cutscene where I need to mash the same buttons over and over again! And people rightfully get mad at those, but put it in a souls-like dress and people love it.
I'm a 40 year old dad, I really don't have the time to waste doing stuff I already mastered 20 times over. Just give me a damn quick save that disables during combat. It doesn't make anything easier, it's just less tedium.
The newer games, particularly Elden Ring, got wayyyy better about not having to run back to the boss room.
I replayed Dark Souls 1 last year and it made me want to bash my head into the wall every time I had to hoof it back to a boss, especially in the late game.
I only tried DS1 and DS3. In DS1 I beat the first boss and then got to some kind of place where I couldn't even get past the regular enemies and the game didn't feel that interesting to me (especially since it makes you basically most of the thing in corpse mode until you restore your humanity or whatever).
In DS3 I literally couldn't beat the first boss no matter what I did so I gave up
Right? I so agree. Further, I feel like a lot of games are just as hard... but they give you a little wiggle room so that you can learn how to fight while you're fighting, and you get this pleasing feeling of being smart and overcoming something difficult just the same, and you can get into the flow of it and let the music sink into you and feel fucking awesome even if it's hard and you do end up dying multiple times.
But with souls games, one (1) tiny mistake and bam, you're dead, and now you have to sit through this long-ass loading screen. That doesn't feel like more difficulty to me; that feels like the type of bullshit that is like getting sniped from across the map by an NPC you can't see. It just interrupts the flow of the fight, and the player's immersion, repeatedly, when it doesn't need to imo. And without difficulty settings, it screws over people who have hand pain or stiffness for any of a number of reasons, or people who have shitty cheap knockoff controllers, or people who have minimal hardware and maybe the game stutters just enough sometimes to make them die, and so on.
And the 'community', at least the one on reddit, is insufferable (in aggregate! I don't automatically think you're an ass because you like souls games, I promise. I'm just tired of people trying to use their like souls games as some of kind of proof that they're better than other people, and of their complaining about difficulty settings and other accessibility measures.)
But yeah. Something like Hyper Light Drifter, that respawns you right by the fight immediately after you die, or something like Celeste where again you respawn right at the same level immediately after you die, is fine. But souls' games death screen is too long on its own, let alone combined with all the stupid backtracking.
Even though it’s a Soul’s game, there was a hilarious contrast between the Bloodborne subreddit and the Souls subreddits. The Souls subreddits had a lot of non-ironic “git gud” type comments, while the Bloodborne subreddit would just be thrilled that someone was playing their game and even years later posts by newcomers to the game would get really happy responses and the comment section of a newbie’s post that they had defeated the first boss would be a virtual party of congratulations and cheering them on… even when there were many such posts per day.
Probably because it was the smallest community, due to being locked to one system, but it always made me laugh how different the subs were. In fairness though the Souls subreddits have chilled out a lot though, but even to this day the Bloodborne subreddit is unrelentingly welcoming in comparison.
You don't die in one hit to most things unless you run with very low health and armor. That's a solvable problem.
And while sometimes bonfires can be a bit far apart, especially in the earlier games, people also seem to forget that you can literally just run past enemies. That said, I think it's part of the journey and the struggle. Dark Souls is basically a rythm game in a way and that takes experience. Basically, you don't need to kill everything but it's good exercise.
Also there has always been an "easy mode", cheesy build and multiplayer. If you think the game is too hard, play different.
I'm a huge Souls fan, but I agree. My top two are Sekiro and Elden Ring. In fact, I think Sekiro is a probably the better game from purely a design perspective, and possibly atmosphere. Almost no run back from what I recall.