this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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FromSoft sort of brought it upon themselves with their design philosophy to be fair, going back at least as far as Dark Souls. Selling a DLC and having it locked behind a convoluted puzzle you wouldn't figure out without a guide was certainly a choice, for example.
Case in point: I played dark souls for 30 minutes and then gave up.
Did not seem worth it.
30 minutes is not nearly long enough to get to anything convoluted.
Not at all convoluted, dark souls seemed very simple, just deliberately constructed to prevent player progression or exploration without any good reason to.
Here is a game. Do not play the game.
The controls were not great, as far as I remember. The first zombie I encountered could just tap me out unless I dodged it correctly and I hit it like 10 times and nothing happened and then it got boring.
I guess 11 strikes kills it? Yeah I'm not going to do that for 3 hours without any reason to.
There was no lore or intro to show why I should care about the game or it's characters or anything.
Does the story get interesting? Because the gameplay was trash and nothing indicated that it was going to get better as the game progressed.
Were you trying to kill the zombie before you get a weapon in the tutorial?
This was years ago, and the controls and camera were so janky I didn't play very long, so I really can't remember, it just felt like the beginning.
I am checking a playthrough. I remember beating this asylum demon and all of these items.
The controls were so slow and confining, I stopped playing after the asylum demon. I didn't feel like stutter rolling 100 times for every boss.
In all the games, your roll speed is determined by your equipment load. You may have picked a starting class that had heavy load, and thus a slow roll. You can take off armor to lower your load.
I think all the games after ds1 show you the percentage of your equip load.
Ah, that's probably it, I can get pretty pack rat until I know anything about the game and what'll be useful or not. Thanks.
The first Dark Souls is pretty clunky compared to modern games though, to be fair
I played several modern games before I decided to give dark souls a try because elden ring had got so popular, and I didn't know at the time about the inventory burden making the roll slower.
None of the new games have instruction manuals, I got the remastered dark souls for the switch.
Man I miss instruction manuals, I feel like some basic context are necessary enough thought there should at least be an official online brief for any game explaining the basic mechanics, Even if they don't want to print out manuals.
Yeah, I don't remember there being any pointers about equip load. On one hand it makes perfect sense, put heavy armor on and you're slower. But on the other hand, it's a video game, so many players wouldn't expect it and then spend hours trying to figure out why their controller rumbles when they roll
And that specific correlation is an uncommon mechanic in games, I can't count the number of games where inventory load only has a bearing on the number of items you can carry.
The more you know
To be clear, it's weight of equipped items. You can have as much stuff as you want in your backpack.
The UI will show your equip load (as a percentage in newer games), and how it changes when you change equipment. Note that some rings are surprisingly heavy.
I think there's a breakpoint at 70% where your roll gets worse.
This, important distinction, doesn't matter how many items are in your bag, just what you're wearing.
I do like the mechanic though. Really forces you to adapt your playstyle. Some enemies are slow enough for it to not matter, and then with others it might actually be better to take some armor off, so you can dodge their attacks better.
Cool, well I'm going to get into elden ring now that I've gained some good perspective on it, and I might even try dark souls 1 again. Thanks!
I like the idea of Soulslikes. I want to like playing them (some of them, I do: Hellpoint, The Surge, the Jedi games). But I can't bring myself to slog through it just to say I did. It's not fun or worth it to me.
What do you mean by the idea of soulslikes?
What is the idea that you like about them if you don't like the slog?
Is the slog not the idea of souls likes?
And what did you like about the three games you mentioned that made you slog through their entire games that was different than elden ring?
I did the same when it first came out, gave it another try during covid when the remastered version came out, absolutely loved it. Got all achievements even :P
I'm believing it now that so many people have explained how much they like the games to me and why.
Even watching the beginning of this playthrough to see how far I got through dark souls 1, which was just to the asylum demon, it looks awesome.
I think I just really would have liked some explanation of any of the gameplay mechanics in a summarized form that I didn't have to hunt for.
But I'm going to start with elden ring, because I do like open worlds, and I'm just going to see how that grabs me.
Did you play DS1 remastered on the switch?
Nah, pc gamer here, I honestly can't imagine it runs very well on Switch :/ especially when you get to Blight town
Maybe that was part of the problem I had. I figured since it was an older game it wouldn't be a big deal.
I'll definitely try the PC version next time.
You can hardly judge a game this size based on a single boss fight :P
I definitely didn't judge it on the boss fight.
But that’s literally the point of these games compared to everything else that’s out there.
Where else do I get cryptic puzzles and unforgiving exploration without a map full of markers?
I don't think that's entirely true. There are lots of people who play them mostly for the challenge of learning and beating the (mostly) well designed bosses.
Outer Wilds? Subnautica?
But the bosses are only half the game if that. The getting to the bosses and exploring an unforgivable world is so core to the experience that you can’t just overlook it.
There are also a lot of games out there like monster hunter that focus on quick boss action.
Outer wilds has a great story but no combat and Subnautica has way too much resource gathering and open world grinding a la Minecraft.
The fromsoft Souls games are still the place for unforgiving exploration and combat. They shouldn’t have to compromise on the unique experience and simplify it for everyone and ruin what makes them good.
If you try to appeal to everyone you loose what makes you special and become generic. Look at resident evil 6 for the perfect example.
( I do have to note I’m all for accessibility options, giving more people access is very important, but it shouldn’t change the core game into something else. Just play a different game, we have so many options nowadays it’s overwhelming. )
When was this ever about compromising the vision or changing the games? I thought this was about the use of guides while playing.
I'm perfectly happy for all the players who spend thousands of hours scrounging every surface, making conspiracy-boards out of item descriptions and feverishly figuring out every hidden secret in these games by themselves.
It's still completely valid to enjoy all the rest the games have to offer and look at the wiki for how you access the secret area with the hidden boss.
Morrowind?
Lunacid
Tangentially related, I played over 30 hours of Elden Ring before learning there were Map Fragments. The first one I found was way up north. I just assumed the world map was supposed to be dogshit.
I wasn't happy for having gotten through without them, I was honestly just kinda pissed that they didn't do some minimal nudging towards the first one.
The first one is a big glowing item by a big stone marker that the graces point you to. It's also marked on the unrevealed map.
The graces pointed me up the gulch to the north, after first pointing to the encounter with what's-her-name. They did not at any time point at the map fragment. It wasn't big and glowing, it was quite tiny when I finally went back to investigate.
Maybe something they've changed with patches 🤷🏻
Also it's "marked" on the unrevealed map, but unless you know what the mark means, it doesn't look anything like a map.