Souls-likes

[Lagduf]

First Remnant 2 DLC out next week. My friend and I will eventually get to it but we’re running through some garbage souls-lite survival game right now (Outward.)

 

[Average Joe]

I've got about 15-20 hours into the original Nioh and I'm digging it a lot. It's carried almost entirely by its gameplay/loot grind, but those aspects of it are so fun that none of its flaws (which it has many) take away from the charm for me.

The level design is kind of boring; enemy variety is bit too lacking; bosses lack the punch of Fromsoft and even other notable Soulsborne games, and the Story might be the most insanely nonsensical shit I've ever seen in a game.

But... it's fun as hell as I said and I'm sticking with it.

I bought this and the sequel at the same time and almost played the sequel first since I read it fixes most of the issues with the first, but I've played a fair bit of this genre over the years so I'm glad I started with the original since I'm getting a lot out of it and can appreciate it as a solid base.

 

[jro]

I've got about 15-20 hours into the original Nioh and I'm digging it a lot. It's carried almost entirely by its gameplay/loot grind, but those aspects of it are so fun that none of its flaws (which it has many) take away from the charm for me.

The level design is kind of boring; enemy variety is bit too lacking; bosses lack the punch of Fromsoft and even other notable Soulsborne games, and the Story might be the most insanely nonsensical shit I've ever seen in a game.

But... it's fun as hell as I said and I'm sticking with it.

I bought this and the sequel at the same time and almost played the sequel first since I read it fixes most of the issues with the first, but I've played a fair bit of this genre over the years so I'm glad I started with the original since I'm getting a lot out of it and can appreciate it as a solid base.

Holy fuck legendary member returns. Was thinking of posting about how I finally got to endgame of LoP but fuck me, man, how you doin'?

 

[kernow]

goobs-likes

 

[SML]

I've got about 15-20 hours into the original Nioh and I'm digging it a lot. It's carried almost entirely by its gameplay/loot grind, but those aspects of it are so fun that none of its flaws (which it has many) take away from the charm for me.

The level design is kind of boring; enemy variety is bit too lacking; bosses lack the punch of Fromsoft and even other notable Soulsborne games, and the Story might be the most insanely nonsensical shit I've ever seen in a game.

Hi Joe
I really enjoyed Nioh as well, although I seem to remember a lot of people claiming it was "harder" than Fromsoft titles. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't that I would win most boss fights by activating living weapon and flipping the fuck out. The post-game is where the difficulty curve kicks in. (Sanada Yukimura gave me a lot of grief.)

 

[Average Joe]

Holy fuck legendary member returns. Was thinking of posting about how I finally got to endgame of LoP but fuck me, man, how you doin'?

Much of the same really, just with a wife, two cats, and a few grey pubes.

I just avoided a lot of social media/forums for a long time as I felt being on there wasn't doing me any good (which it wasn't.)

Been in a good place mentally for a while, so after terry.330 told me about this place and what was up here after we last talked I figured I'd pop in.

 

[Average Joe]

Hi Joe
I really enjoyed Nioh as well, although I seem to remember a lot of people claiming it was "harder" than Fromsoft titles. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't that I would win most boss fights by activating living weapon and flipping the fuck out. The post-game is where the difficulty curve kicks in. (Sanada Yukimura gave me a lot of grief.)

I did just fight Tachibana Muneshige in the "An Invitation from the Warrior of the West" mission and he gave me some issues for a while until I figured him out--but that fight was a lot of fun and quite notable.

I do wish the initial game gets harder though as I haven't had any real issues with it, but I have played a lot of these games the past few years (nearly 400 hours in Elden Ring alone) so I'd like to think I'm at least decent at them.

 

[SML]

I did just fight Tachibana Muneshige in the "An Invitation from the Warrior of the West" mission and he gave me some issues for a while until I figured him out--but that fight was a lot of fun and quite notable.

Oh yeah, that guy totally fucked me up too. Thank God for that boulder.

 

[Average Joe]

Oh yeah, that guy totally fucked me up too. Thank God for that boulder.

I just did it the straightforward way haha

You just have to get the dodge right on his charging slash and then make sure you whittle down his Ki (the kick move is great for that) since you can damage him a lot while he recovers.

I read about the boulder trick afterwards since I'll look up information on bosses once I bested them.

 

[jro]

I did just fight Tachibana Muneshige in the "An Invitation from the Warrior of the West" mission and he gave me some issues for a while until I figured him out--but that fight was a lot of fun and quite notable.

I do wish the initial game gets harder though as I haven't had any real issues with it, but I have played a lot of these games the past few years (nearly 400 hours in Elden Ring alone) so I'd like to think I'm at least decent at them.

It's been a while since I've played the original Nioh, can't really think of much that might trip you up. Of all the dumb guys, it was Umi-Bozu that gave me the most problems on my first couple of playthroughs then on the third it finally clicked when I realized I had to always be circle-strafing in the second phase instead of dodging in or out.

Nioh does tend to do the duel-type missions and bosses well almost every time. I also really like how much freedom N and N2 give the player in builds, i.e. the many weapon types, magic, ninjitsu, etc. I'd certainly recommend the sequel after you finish N1 and the DLC for both is fun as well. Wo Long is also really good though the gameplay is changed up a bit due to the heavy emphasis on parrying red attacks.

Glad to hear you're doing well and it's great to see you back.

 

[Average Joe]

I have a copy of Sekiro I need to get to as well as I have yet to play that.

Been kind of feeling the urge to play the original Dark Souls too since I am way better at these games now than I was when I first played that.

Might also snag Mortal Shell despite the mixed reviews since it's only $5 on PSN and thus not much of a risk (listened to an in-depth review earlier and it sounds OK.)

 

[jro]

Sekiro is a unique cat. It's still definitely a souls-like, contrary to some opinions, but the parrying is the focus. There's a lot of stealth and a bunch of janky cheeses, even by From standards, but there are a few brick-wall boss fights that will pretty much stop you cold without learning to parry, i.e. Genichiro (spelled it wrong I'm sure). It's still good and worth playing but it's a bit of a pain at times. It's the one game in From's proper line that I haven't beaten at least twice, beat Sword Saint on my first playthrough (Tyrannicon's "spam the hat counter" tech got me to the win) but then I could not, for the life of me, beat the wimpy version of him you fight if you decide to fight the girl. IMO Wo Long took the formula and made it better.

Mortal Shell is surprisingly decent IMO, and that's not even accounting for the work the devs did to upgrade for current hardware. The levels and bosses are well-designed, few to zero bugs, and the main/unique mechanic, the shell, actually works really nicely. I finished it and liked it a lot when it first came out and I've been tempted to play it again with the current-gen upgrades. Easily one of the better small-budget titles in the genre.

And... I finally (FINALLY) finished Lies of P. Granted, I took the easy way out at the end since I realized I didn't have enough Warmth to get the true ending (srsly, I didn't get/listen to enough GD'ed records) so I just said fuck it and let Geppeto have the Organ (ya don't wanna know) and managed to also conveniently avoid what is apparently a pain in the ass of a boss fight in a game where that's saying something.

Final impressions re: LoP...

Positives: really fantastic level design, second-to-none including From. Basic combat mechanics felt really good after upgrading the dodge enough (one of the patches helped with that, made get-up dodge a basic move instead of an unlockable). Specters (like Ashes in Elden Ring) felt appropriately useful but not overpowered by any means, to make them best they could be you have to put a ton of Quartz into them at the expense of other stuff. Story was also unexpectedly very good.

Three main complaints I think, one, many of the late game bosses/minibosses/elites rely on using VERY nasty status effects against the player as their main means of threat. Felt like spam a lot of the time. Two, the two-HP bar thing is just dumb, and most (all maybe?) of the end-game bosses have it. Round8 had to nerf most of the first HP bars for these things already. Three, the over-reliance on throwables is annoying. LoP and maybe Steelrising are the only games in the genre that I can think of where throwables are your best weapon to use against pretty much any and every hard boss. It's a bad mechanic to reward grinding for cash to buy firebombs instead of skill/levels. I know some savants like Esoterrick can beat every boss in this with no specter and no throwables and zero heals but when 80% of guides are to keep throwing shit there's an issue.

Of note, looks like there's a sequel coming in which the PC will be Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. Could work! Round8 going HAM with the public domain apparently.

 

[Average Joe]

I beat up to Fuoco in Lies of P and just sort of stopped despite myself enjoying it.

I did have a major gripe with the lack of Poise in the game in regards to your character--tons of enemies in the game have it, but you have none. I remember finding my first heavy weapon and being pumped since that is my go-to in these games (Kirkhammer forever) and then instantly deflating when I kept getting hit out of my attacks.

 

[radiantsvgun]

I really liked Lies of P. I ended up getting 100% steam achievements. My biggest gripes were after I got the 100% they went and balanced out the enemies and their damage outputs; then they increased some of the weapons powers. Also, some of the enemies have crazy amounts of tracking, if you don’t dodge at exactly the right moment, you’re getting hit.

Also the PC looks like a twink, I guess gepettto made that doll with a functioning butthole.

 

[jro]

I beat up to Fuoco in Lies of P and just sort of stopped despite myself enjoying it.

I did have a major gripe with the lack of Poise in the game in regards to your character--tons of enemies in the game have it, but you have none. I remember finding my first heavy weapon and being pumped since that is my go-to in these games (Kirkhammer forever) and then instantly deflating when I kept getting hit out of my attacks.

It's a bit deceptive in how it teaches you to build your character. Strength builds seem to work well starting out, maybe first 50% of the game, but then they absolutely get wrecked by the many bosses that are just entirely too fast for them. I put +10 into the wrench because it was one-shotting mobs and worked well against early bosses, then it just got me murdered after that point so I switched to the Puppet Ripper (mainly) and the Two-Dragons Sword and my half/half motivity/technique build was none the worse. At least re-speccing if you want to is pretty easy compared to many in the genre.

I really liked Lies of P. I ended up getting 100% steam achievements. My biggest gripes were after I got the 100% they went and balanced out the enemies and their damage outputs; then they increased some of the weapons powers. Also, some of the enemies have crazy amounts of tracking, if you don’t dodge at exactly the right moment, you’re getting hit.

Also the PC looks like a twink, I guess gepettto made that doll with a functioning butthole.

He totally does, I put on that mouse mask and wore it until I got the mole one (I think?) to make him look a little less faggy (h/t Dee) but then when I got the top hat, sunglasses, and cape, sheeit that became a hot fella right there. Like an effeminate Slash laying waste to Laxasia pretty much. Hopefully Dorothy will have like shoulder pads or something to make her also non-specific.

Also, random weird note, I mis-remembered the specifics of Mortal Shell - there are two main unique aspects to it, not one. First is the shells, it's cool how you can switch between them at will basically, makes it so you have four useful builds to switch to as called for instead of being locked into one and hope it works. The other mechanic that I meant to refer to but mis-named was hardening. You can turn to stone for a few seconds at a time if you have meter for it to mitigate enemy hits. It works surprisingly well and becomes an intricate part of late-game boss fights.

 

[Average Joe]

I played Mortal Shell for a bit over an hour just to test it out. I probably won't play it for a while since I have a current queue of other games to get through, but I really liked what I saw so far.

The opening of you being almost literally "birthed" into the world was easily the coolest start to a Souls-like I have ever seen.

 

[radiantsvgun]

It's a bit deceptive in how it teaches you to build your character. Strength builds seem to work well starting out, maybe first 50% of the game, but then they absolutely get wrecked by the many bosses that are just entirely too fast for them. I put +10 into the wrench because it was one-shotting mobs and worked well against early bosses, then it just got me murdered after that point so I switched to the Puppet Ripper (mainly) and the Two-Dragons Sword and my half/half motivity/technique build was none the worse. At least re-speccing if you want to is pretty easy compared to many in the genre.

He totally does, I put on that mouse mask and wore it until I got the mole one (I think?) to make him look a little less faggy (h/t Dee) but then when I got the top hat, sunglasses, and cape, sheeit that became a hot fella right there. Like an effeminate Slash laying waste to Laxasia pretty much. Hopefully Dorothy will have like shoulder pads or something to make her also non-specific.

Also, random weird note, I mis-remembered the specifics of Mortal Shell - there are two main unique aspects to it, not one. First is the shells, it's cool how you can switch between them at will basically, makes it so you have four useful builds to switch to as called for instead of being locked into one and hope it works. The other mechanic that I meant to refer to but mis-named was hardening. You can turn to stone for a few seconds at a time if you have meter for it to mitigate enemy hits. It works surprisingly well and becomes an intricate part of late-game boss fights.

Oh yeah, the game is really built around technique based weapons. Twin Dragon sword is crazy OP for what it is. One neat thing, you can break the first two playthoughs by leveling up that stat that focuses on elemental damage and just go crazy with throwables. Throw items in Lies of P are crazy good. Fuck the TLB though, that shit is insane.

 

[SML]

Other studios dropped the ball by not copying Mortal Shell's Lute mechanic.

 

[jro]

Oh yeah, the game is really built around technique based weapons. Twin Dragon sword is crazy OP for what it is. One neat thing, you can break the first two playthoughs by leveling up that stat that focuses on elemental damage and just go crazy with throwables. Throw items in Lies of P are crazy good. Fuck the TLB though, that shit is insane.

Lol I watched a few guides on him, noticed that my P's hair was most certainly not gray, and said sure, here, open that suitcase you crazy old man. I may play it again sometime on PS5 or PC, but for now I'm okay with not standing off with that dude.

Also, apropos of nothing, I rage deleted and then re-installed (as is tradition) Lords of the Fallen. I'm at the optional duel against the knight early in Fitzroy's Gorge and guy is utterly wrecking me. Tried it with a couple of different 2Ps, first one literally just ran around the arena not attacking and second didn't do much better, dunno if I'll try it again or not. Has the weird delay of attacks like in LoP and then just an utter ocean of an HP pool for the mini-boss. Such a weird game.

I also fired up a new Dark Souls 3 playthrough on the Legion Go, vanilla since the DLC is meh and it completely borks my preferred pyro build. Runs amazingly in 2560 x 1600 on the 8.8 screen, suppose it should being 8 years old and all.

 

[radiantsvgun]

Lol I watched a few guides on him, noticed that my P's hair was most certainly not gray, and said sure, here, open that suitcase you crazy old man. I may play it again sometime on PS5 or PC, but for now I'm okay with not standing off with that dude.

Also, apropos of nothing, I rage deleted and then re-installed (as is tradition) Lords of the Fallen. I'm at the optional duel against the knight early in Fitzroy's Gorge and guy is utterly wrecking me. Tried it with a couple of different 2Ps, first one literally just ran around the arena not attacking and second didn't do much better, dunno if I'll try it again or not. Has the weird delay of attacks like in LoP and then just an utter ocean of an HP pool for the mini-boss. Such a weird game.

I also fired up a new Dark Souls 3 playthrough on the Legion Go, vanilla since the DLC is meh and it completely borks my preferred pyro build. Runs amazingly in 2560 x 1600 on the 8.8 screen, suppose it should being 8 years old and all.

Dark souls 3 still holds up. I’m waiting for it to go on steam sale because 59.99 is a bit much for it now. Now that I understand builds and poise, the game is much more enjoyable.

Really it’s hard to go below 3 anymore, weapon skills have spoiled me.

 

[jro]

I tried, I really tried, re-installed it yet again and spent another hour-plus on it tonight but man, Lords of the Fallen (2023) is just awful. The bosses have hilariously massive health bars, the mobs are still fucking huge even after the patch that supposedly made them smaller, attacks do just shit damage, summons are worthless, they get 1/3 souls and have half of the healing at best, not great math.

The checkpointing [bonfire] system is easily still the worst in the genre after a supposed complete re-work from the dev. Spoiler, it is still utter fucking shit. You get one main bonfire and (maybe!) one temp one if you have a consumable Seed item that was recently nerfed to cost only about half a level-up instead of 3/4 of one from one of the early vendors. The main bonfires/seeds? They're super fucking far apart from about 25% of the way through the game. So you have to buy seeds from vendors early and often if you don't want your boss runs to be 5 minutes long.

And the level designs, after all of that shit, are just bad. They're terrible. Tons of mobs, little or no logical direction, bizarre bumps in challenge in the middle of nowhere, it's all here.

The bosses have no sense of, I dunno, "flow" to them at all, y'know where you get a feel for it and it works. It's just chunky, unreactive bullshit where you hope and pray you might get lucky on a parry.

I'm ranting, I know. But, I did somehow manage to put about 18 or 20 hours into this game, and I want to convey, at least somewhat, that it is utterly fucking terrible and should not be played by anyone. It's the second-worst game in the genre that I can remember playing after only Dolmen, which should have qualified its developers for summary execution.

Honestly, no one at Hexworks should ever be allowed to work in the industry again either. Maybe stop at forced sterilization this time, I dunno.

Yes I do really fucking hate this game and it's only managed to make me appreciate Lies of P more.

 

[jro]

Final Wo Long DLC is out today. Game is currently downloading a 48 GB with a final footprint of just under 97GB according to the listing, good lord.

Definitely looking forward to playing through it, Lies of P did manage to win me over but WL is still my favorite game in the genre in quite a while.

 

[HornheaDD]

Final Wo Long DLC is out today. Game is currently downloading a 48 GB with a final footprint of just under 97GB according to the listing, good lord.

Definitely looking forward to playing through it, Lies of P did manage to win me over but WL is still my favorite game in the genre in quite a while.

I finally got Lies of P the other day. I wanted to buy it because I had heard it was almost like a spiritual sibling to Bloodborne. I found out it was released on the PS4 as well so I was able to find a rip of it and slap it into my JB'd PS4.

Ive only gotten to the first boss but I dunno it feels... janky? I know almost nothing can come close to BB's smoothness/speed/accuracy but it just didnt feel the same. Does it get better after the first boss?

I will admit I like the 'retelling' of the Pinocchio story, with Gemini being some sort of AI thing or whatever, but gameplay wise it doesn't feel like BB to me.

 

[jro]

I finally got Lies of P the other day. I wanted to buy it because I had heard it was almost like a spiritual sibling to Bloodborne. I found out it was released on the PS4 as well so I was able to find a rip of it and slap it into my JB'd PS4.

Ive only gotten to the first boss but I dunno it feels... janky? I know almost nothing can come close to BB's smoothness/speed/accuracy but it just didnt feel the same. Does it get better after the first boss?

I will admit I like the 'retelling' of the Pinocchio story, with Gemini being some sort of AI thing or whatever, but gameplay wise it doesn't feel like BB to me.

It does start off feeling less than ideal, somewhere in there near janky, yes, agreed. The dodge you start out with is basically intentionally nerfed to force you to use the parry instead, and it used to be worse before R8 patched it to at least have the ground roll as a basic skill instead of one you had to buy with upgrades. The double roll though, still an upgrade. If you put the points into getting it the game will feel pretty much like a less-polished Bloodborne in terms of dodging and parrying. Parrying in LoP, to note, has an incredibly short timing window compared to other games in the genre, it's like 7 ms I want to say, and I think it's 24 ms in Wo Long for comparison. I never did come close to mastering parrying in LoP and mostly just dodged my whole way through, though the one auto-parry (well not quite, it's a command skill that puts up a parry animation for about a half-second and then hits like a full Fable Art if you connect) skill is very helpful for a few bosses though.

The swamp monster thing was a big wall for me and then Romeo was also, but not too bad other than those two after where you're at. I intentionally took the bad ending to avoid fighting the Nameless Puppet though, as he is apparently far more annoying than anything else in the game and I was pretty much out at that point.

Game feels pretty solid to play after you level up skills and there are some very good level and boss designs, but the somewhat unshakeable basic jankiness and the OP-ness of projectiles are hard to ignore. Worth a playthrough overall IMO but has some significant flaws.

Re: Wo Long - I finished up the final DLC a while back, fine but nothing great, like the other ones I suppose. The final optional boss fight, in the usual Team Ninja fashion, is just insanely strong. I think I hit three criticals on him and had done maybe 20% of his HP on my best run, and that's at the max level of 150 for NG+ on NG difficulty. Design is fair and not cheap but beyond my capabilities.

edit, couple of items of note for LoP while the sound of Majima kicking my Kiryu's ass in Infinite Wealth plays:
-battle items are overpowered. It's absolutely worth grinding up to be able to buy and take 10-15 or however many firebombs etc into a fight. They'll do huge amounts of damage to bosses all the way up to the endgame. Steelrising was really bad about balancing attack items and then LoP was like hold my beer. Grinding for these, especially after you unlock Red Lobster [srsly that's its name] is gonna be key to winning a lot of fights. It's dumb but it works.
-Wrench is very good early but then it turns to dust after you beat Romeo. Upgrading former all you want will probably help against Romeo but then get the Puppet Ripper and focus on upgrading that. Its charge move where it spins in a circle makes the Black Rabbits fights trivial and many mobs die before they see you.
-if in doubt on the little dupe charges (whatevs, they're basically ashes in Elden Ring), go with the ones that charge their HP. The one that heals them three times is really, really helpful to take aggro. I think it was still alive and kicking when I beat both Laxasia and Manus with that one.

 

[HornheaDD]

LoP

I havent put much more time into it as I was trying to figure out how to install Bloodborne and the debug menu into my jailbroken PS4, but every rip I got would either crash when bringing up the menu, or installing a fresh copy with the Debug'ed update would fail to install.

So then I just moved to the new Prince of Persia, which I thought would be like Sands of Time, which I liked (second one can suck it). But it turns out its a Metroidvania, which holds promise. Only an hour or two into it but still seems pretty cool so far.