Souls-likes

[Gentlegamer]

Midra, so far, is the only non-bullshit DLC boss I've encountered.

 

[Taiso]

That alone makes it worth getting to Midra.

 

[Average Joe]

Midra was dope, but the fight was too easy in relation to all the other DLC bosses thus far.

 

[jro]

So, this was unique. Made it to up to the grace right before Consort Radahn, then I went back to get the Antspur (no prob) and the Fingerprint Shield (yes prob fuck that platforming it's ass). So I said kick rocks on the latter and went back to CS and tried it out. Lost a few times with Mimic, tried a few 2P summons, and on the third Furcalling Fingers I got

"Let Me Solo Him."

At first I was like yeah okay copy a cool meme but then he was kicking Radahn's ass and I went huh.

Healed a few times, stayed out out his way while he just fucked Radahn up and I threw in some damage when it didn't look like it would mess up the AI offense cycles and that was it, we won.

I've honestly never seen anything like it in any game, ever, souls or otherwise. I'm still just like, fuck man. It's such a little thing overall but it is so incredibly fucking cool.

 

[Lagduf]

Well it seems like the third DLC for Remnant 2 is going to be announced soon (Devs posted cryptic "soon") on their twitter, so me and my bud will be playing through the Remnant 2 DLC, hopefully the third drops soon.

Jro I know you hated this shit solo, and the last boss is bullshit (I think it's designed for three), but it's a lot of fun playing with a friend.

 

[jro]

Well it seems like the third DLC for Remnant 2 is going to be announced soon (Devs posted cryptic "soon") on their twitter, so me and my bud will be playing through the Remnant 2 DLC, hopefully the third drops soon.

Jro I know you hated this shit solo, and the last boss is bullshit (I think it's designed for three), but it's a lot of fun playing with a friend.

I have to admit I've been tempted more than once to re-install it and start all over, DLC purchases breaking my character be damned... Yeah I admit I'll probably crack sooner than later especially given the lack of similar in the genre lately. If it wasn't for that dumb one-time DLC fuckup I'd probably have burnt a hundred hours into it. Come to think of it... yeah. FUCK YOU CUBE.

Anyway.

I went ahead and finished my NG+ on ER, turns out a Blasphemous Blade and pimped out Mimic will make Malenia trivial. Kind of fun to just melt her after so much annoyance the first time around. Placidusax was significantly harder IMO, but still not bad. Finished up the basic ending without much problem (fuck me tho Elden Beast has a LOT of HP), then thought I might like to do Frenzied Flame. Thought I'd try to do the drop on my current playthrough to see if it would be worth it and... no. I must have died 50 times. It's so bad. From added momentum to the fucking jump like you're a dead weight sliding off the slightest semblance of a cliff. I love the game, and Erdtree is excellent, but I'm not doing that goddamn drop. Some people may call it brilliant but I'm just gonna go with WTF.

Similarly, the helicopter protection mission on NG+ in Armored Core 6 is batshit crazy. You have your mech and one dumbass stupid papier macher troop carrier and you have to basically kill everything in the level before it can even attempt to arrive onscreen. Two of the three at the end have shields that force you to go WAY behind them, then if that shit ain't enough you get a proper mech with more firearm support from the corners, if the helicopter dies you start over.

It's just lazy bad design. Making the player do 5-8 minutes of tedium to get to a critical point where they either automatically die and start over or hang on by the skin of their teeth to start a dumb mini-boss should be beyond any of From's main teams. I honestly really do like AC6 and I'd like to get the real ending but I don't expect to get past this dumb mission.

ADDENDUM!!!! That's a word. Google says so. Anyway.........

Flintlock: Siege of Dawn... fucking sucks. It is bad. It's a little bit above Dolmen on my list of Souls-likes. Background, I really enjoyed Ashen, also developed by A44. It was a straight rip of Dark Souls but with an AI buddy following you around, some town-building, it's good, go play it!

Flintlock, however, is just kind of sad. I'm not enjoying doing this, but the game is terrible, and I have no idea how A44 went from Ashen to this:
-TF with the graphics settings. It's insanely dark and you can't fix it. Clarity looks like a 360 game.
-Oh yeah, poise is not a thing. Hit a motherfucker as many times as you want he'll still gladly interrupt your combo you and send you right back to that door over there.
-CHRIST is this over-designed. There's so goddamned many mechanics and about half of them matter. It's like they A44 played Lords of the Fallen and said Hold Meh Beer. You can dodge, or deflect, or drain shields, or have your little spirit puppy prime enemies for you to lick their balls, or you can double-prime them with your sniper rifle while you have your sprit doge gently tickle their nuts while you run interference by waving a pride flag.

Okay I might have made up part of that last one but the gameplay is shit.

TLRD (who does that?) it's a terrible game made by devs that should know better. I fucking tried it for about 8 fucking hours and Dolmen was what I kept thinking of for a comparison. Play it on Gamepass if you hate yourself I guess.

 

[jro]

Given the recent spate of anything at all new that's any good, been playing a couple of jank-souls.

Bleak Faith: Forsaken - I honestly cannot believe that this has been out for more than a year's worth of feedback to the devs and they haven't improved the fucking impact of giving and taking hits. It's just awful. The level design is also among the worst I've ever seen, just inane. Very slightly above Dolmen-tier so far, do not play this trash. Also can't help but be amused by how every fucking video on Youtube says guys, it's not fair to judge it against Elden Ring cuz the dev team is three people (srsly check out those comments, it's bad). Just, no. That last point is a whole other thing entirely but seriously, fuck you morons that think charging $35 for trash is fine since it's a small team.

Standards are okay to have.

Deathbound - eh... okay so far I guess. I haven't wasted 10+ hours on this like BFF so I suppose it still has plenty of time to make me hate it. Plays and looks pretty good at first but that healing mechanic is rough.

Yeah, just gonna replay Demon's Souls again I guess.

 

[roker]

Elden Ring is really good. I still consider Dark Souls a classic and landmark game, but Elden Ring is the best version of the Souls like genre. I might be obsessed with this one for a while.

 

[jro]

Elden Ring is really good. I still consider Dark Souls a classic and landmark game, but Elden Ring is the best version of the Souls like genre. I might be obsessed with this one for a while.

I'm continually trying to psych myself up to do a Frenzied Flame playthrough but knowing that the down-plat trip to hell is waiting is just so much.

I will eventually bite that bullet I'm pretty sure, and I think I'm on-board for crowning it over Wo Long and Bloodborne for my favorite game in the genre.

Also, as is tradition, I, yes, picked back up a sl I swore I was done with and re-installed Bleak Faith and, after quite a few tries and settling on spamming magic bullets and then switching weapons, finally got somewhere. It's uh, something. The rhythm to combat is just weird as hell, you honestly are best off just trying to time your attacks to when the screen bobs than to actual animations, it doesn't make much sense. It's been nerfed since the original launch I'm pretty sure, but using the staff and Techmancer gear on Konrad makes it so you can melt about half his HP before he can get close to you, then you can switch to melee and finish the fight much easier than trying any of the melee-only strategies that are in vogue at the moment. Then you take the weapon you get from him and do basically the same thing against the really, really dumb mini-boss Mutated Ghoul with its bizarre AOEs and you get some more upgrade items but you also increase all of the upcoming boss' difficulty levels.

Um-hmm, BFF scales boss fights based solely on how many bosses you've killed, not on your level or anything else that would make sense. It is very strange.

It's not a good game at all but I'm oddly fascinated by it. Maybe wait for a sale to actually spend $ on it though if ever.

 

[jro]

I got a ways further into BF and I can say pretty confidently that it's one of the worst SL I've ever played. Absolutely awful boss design and pretty shit mob and area design with zero signposting or guidance anywhere. It definitely reminds me of Dolmen than anything else.

At least Black Myth Wukong looks cool for 10 pm on Monday, fingers crossed.

 

[jro]

Black Myth Wukong has production value but that's about it. Currently at the huge ape boss or the dumb baby guy, both are cheap as fuck and not fun to fight. You can't grind levels since it has a skill tree instead of points.

Feels okay to play I guess but not what I'd call good.

Generally just poor design that could have been a lot better.

The genre is played out. The parry-souls was the last decent innovation.

No more unless From or Team Ninja reinvents everything again.

Basically, yes, Miyazaki save me.

Or TN make Wo Long 2.

I'll stop complaining either way.

 

[Lagduf]

The only hype I've seen for Black Myth is the graphics are supposed to be good.

The Chinese mythology stuff seems cool because it's so unfamiliar to westerners but yeah...sounds like we need competent devs.

 

[terry.330]

Is WuKong even a Souls-like though? From what I've seen it's more of a straight up action game focused on boss fights.

 

[radiantsvgun]

I started on Demon Souls remake again- I still say this is one of the best in the series but I find it to be one of the most difficult. The hp drain and the enemies are brutal. The remake is still easier than the OG since you can stunlock a lot of bosses and enemies you couldn’t before. Def recommended if you have a ps5.

 

[SNKNostalgia]

The dodge timing in WuKong is not easy. Game is actually fun though.

 

[jro]

The only hype I've seen for Black Myth is the graphics are supposed to be good.

The Chinese mythology stuff seems cool because it's so unfamiliar to westerners but yeah...sounds like we need competent devs.

Graphics are apparently really damn good on the PC version. On PS5 (which I'm playing), I can kind of see why they didn't send out review codes. The original launch build, in particular, looked horrible on all modes, bizarre sharpness/slash vasoline (not kidding, it shouldn't have been possible) filter over everything in Performance Mode. It's gone now I think, but it still only looks like, I dunno, Wo Long or Nioh with a few slight improvements on console. Can't imagine how bad the delayed Xbox versions are going to be.

Is WuKong even a Souls-like though? From what I've seen it's more of a straight up action game focused on boss fights.

You are correct, it kind of is, kind of isn't. Level structure is similar, controls are mostly Nioh, but you don't lose souls when you die and it's mostly about hammering one attack button until your abilities come off of cooldown. Defense is about spacing and dodging, so I'd say Bloodborne or some Bayo there. Sort of about, maybe, 50% souls, 25% Bayonetta, 10 BB, 15% some jank shit that shouldn't have been there. It's weird. Doesn't really work out IMO.

I started on Demon Souls remake again- I still say this is one of the best in the series but I find it to be one of the most difficult. The hp drain and the enemies are brutal. The remake is still easier than the OG since you can stunlock a lot of bosses and enemies you couldn’t before. Def recommended if you have a ps5.

Demon's Remake is still awesome. Just a gem of a launch game. The original on PS3 had those nutty difficulty spikes and the slowdown and Remake smooths things out so nicely. Still holds up graphics-wise. Not sure if Demon's (combined) or Dark Souls 3 is most playthroughs for me, around 5-7 each, gonna have to pick Remake up again soon. The HP regen armor and accessories in Demon's, IIRC, are more potent than anything else in the series and help immensely. I remember that when I finally decided to beat False Allant fairly that the regen was strong enough that I could just run around him for a while and recover as much health as any grass.

The dodge timing in WuKong is not easy. Game is actually fun though.

And now the buried lede. FUCK ME. Wukong does so, so many things really well, but it does so much so fucking wrong. I'm currently stuck at the Yellow Wind Sage, guy just smashes me. I'm level 40, which is about 16-18 levels higher than guides say you need to be.

Anyway, some various notes, negative first:

1. The hitboxes suck. AOEs from bosses almost always hit a lot more area than they look like. Gets irritating quickly.
2. Similarly, bosses seem to constantly avoid the player's attacks when they shouldn't. The charged attacks miss ALL THE FUCKing time when it looks like they should land. And then you take half your health bar in damage instead. The transformation attacks also miss hilariously often.
3. There's a miniscule or zero amount of command buffering for the player, which just isn't normal (or fair, yes I'll whine here) for anything in the genre or adjacent. If you start your heavy attack command or your heal, literally, any frames before your character finishes getting up from WTF evs you just got trucked by, well, too bad, there's no command read and you're just going to stand there and eat shit. You get more used to it eventually but it never feels quite right and goddamn it can lead to a lot of cheap hits.
4. TF is with A Pluck of Many? The skill that is ostensibly Mimic/Ash/Puppet gives you a handful of dummy PCs that very slowly attack your enemy, draw little or no aggro, and do basically zero damage. I tried using it on various bosses then respecced completely away from it since wasting half the mana bar on those dipshits is worthless compared to two freezes.
5. The skill tree sucks. Just have normal levelling like every other competent SL ever, don't make me save up two points to get a useless skill that will in turn allow me to save up two more points to get 2% more defense.
6. The bosses tend to have insanely long combos with varied/delayed/weird timing starting quite (i.e. Chapter 2) early. Works if there's a parry mechanic with a stagger because that lets the player counter effectively, but when there's only dodging, and a very limited stagger that triggers mostly out of nowhere and doesn't last, just, ugh.

And then this is probably what irritates me the most, is that there's a lot of good in BMW too, that is made very hard to get to by the bad design choices:

1. Exploration is fun. I hated not having a map or guidance at first, but then I came to really like just cruising around and wiping every area and all of the minibosses that I could find. The levels are deceptively linear actually and pretty good.
2. The basic minute-to-minute gameplay is fun. Really fun. The mobs, the properly-tuned bosses, they're fun. The basics of the gameplay are very sound and would make for a very good game if the design around them was not, this.
3. There are some cool discoverable things. For instance, in Chapter 2, you can bash your head on the Stone Vanguard for a while or you can go find all the hidden eyes to awaken his nemesis who will then fight against him alongside you and KTFO dude but will then turn on you but is easier and has a key item.
   1. SEE THIS is what I hate. I know there's gotta be a bunch more cool moments like this in the game but you have to get through the grind your teeth to bits bad boss fights to get there.

Anyway, like I mentioned, stuck at Wind Sage. He's like the 30-something-ish boss of 91 in the game.

Also, pet peeve for me. Yong Yea (you'll never be Kiryu), et al covering the damn game like it's a revelation due to sales... at least 80% of those are from China. 2 million elsewhere's cool I suppose but, um, it's China. It's China. If 'sage bought 8 million copies I take it back, but I'm not sure about some of those sales otherwise just saying. Don't try to tell me this is bigger than Elden Ring.

TL;DR... game is almost so good but it's not quite due to things that should have been done right the first time.

Edit: the launch version on PS5 had a Balance Mode option where the target was 45 fps. What in the actual fuck. That's judder or stutter constantly.

 

[Lagduf]

Anyone claiming BMW is bigger than Elden Ring is…insane, lol.

 

[jro]

Yellow Wind Sage is one of the worst boss fights I've played in any game in any genre. It's just oppressively irritating. Reminds me of Senator Armstrong, which is basically my Rubicon, but somehow quite a bit worse.

Kinda cute how Game Science just leans right in to all of its bad press like is that IDGAF cred or is it not a not having a PR department?

Hard non-recommend re the game itself. Can't really even see myself hate-finishing it at this point.

Also, various sites that gave it a 6/10 in reviews have had to remove author bylines due to harassment, which is not normal. Those insane sales on Steam, just, still, no.

 

[Taiso]

Demon's Remake is still awesome. Just a gem of a launch game. The original on PS3 had those nutty difficulty spikes and the slowdown and Remake smooths things out so nicely. Still holds up graphics-wise. Not sure if Demon's (combined) or Dark Souls 3 is most playthroughs for me, around 5-7 each, gonna have to pick Remake up again soon. The HP regen armor and accessories in Demon's, IIRC, are more potent than anything else in the series and help immensely. I remember that when I finally decided to beat False Allant fairly that the regen was strong enough that I could just run around him for a while and recover as much health as any grass.

I will definitely support this. I wanted a PS5 specifically for Demon's Souls and I wasn't disappointed. It is one tight and refined remake and was well worth the effort and money I spent to be able to play and own it. It might just be the best PS5 game out there, even today.

 

[jro]

About halfway through ch 4 TF is with this keyboard Google, anyway, eh. There are a lot of really good elements in it and then there are a lot that's not good.

Anyway this is not Alan Wake 2.

 

[Lagduf]

I forgot I saw this pic a few days ago and saved it just for you, @jro:

 

[SML]

I'm watching the recent progress on Bloodborne emulation with great interest. Only played the base game via PS Now, so there's a lot to look forward to between the Old Hunters, higher resolutions and frame-rates, and (I assume) more responsive controls. Maybe Sony will even figure out they need to grab the money while it's still on the table.

 

[Lagduf]

I’ll buy a PS5 if they do a remake of Bloodborne ala Demon Souls.

 

[jro]

I forgot I saw this pic a few days ago and saved it just for you, @jro:

View attachment 78102

Why can't I quit you @Lagduf ?

Anyway, for real, this is one of the strangest souls-adjacent games I've ever played. 80% maybe, good. Maybe 10% excellent. Then 10% that's just awful and generally tanks everything else.

 

[jro]

So yeah edit on phone way too close to post on phone. Fuck.