Souls-likes

[jro]

Then I got to Supreme Inspector in chapter 6.

Just uniquely terrible game design, hard to even describe everything that's wrong with this guy.

I really hate to just quit after 50 hours but f me, the entire second half of BMW is a slog that then becomes torture and not anywhere near that fun please stretch my face with knitting needles Cenobite kind.

 

[Taiso]

Elden Ring's new patch nerfs Consort Radahn and makes a bunch of adjustments:

 

[Gentlegamer]

Nice, I've been on a two month break, when I go back and can fight a less-bullshit version.

 

[SML]

Runs shockingly smoothly on my pc. (12GB 3060, 5700x3d, 64GB DDR4.)

Still has a long way to go (sound, lighting, memory leaks and graphical glitches) but it's happening.

 

[jro]

Notes.

I got to and I am currently stuck on Stone Monkey in Wu Kong. He's one of two back-to-back final boss fights (except there's actually a true final boss if you don't start NG+ and head back to stage 3 I mean who in the fuck would have thought that was a good idea fuck me okay no more) that have two phases one after another and man, Stone Monkey just feels like an HP wall for no reason except to burn your spells out. Oh and there are two unskippable cutscenes within those first two phases. I may eventually go back and try to brute force my way through this but until then it is shit.

BMW is probably going win GotY at Game Awards, maybe Geoff Keighley will light a monk on fire in protest.

Sorry, back on topic.

Needed a break so I finished Space Marine II, not a souls-like, but fun if you just wanna kill bitches, as well as a proper playthrough of Wo Long on PS5. Still love the main game, and the DLC for it is still trash, I got halfway through the second one and realized my SiriusXM playlist had restarted and I was barely awake and just, no. Just bad dlc for such a good game that no one cared about anyway.

Anyway, main point that I forgot about because it's not worth remembering, Enotria. Tl;rd Fuck you, Jyamma Games, you are Dolmen-tier. And goddamnit, this one pains me to say it, unlike some of the low/zero effort SL in the past few years. LONG STORY SHORT... the basic gameplay is pretty good, level design is okay, then you get to a level boss that can literally two-shot you if you miss a single parry attempt. Like, throughout the entire 5 minute fight. Miss one parry, then another one, you lose, and it's just inconsitent as hell. Every boss has two phases. They can interrupt your heals. They have bizarrely-segmented moves where they transition from one animation to another one that you don't expect that does a delay then finally swings, just, fuck, no more.
The slightly extended window for a successful parry is good, but everything else about Enotria is fucking terrible.

Edit, and this is $50. Enotria sucks.

The genre is still trending pretty sharp downward. Holding out that Miyazaki may will come up with something good but I think that indy devs are just getting somehow worse and worse.

 

[Taiso]

Dark Souls is the DKR of video games.

Everyone loved it so much that they wanted to do their own version without truly even taking a moment to really think about why they liked it.

The mechanics of Dark Souls are good enough but there is an entire design philosophy behind From Software's output that all these wannabes just don't understand and can't comprehend.

That's why so many of them are so bad.

It's just an inevitability of influential creative expression.

 

[jro]

I tried and tried and tried with Enotria. It is fucking trash. Fighting is basically pretty easy, but my God does the level design suck ass. Maybe I'm just a joe8 but I've been wandering around for 45 minutes after beating red dip shit mini boss and I have no clue where to go.

It's almost comical how stupid this level design is. You jump on some vines for a while kill some guys then get back to the same fucking place.

How in the fuck does a dev get the combat so right and then completely fuck up everything around it? Overall, it's utter shit.

Pls no more from Italian devs that suck just like no more from Chinese devs that suck.

New rule, if your game is not from From or Team Ninja or Round8 then why bother.

Edit... @Taiso ... You are so right it's painful. Never woulda guessed a genre could do an Icarus but here we are.

 

[jro]

Jesus fucking Christ the Enotria Sevastapol boss is beyond bad. It's faster than anything in Bloodborne and the player's weapons, at best, hit about once every three attacks from the boss. Oh and the level design is still awful. It has SO many other problems but it's not worth bothering. Go watch Paige wear her NXT belt on her tits while she gets double-teamed by Austin Creed and Brad Maddox instead, way more worth the time. No idea how I know that exists.

Xavier like totes bi, I mean c'mon, he really got that cam right up in there. I have no idea that any such thing actually exists. Macaroni pictures. Let's make them for Moses.

Fuck Enotria permanently, and the devs should all be melted in a forge.

The tribalism/nationalism in game dev sucks balls. Enotria is fucking trash, and if a U.S. or Japanese dev had made it people would admit it. Black Myth Wukong is overrated mostly garbage that's propped up by the Chinese government, again, if a U.S. or J dev made it people would admit that shit.

 

[Taiso]

Go watch Paige wear her NXT belt on her tits while she gets double-teamed by Austin Creed and Brad Maddox instead, way more worth the time. No idea how I know that exists.

This is such a forced thing to put into your comment that I kind of think you want us to know that you know it exists.

Xavier like totes bi, I mean c'mon, he really got that cam right up in there. I have no idea that any such thing actually exists. Macaroni pictures. Let's make them for Moses.

I am confused and need this entire sentence explained to me.

Fuck Enotria permanently, and the devs should all be melted in a forge.

The tribalism/nationalism in game dev sucks balls. Enotria is fucking trash, and if a U.S. or Japanese dev had made it people would admit it. Black Myth Wukong is overrated mostly garbage that's propped up by the Chinese government, again, if a U.S. or J dev made it people would admit that shit.

I need to elaborate on this point.

 

[jro]

In interest of not re-posting the wall of text, @Taiso , ... ... No I'm not rot reincarnated... You realize I have this little Guts-looking sob as my post-conscience all of a sudden?

First though, Spaventa was actually really easy being fully aggressive but now I'm at the last Moretta, and it just doesn't work. She's just nuts and basically breaks the mechanics.

Anyway.

Yeah, sometimes stream of consciousness should not be documented. Dumb post I'm sure won't be my last.

Re last thing made very short, I think it's quite possible that Xi propped up sales of BMW in China and used all his levers possible to gain coverage elsewhere, made a mediocre game into what it was. Trying to present as equitable to the West in entertainment would mean a lot to him. Enotria is much lower stakes obviously but there's a whole lot of positive coverage from Italians and not much elsewhere. Fuck am I Trump of game critics here all of a sudden that's no bueno.

Keep keeping me mostly honest brother.

 

[Taiso]

I wasn't criticizing you, jro my bro.

I just needed some context on what you were saying.

If you're wondering why Black Myth Wukong is getting so much press, I don't think you need to dig too deep into the weeds to understand how that's possible.

As for Enotria being a nationalist game celebrating Italian culture, it's the first I've heard of it.

That said, I don't see a problem with that. It's their country. It's their game. They can do what they want. Remember that Italy is riding a wave of patriotism currently. Whatever people think of that, however much people want to clutch their pearls about it, the game is going to be celebrated favorably by their media precisely because of that identity. Rather than taking umbrage about a game developed by Italians being a statement of Italian pride, people need to take a step back and wonder when they mistook their moral outrage for an enlightened perspective.

 

[SML]

SOTFS Lighting Engine mod has updated. Looking better than ever. (Third shot is DS2 vanilla for comparison.)

 

[Gentlegamer]

Is there a mod to fix the dead zones and remove durability?

 

[SML]

Is there a mod to fix the dead zones and remove durability?

Original:
https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/76


SOTFS:
https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/786
https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/1200
https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/910
https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/894

 

[Taiso]

Whoa that makes a big difference as far as the visuals go. Impressive.

 

[SML]

Check this shit out.

 

[Taiso]

Man, imagine pouring all that effort into duplicating an environment from the worst of the Souls games.

They should have just done the Band of the Falcon's camp from Berserk instead.

 

[jro]

I am jonesing for a souls-like. Got a little into Nine Sols and then got bored, gonna have to get back to it or maybe finally finish my DS3 Legion Go playthrough.

It's like Occam's Razor for genres, you either get closer and closer to the ideal or your studio dies.

I dunno, I guess I could do with more Hellpoints or the like. Double A isn't a thing anymore I guess.

 

[Taiso]

A lot of indie studios are taking the design theories and ideas of SoulsBorne games and dropping them into 16 and 24 bit retro action brawlers. It was bound to happen.

So many people think that Batman beating up Superman was the best thing to come out of The Dark Knight Returns when it absolutely wasn't.

We've been suffering with distaff interpretations of that event in comics ever since. It's like someone else picking up Thor's hammer or Captain America's shield breaking, or like people kicking out of 20 finishers in a wrestling match week after week. Everyone copying these events because they want their own 'cool moment' is missing the point. It cheapens the original and dilutes the mediums.

Or it's hubris and they think they can do it better without understanding anything about those initial inspirations.

And then Elden Ring, a game that is basically reskinned Dark Souls III with a mount, reminds us that only a few people are capable of doing the genre justice.

Sometimes, you need a really big newspaper so that you can swat people on the nose and tell them to go back and relearn the basics first.

 

[jro]

It's been a bad year for the genre.

Games in general kinda weak transition year, Black Ops 6 was one of the better single player campaigns which is not saying much.

Took me a while to come around to it but Erdtree is easily my GOTY. Not close for second. Still planning to get around to Nine Sols for real sometime soon but not grabbing me immediately.

 

[SML]

A bottomless curse, a bottomless sea
Accepting of all that there is and can be


Finished with the custom build (but not the modifications) recommended here:

 

[Gentlegamer]

I miss when FROM made good games with good bosses.

 

[Taiso]

Sometimes it's hard to believe From Softward also did the Tenchu series.

 

[Lagduf]

My friend and I have been playing Remnant 2 again.

Been having a lot of fun and the new classes and areas in the three DLCs are great additions to the game.

They added a boss rush mode as well which grants new items on successful runs.

Honestly disappointed they’re done with this game because I definitely want more, lol.

I know they plan to do a third game but It’ll be awhile as they’re currently working on the next Darksiders game

 

[ggallegos1]

Super late to the party, but my wife and I were just talking about maybe doing another Bloodborne run and we discovered Lies of P. Game is fantastic, feels solid and I appreciate the additional upgrade options and systems it has. We're about to fight the Cathedral boss with a tech build