Souls-likes

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
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Games fucking amazing. Best game of the last few gens. Just cause you tried to go through tomb of giants without a lantern and couldn't beat Gwen doesn't make it a bad game. It makes you a bad player.

First time i played the game I went through TOTG without a lantern and before placing the Lord Vessel. Had to walk my ass out of there in the dark. One of my favorite gaming memories.
I've beaten the game. This is NG+, and TotG wasn't a problem, finished it in 10 minutes with my only death coming from falling on the shortcut.

Edit: okay I finally beat Gwyn again, salt got the better of me for a minute there. It's a good game with some bad design choices.
 
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jro

Gonna take a lot
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Been dinkin' around with Hellpoint on Xbox One. It's janky as all get out, but oddly enjoyable. Also had maybe my favorite glitch I've ever seen in the genre- playing it last night, I got my ass kicked by the Master of Puppets boss (yep, looks just like Lars Ullrich and everything) repeatedly. After losing maybe 7-8 times in a row, I got killed again, but my character didn't actually die. Zero health, but everything kept going just like it had before. So I just kept mashing attack, boss plus a bunch of adds couldn't kill me, and I eventually won. Sekiro has several bosses that have broken scripting if you do certain things that makes them kill themselves, but I think this is the first time a bug made me invincible.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
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I've put around 4 or 5 hours into Mortal Shell so far, with much of that just going into learning the game and its systems. It's definitely much more polished than Hellpoint was.

The minute-to-minute gameplay is quite good, combat has that heavy, solid feel to it that From games do and so many clones don't get right, so that's awesome. The "hardening" mechanic is interesting and useful once you get over the learning curve on how to use it effectively. As much as enemy attacks track you when you're moving, almost like Sekiro in some cases, hardening generally is more effective, IMO, than just spamming dodge.

The level design is not good, so far, though. The starting area is a sprawling mess with a ton of different paths, most of which lead to dead ends and mediocre items. There are also a ton of enemies in every area, reminds me a little of how Demon Ruins in Dark Souls has the same dumb enemies copy-pasted about every three feet. I'm most of the way through the first main dungeon now and it's similarly annoying, but a little more linear at least.

Worth playing, overall, recommended even with imperfections.
 

k'_127

NeoGumby's Sycophant,
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The level design is not good, so far, though. The starting area is a sprawling mess with a ton of different paths, most of which lead to dead ends and mediocre items. There are also a ton of enemies in every area, reminds me a little of how Demon Ruins in Dark Souls has the same dumb enemies copy-pasted about every three feet. I'm most of the way through the first main dungeon now and it's similarly annoying, but a little more linear at least.

Thanks for the write up. I tried the game a bit and liked everything in it. Exploration / level design was the only point I couldn't judge in my initial impression so I was keen to hear about it. Let us know how it goes if you decide to finish the game.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
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Thanks for the write up. I tried the game a bit and liked everything in it. Exploration / level design was the only point I couldn't judge in my initial impression so I was keen to hear about it. Let us know how it goes if you decide to finish the game.

I had little to no problem with the first two minibosses that I fought, then got obliterated by the first main boss I fought (Tarsus, The First Martyr). Turns out, that's not the recommended area to start on, and I also managed to miss the part of the hub area with all the upgrading equipment, statue, etc. So I restarted the game. Hopefully go the right direction this time. At least beating the boss in the tutorial popped one of those cool diamond/rare achievements.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
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I have all four weapons and all four shells now. Much smoother experience this time around. The base gameplay is executed really well, with hardening feeling like second nature once you get used to it. Still gotta learn to use the parry, though. It's a cool animation, but it's also about twice as long as the parry animation in DS.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
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Okay, I finished Mortal Shell. Moment to moment gameplay, yeah, pretty good. Hardening works well as a mechanic. But the healing, yeesh. Bad. There's no automatic refill like in every normal Souls-like, no, in this you collect mushrooms, roasted rats, and you nail parries. The parries are fine against weak enemies (an enpowered riposted after a parry gives you back health), but in a boss fight, uh, no, where missing a parry means losing half your HP. So you brute force the game by waiting by a mushroom spawn and picking it up again and again and buying roasted rats for cheap.

Three of the four main bosses will lose, easily, to the exact same pattern, and the fourth (final) one is just fucking annoying with literally roughly as many HP as the rest put together, no good attacks of his own, and a couple of dumb moves where he summons ads and then cheaps the fuck out.

By far the hardest part of the game is leaving the dungeons after beating the bosses, which is kind of cool and also really irritating.

Not a good game. Hellpoint was generally shit, but it was also more fun to play than this. Absolutely not recommended unless you're desperate to play another Souls-like and you have literally nothing that's not awful in the queue.
 

k'_127

NeoGumby's Sycophant,
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Sound good to me. Will definitely play it later.

I think I went through Dark Souls 1&2 and Nioh too fast, one after the other, so I'm currently hording as many of these games as I can. My plan for the next souls game would be Dark Souls 3 on PS5 because the PS4 Pro patch messed up the frame rate, which currently floats between 40 - 50 fps and I find it jarring (prior to the patch, it could be played at a stable 30 fps with boost mode, which is my preference if 60 fps wasn't available). I just hope the game will be supported on ps5 at launch with at least a stable frame rate.
 

Taiso

Remembers The North,
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Dec 29, 2000
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I am playing The Immortal for NES and there are a lot of Souls-like elements to it.

It has death traps, puzzles which require backtracking, a dank dungeon atmosphere, item use and management, punishing combat that requires precision timing, a stamina bar and lore that you learn about by talking to NPCs and examining items.

It definitely has a similar vibe, even though the mechanics aren't the same at all.
 

Shmuppy

Banned
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Aug 5, 2020
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549
Salts & Sanctuary is pretty much Dark Souls in 2D and it has co-op.
 
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Tron

Test
15 Year Member
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May 20, 2004
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8,135
Another video up for the demon's souls remake showed for the recent PS5 showcase.
 

greedostick

Obsessed Neo-Fan
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Another video up for the demon's souls remake showed for the recent PS5 showcase.

It looks so clean. I haven't been this excited for a game ever. It's my all time favorite game. I hope I can get a PS5.... I wasn't going to get one, but Sony got me.
 

Tron

Test
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It looks so clean. I haven't been this excited for a game ever. It's my all time favorite game. I hope I can get a PS5.... I wasn't going to get one, but Sony got me.
Me either at this point,means for me selling off some other gaming things to buy a PS5.If i can't i'll probably won't get the console until next year.Demon's Souls and Resident Evil Village are the only two games that make me want a PS5 at the most.
 

neo_mao

Been There., Done That., It Was Shit.,
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Another video up for the demon's souls remake showed for the recent PS5 showcase.

I don’t even like these games but I have to admit that looks really good
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
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Like quite a few people, I'd be totally down to hold off on getting a PS5 for quite a while if Demon's Souls didn't look so incredibly good.

Seems like the multiplayer should stay pretty hot for quite a while at least? I was surprised as hell when I finally played through Dark Souls II SotFS on XB1 a year or so ago and still consistently got invaded and found summon signs, so I'd imagine the community is gonna be pretty active for quite some time on Demon's.

edit: I hadn't seen this before just now- the whole PS5 pre-order thing may already be a giant shitshow.

Just put the damn thing on PC so I can finally just go that route and call it good, Sony.
 
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ChuChu Flamingo

We have purposely, trained him wrong, ...as a joke
10 Year Member
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I think bluepoint games SUCKS

1600257233969.jpg
 

greedostick

Obsessed Neo-Fan
15 Year Member
Joined
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Posts
4,474
Ive been playin demons souls on the RPCS3 emulator on the custom server. Been having a lot of fun. Lots of people in the discord doing co op and pvp. They're actually having an event all October. Of you want info on getting set up pm me. I can help get you started!
 

Gentlegamer

Sakura's Bank Manager
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Dec 7, 2014
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728
I have the RPCS3 emulator and tried some Demon's Souls on it, but it seemed like I needed to change a bunch of settings or something. I didn't try the custom server.
 

greedostick

Obsessed Neo-Fan
15 Year Member
Joined
Aug 11, 2003
Posts
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I have the RPCS3 emulator and tried some Demon's Souls on it, but it seemed like I needed to change a bunch of settings or something. I didn't try the custom server.

They keep updating the emulator. Its runs pretty much perfect now. No long shader loading times. There are just a few options in the emulator thst need changed. Pretty much all in the gpu tab. Like set it to vulcan and check white shaders or something.
 

munchiaz

Robert Garcia's Butler
Joined
Nov 13, 2011
Posts
1,299
Kind of looks like it could be a estus flask?

Edit: NVM, I'm playing through Demon's souls now on ps3 (probably been about 5+years since last playthrough) and this "lamp" is in the original as well.
demon's souls estsu flask.PNG
 
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