Personally speaking outside of the FromSoftware catalogue, Nioh and Hollow Knight are the best soulslike ganes ive played.

The combat mechanics in Nioh (not played 2 yet) are the best of this generation for this type of game. If you really do like the Dark Souls games and you havent tried Nioh, then you are in for a real treat.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has some mechanics ripped right out of the Souls template. It has bonfires in the form of meditation points that heals you up and respawns all the surrounding enemies. The 'souls' are used to unlock paths on the skill tree. The locations have shortcuts that open up as you progress. It's obviously nowhere near as in-depth or brilliant as a Souls game but it's a very fun third person action game in its own right. One little Souls variation I liked was that your dropped 'souls' don't just lie around waiting for you to pick them up again but attach to the enemy that killed you. When you strike that enemy after respawning your health and force are restored and your 'souls' are returned.

nick_md wrote:

Nah, no ps+ here at all, was surprised to see last weekend I had to pay to try rdonline, though Sony was free online. Didn't try it.

Watched trailers just now, for some reason ds3 appeals more than BB. I'll mull it over and get stuck into one of them tomorrow.

Bloodborne rules them all. Second best game ever made.

I'll just post once here unless anyone wants me to go deeper because as the OP alludes, my feelings on these games are parody at this point (that's on me shitposting when a new one comes out, not anyone else) but I can generally sum up my reluctance for them to three general reasons.

1) Aesthetics. There's a general grimness or eldritch ness or horror ness to a large number of them that simply does not resonate with me. Even DS' specific brand of fantasy / lore has an overbearing weight to it. I suspect this heaviness is because a central conceit or theme to them is the concept of death and what this means to the world, as the death / repeat cycle is such a core gameplay loop. Even something with a slightly less oppressive (although likely because it looks like a cartoon, not thematically) feel like Hollow Knight was something I bounced off, while conversely Flora who has never played an actual Souls game - nor do I think she wants to - completed it twice and is excited for Silksong.

2) Fairness. A lot of arguments for these types of games that I saw when the style was first coming to the fore was the concept that they were explicitly "fair" games - that the systems and enemies in the world operate in a specific way, and you learn them and if you don't respect them and die then it's your fault. I understand that mechanism with combat, but when I'm surprised by a boulder coming down the stairs in the first hour of Dark Souls that kills me with no sense of warning, it's inherently unfair to me. Yes, on my next run I will know it's there, but thar is antithetical to something like Mario 1 where the mechanics are introduced in a fair way (ie a jump with ground underneath, and then one without). To bump me back in my progress in a cheap "gotcha" way is something that I bounce off. Incidentally, it's why I think The Lost Levels is a shitty Mario game.

3) Time and Mechanics. Because of the two above, I don't feel the desire to sink the time into them. I'm not an instant gratification guy - 30 runs on Dark Side of the Moon in Mario Odyssey (a lot of Mario here?) Suggests I am happy to sink in time to learn a pattern, but that's because I enjoy the way Mario controls, and by that point I've learned tricks throughout my 20+ hours of the main game I can use. To me, it feels like these games demand too much too soon, and again the time spent working through the equivalent of 1-1 (another reference) and seeing the same environs over and over feels like time wasted to me.


And that's me. I will be taking questions but also know all of this is me, and not the quality of the games themselves. But also I may be absent here for a bit so sorry if I don't respond instantly.

acemuzzy wrote:

After FM21?

BotW innit

Hellpoint is unpolished a bit janky and has 6/10 written all over it, but i've been thinking about it all day while i'm not playing, so it clearly has 'something' about it. 

Cleared out the first main area of baby ads, and found the boss door easily enough. One novel aspect of this game is that the enemies don't respawn when you rest at a bonfire. BUT! random enemies (including types that weren't there before) do appear depending on the space-station's location in its orbit around the planet below. 

I'll see how that pans out in real time over extended sessions, but it sounds cool and a good way to keep you on your toes. Also cuts out any possible grinding of low level ads for souls.

I'll give the first boss a blast later when this weather has cooled down a bit (hopefully).

Ign gave hellpoint a 6 out of 10. I watched the review. The space station setting looks cool. The enemies / reuse of design of DS didnt appeal. Could have been braver and looked to dead space or the like for ideas. Why not have weapons that could be found on a space station or theme the enemies away from the DS horror motif?

Yeah, remnant is on my wishlist. When a Sale and pay day line up I'll nab it.

Bit more time with shattered this morning.

Its potentially REALLY good.

It's lacking some very basic polish like proper sound/visual cues on item switching and even picking up stuff. And even when you confirm something in a menu.

The fighting is almost there, but it has issues around what happens when you run out of stamina, and (as per reg above) what's fair with dodges etc.

It's pretty, but as I think I mentioned early has incongruous design choices in spots (Tim Burtonesque meets tron meets journey), your navi equiv is playing it for comedy in a game that is otherwise poe faced, 2d platforming with 3d souls.

Should say some proper positives.

The jumping is great. Double jump and b does a dash. And they've borrowed from destiny in how you can control landing. So you can drop for ages then jump just before landing to not damage yourself. Allows for a lot of verticality.

Game is in desperate need of a little pull yourself up from edge mechanic though. The number of just missable jumps is silly.

Good choice re losing essence (souls). If you die by enemy you have to kill that enemy to get them back. If you die by misadventure, to borrow a destiny term, you don't lose essence. Given the platforming and rough edges, this is welcome.

The 2d bits are quite well done, but you can move in 3d in some bits and miss jumps, and it blurs rules a bit around what might be a hidden area or not with the 2 views.

Beat my first mini boss too. Was a good fight in a stunning locale.

General feel isn't as punitive or oppressive as other souls games.

Halo purple needs to be banned, stat, though as a viable item/orb/enemy/power colour.

Hellpoint really opened up after the first boss. Wow! The ship is huge. And stunning. Kinda like Halo meets Event Horizon.

Found the main base of operations with all the necesary upgrade/workshop benches, then soon after found the second boss gate. Its my understanding that the A-B route from bonfire to boss is always pretty straightforward, its the up & down exploration and convoluted corridors/walkways that lead to the good stuff. 

It was stupidly hot here yesterday and i was worried my laptop was gonna overheat so i called it an early night. Looking forward to getting stuck in today...after my coffee, of course.

It isn't just the fact it's there it's the fact that it's almost your first set of stairs. Maybe that's the plan, to teach you that early on, but it's just too much too soon for me and it left a sour taste in my mouth.

I should add there is one thing I DO love about Souls games and that's the maps. I love the concept of traversing round an environment and it being like a little concertina thing that at the end brings you out like above where you started and you kick down a wee ladder or something to skip the whole place.
I have been sort of 6/10 enjoying Fallen Order on PC and when it does that I give it a wee mental nod like "well played, wee man".

Yeah I've watched all those, they're quality vids. Some absolute stinkers out there.

Got my Fashion sorted in Hellpoint.

It seemed ok. Enemy variety was appalling, wasn't it?

Yeah, wasn't bad. It was a pleasantly surprising game.

Lol. So I've played 3 of the games in that. Gonna try Lucrah too I reckon. 

Bright Memory is pants. Impressive in ways for one guy, but pants. Wouldn't have thought to include it, that forgettable. 

Gegein 3 (or whatever it's called) isn't really souls like, reminded me more of dynasty warriors mixed with Dragon's Dogma. 

Shattered review in there is spot on, and shows me that they really are tweaking. Haven't had any spike deaths like he did there. And everything else he says is spot on.