[SilverEars]

General discussion of Souls-like/Souls-borne game genre.

I thought I was an idiot for being oblivious to parry mechanics in Sekiro when I first attempted it (even if they actually tell you how it works, which is why I gave up the first time), but this guy is much more idiotic than that. He can't even figure out how to equip a pistol and misses lamps, or bonfires. Skills doesn't necessary garner viewerships.

 

[Kukuk]

I really wish I could love souls games. I think I just don't have it in my anymore to play really difficult games. I did play the original Demon's Souls and beat, which I really liked, and beat Code Vein. Also, is Dragon's Dogma considered souls-like? I played that through like 20 times. lol

 

[SilverEars]

Damn, you beat Code Vein? It was too hard for me and I gave up at some boss. I wouldn't say Dragon's Dogma is Souls-like.

I think you beat the hard ones. Demon's Souls bosses are easy, but the levels are difficult. Perhaps, tedious is the right term for Demon's Souls since you have to repeat big bulk of the level when you die. They added more bonfire locations in Dark Souls, so it's more manageable. Once you figure out how to play these games, they get pretty easy. The difficulty is not having the patience during the first playthrough. I also encourage going on Google to look up guides and forums/reddit for tips/hints/advices. It's more of a game you learn as you go, and once you learn enough, it gets easy.

The biggest difficulty of early From Soft Souls games is the clunky controls, and enemies that randomly spam attacks you and you die from the spam combos on occasions. Which really raises frustrations, but I think part of the appeal is figuring out ways to dealing with those situations. It can really be annoying or you figure out ways to deal with it.

I've actually gotten cursed in the depths during a playthrough of Dark Souls. It would reduce your health to half until you uncurse yourself. I causes you to revive with half half when you are curse. This put a real damper on my enjoyment, but figuring out the solution was the part of the challenge, and once you do, it feels relieving. The experience is nothing like anything out there.

Once you experience being cursed in Dark Souls. You understand why it's funny when this guy gets cursed. This is the reason why Dark Souls streams are so entertaining once you've dealt with all that crap in Dark Souls.


The later games really improved the controls, and the more precise controls helps reduce difficulty from clunky controls. So, I usually recommend starting with Bloodborne, and then DS3, and then play the classics. Since Elden Ring is out, it makes sense to start with that one. Since, it has the most up to date control mechanics.

 

[Kukuk]

I've really been on the fence about trying Elden Ring, and to this point I still haven't hopped off it. I hear mixed things about how forgiving it is, which doesn't help making the decision to get it any easier. Some people say it's easier than the Dark Souls games, some say it's harder. Then I've also heard the game gets easier the further you get, which gives me some hope, but then I've also heard some of the last bosses are extremely frustrating.

I might jump on it when it goes on sale or something.

 

[SilverEars]

I've really been on the fence about trying Elden Ring, and to this point I still haven't hopped off it. I hear mixed things about how forgiving it is, which doesn't help making the decision to get it any easier. Some people say it's easier than the Dark Souls games, some say it's harder. Then I've also heard the game gets easier the further you get, which gives me some hope, but then I've also heard some of the last bosses are extremely frustrating.

I might jump on it when it goes on sale or something.

It's easier to get into, yes. Open world is easy, and it's easy to over-level for the dungeons. The number of offense options in terms of weapons, and magic makes it so that you can play easy mode if you just pick the right weapon and upgrade them, or supplement with magic.

It's much more flexible to make the experience much easier. Use magic and summons. lol

However, some of the bosses are real annoying in a bad way, and personally, I didn't like the boss designs. Toward the end, the From-Soft challenges arises, in a bad way.

Personally, I don't like that summons and OP magic in the game. It defeats challenge of the game, but also, the boss designs are hard, not in a fair challening way, so it's better off having option to summon to get it over with. Probably the most unfun boss fights in this game compared to other From Soft titles.

However, when I go all out on magic, everything is trivial. I just hate the game's balance.

Personally, least likeable characters and game balance. I don't like the open-world, but I like the many options for spells and weapons. I prefer better tweaked challenges without the open world (seems pointless after so many hours put into it), and strictly dungeons like in Dark Souls series.

 

[Kukuk]

Welp.

My brother finally whittled me down.

 

[SilverEars]

Welp.



My brother finally whittled me down.

Enjoy. Tips on making it easy:

Become an astrologer and pump INT. Use glintstone pebble and shard magic. Find scrolls to get more powerful magic and learn the spells from mage npcs. Get the magic scaling swords for melee weapon. Carian Knight's sword, Moonveil, Darkmoon Greatsword. Get summoning bell early and use summons in boss fights. Later when you get black assassin or banish knight summons, upgrade them and use them.

If you don't want to use magic, start out vagabond with straightsword. Get the bloodhoundfang as soon as you can and upgrade the weapon. Upgrading weapons are most important. Find smithing stone in caverns to upgrade weapons. If mage, upgrade mage staff over your melee weapon.

Personally, I like longsword to supplement mage because longsword is fast and use shield when blocking imps in dungeons, it's an effective combo. When you find wetblades you can change weapon scaling. If you are a mage, you want to start out with standard and then change to magic scaling when you find magic whetblade.

When you are in the open world, fight on Torrent as much as you can. It's awkward at the start, but get used to fighting on Torrent. You should be fighting Erdtree Avatars on Torrent, and also dragons out in the open world. Torrent makes it easier to avoid certain phased attacks.

 

[Kukuk]

I gotta say the HDR implementation for this game is fantastic; among the best I've seen in a game. Playing it on a 4k OLED is pretty sweet, especially locked at 60FPS. Wish I could take proper screenshots with HDR, but this'll have to do.

The HDR really looks best in dark areas like this, so when something is bright it really pops.

The only real performance issues I've seen is the damned stuttering from time to time. The stuttering wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that the game rubberbands after the stuttering is over. I swear it's been like15 years since I've seen games rubberband; kind of an oddity here.

 

[SilverEars]

I gotta say the HDR implementation for this game is fantastic; among the best I've seen in a game. Playing it on a 4k OLED is pretty sweet, especially locked at 60FPS. Wish I could take proper screenshots with HDR, but this'll have to do.



The HDR really looks best in dark areas like this, so when something is bright it really pops.

The only real performance issues I've seen is the damned stuttering from time to time. The stuttering wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that the game rubberbands after the stuttering is over. I swear it's been like15 years since I've seen games rubberband; kind of an oddity here.

Do you have VRR? Not sure if PC supports VRR, but I heard it smooths out the stutters. I have OLED as well, and I like to game on it due to the colors. Samurai is a a good pick. Uchigatana is a good weapon to start out with.

 

[Kukuk]

I do have variable refresh, but it doesn't help the stutters. At first I thought the stuttering was a streaming issue, but once I saw the rubberbanding I started to think it might be some sort of game engine logic issue. I really hope they can eventually fix it, I know it's going to end up getting me killed.

 

[SilverEars]

I ask becuase digital foundry keeps mentioning it helps with Elden Ring. FromSoft sucks at optimizing for smooth frame-rate. I think starting from Bloodborne with the new engine, they didn't do a good job keeping steady frame rates. Bloodborne is thhe worst of the bunch with 30 or below fps and just bad stability. I still played it and enjoyed it on the PS5. I wish they update the game with steady 60 fps, and put it out on pc. I'm sure DS3 has issues as well, but for me, it runs really nice at 4k 60fps. I like DS3 the best when it comes to how it runs. DS1 remastered runs better, but it's old engine.

With that said, I finished up my 2nd run of Dark Souls 1, and I ran into much hurdles (being cursed in the depths), but smoother experience overall since I know what to do mostly. This time I played pure sorcerer, and it wasn't so bad. Once you get the soul spear or crystal soul spear spell, that's when magic becomes OP.

With this run, I felt like I got gud. I now do a lot of back stabs, and know that it's easy to take out knights with back-stabs. I really enjoy backstabbing the knights. lol. Since this run was easier, I may start to do a challenge run. Limit myself from OP weapons.

So, there is a magic scaling melee weapon I would have never expected to enjoy, but it was fun using. It was weapon that had spear like moveset, and I never used spears in the past since I like regular knight sword move sets. There are advantages to using spears. The length of the spear keeps enemies at distance while you still do damage to them.

 

[SilverEars]

Currently playing Jedi Fallen Order, and I had no idea it was a Souls-like when I played it couple years ago.

In terms of aestetics, there's really not much similarities with Dark Souls games, but there are certain aspects that makes it a souls-like. There are bonfires (save points where you respawn if you die), shortcuts, and you can lose your XP when you die. Also, it's an action RPG with swordplay combat mechanics. That's as far as similarities go.

And due to such similarities, I'm quite enjoying the game. The level design isn't unforgiving like Dark Souls games, but it shares more similarities to Sekiro in terms of interactions with the levels. In general, this game is most similar to Sekiro due to lack of RPG elements and being more combat focused with skill upgrades.

Not only that, it also fall under Metroidvania genre due to certain skills you squire that gives you access to area you cannot access earlier on.

Therefore, the combination of being a Metroidvania, and Souls-likes makes this an interesting game. The graphics are pretty good, and art style is ok. Not on the level of FromSoft level of art, but pretty good still.

I think the main character's outfit is pretty cool. I think FromSoft can make a much better art designed star wars action rpg.

This game feels more like Zelda than Dark Souls due to the puzzles it has. So in general, it's a pretty good game worth spending time on.

When I played it long ago. I stopped because I wasn't very good, and kept getting lost in the game. Since I'm a veteran of Dark Souls/Elden Ring/Sekiro/Bloodborne, this game is a breeze now. For those that has beaten Soulsborne games should find this game pretty easy. I feel like FromSoft games taught me how to play games really well. I can play anything without issues due to this. The downs sides is, I'm really picky what games I play now. Majority of games are garbage.

 

[SilverEars]

Team Ninja's (Nioh series) next game. I hope they learn from Sekiro, and make the combat much more satisfying and make better level design and enemies.

 

[SilverEars]

Finally, something different. I don't believe it's a souls-like, but close. It has dodge mechanics, and the pace feels quicker. Probably more akin to God of War, but it seems like an engaging combat system. I could definitely get into this. The level design looks good.

 

[SilverEars]

This is the best explaination of Dark Souls 1 I've ever seen.

"You learn through failure, and that's the only way to learn"


I've been playing Darksiders 3 and I really enjoy this one. If you play on the highest difficulty level, it has the souls-like difficulty feel. I find that it's combat is like Sekiro when it comes to dodge timing. You are trying to get the dodge timing down to precision so you can do counter attacks. I would recommend for those into Souls-likes, but at Apocalypse difficulty.