What's a popular game series that you just can't understand the hype for?
-
I did find it more difficult than DS1 but, as in my metaphor, in a more artificial way. I'm thinking of the nerfed rolling frames (before you level ADP), more difficult parry timing, far more multi-opponent bosses, and especially the way that dying will reduce your max health. Any of these on their own would be totally unremarkable, but all together it feels like there was much more explicit focus on adding things to make it more difficult (which I believe was also reflected in the marketing of the games).
I also think that the atmosphere and artstyle of DS1 was much more serious and unique, whereas DS2 has comparatively much more ghoulish cartoony vibes, which just made it feel incongruent. Eg: the undead are now green and less scrawny, making them seem more like generic goblins rather than how they were in DS1. I just feel like there was an overall shift in the focus to be less about the unique world and its story and more about a Ghosts 'n Goblins -esque rage game.
I don't think Dark Souls 2 is the most difficult in the series but I think it's the first one where the difficulty started to feel unfair and like it was missing the point.
Basically here's the vibes I get from each game:
DS1: A somber and holy journey
DS2: Ghosts 'n Goblins but 3D
DS3: Killing cool bosses is so cool
ER: All of the aboveAh, I sort of forgot about the slowly reducing max health. I think that and the different parry timing (the best mechanic in all the games, baby baby) made me quit it the first time I played. I don't even remember it bothering me in the second time I tried, maybe because I had played elden ring and dark souls again at that point and didn't try to horde items.
Pre-edit edit: Wait, I remember now. I played the game the way it was 'meant' to be played, with a giant weapon and just beating everything up before they could get me. I remember telling my friend that the openings in the boss attacks felt like they were specifically designed around the giant weapon timings. It just made everything easier.
-
Animal Crossing.
The thought of it disgusts me. Don't know exactly why.
Fascinating. Do you feel the same way about Stardew Valley, My Time At Portia, Palia etc?
-
Mass Effect and KotOR
Both have absolutely terrible gameplay. Fans tell me the story makes it worth it but if I want a good story I can read a book.
Ah man I loved ME1. Heard the later ones were more gun-focused and decided to not check them out.
-
Sports games.
-
Sonic.
I've been trying to like them when they were published, but no. It's not really much fun.
-
Dark Souls type games that are just pure grinding wasting time.
I bought this shadow game that look awesome gameplay was fun at first... Then something felt off.. Things were just ridiculously hard for no reason I kept dying on level one...
I was like... Wtf is this shit? Little googling and the game is made by the dark souls people and apparently this grinding over hard shit IS the appeal...
Na man, I got a job and kids and responsibilities and my one hour of playtime better be fun... And dieing and grinding ain't it.
-
Pretty much. They need a different genre name, like "masochist" or "try-hard". A lot of these games are significantly more punishing than the original Dark Souls ever was
wrote last edited by [email protected]It's not even punishing IMHO, like it's just cheap 'hard' walk around corner insto death because you didn't know whatever event was there was there, and only way to learn this was... Walk around the corner and die, now, proceed to waste your time walking back get past that corner, die on next... Repeat.
-
Fascinating. Do you feel the same way about Stardew Valley, My Time At Portia, Palia etc?
I know nothing about Stardew Valley aside from its name, and I've never heard of the other two. I can't say I have an opinion about them
-
Yeah, I tried giving it a shot twice, but both times after 5-6 hours I just came to the conclusion that the game wasn't respecting my time, and was punishing me for exploring.
The worst part is that its popularity lead to other games copying it, meaning half of metroidvanias released after it have the same issues. I started to just filter out any game that had corpse runs as it was a good indicator of how much I'd hate it.
the game wasn't respecting my time
Hit the nail on the head. That’s why I stopped too. And I don’t even mind difficult games; Sekiro is an all-time favorite of mine. But Sekiro is compact, dense, no filler. Hollow Knight felt empty and sparse and traversal was a chore.
-
Balatro. There’s just no motivation to keep playing. It’s just uninteresting. Love me some Slay the Spire, though.
-
Souls.
I’ve tried em and find them repetitive and cheesy in their lack of little details that make games fun for me.I tried Elden ring and thought it was the ugliest, most repetitive game I’ve ever played.
I don’t get the hype for the souls series, it’s just making a game repetitive and difficult to justify its lack of substance -
Dark Souls type games that are just pure grinding wasting time.
I bought this shadow game that look awesome gameplay was fun at first... Then something felt off.. Things were just ridiculously hard for no reason I kept dying on level one...
I was like... Wtf is this shit? Little googling and the game is made by the dark souls people and apparently this grinding over hard shit IS the appeal...
Na man, I got a job and kids and responsibilities and my one hour of playtime better be fun... And dieing and grinding ain't it.
Same, what I hate is how many souls like games they make, it’s just cheap
-
Fascinating. Do you feel the same way about Stardew Valley, My Time At Portia, Palia etc?
As someone who put a lot of hours into both, I don't see the comparison between Stardew and Animal Crossing.
Not meant to be an aggro response. I just think the depth of each game is wildly different.
-
Darksiders is pretty much a mix of Legend of Zelda and God of War.
And your point is?
-
yes, i really liked it. it was a bit difficult in some places (i don't know how many times i had to re-do the tree flooding) but the aesthetic really made it worth it.
one of my more recent stand-outs in the genre was yoku's island express, which is also a real treat.
Hmm. I'll have to check out the demo. The screenshots of the gameplay make me thunk I'll bounce off it, but figuring that out is what a dwmo is for
-
Zelda and Pokémon. They bore me. I love the Pokémon tv show tho
-
I agree with your critique of souls-likes, but there was something really special about the original Dark Souls that none of its successors really captured. This was before they decided that "ultra-hard" was a good selling point and the attack patterns were far more simple. The atmosphere and difficulty were still there, but they made sense and fit with the rest of the game and its ideas very cohesively.
Not sure if anybody will understand this, but it's like the difference between spicy food that's spicy because it has peppers and spicy food that's spicy because they added a bunch of artificial stuff. Spicier usually means tastier, because it has more of the flavorful peppers. But in the case of, for example, Dark Souls 2 or Elden Ring, it's like they just added a bunch of capsaicin (difficulty) without including any more flavors of the peppers. The difficulty is beyond the degree to which it was artistically meaningful in the original Dark Souls.
Yeh I get you. It’s like when turning the difficulty up in a game all they do is make enemies take more damage to kill and do significantly more damage when they hit you. That’s just crap. Difficulty increases should be about more than that, like better AI and more/different enemies.
-
For me its Metroid, and really the whole Metroidvania genre. I can never tell when a challenge is supposed to be possible, or if I'm supposed to come back later, and and up wasting hours trying to do something only for it to be trivial later. I don't find this at all rewarding.
That said Tunic was a fantastic game, and I love the concept of the 'Metroid-Brainia', purely because of the concept that every challenge is theoretically possible from the start, you just need to learn how to do it.
-
“Souls-like” games - memorise attack patterns, the game. Not hard, just tedious.
Are people memorizing attack patterns? This one comes up a lot and I don't really get it. The boss does a thing and I react, which is how most real time combat games are, I think?
I guess something like Skyrim you mostly just stand there and trade blows.
Yes, that’s how you’re reacting to the boss or any other enemies in games. You know that they do attack x, y, and z and then are vulnerable for 2 seconds, or which moves are parry-able to stun them, etc. Enemies in games have set move lists, and they have pre-set patterns and weak points etc.
For example when you see a skeleton you know exactly which moves and attacks patterns it has, and when to block/parry/strike to defeat them.
-
How many of the bosses can you walk in and just wipe the floor with on the first try
A pretty good amount, though that's confounded by playing lots of similar games over the years. But, like, I see the boss lift his weapon way up and I go "I bet he's going to swing. I should get out of the way." Sure, there is an element to "I've seen this before - I know if I run behind him after the big butt stomp I can hit him easily", but that's hardly unique to fromsoft.
What sort of games don't have enemies that you learn their moves? Like, you play Baldur's Gate 3 and you learn "ok, that wizard has Sleep prepared, I should keep my HP up." Or you play Hades and learn "ok, these guys like to charge but then take a second to recover". This complaint is not unique to souls-likes but I don't know if I've heard it brought against any other game.
It’s not unique to from soft games, but it is literally the entire games “difficulty”. They usually just give them extreme levels of health and make them do tonnes of damage so you have to make few mistakes in recognising and reacting to the patterns.
Its a big reason why I don’t care about single player action games.
