What's a popular game series that you just can't understand the hype for?
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I love you for the spice metaphor (which I have to use all the time on friends who gift me hot sauces), but did you really think DS2 was harder than the original? It's my favorite, and it's because of the combat being 'slower' and the open vistas of the world appealed more than the first game. Hell, it introduced bosses that you didn't even need to dodge if you learned which way to move during their windups.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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 above -
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 aboveI'm not complaining about the Ghosts 'n Goblins series though, Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts is one of the best games ever
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Sports games.
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Sonic.
I've been trying to like them when they were published, but no. It's not really much fun.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Balatro. There’s just no motivation to keep playing. It’s just uninteresting. Love me some Slay the Spire, though.
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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
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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.
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Darksiders is pretty much a mix of Legend of Zelda and God of War.
And your point is?
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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
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Zelda and Pokémon. They bore me. I love the Pokémon tv show tho
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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.
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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.
