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Soulslike - Discussion, News, Memes

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This is a community for discussion, news, and memes pertaining to the video game sub-genre "soulslike".

Given Lemmy's size, the definition of soulslike may be treated relatively loosely. While games like the numerous FromSoft titles, the recent Star Wars Jedi games, Lies of P, Nioh and similar games should be the focus, games that incorporate soulslike elements - like Hollow Knight and Blasphemous, for example - may also be discussed here.

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[BB] This enemy is so difficult!

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[Discussion] Open worlds in Soulslikes: yay or nay? (lemmy.zip)
submitted 2 days ago by v4ld1z@lemmy.zip to c/soulslike@lemmy.zip
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Since Elden Ring's meteoric entrance into the pantheon of soulslikes, many players have grown very fond of the very new and fresh open-world approach to the genre. Miyazaki himself said that ER is as close to his dream soulslike as he could wish it to be. It felt like a new direction for future soulslikes to come and felt similarly revolutionary as Breath of the Wild did for Zelda.

The open world didn't come with only positives, however. Repeat bosses and assets, dungeons weren't as diverse as one hoped them to be, the rewards for exploring some of them felt very situational and niche-y at best and outright useless at their worst. Some say the game is only ever good for a first blind playthrough and that the open world stands in their way of getting to "the fun part™" of the game.

After almost four years of the game existing, a, objectively speaking, very strong DLC, and a spin-off with Nightreign, how do you guys feel about open worlds in soulslikes? I understand this is not the first or only soulslike to feature an open world - I don't have any examples at hand off the dome - but ER is definitely the open world soulslike.

Is it something you'd like to see featured in future soulslikes? Are you over it? Very keen on hearing your thoughts since I can't really make up my mind either :)

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[–] eezeebee@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago

I'm not a huge open world fan. It's fine, but my preference would be more like multiple branching paths, some of which would be locked in a Metroidvania fashion, or just gatekept by strong enemies/bosses so you could still get through if you were stubborn enough. Something like DS1 interconnectivity, DS2 multiple branches, and DS3 Dancer blocking the late game, all put together.