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.
Basic Lemmy-quette applies. Additionally, since flairs don't exist yet, please do make sure to include a marker to denote what game your post is about in square brackets for clarity's sake. An example could be:
[BB] This enemy is so difficult!
or
[DS1] Anyone struggling with the gargoyles?
Friends:
Should you have any questions, please do let me know.
Being able to refight bosses is such an awesome addition to Sekiro and Lies of P, it's surprising that there aren't move soulslike out there that offer that. Or some sort of gauntlet, like in Hollow Knight or Khazan. Khazan even let's you refight bosses to farm materials for your armour/weapon crafting.
Difficulty settings would also be a welcome addition to all soulslikes. Those who want them can use them, those that don't don't have to.
What's another feature you'd like to see more often?
Just had a whole comment brouhaha about difficulty options. Don't want to rehash it, but I think in-game ways of addressing difficulty is under appreciated. Not everything needs to be a menu option outside the game.
"These sword snakes are too fast" -> "fuck it, I'm going to snipe them from this rooftop" or "I'm just going to summon a jellyfish to kill them". That's better than "everyone must fight these sword snakes in close range melee". It feels more satisfying, to me at least, to bypass a challenge through in-universe mechanics than changing out of game config.
I'm not against settings, but I think in-game options don't get enough credit.
But I am working on an assumption that not everyone will be able to execute every part of the game well. I couldn't do a parry based build because I'm not great at it and don't want to practice, so I don't. I wouldn't find it satisfying to run the game in slo-mo. But, like, you do you. It's your fun.
In other words: multiple approaches and tools for challenges in the game.
I think this is one of the reasons Elden Ring did so well. Boss one-shots me repeatedly? Fuck it, I'll explore. A certain style isn't working? Vary things up a bit. Or go in through a different side of the building. Or snipe. Or...
Or Wuchang, where you can basically respec for every boss according to their weaknesses. I ran one build against most bosses, but changed it for a few specific ones where my regular build didn't work well.
Huh. Was thinking of playing, but is that exhausting? Sounds rough.
Jumping.
We have the technology.
Elden Ring set the bar for every soulslike after it. Sekiro too, but it didn't have as much of a reach.
It's a whole nother dimension to combat and exploration. It's the clear evolution of the next generation of soulslikes. It's even kind of weird to think about how popular these games are without a jump, while jumping has been in other genres for decades.
Swimming, too! Sekiro had both. Elden Ring only kept the jumping. Getting the swimming skill was mind blowing. I just assumed water would be like any other pit the whole game.
Imagine what Liurnia would have been like if that lake had actual depth to it.
The flooded church district in Shadow of the Erdtree is like a miniature version of that. It catapulted me straight back to my memories of fighting the electric eel in Shadow of the Colossus, except in that you actually do have to go swimming
A dedicated jump button It's good to have but easy to abuse. I like how it's done in bloodborne but I agree it's unnecesarily effortful, reserved for style points. :P
The games need accessibility settings and not a difficulty toggle.
Give people settings to tweak the aspects of the games they struggle with. A generic “easy” mode is the laziest and most patronizing solution.
Give people accessibility sliders for enemy animation speed, iframe windows and health buffs alongside with the options for colourblind, motion blur, sound balance, etc
Making arbitrary modes for easy and hard is such a waste of time. Balancing a game takes a long time and most of the easy and hard modes are only lazy buffs/nerfs to health and attack.
Number 1 thing I think these games need is more complexity. Since Elden Ring the focus has been on polishing/simplifying the existing mechanics and not lets flesh these out some more and add more complexity to the level design, story and missions.
Lies of P is a great example. Incredibly polished and great for first time players but damn if it’s not basically just a linear game. The icons for the missions and everything basically spelt out for you. There is no way to miss anything in that game really.
You need to hide things properly for there to be something for players to find. Hearing about a location that you missed and going back to explore and seeing just what else might be hidden is an amazing feeling.
Fucking perfect. I've had people mock me in my stream reviews because there are certain things that are just more difficult physically these days.
I'm as fast as anyone for general play, but certain combinations of movements get a bit excessive.
That's even better. The way Shadow of the Tomb Raider did it is my favourite way of tweaking difficulty. However, that's more work than just adding blanket difficulty options, so that's the bare minimum I've grown to expect. I'm fine with either
Pause button.
Hard disagree.
Invading another player and not knowing whether they just left the room with the game still on is thrilling.
You can start fucking with them; kick them into a corner and push some explosive barrels around them and see them freak out when they return.
Or you get close and you realise they've played possum and they come alive like a fucking golem and push your shit in.
It's all part of the experience. I love it.
Imo, there's room enough in the genre for both. Some games have compromised with allowing you to pause the game in offline play but you can't access the menu or anything while the game is paused, and I think that that works pretty well. Those ones usually have asynchronous multiplayer only anyway, where PVP isn't an option.
That's fair enough but sometimes I gotta answer the door in the middle of a boss fight. Kills my fun to just lose an attempt because of dumb design.
Lords of the Fallen has a cool little gimmick where you can't see the flavor text item description to get the lore off it unless you have the right stats (so like items associated with Chaos require a higher Chaos stat to see the lore text or items associated with Divinity need a higher Divine skill, etc). In soulsgames with little build diversity, this gives a bigger incentive to play around with builds even if the combat itself doesn't really play much differently.
Lies of P would have benefitted from this, IMO.
Patches Emporium as some kinda armory for new characters.
New game plus isn’t for everyone, but starting with your favorite weapon might be.
A Vaatividya that explains what is happening in the game I am playing
I really like the developer's voiceover in Getting Over It. He generally only speaks when you either make it past a difficult obstacle or lose a lot of progress. I could see that format working with NPC summons. Have them join you for the boss runback and tell you a little snippet each time, and also join you to say something else at the post-boss bonfire. This could happen regardless of whether the player chooses to actually bring them through the fog gate or not too. Keep up that pretence of them being summoned from their own world by having them be like the ghosts of players you see running about
Every game has such thing, it's called wiki. And it's also more credible than Vaati's videos
That is a far stretch at least for not-that-popular games
Like a tag-along?