Games

"The Dark Souls series has earned my undying enmity for what it has done to gaming discourse."

Fucking THANK YOU! I despise this so much. The worst part about this is that it seems to either be all some developers are in on, a sort of unending slog that is absolutely miserable to play through until you "master" it, or games for baby brains that walk you through every single facet of the game without ever stopping.

I just want good RPGs and linear story telling games. I don't want to have to be killed 64 times in an effort to just get out of the first stage before I even get to the boss and then have to watch 3 different youtube videos specifically telling me how to kill him because he keeps 1-shotting me.

is there some mechanical reason to gate the second fight like that? if it's just wasting your time then fuck 'em, but it's not always so simple.

one of the friction points some people don't like is having to repeat platforming sections after dying but the game is designed like that so you learn the map and have the chance to go do something else instead of banging your head into one frustrating section.

there may also be a technical reason they don't have a save in between, here's Tim Cain talking about the design complexities of loading and saving. i have no idea if that's the case for hollow knight, but it could be that something breaks real bad and wasn't feasible to fix on the programming side.

I really understand your point, it took me like 2 months to beat radiance because I had to hollow knight fight every time and I get tried relatively quickly and I can't do much in that scenario. I can imagine why you would quit it, there many accessible experiences out there and that you can always try them out if you want a metroidvania. I personally love these games but I seriously wish things like runbacks weren't a thing.

I think the most incredible thing about the souls game is their commitment to trying to make even the most esoteric game/network mechanics thematic.

You don’t die and game over you are somehow divinely cursed to respawn(and many characters throughout the series comment on this). You can’t just join a game lobby and play with your friends you have to use a magic rock and draw a message hoping your friends find it.

with ER they still refused difficulty settings but put even more thematic abilities and items in the game to make the enemies easier to fight and I really appreciate that they won’t take the easy way out (lol) when it comes to the presentation.