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Soulslike - Discussion, News, Memes

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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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[Discussion] Which Soulslike will you be playing this weekend and what's your favourite boss cheese in a Soulslike? (lemmy.zip)
submitted 4 days ago by v4ld1z@lemmy.zip to c/soulslike@lemmy.zip
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I've been playing anything but soulslikes recently. Climbing my way up the ranked ladder in League, played some Darkwood, and recently got obsessed with Pokerogue which has been a lot of fun.

Soulslikes can pose quite a challenge for players with their oftentimes quite brutal difficulty: insane boss patterns that leave no breathing room, high amounts of damage, status damage. Luckily, many bosses allow for strategies that exploit intended as well as unintended weaknesses to make the fights a little more bearable. So following up on @MissingInteger@lemmy.zip's suggestion, I want to know what your favourite ways to cheese a boss in a Soulslike is.

Cheesing could be a glitch in this case, like glitching out the final boss of the Bloodborne DLC to stop them from attacking or having Gyoubu or a certain hateful spirit jump off a cliff in Sekiro, as well as "intended" cheeses, like chugging consumables and Fable Arts at bosses in Lies of P.

I haven't done it myself, but I always found it incredibly funny to think about that the Capra Demon from DS1, a wall for many new players, can be killed from outside their fog of wall with stones and dung piles. Or a certain simian boss from Sekiro being very weak to the Mortal Draw to a point where he's in a constant stagger animation and just dies without any counterplay.

What are your favourite cheeses?

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[–] No_Bark@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Not really a boss cheese, but I recently started replaying Dark Souls 3, and when I arrived at Firelink Shrine I went to kill that Katana guy to get my precious Uchigatana and accidentally knocked him off the cliff and he died. But I couldn't reach what he dropped and was pissed and nearly restarted my game, but I rested at the shrine before rage quiting and found out that his drop respawns back up where he's normally chilling.

So I of course went back to the graveyard of ash and baited the crystal lizard guy to the cliff and waited for him to yeet himself off the cliff, which he did, and I got a sweet titinate scale.

I never thought to do this before because I was afraid of losing whatever loot was dropped, but I'm having a lot of fun seeing how many enemies I can trick/cheese their pathing into getting them to kill themselves. So this is now the run of knocking guys off tall places when I find them annoying.

[–] MissingInteger@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago

Gravity the most dangerous thing in Souls games. NPCs especially love to take a dive.

You can also quit and reload for the loot to reappear.

[–] MissingInteger@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The Night's Cavalry in Dragonbarrow yearns for the abyss. There are so many different cheeses for that one. The most popular is the one where you position yourself on the side of the bridge. The cooler one in my opinion is where you throw Kukris and it looks like you mind controlled him to jump of the branch. This works because enemies follow sounds and Kukris make quite a loud sound. Kukris are generally great for distracting enemies (Greatbow arrows are louder but less convenient).

Dragonbarrow is overall a very cheesy place. 4 Bosses in Dragonbarrow are cheese-sable. The Night's Cavalry, the bridge dragon, Greyoll and the Bellbearing Hunter. You can make the bridge dragon (Greyll) lose a fight against a tree; it's pretty finicky to do. Greyoll can easily be cheesed with any bleed weapon, it's just time consuming. The cheese for the Bellbearing Hunter looks easy, but is far more difficult than it seems. You need to get the Golem way below to shoot him and then use a crit to get him over the edge.

There are so many great cheeses in the cheese plater that is Elden Ring. You can almost skip Phase 2 Malenia completely if you kill her phase 1 with Howl of Shabriri or a Volcano Pot. Or you can abuse the way Boss agro is programmed: In Elden Ring, they didn't do it like DS1 where the Boss always "smells" you in the arena, they simply gave the Bosses huge agro. So you can stack Assassin's Gambit and Unseen Form together and the Boss doesn't notice right away and then you can sneak behind them and ~~blow gas up their ass~~ use Poison Mist to slowly kill them. That was to cheesy for me to try it, yet. Here is an example with Morgott.

Now that I think about it, one of my favorite cheeses is ~~Gouda~~ the intended cheese for Ceaseless Discharge. The way he falls of the cliff to his doom… very cinematic. If we ever get a proper remaster I want a satisfying thunk when he hit the ground and maybe even a corpse that stays there.

It's also interesting to think about what is a cheese? Does skipping a Boss count? Is it really a cheese if it's harder than fighting the Boss? The skip past Godskin Duo with Hand of Malenia is way harder than throwing a couple of Sleep Pots. Also are Sleep Pots a cheese? It's just an intended weakness, if a major one. Or are high damage builds cheese? One shooting Mohg with Comet Azur is super easy and fun and imo everyone should try it sometime, but feels very cheese. In the end everyone has to decide what is cheese and whether or not they like doing it in their playthroughs. We all want to have fun playing video games.

Some nice videos about cheese in Souls games:

Speaking about fun: with the many games I never played at my disposal I will obviously play through Elden Ring at RL1 again, for the third time. I actually started last weekend and got pretty far already. I'm already in Leyndell. I didn't follow my careful plan of leveling up a Claymore to +20 and instead started by running naked into Stormveil with only a Broadsword. The Broadsword destroys Margit so hard. If been using the mostly the Broadsword since then. Pretty good weapon at RL1.

I also got a bit goofy since cheese was on my mind. I stacked enough anti undead buffs to one-shot Death Birds with a Holy Pot. Only I overdid it a bit. I did 34k to the Death Bird in Weeping Peninsula that is almost 10x the damage needed and mind you that's at RL1. The crazy thing is that's not even close to optimized. At endgame I would have access to even more buffs. I will experiment further in the snow when I get there. The one in the snowfield should be easy to hit in the head.

[–] GrantUsEyes@piefed.zip 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Very informative as always!

One day I might actually learn how to optimize a build in ER (or any other game for that matter) and do a SL1 run but it's not today...

I did get out of my comfort zone recently-ish and started the "magic" run from scratch (but actually settled on spellblade)... Glint sorceries do some really decent stance damage I've come to find! I might go for an all out busted magic run later but I'm a bit afraid the game will lose a lot of the cool coreography elements with the bosses spamming ranged attacks. Right now I'm just before morgott so I haven't even touched the busted spells. We'll see how it goes :P

[–] MissingInteger@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

If you ever have question about SL1 just ask me ;) I have an unhealthy amount of knowledge. SL1 is really about how good of a player you are moment to moment in fights and how much you know about the game. One side balances the other. I'm not that good moment to moment, but I'm very good at planing due to game knowledge.

Have fun with your magic run :)

Ranged sorceries can sometimes lose the "choreography look". It looks more like an anime moment. Spellblade fights can look like beautiful choreography. Here is a beautiful fight against Malenia. This fight is not optimized for damage but for style.

What's your current favorite spell and what's your "default" spell - the spell you spam the most?

For a spell blade I can't recommend Carian Slicer enough. Fast melee spell. High DPS. Awesome gameplay feel. You can for example smoothly transition from hitting with your melee weapon to casting Slicer with your Staff. If you have questions about sorceries in ER feel free to ask me.

[–] plutopos@lemmy.zip 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

My favorite is a different Capra Demon cheese because I came up with it myself in a panic. Basically you climb up the stairs, shoot the demon with your bow, drop down, then rinse and repeat until it's dead lmao

[–] GrantUsEyes@piefed.zip 2 points 4 days ago

The running "in circles"up the stairs I have also used XD

[–] garretble@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

This weekend? I'll probably be playing Mina, honestly. #BONEUP

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Probably won't be gaming much this weekend between the World Cup and F1, but definitely won't be playing any Soulslikes. Might plug away some more at Darkwood but... it's going slowly. Game does genuinely get to me, I don't really play for long periods at a time. I love the setting, the story, the characters, pretty much all of it. It just stresses me out to play. I will typically get through a single day/night cycle then breathe out and exit and do something else, haha. And also it's really fucking difficult. I still don't know if I have it in me to actually beat the thing, even though I'm very glad to have played it.

So I started Lost Odyssey yesterday on Xenia Edge. Unfortunately I'm having some performance issues that I need to look at or this might be unplayable, which would be a shame. Otherwise it's been pretty much exactly what I expected: "I can't believe it's not Final Fantasy"-the game. It has some interesting art direction and design which sits in that patented JRPG space where you're not sure whether it's cool or ridiculous, and the story opening has been alright if nothing too special. I do wish it looked a bit better though, while it's graphically pretty impressive for its period it's from the peak of that grey-brown design era and not even RTX HDR can save it from looking incredibly drab and dull. But maybe this is just the first area.

As for favourite cheese, the dung pie kill on Capra Demon you already mentioned is an absolute classic, that's probably the first one we all think of.

My other immediate thought is killing Nameless King (phase 2) with a bow. If you keep far away from him he just slowly walks towards you menacingly and throws out the occasional easily dodged ranged attack and you can kind of just stay away and plink him down with a bow.

[–] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Darkwood definitely isn't a cozy game. I haven't played in a bit too, but I'd usually play for like 1h, maybe 2 at a time until I need a break. I haven't died yet and am yet to leave the first area of the map, so there's probably lots I haven't seen and experienced yet, but I'll get there sometime soon, I'm sure.

The 2010s are certainly guilty of that colour palette, damn. Add in a yellow-tint filter on top and you've got your average shooter.

That cheese sounds fun! I feel like ranged weapons in general are underutilised in soulslikes already. Weapons like Simon's Bowblade from Bloodborne add a little variety to the very melee-leaning weaponry.

It feels to me like soulslikes haven't really figured out the balance of how to have an interesting ranged weapon that can coexist with melee weapons. Monster Hunter figured out, and I'd say they share a couple of similarities when it comes to combat.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, cozy is probably the exact opposite of what Darkwood is haha. "Oppressive and stressful" is more like what I'm feeling. I'm in the second area still but I've also been watching Mapocolops playthrough of it because I want to see at least one ending of it and I'm not sure I have it in me to beat it as I said. And I can tell you the game just keeps getting worse and harder. It's actually well balanced in that way, that despite you getting more and better weapons it never really gets that much easier. Though maybe playing on controller is just way worse than KBM. I definitely struggle more with aiming and dodging than Mapocolops does. You definitely have a lot more to discover, I won't spoil anything but it feels like the second area is where things really starts to happen in terms of characters and story and world. Although the wedding in the first area was awesome too.

I guess I should play Monster Hunter at some point, that is a franchise I'm not familiar with. How do they adapt their bosses so that both melee and archers can have interesting fights?

[–] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've tried playing with a controller for like 5 minutes and found the controls to be pretty clunky tbh. It didn't feel precise enough vs MKB.

I'm not sure if I like that the difficulty keeps up with your getting stronger, but I guess I wouldn't fit the vibe the game is going for if you could just plough your way to the end like in Diablo (bar being too scared by the game). I'll stay optimistic.

It used to be that ranged weapons had the highest DPS and didn't have a lot of counterplay to them. Similarly to souls games, you can stagger monsters if you deal enough damage, either by breaking parts of their bodies or just dealing enough damage in general. For really high kill times, you'd have four hunters stand in a circle around the monster and shoot them with their Heavy Bowguns for insane amounts of damage. In later installments, some monsters got quite a lot of mobility - think dashes, jumps, teleports even - to close the gap to ranged hunters. Given that you'd fight the monster across the entire map, following them from area to area with sometimes drastically different environments and verticality, you could either win out and have some kinda ledge to shoot from or your stuck in a very flat area with barely any cover to hide behind, so you're more likely to get hit. Stronger monsters sometimes have huge AOE attacks that could one-shot you as a ranged hunter if you're not careful. It was only recently changed that ranger hunters had to have a gunner armour vs a blademaster armour with lower resistances and defense to balance out their ranged DPS.

Similarly to Souls, ranged weapons played a little monotonous and one-dimensional, unfortunately. Across the three ranged weapons there used to be (maybe there's more now - haven't kept up with newer titles), you'd only have different types of ammo and coatings for your arrows for a bow and essentially the same kinda moves to attack with. In later games, additional moves have been introduced, kinda similar to Fable Arts in Lies of P or Ashes of War in ER, that spiced up the gameplay and allowed for more customisation and personalisation. Other than that, melee weapons were always and will likely remain the favourites among fans - they are just more fun and play better. Plus you're in the thick of things like in soulslikes which is the main drive of playing these games in the first place, I feel like.

Hope that answers your question somewhat :)

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 1 points 2 days ago

I might try KBM then, although I do like being able to lean back with the controller. Helps me relax a bit which is kinda needed haha.

I mean, some things do just make it easier like inventory upgrades and better tools like flashlights and such. But the threats also keep getting more challenging, the nights get tougher and hideouts more open and less defensible. So you never really feel safe. Though I suspect if you get really comfortable with the dodge and melee swing timing you could probably defuse a lot of the danger of most enemies.

Thank you for a super detailed explanation. Though from the sounds of it it seems like they still haven't figured out how to make the fights interesting for both melee and ranged then, if most people prefer melee? Which I completely understand - like you say it's central to the fantasy most people are looking for to be swinging a weapon in the face of a boss.

That's probably why we don't see too many bosses with specific ranged movesets meant to be engaging for archers. Whatever that would look like. It's a huge design demand for very little reward considering most players want to melee anyway. Better just add some gap closers and make ranged a non-issue.

There are plenty of games that have both satisfying melee and ranged, but I don't know if any of them have Souls (or Monster Hunter) style bosses. Maybe I'm forgetting something?

[–] GrantUsEyes@piefed.zip 6 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The one I've used for rune farming purposes in ER is baiting the night cavalry to jump off the bridge in dragonbarrow. :P

I got time and energy for videogames again! I purchased Khazan and Code Vein so I'm looking forward to those.I want to beat all the nightlords with all the characters on nightreign buut that may take a good good while. Just something going on in the background. And I should get to finishing DS3. Weeeeee

And look y'all. I have a new friend, and our hair color matches.

[–] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

That one's quite easy to pull off too, right? And relatively early on. How many of these are there throughout the game? Two I think?

Awesome, enjoy! Looking forward to your impressions :)

So cute and love the colour! I should get my hair dyed soon too

[–] MissingInteger@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago

I haven't gotten any other Night's Cavalry to succumb to gravity. The one in the Forbidden Lands really wants to, but I think there are guardrails for him.

But you can cheese every Night's Cavalry, by simply going to a high place and shooting them from there or by running farther than their roaming range and shooting them then.

[–] GrantUsEyes@piefed.zip 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Very very, easy yeah.

~~Night's cavalry?..there are nine or ten in the game I can't remember correctly. :P~~

God I'm so dumb sometimes.I guess you mean two cheesable ones. XD I don't think the limgrave one can jump off the bridge anymore.

What color are you going for?

[–] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've got a buzz cut, so my fiancée usually dyes some kinda patterns onto my head. She's done Starry Night by van Gogh before, spirals, geometrical patterns, hearts for Valentine's, card suits etc etc

Don't have any ideas currently. Open to suggestions :)

[–] GrantUsEyes@piefed.zip 1 points 2 days ago

That's the coolest thing! I'm so jealous, my head is partially buzzed but I wouldn't trust anyone with the task haha

Humm Solaire's insignia? XD or ... Let me provide some color/pattern inspo. Might be too wild for hair tho hehe

[–] MissingInteger@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago

Alex looks very nice with green hair. Cute little guy :)

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Ohh, I didn't think about farming related cheese but there is also the iconic DS1 spot on the bridge where you let the dragon kill all those hollows for you by just running up and down from the bonfire. That's a classic.

What made you grab Code Vein of all things? I've heard some... not so good things about it. And does that mean you gave up on Withering Rooms, then? It's totally fine, my recommendations can't all be winners.

Love your hair! And you still got your claws I see.

Also that is a very cute flowerpot.

[–] GrantUsEyes@piefed.zip 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Oh, I haven't given up on Withering rooms, but I keep it soulslike related in this comm XD. There's other stuff I've been meaning to ask you about it, now that I remember. (But again, not here)

Code Vein, well it was cheap af. Only thing I know about it is that it has the anime aesthetic going on and I had heard that the level design was good.

Also a flower pot? that's Iron Fist Alexander, for you. Mighty warrior jar... Please put some respect on my boy's name.

(And thank you)

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Well you know, if Druid can talk about throwing their sanity away in League every week in this thread then we can talk about playing non-Souls games too here. Plus, Withering Rooms was clearly inspired by Dark Souls (and its sequel will be an actual Soulslike/-lite) so it's practically an honorary Soulslike anyway.

Also, weren't you supposed to be punk? Sticking to some stuffy establishment notion of a "discussion topic" is not very punk rock...

Hm, I don't think I've heard much praise for the level design in Code Vein. Are you sure you're not mixing it up with AI Limit? That's another anime Soulslike and that one does get praised a lot for level design (although I found it less impressive than people made it out to be).

Well, if he wanted me to take him seriously as a warrior he shouldn't have garden greens growing out of his head. He's giving less "Iron Fist" and more "Iron Fistful of basil for my omelette".

[–] GrantUsEyes@piefed.zip 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Ok. I might be getting confused on the games :s .. What are the "not great" things you've heard about code vein?

On regards to withering rooms... It's kind of stupid, but Are the photo plates purchaseable from some vendors? (It'd been a while) The guy on the first floor doesn't have them, right now I don't think I have any mirrors to go to the hub place to check ( Can that happen, the nowhere place being non accessible I mean?) . Should I just start another night? I'm relying on enemy drops buuut everything's dead rn. So I maybe I need to pay a visit to coffin guy....

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Okay first of all I don't want to say anything definitive because I haven't played it myself. And Code Vein does have its fanbase, it's just that they mostly like it for the anime story and the companion system (or co-op) or the character creator that lets you make your own anime character. Or the build variety I guess, I have heard it's supposed to have good build variety.

But stuff like combat, boss design, level design and exploration are often brought up as criticisms in various ways. Clunky and weightless combat, some bad bosses, poor balancing, uninspiring level design with lots of samey-looking mazelike copy-pasted assets, poor enemy variety... stuff like that is what I've heard.

Okay, so yes. Lord Nobody of Nowhere in Central Nowhere sells photo plates (he also buys pictures, pays extra for pictures of ghosts). Like every vendor, he will only sell you up to a certain quantity, so you can never overstock anything (apart from craftables). I think the max limit on photo plates is 7. I think this also takes into account spent photo plates in your inventory so always sell those off before you restock.

I don't think there should be any place that is completely inaccessible, not that I remember. Which area are you in? But doing a farming run with Mr Coffin isn't a bad idea if you need more resources. There are also some neat farming strats you can do, like with the grandfather clock (set it to midnight to attract enemies then pelt them with an AoE like Harvest Field). Or some Door Hex shenanigans.

[–] GrantUsEyes@piefed.zip 3 points 3 days ago

I see, I remember looking for a review of the first one when the latest one dropped and it didn't gave me a bad impression. But maybe I wasn't thorough enough.

I guess between this one and thymesia I'll play the mid/bad soulslikes as well, eventually.

Ok, good to know on the plate thing, thank you! oh and that's what the clock is for? I had no idea. I'm at the entry of the maze. Because of the pace of the game I'm being very careful not to die and I haven't died that much so I went to get stuff before I dived in. Anyway if anything else comes up I'll ask you about it... Or look it up like a normal person XD

[–] Smeagol666@crazypeople.online 4 points 3 days ago

The "Beaky Buzzard" or "dumb bird" cheese near Mohg's Palace in Elden Ring.

[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 4 points 4 days ago

Serpent's Gaze. Its Early Access but pretty good roguelike and soulslike. I'm almost positive they reverse engineered some FromSoft code with how it feels.

[–] Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

Nothing like absolutely breaking dragonriders ankles.

[–] CascadeOfLight@hexbear.net 3 points 4 days ago

I like in DS2, parrying the Pursuer in front of the ballista and deleting it in a hail of bolts.

In general I like boss arena features that act like puzzle pieces (more so than bosses whose entire fight is just a puzzle) and Pursuer is one of the few that really has something like that... but it does so much damage, I have to consider it cheesing.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Sitting behind a door and attacking the boss by facing away from him so the very edge of your attack hits him so that he never does anything for a bunch of the bosses in Sekiro will never not be funny to me. Especially when I see so many people claim it's the hardest soulslike.

[–] WittyProfileName2@hexbear.net 2 points 4 days ago

what's your favourite boss cheese in a Soulslike?

There's this one piece of the long carpet that if you stand on at the moment you trigger the second phase of Twin Princes fight in Dark Souls 3, they spawn in unaggroed and you can just plink Lothric to death with soul arrows.

[–] Starfuckers_inc@lemmy.4d2.org 1 points 3 days ago

What are your favourite cheeses? the one where you turn off Capras AI by jumping ontop of the arena