I’ve fallen into this exact trap when I played the HD remaster of Suikoden 1&2 a few months ago. The games still hold up pretty well but are a bit too dated to my taste to have more than a single playthrough, so I followed guides to get the perfect ending, which involves recruiting all 108 characters into your army.
At first I was just looking at a very light guide that told me which characters were missable and approximately when to get them. Then I got impatient and looked up their location and recruitment conditions. And then I ended up following a complete walkthrough step by step to make sure I wasn’t making any mistake.
That completely took the fun out of the games and I burnt out halfway through the second one.
Running Steam games on Mint, I don’t think I’ve ever run into a game that flat-out didn’t run. Usually they work out of the box. The most I’ve ever had to do was select “Force the use of a specific compatibility tool” and try out a different version of Proton from the dropdown list.
Weird, I love problem solving. Its why im so upset with people complaining about computers when all they have to do is tinker with them or google about it. Walkthroughs are for when you need it, if you have an urge to use the walkthrough only instead of actually playing the game, then thats a you problem.
I mean, I guess, it was their realization that the walkthrough skips the fun problem-solving part. That it shouldn’t be a tool you use during the problem-solving.
One time I used a GameShark mid game for a Zelda game, I saved my file and came back later to find that by maxing out, I had ruined my save file and lost all my progress. I cried my eyes out and it took days to get back, boringly replaying the game.
I always wondered if that was an intentional lesson by the GameShark devs… ChatGPT seems designed to make you act against your best self interest.
I’ve had a similar train of thought. I work with a lot of people that have been doing their jobs for many years and know what they’re doing. They might benefit from an LLM since they already have the expertise to tell what to take or leave. A novice would benefit more long term from learning the hard way.
Continuing with that train of thought though, if someone has been learning and growing for years, is there really a point where it’s okay to stop, say “I don’t need to learn more,” and start relying on the easy method while their skills stagnate?
We were so bored back in the day we spent hours, days, months finding out how to get by stupid things in point&click games, it was better than not playing them but it was also not like the best time ever either.
Being bored was the healthy part, developmentally speaking.
Not that there weren’t overstimulating games back then, or healthy problem solving games today. But with enshittification, the shit is drowning out the gold.
As a horny teen, Leisure Suit Larry was the closest thing to smut in a game that I could get. There was no internet walkthroughs. You wanted pixelated boobs and innuendo? You had to try every item in your arsenal and every dialogue choice to get it. But damn was it fun!
Later, going back to the games and using walkthroughs, some of the solutions seemed rather silly.
Im playing a bunch of soulslikes for the first time now. You gotta exhaust everything you can think of, then check a walkthrough just for the hint youre missing.
The process is the fun part. Looking it up is just a way to minimize frustration because you can’t find the goddamn ladder.
I think souls likes are just not for me. I just want a cool story told in a relatively linear fashion. I’d take a linear 15 hour game over an open world 150+ hour game any day.
Most of em are pretty linear, really. Elden Ring is the exception. But like Bloodborne for instance, youre gonna go pretty much in the same order till you have to return to earlier areas to finish stuff. You’ve gotta explore a lot though.
Not trying to be like “LOVE THE THING THAT I LOVE DAMN YOU”, theyre totally not for everyone.
Only the most braindead of gamers has a chance of bouncing off a single Souls fight more than maybe a dozen times. Two dozen if you’re especially thickheaded.
The thing about Soulslikes - and Fromsoft games in particular - is that they teach you new things primarily by killing you with them. Once you know whatever the thing is that this encounter is trying to teach you, you can blow through the entire thing at level 1 and people do it all the time. And I do mean “people” and not just professional streamers. SL1 is a popular challenge run for souls fans, specifically because once you know all the rules of the game it becomes very easy.
But there is no easing-in to learning new things in Dark Souls. You will get flattened into paste by some bullshit without warning, and it is up to the player to figure out a) why they died, and b) how to prevent that. Throwing yourself at the same brick wall 200 times with no change in strategy is a losing prospect no matter what game you’re playing, souls or otherwise.
The essence of “gitting gud” is literally just stopping for 10 seconds to think about why you failed last time. If you’re capable of that - and 99% of gamers definitely are, it’s a core component of game design - you’re capable of not only completing but excelling in Soulslikes.
People have been jerking off how difficult Souls games are for a decade and a half now and it’s never been true. Souls games are just rhythm games that don’t give you the rhythm onscreen. Find that rhythm (through observing patterns, and especially through listening to the boss fight music) and you’ll first-clear every single fight.
Thing is I do enough of problem solving already so this just isnt my jam.
And if you like that genre/game series I wish you the best to getting more :)
I’m sorry, I just can’t stop myself from launching into this spiel every time I hear a comment like your first one. There’s a huge swath of gamers that I feel like would actually love my favorite game if they weren’t scared away from it by gamer circlejerk. It’s not my mission in life to defend Dark Souls to people who don’t care about it, but I often assume that mantle despite myself.
At the end of the day though it’s just a game about self reflection and personal growth, and I like that.
Very. I would recommend only playing it on controller. And it runs pretty well on Steam Deck. There’s an fps unlocker/resolution fix that makes it play better, but not necessary.
A lot of people will say it’s harder than other souls games, but it’s really just different. The combat is amazing once you get the timing down. It can feel like a rhythm game at times when you’re in the zone. And the feeling you get when you beat a difficult boss is second to none.
Look, it’s like my favorite game ever, but it’s pretty hard and it’s not for everyone. I hope you enjoy it, but the game only ever seems to go down to $30, so I don’t want someone to waste money on a game they don’t like on account of me.
I guess it can refund it in Steam, though I’m not sure if 2 hours is enough time for it to gel. I’ve seen people say that the early boss, “Genichiro Ashina” is the first real test, and indication of what’s to come. That one will be tough, but it’s all about learning the attack patterns.
Sounds good to me.
I am not against a challenge.
But it’s good to have different viewpoints to get a general idea what to expect (and as you said, not to waste money) ;)
Yeah this is absolutely true start to finish. Once you slow down and stop spamming buttons, and think, it becomes really surprisingly easy. Mostly. Some bosses are just gonna ruin your day for a bit. Till you figure out what youre doing wrong and adjust. Sometimes easier said than done.
Then, by the time you’ve finished like a single run of any game, youre totally ready to crush the entire genre catalog. You’ve got months of dungeons to explore if you want.
Sigh. Im so grateful for these games lol. Theres so much love and creativity in their DNA.
Oh yeah that boss music tip made a world of difference with Bloodborne. Once someone pointed it out on a flame-themed hunter boss that was giving me pause, i was amazed. Like, how the hell does that work so well??
I made it all the way through Dark Souls 1 and 2 and about half of 3 before I even knew that was a thing. I was getting curbstomped by Dancer of the Boreal Valley and went online looking for discussions about her. Lo and behold:
Tl;dw - Dancer’s song is in 3/4 time instead of 4/4 and she dances with her music. This gives her a crazy pattern that people always get got by because what feels like an opening actually isn’t. In order to defeat her you have to listen to her song and learn to dance with her.
Once I learned that it opened up an entire new world of understanding across every soulslike game I played and immediately halved my average number of boss attempts. No joke. Not every boss can be beaten blindfolded by just listening to their OST but it’ll give you good timing cues for the fight more often than it doesn’t.
I’ve bounced off some fights way more than that. It’s not even about not getting what to do, my concentration just dies and I also get greedy (or in the case of margit in elden ring was insanely underleveled on top of that). Playing claire obscure on the highest difficulty while ignoring defense isn’t very different in terms of dodging difficulty, but since I couldn’t really get greedy and my brain can go off on a journey on my own turn it was pretty smooth and much less frustrating for me.
I do agree souls games aren’t super difficult, but they are unforgiving and if concentration isn’t your strong suit that will fuck you relentlessly. I still enjoy them personally though I’ve never completed one, there’s always some area that just annoys me too much to bother after a bit.
Or the third option: someone enjoys games differently than you.
I rage quit the final boss of Sekiro (Sword Saint Isshin) after hours of trying, on and off, for days. Came back after a break of a couple of days, and beat him on the first try. The feeling was unmatched. I felt like a god lol
Soulslikes are great if you're looking to scratch an itch for mechanical mastery, discovery, exploration, etc., but stories are not their strong suit. I'm not saying the stories are bad, just the delivery of them, unless you're the type of player who wants to play detective.
First few games were delightful to me precisely because they didn’t beat you over the head with a story. It’s up to you the player to make your own meaning of the understated story.
That’s not just Souls-likes though. And only Elden Ring is really open world in that way (I think, haven’t played much of any of them). What you’re meaning is that open world games aren’t for you, which is a lot more games than just Souls-likes.
I generally love open-world games, but really don’t like any of the Souls or Souls-like games. The whole thing of always being so focused on the enemy, having to time dodges and parries just isn’t how my brain works, and I lose interest and/or give up very quickly. I have no issue with hard games, but I feel a lot of people who love those kinds of games have some kind of masochistic trait that makes them keep exposing themselves to the shit those games drag you through. I don’t get super happy or feel like I’ve overcome something big with these kinds of challenges, it’s just “fucking fuck, it’s finally dead, I feel like shit and have used up all my consumables, that was not fun in any way. I need to go do something else because I almost had a panic attack from all this crap”. The story just ends up not mattering because there’s always this burden of forcing yourself to get past every millimetre of the game. I love really hard puzzles though, and stuff like platforming and so on, almost anything except that very Souls-specific soul crushing style.
I dunno, I feel like I wouldn’t use a walkthrough on souls like games until the second play through. Part of the fun is the discovery, and its fine if you miss shit the first time.
I just mean when youre banging your head against the wall and need a hint where to go. I do this less and less now though, I’ve still only beaten one of them.
I agree and don’t typically worry so much about getting 100% in games, if i miss something that’s on me and fine.
I use Arch and its fantastic! Sure some of the multiplayer games with bullshit DRM won’t work (only because the companies will ban you even though the tech is working as expected FU EPIC)
Once you get your system functioning the way you want it, you almost never have to worry about a patch breaking your shit. That is unless you customized your video drivers or the kernel.
I’ve been on NixOS for a little over a year, and have been absolutely delighted at how well gaming works now. I initially thought I would dual boot until Windows 10 EoL, but have had no reason to use Windows in that time and a couple months ago I converted my storage disk from ntfs to ext4.
Steam is nearly seamless; there have been one or two titles where I’ve had to switch the Proton version to experimental or GE, but nothing more than that. Heroic and Lutris have been similarly easy for non-Steam games. There has been nothing that I have tried to play that hasn’t worked, but I don’t play multiplayer games so YMMV there.
That said, this is not my first rodeo with Linux. I used it extensively in the late '00s and early '10s, which probably helped to sand some of the rough edges off of my recent experience. Though back then wine was not really suitable for gaming. I also have an AMD GPU, which I understand has an easier setup process than Nvidia. (I literally haven’t had to think about graphics drivers at all.)
I started out using an old Nvidia Geforce 1060 TI and an i5 whose model number now escapes me. My experience was terrible, on Mint, Ubuntu, and Bazzite. Most games didn’t work, and researching the error messages I found in my logs just directed me to Nvidia forum posts from 6 months to a year ago where a user described my exact issue and received no response.
Then, I purchased a new pre-fab computer with an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D processor and a Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU. I still had a handful of issues on Ubuntu, so I switched to Bazzite and it’s been smooth sailing ever since. I can run the vast majority of games through Steam, and use Bottles for anything else.
The lesson I learned was fuck Nvidia. Team Red 4 lyfe.
its not NVIDIA’s fault that Mint, Ubuntu and Bazzite can’t implement a driver properly. I have never had a problem with the multiple NVIDIA cards I have used with my Arch installs.
I had the same experience on those three and popos with my 2070. Then I switched to Endeavoros and finally things worked. Since then, my Nvidia card works just as well as Windows.
My old desktop I went with Linux mint. I had some trouble with the installer that I didn’t solve, but switching to slightly older but still supported version of mint worked. Games worked out of the box with steam.
I was playing a MUD for a while (I’m old, but aardwolf is still going). They have a special client you can use. That worked just fine through WINE.
On my newer desktop, I tried mint. I foolishly didn’t test much on the live disk, and only after installing did I realize HDMI, Ethernet, WiFi, didn’t work. Proton also crashed explosively. That was a bad time.
I then tried pop!_os and that has worked fine. I haven’t played much yet on it- just my usual guild wars 2 and binding of Isaac, but it’s been fine.
There was a weird issue with audio crackling in gw2, but I think I fixed that by changing a setting somewhere.
I also recently installed mint on a ~2014 MacBook Air. Not for gaming, but so it can get security updates and stuff. I needed to fuss with grub - something I never would have figured out on my own by someone on stack exchange had figured out - and now it works fine. Haven’t done any games on it, but I bet it could run really light stuff better than it could have as a Mac.
Generally, I’m a big fan of it not nagging me. It doesn’t ask me to use OneDrive. It doesn’t want me to make an account anywhere. Pretty much everything can be changed if you’re determined enough. I’m pretty easy to please though, so all I’ve done for customization is add a clock widget to the desktop and turn off edge tiling.
One thing that I expect might be a headache is mods. A lot of mod tooling I think makes assumptions about windows. There’s probably a way to run like vortex in the same environment as whenever proton puts the game, but I’m not sure how to do it. You can also probably find where the game files are easily and edit them. I’m hoping the community starts adopting Linux more so people write guides (and please write them on the public web instead of making 20 minute videos or burying them in discord)
Luckily Baldur’s gate 3 (which also runs fine) has its own mod manager, and that works fine.
Oh, I did have a weird thing once where the desktop environment had a keybind that was interfering with a game once. I think middle click, maybe? I forget exactly what it was, but I just unmapped the keybind in the desktop env and the game was then fine.
Wind Waker holds a special place in my heart after a summer where the Wi-Fi and the AC both went out and Wind Waker was the only game installed on my Wii U. It’s definitely my Second Favorite Zelda
I’ve had pretty good experience with Bazzite recently. There were some initial pain points, the biggest one is that my Nvidia GPU wasn’t even used in Steam games by default. But after working around all of those, it’s been a smooth ride. I’m playing a dozen of lesser-known Windows-only games in Steam and Lutris/Wine with zero or very minor issues.
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