Elden Ring. It is good for what it is, probably the best in its genre, but after so many Soulsbornes, it just feels like more of the same. Formulaic. I’ve tried it three separate times and it never grabbed me.
To me, the Souls combat does best in a tightly knit and highly curated environment. I really enjoyed Elden Ring but I do not think it was a step forward for the series. Open World worked to the detriment of the game IMO.
I echoed this in another thread. I honestly feel like ER is the weakest “Soulsborne” game they’ve put out. It feels like a lot of conflicting design philosophies at once.
The lore and worldbuilding are phenomenal but gameplay-wise it falls short of what made their past games shine.
I (re)play Soulsborne for builds, and I think that’s necessary to appreciate ER. Trying out all the spells and different weapons is most of the fun, the rest being trying them out on bosses.
This is something that gets completely lost in the translation to an open world game. The DS trilogy, Bloodborne, and even the original Demon’s Souls feel hand-crafted and carefully structured without being completely linear. ER loses a lot by leaving that formula behind.
On top of that, the boss/enemy design is imo some of the worst they’ve ever done. The past games (with DS2 being the one with the most exceptions) typically give you very fair but challenging fights. Telegraphs are clear without being slow and obvious. Particle effects and such are generally kept to a minimum to prevent visual clutter from taking over the screen. Bosses hit hard, but very few hits or combos, if any, would one-shot most builds outside of challenge runs. ER throws all of that out the window - bosses tend to hit like trucks, are visual clusterfucks (either enormous models with a terrible camera, tons of particle effects blasting out the ass, or both). I feel like the final boss of the DLC as an example is the most egregious example of this sort of design philosophy. Hell, Nightreign works so much better with the exact same designs because it’s such a faster-paced game where getting knocked down once or twice isn’t usually the end of a run.
You know, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I’d say Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is worth playing for a lot of reasons, but I think it’s got huge fundamental issues in both its combat and narrative design; it’s still on the short list for most outlets’ game of the year awards this year. Hades just got a sequel, and I didn’t even care for the first one. For many people, those two games are just about the only roguelikes or -lites they’ve ever played, but I don’t think they’re even good ones of those; the level generation is so limited that you’ll have seen all their permutations quite quickly, and the bonuses from boons just about all feel superfluous and interchangeable. Hollow Knight holds this legendary status among metroidvanias, and Silksong followed suit. I thought Hollow Knight was just fine, but I was surprised to find that this was the game with that sort of following. When facing the possibility of playing Silksong this year or about 5 other video games that came out this year, I don’t think Silksong is making the cut.
But your mileage will absolutely vary. These games have hype for a reason: a lot of people love them. You might, too.
A big part of the appeal of Hollow Knight and Hades are their respective art styles. They are both genuinely gorgeous games, and it really improves the experience. I would rather open up Hades again instead of, say, TBoI for exactly that reason, despite my thinking that TBoI is the better roguelike.
Admittedly I can’t bring myself to enjoy Hollow Knight at all, but that’s just an issue of me disliking metroidvanias.
I can answer this for you. So imagine a genre of game that you grew up playing, loved, and sunk possibly thousands of hours in. Now imagine for like 15 years they only made the most dogshit version of that genre of game. Then someone comes along and makes a decent, even passable, modern version of that game.
It’s like giving dirty water to a dehydrated person. Is the water good? Fuck yeah in the moment it’s fantastic. Is the water the greatest water you’ve ever had? Well technically no, but please don’t take away the dirty water please.
The worst part is, that decent game isn’t even in the same genre. E33 is too damn heavy on parrying. Imagine if all 2000-2015 Zelda games were garbage, and Breath of the Wild was the first good one. I’m sure some OoT fans wouldn’t be too thrilled, while a majority of gamers would be.
As a JRPG fan though, I concur, most JRPGs suck ass, and it’s often for the most obvious, easy to fix problems like slow combat speed, or throwaway random encounter design.
I played E33 for about 4 hours. The combat system is atrocious. It feels like I’m playing a turn based RPG but with elements of Dark Souls? The almost necessity of dodging in combat made me give the game up.
Was it good though? I imagine you’d be AP starved until you get the Picto for AP on hit, and then it sounds like the opposite where you can spam costly skills.
To clarify, I meant gameplay, because you can (and a lot of people do) turn on easy mode just to ignore it and focus on everything else.
The easy mode could win battles for you automatically and most people would “enjoy” it all the same, but I hardly think anyone would love it.
Edit: The context was explicitly combat, but, I feel there’s still a difference of enjoyable combat and actually engaging combat. Is parryless easy mode challenging enough?
The new Doom games are all very different from each other. I liked what Doom 2016 was doing (even if it got repetitive) but really didn’t enjoy Eternal because the constant juggling didn’t sit with me. I haven’t tried Dark Ages but it seems like it’s doing something between 2016 and Eternal (not quite use what you want and not quite always juggle) while also adding its own dimension with the mix of melee and guns.
I would never recommend each Doom title based on the last title. But it doesn’t mean I don’t like what they’re doing. I think it’s brave to do its own thing instead of doing what is expected.
Both of your comments are a testament to why I love the new Doom games – they’re different and don’t seem to be meant to be enjoyed by every fan, every release, every time.
Apart from the first two games (and Doom 64 for that matter), each offers different gameplay and feel and it’s so, so beautiful.
I feel lucky having a blast in each one. Doom 3 is my favorite, actually, especially with the vanilla flashlight (for the uninitiated: where you can either have your weapon out or the flashlight).
Yeah. I didn’t really enjoy it, but I got into it and finished it. Once I realized that you’re expected to die and respawn frequently, and you don’t lose anything when you do, playing went a lot better.
I still don’t get that decision, because Doom has never been like that. Even arcade games don’t do that. It just felt trivially cheap at that point.
Yeah, I enjoyed a bit of 2016, but got bored a didn’t finish it. I think Doom Eternal I had from Steam Family Sharing (or other source I didn’t pay for) and just couldn’t get into it. I hate both of them forcing the melee kill thing that takes you out of the action to watch a cutscene, but Eternal just didn’t feel like it worked for some reason.
Dungeons and Dragons 5e is less fun than 3.5e IMO.
There was more of a sense of character progression, and ability differentiation in 3.5e.
5e achieves balance by flattening the power curve.
For example, the attack bonus for a level 20 Fighter in 5e is just 4 points higher than it was at level 1 - same as a 5e Wizard. Both get +2 at lvl 1 and +6 at lvl 20
In 3.5e, a level 20 fighter’s attack bonus is 19 points higher than it was at level 1 (+1 to +20), but a wizard only gains half that much fighting prowess as they level up (+0 to +10).
All 5e characters are pretty much the same statistically & mechanically. Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.
I haven’t played any 3.5e proper, but I understand Pillars of Eternity 1 is largely based on it, and I’ve played a handful of the 2e games. I dig a lot of the changes in 5e. I wouldn’t say the power is so flat that the differentiation only comes down to role play; I’d say a lot of it comes from the apples and oranges comparisons between classes, like things beyond to-hit roles. Your fighter has no AoE attacks like the wizard has but has Second Wind and Action Surge, for instance. The advantage to flattening the differences a bit more is that your character’s role is less preordained (“you are playing class X, so you must be responsible for Y”) and that you are less hamstrung by the absence of one particular role, which scales better to small parties.
4e did some really cool stuff while also going a bit off the rails for me. I think overall I like 5E more, but we played a ton of 4e and I’ll always remember it fondly. I was really into the more defined roles, and how classes were a bit more self contained so they could just keep making more and more niche ones
Heartbreaking that they decided static item attack rolls and DCs was a good idea. It’s my biggest gripe with the system. Some items, like the Holy Avenger, subvert this and are pretty good, but most items suuuuuck the instant you outlevel them. Like, Sparkblade is cool, who doesn’t like chain swordbeams? Anyone over level 4, aparrently, because every creature you come across has learned to dodge lightning from that sword in particular
I feel the 5e rules are poorly organized, too. Lots of interdependent rules scattered far from each other in the books, and sometimes buried in the middle of seemingly unrelated sections, so unless you’ve memorized multiple chapters, understanding how to resolve common situations sometimes requires stopping the game for 15-30 minutes while someone digs through the books to find all the relevant factors. Even when you do find the relevant info, it’s often in ambiguous language describing what could have been made perfectly clear with a few keywords. The books are pretty, and the text might be nice to read for entertainment, but they’re pretty bad the the job of being game manuals.
Does 3.5e use the d20 system? Does it have the advantage/disadvantage mechanic? I like those aspects of 5e; they’re simple and they help keep games moving along.
Maybe I should give it a try. Or perhaps 4e, which I have read does a better job of clearly defining its gameplay mechanics.
3.5 does use d20, but lacks advantage/disadvantage in favor of doing a lot more math every moment of every round of combat. This is the biggest appeal of 5e, it’s approachable and keeps the games moving.
I wouldn’t recommend 4e, it strongly suffers from the aforementioned “everyone can do everything and feels samey” much more than 5e.
Pathfinder 1e is basically just dnd 3.5, and as others have mentioned, PF2e is more of a middle ground
Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.
Can you explain why you would play a TTRPG if you’re not interested in role play? Seems like a battle sim like warhammer, or just a video game might be the thing you’re looking for.
As a DM, the cooperative story telling IS the interesting part. D&D has never been an airtight game system, it’s a bunch if hand waving to give just enough illusion of structure and randomness so you don’t feel like you’re just arbitrarily deciding everything yourselves. But at the end of the day, you are. The characters and story you’re left with is the only thing of value.
I started TTRPGs with Pathfinder (1e). Some people talk about it like some impossible thing to play. It does have a lot more detail than 5e, but it isn’t that bad. (I did play one character as a wrestler, who did grappling a lot, which is notoriously one of the most complex systems.)
5e sells itself as being simple, and it is in how little control it gives you. However, the rules are anything but simple. There’s so many contradictions and stipulations every player has to memorize. It’s a mess. For example, some spells can be used as bonus actions, but not if you’ve already cast a spell, except for some that can anyway. It’s stupid.
Pathfinder 2e seems to make things so much simpler for everything, while still giving players freedom. Actions are just actions. If you’ve got the points you can use them for anything. Movement, attacks, spells, etc. Pretty much everything just is what it says.
I often stay away of new games because that exactly, the hype. If you play a new game and you say it sucks, everybody yells at you, but if you let past the time, it’s the time the one who gives reason to people.
In a lot of cases, the people who enjoyed it will have already said what they wanted to say about it, and then the detractors can just yell out the loudest. There’s a perception that BioShock Infinite was only praised because of release hype, and a lot of people look back at it unkindly for one reason or another, but I’ve seen a number of people experience it for the first time in just the past couple of years, unaware of any reputation it might have, and they loved it like we all did at launch.
This happened to me with Resident Evil 3 Remake, I didn’t knew that had so many haters behind but I really enjoyed the game. One thing to hate, they say, is the short duration of the game. I mean, you could beat the original game in 2 hours, if you didn’t knew nothing about the game, could take you like 7 or 8 hours
I always think it’s fascinating to see how the discourse around games evolves. It’s always most telling when people stop talking about a game at all. Remember Starfield? No one even talks about Starfield anymore, not even about how bad it may or may not have been. Just kinda flopped a bit and passed from memory.
I had to search “Bethesda space game” just now to even remember its generic name …
I remember at the time it was getting all these awards. When I still had game pass I booted it up to see what it was all about. Dear god was it dull. All I remember is some dude comes out and is like “you had a space vision! Take my ship!” And I thought that was the most absurd way to start a game.
I was just talking to someone at a party about what games we’d been playing, and we also had to fully stop and think a while to remember the actual name of the Bethesda Space Game™.
I played Demons Souls and it was awesome, but Dark Souls is so confuse, I couldn’t understand shit about the story, and it’s not that hard, harder than Demons Souls but no that hard.
Not sure how recent we’re talking but within the last year or so my 2 biggest disappointments have been once human and nightingale. I can usually work around jank and weird creative decisions, but unfortunately neither of these two were worth any of the time I’ve spent playing em since they felt like they didn’t seem to want you to progress.
Played once human for about 3 days, nightingale for around 3 hours and then refunded.
990Pro here (once had 770 80ohm, got nicked at work!!) - you can get some really nice memory foam+leather pads on ebay for them, makes a world of difference since they conform nicer and you get a slightly better seal for bass.
I’m going to make this point again because it went unnoticed due to the sheer amount of comments, but you wouldn’t complain about a Rubik’s cube or crossword puzzle being too hard or anything else designed to challenge you. I’d argue that without the difficulty of solving a Rubik’s cube that toy would be lost to time. The only reason it still exists today is because it was so hard to solve for children when it was released. Souls games are the same. The only reason we still talk about them and the only reason they gained the popularity that they did is because of the difficulty.
I remember distinctly picking up dark souls on sale on a whim before it started really entering mainstream discussion. The guy working at Gamestop warned me that people kept returning it because it was too hard. I took it home and played it and really learned the mechanics then I brought it to my friends to try. They learned the mechanics and since then we’ve had an unofficial race to see who can beat the newest FromSoft game fastest. It was the difficulty of the game that made it so addicting. Without that the game would be boring and no one would know what it was in 2025. If you don’t believe me install the easy mode mods and come back to let us know what your experience was like.
There’s nothing wrong with a difficult game, but there’s also nothing wrong with difficulty selection or easy games. Why does a game need to be remembered if the goal is to make something fun? The fun alone is what makes something memorable
I never said there is anything wrong with easy games. I play many easy games that were designed to be easy and accessible. Games can be memorable for different reasons. I play Souls games because I love the difficulty. I also play farm sims and VNs because I love story telling and other aspects. My point is that Souls games only exist and are only memorable because of the difficulty.
I’ll go back to the Rubik’s cube. It was released in the 70s. It’s a square puzzle that isn’t flashy or intricate. Do you think it would still be relevant over 50 years later if it wasn’t difficult? That doesn’t invalidate other games or puzzles that survived the test of time that are much easier. The Rubik’s cube was designed to be difficult as were Souls games. Without that difficulty they don’t have much else to offer.
Have never thought about it so dunno how awkward it'd be, but maybe NES and SNES turn-based RPGs? Quite like Mystic Quest out of them, Final Fantasy on easy mode pretty much but pretty chill and enjoyable imo.
Would recommend also hasicontent, Slipways Classic and Dust Bunny, all for PICO-8 and on Itchio, and those I think that'd be more feasible one-handed. Also Final Fantasy II for the PSP specifically as it's the most feature complete version, and this one iirc is feasible with one hand.
Also more feasible and native to Android if that's your phone system, Chloe Playtime (Google Play), Codemancer (Itchio), Deeper Down Dungeons (Google Play), Quest of Dungeons (Google Play, Humble Bundle, Itchio), REDDEN (dunno if still distributed anywhere) and Tyrant's Blessing (Google Play).
And don't remember any, but if there's any game compatible, maybe also check stuff playable on ScummVM, Joiplay, and other similar projects?
I’m still buying it at launch because it’s gta 6 and I doubt itll be bad, I never thought they werent scummy, idk why anyone thought they were a good comapny after gta online lol
Im gonna get value for my money and play in a fun open world, and not lie to myself about it, I bet itll get delayed again tho and they didn’t think firing them through
Yeah, people are delusion if they think GTA will be boycotted. However shitty Rockstar is, one thing to admit is that they do deliver good, polished games. Well, as polished as you can with these humongous titles.
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