I’m not certain I have the faith it’ll ever have 30 hours of content
Does it need to? Nothing wrong with a solid 20-25h campaign, you play through once, maybe another time with a different class or in multiplayer, and you’re done. I don’t need everything to be a forever game with constant content drops, even a game like this.
Just finished The First Berserker: Khazan earlier today. For some reason, the final boss was extremely hyped up in the game’s subreddit, and it ended up just being alright. Overall a good game, I had fun with the combat, but the story is trash and the characters are nothing, not even cardboard cutouts.
Bought it as the EA price was cheap enough to take a chance and early reviews where positive enough to signal that the game isnt completely broken.
That’s my thinking as well. I don’t mind Early Access either way, and I’m fine with coming back to the game every couple of months when more content drops.
The layoffs were already yesterday’s news, with basically no one talking about them. I don’t think MS needs any diversion tactics for that, and even then, Silksong wouldn’t be it.
I’ve been playing The First Berserker: Khazan. I’m maybe two-thirds through the game and generally have a good time. It’s basically Nioh with the faster paced combat, loot and mission based level format. For the first two regions, I mainly used the Spear, but recently have switched to the Greatsword. The monster bosses are fine, but some of the human bosses can be extremely infuriating, with how their stamina regenerates so quickly.
It’s mainly just talking to people, but if you want to fight as few times as possible, you probably need to know the game or tons of save-scumming. You’ll also have to be ok with just missing a bunch of stuff, or pick and choose your fights, which again, needs prior knowledge.
I don’t think it’s a good way for a first playthrough.
IIRC there are six fights you always need to do (two of those in the tutorial and another shortly after, although technically you can use glitches to skip these). But if you only wanted to do these fights, you’d basically do an evil playthrough and miss most of the game, especially Act 1 and 3. And if you’re not talking to people, save-reload the correct dialogue choice, you would just sneak around everywhere, trying to avoid enemies, constantly saving and reloading, because you were spotted.
If you add a handful of boss fights, a good run is possible, but still, there’s going to be a lot of sneaking around and save-scumming.
I think you can only be non-lethal, not truly pacifist, if someone cares about this difference. You still need to knock people out and do stuff to them, even if they don’t die by your hand.
I remember playing this on my Voodoo graphics card back in the day.
I always wanted to check it out again, but there are no proper discounts of this game anymore, and the price even increased to 20€ a couple of months back. Who thinks that anybody will buy Descent with DOSBox for 20€ in 2025? Might as well just use my old pirated copy on a burned CD I have somewhere.
I’m someone who tried a few Fromsoft games, but only really got into Elden Ring and that was the first (and so far only) game of theirs I finished.
If you want more Fromsoft, there’s going to be a lot of overlap with their Souls games, because of how From reuses assets.
Dark Souls 3 will be the most mechanically similar, but depending on what you liked in ER, it might get too similar and just feel the same, or you get frustrated when muscle memory kicks in when you do some Elden Ring move, that doesn’t work in DS3.
Dark Souls 1 might be a nice palate cleanser, as another user already stated.
If you play on console, Demons Souls or Bloodborne are also options, the latter probably being the fan favorite (or you can try to emulate it on PC). I think BB combat is supposed to be more aggressive because you can get back health, when you attack enemies after you’re hit.
Sekiro is focused on parries, and a lot faster, and more difficult.
If you want to try other developers, Lies of P is a recent one, that’s pretty good, more focus on blocking and perfect blocks, along with the BB-esque health-leech after you get hit, so you’re supposed to be more aggressive.
If you’re a Star Wars fan, the Jedi games, Fallen Order and Survivor aren’t bad, but they have some open world bloat, that you can ignore. Also, it’s an EA game.
If you like old school Zelda and puzzles, maybe check out Tunic.
If you like Crabs, try Another Crab’s Treasure, that was already mentioned here.
If you like 2D Metroid and bugs, check out Hollow Knight.
If you like 2D Metroid and little girls (what?) take a look at Ender Lilies.
If you like FPS and have friends, try Remnant for some coop fun.
If you like fast-paced action games and loot, with some souls stuff, Nioh and The First Berserker Khazan have you covered. If you want more of that along with Final Fantasy, there’s Stranger of Paradise.
If you tried Sekiro and liked it, or maybe you thought it was too hard, but it’s good in concept (and like loot) you can check out Wo Long. Also helps if you’re super into the Three Kingdoms stuff.
If you want Chinese mythology, take a look at Black Myth: Wukong.
If you like anime tiddies, there’s Code Vein, a decent game like this, on the easier side.
If you’ve tried a bunch of these games and just look for more, The Surge games are alright, nothing special I think.
If you want to defeat the woke mind virus and are extremely based, but don’t like good games, take a look at the Lords of the Fallen (2023).
I played it at launch on PC, and the only thing I remember is terrible performance in certain areas. Don’t think I had any real gameplay bugs, but maybe I just forgot.
I still didn’t like the game, but bugs weren’t really the issue for me.
Call of Duty players, when the matchmaker doesn’t just put them against people who have never held a controller before and they have to shoot at moving targets:
I only played DKC 1 & 2, never played 3, so I just looked at the Wikipedia, and it said DK and Diddy were somehow “made” to fight Dixie and Kiddy. That’s why I just assumed there was some kind of mind control going on.