I'm not a fan of looter shooters, so this was never gonna work for me anyway, but I wanna mention this because I found it funny: Borderlands 4 Super Deluxe Edition is $130 and the last 17 games I bought on Steam cost me $127, and that includes a few DLCs 😂
I also just realized this: currently at 60%, Borderlands 4 has worse user rating than any of those 17 games 😂
You're pointing a finger at the Soulslike genre here, not only HK. Some games may abandon it, but this is common enough to be called a genre stable.
You should try Salt and Sanctuary, Sekiro, Bloodborne, The Surge, Lords of the Fallen, or Lies of P—all had boss runbacks, and that's ignoring HK, Silksong, and the original Souls games.
Not putting checkpoints close to boss fights is not difficulty.
You're pointing a finger at the Soulslike genre here, not only HK. Some games may abandon it, but this is common enough to be called a genre stable.
Just like the "hit hit, dodge/parry, hit hit" combat pattern, losing/recovering currency, enemies respawning on bonfire use… etc.
I think this whole genre is wack, TBH. I don't even find it difficult, I just think what they test is perseverance in the face of misery and tediousness, which's a bizarre thing to test in a video game. It's almost as if it's straight up telling you: this is a serious video game, no room for fun here.
Meanwhile, Ninja Gaiden proved you can simultaneously have extreme difficulty AND fun like one million years ago.
Hmm… I read your edit, and I think you're kinda overlooking the hard truth here: you can come up with a list of 1,000 things players "have to" do, but if the game doesn't enforce them, they're not gonna happen.
You can rant out of frustration all you want, but you have no control over anyone except yourself, and trying to tell people what to do will only piss them off.
You're also making a lot of baseless assumptions. How do you know how much they enjoy the game? Maybe they choose to engage with the parts they like and leave the rest out, they're happy this way, and the game lets them. Who are you to tell them what to do?
Again, ranting is fine, but you gotta have self-awareness, otherwise you're gonna get nothing but negative reactions.
Question: has his series ascended to action status yet, or is it still an action RPG?
Another way to ask this: does freedom of expression in combat come from combat mechanics or character build? I'm assuming it's still a combo, but 2 and 3 feel as if they're leaning more towards action than RPG.
I don't necessarily have any problem with action RPGs, but I'd be more inclined to add it to my wishlist if combat takes more from Ninja Gaiden than it does from Dark Souls.
Damn, you should steer clear of Japanese action games then.
Further, yes, I expect all products to tell me about their features.
Oh, really? I should get my money back from 20th Century Fox… they didn't tell me Fight Club had the twist feature at the end. Thank you for pointing that out.
I cannot believe I had to discover it myself as I was watching the movie. Bizarre stuff.