What are you Playing Now? No really, tell us more...

[Keyrock]

1 hour ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

There's more than one? OH NO!

Somehow I have never played a DS or Bloodbourne game. Should I get into them?

They're not for everybody. They're not my jam, but I do recognize that they're really well made games. It's worth checking one of them out to find out if they're up your alley because they're top quality.

[the_dog_days]

2 hours ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

Somehow I have never played a DS or Bloodbourne game. Should I get into them?

I own like 7 or 8 soulslike games and I've never played more than about 10-15 hours on any one 'cause I find them boring. All rpgs have the explore - fight - loot - level gameplay loop but in souls games those loops feel stunted without an actual story. The combat and exploration aren't interesting or satisfying enough to hold my attention.

[Lexx]

Why do you have 7 or 8 souls like games if you don't like playing them?

[Hurlshort]

Hah, I totally get it. 10-15 hours is just enough to be like, "The next one will be different and keep my attention the whole time!" 

[ComradeYellow]

1 hour ago, Hurlsnot said:

Hah, I totally get it. 10-15 hours is just enough to be like, "The next one will be different and keep my attention the whole time!" 

What's funny with this is that FromSoftware isn't nearly as guilty as over marketing and hype as say, Bethesda and CD Projekt yet it appears people can be prone to buy stuff they don't care about  based off of internet word of mouth justt as easily as overpaid marketeers.

And anyone who doesn't like Miyazaki is on the wrong side of history, this man is truly among the greats. 

Edited March 6, 2022 by ComradeYellow

[the_dog_days]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

Why do you have 7 or 8 souls like games if you don't like playing them?

The ones I have aren't bad games and

1 hour ago, Hurlsnot said:

Hah, I totally get it. 10-15 hours is just enough to be like, "The next one will be different and keep my attention the whole time!" 

The only 'soulslike' I've finished is the one that's closest to being a normal rpg, Ashen and that was because of the questing.

[Bartimaeus]

6 hours ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

There's more than one? OH NO!

Somehow I have never played a DS or Bloodbourne game. Should I get into them?

To me, gameplay-wise, they're basically if you took the combat of a 3D Zelda game and made it a little more intricate and customizable on top of making it an actual challenge (which the 3D Zelda games are...decidedly not). I really don't think Souls games are as "unforgivably hard" as many people make them out to be - Dark Souls 1 in particular, which is the one I played first, I did not have much trouble with the majority of bosses on the first playthrough, with many being defeated on literally the first try. If you don't have much experience with 3D action RPGs, I could see it being too difficult to start off with. I love Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1, and Bloodborne, but I don't care so much about the rest - especially Dark Souls 2, which I think is pretty much just a giant heap of garbage (though it is apparently many people's favorite Souls game...how, I could not possibly begin to guess).

Edited March 6, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

10 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I think we've had this discussion before, but yeah, FromSoftware is pretty good at passive storytelling and world-building - not plot or traditional storytelling, of which they largely make no attempt to really even do outside of Sekiro (...and even that pales in comparison to most other games in terms of directness and quantity).

DeS, DS1, and BB all drew me in from a world perspective - the rest were somewhere between "eh" and "nothing". I have not tried Elden Ring yet, and I probably won't for some time to come...open world trash, .

Yes, we did, because everything happens in cycles, just like the Timless Prophet said. I mean, ehm... well, yes. Sekiro for sure was more straightforward, but it also felt like a whole lot more was missing from the game. I don't exactly mind indirect storytelling or having to go look for backstories. The best part about Dragon Age: Inquisition for me was looking at elven ruins trying to figure out what really happened in the past. The actual plot not so much, and the gameplay, well... erm, nope.

It's just that I for some reason bought into the hype and ended up being sorely disappointed by virtually everything about Dark Souls, from the supposed difficulty to the fantastic and deep story. I still enjoyed playing Dark Souls very much because it's a good game, it just wasn't what I thought it would be. Going in without expectations would probably have been a lot better.

7 hours ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

Somehow I have never played a DS or Bloodbourne game. Should I get into them?

Dark Souls is well worth the price of admission, although 40$ is a bit pricey considering it's age. From that you can gauge if you'd actually like the other games, except Sekiro, because that's a very different game and forgoes many of the elements found in the Soulsbourne games. For some, like @Bartimaeus to the detriment of the game. I liked Sekiro's focus, although I can understand why the relative lack of variety in combat styles and enemies can be a problem.

Regarding the game's fabled difficulty, I can't say much. Dark Souls is home to an iconic pair of bosses you fight at once that I heard a whole lot about that I ended up beating on my very first attempt, but I struggled with a boss that is supposed to be an early pushover learning experience. Mostly, like I posted once or twice already, because I really gimped my character. I read that magic users have an easier time, so I started out as one, then noticed that I just can't kill anything with magic (because I didn't get how the system works, oh my!) then switched to pyromancy which is flat damage that doesn't depend on anything but gear upgrades and also noticed that it's not enough to kill things (because I didn't get how the system works, oh my!) and so I had a character with 45 agility for the highest pyromancy casting speed, some other casting stats and a whole lot of nothing else wading into melee. Which wasn't very pleasant, but hey, school of hard knocks and all that, the rest of the game was smooth sailing, especially after finding a good agi-scaling weapon. Turns out playing a quick melee glass cannon works too. Except it was not the easy mode I hoped for.

That said, while I don't think of myself as the greatest of players, the above statement was made from one of the 1% of players who were able to achieve Embrace the Void in Hollow Knight. Not that the games are comparable at all (and achievement trackers aren't the most reliable source of information), just as a point of reference.

There's some fun jank in Dark Souls too. Fans claim it's always fair and you never die unless you make mistakes, but that's not entirely true. There's the usual, hits that shouldn't have been there, invulnerability frames that don't always work the way they should, ridiculous gotcha moments and the funny archers in Anor Londo... which, sorry fanboys, is just bad, bad, BAAAAAAAAAAD game design. Ugh.

Edited March 6, 2022 by majestic

[Wormerine]

5 hours ago, the_dog_days said:

I own like 7 or 8 soulslike games and I've never played more than about 10-15 hours on any one 'cause I find them boring. All rpgs have the explore - fight - loot - level gameplay loop but in souls games those loops feel stunted without an actual story. The combat and exploration aren't interesting or satisfying enough to hold my attention.

Interesting. Personally I don't really think of Soulslike as RPG as such - or rather is the ideal implementation of what I consider valuable in RPG combat. RPGness serves defining your characters, but I don't find progression itself to be compelling or to be a point in itself. At a core I treat it as an action game with flexible playstyle. To me every SoulsLike has been about exploring cool dungeons and fighting cool bosses - to me best content in all of the three games are DLCs as characters are fully developed by that point and FromSoft can go ham with bosses in terms of complexity and difficulty. I suppose that's why I didn't mind Sekiro at all, though I suppose it has far less replayibility... which doesn't mean much as I usually end up playing similar melee character build in DS games in the end. 

16 minutes ago, majestic said:

There's some fun jank in Dark Souls too. Fans claim it's always fair and you never die unless you make mistakes, but that's not entirely true. There's the usual, hits that shouldn't have been there, invulnerability frames that don't always work the way they should, ridiculous gotcha moments and the funny archers in Anor Londo... which, sorry fanboys, is just bad, bad, BAAAAAAAAAAD game design. Ugh.

I would say it's mostly true, but there are bull**** moments, and bosses and encounters. I do remember Anor Londo rooftops getting infuriating... I wonder how I would respond to them after many Soulsbornes later - would it be a cakewalk, or just bad design as you mention. DS1 has a lot of jank especially in the latter half which feels unfinished unfortunately. I did think that Dark Souls3 was rather well put together from the beginning to the end. 

[Bartimaeus]

4 minutes ago, majestic said:

There's some fun jank in Dark Souls too. Fans claim it's always fair and you never die unless you make mistakes, but that's not entirely true. There's the usual, hits that shouldn't have been there, invulnerability frames that don't always work the way they should, ridiculous gotcha moments and the funny archers in Anor Londo... which, sorry fanboys, is just bad, bad, BAAAAAAAAAAD game design. Ugh.

Lmao - I got past those archers on my first try on my first playthrough and didn't think much of them...and then proceeded to die like 30 times in a row on my second playthrough. There are definitely cheap moments that you could not reasonably foresee every so often...but most of them are not nearly so bad as that.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

To me, gameplay-wise, they're basically if you took the combat of a 3D Zelda game and made it a little more intricate and customizable on top of making it an actual challenge (which the 3D Zelda games are...decidedly not). I really don't think Souls games are as "unforgivably hard" as many people make them out to be - Dark Souls 1 in particular, which is the one I played first, I did not have much trouble with the majority of bosses on the first playthrough, with many being defeated on literally the first try. If you don't have much experience with 3D action RPGs, I could see it being too difficult to start off with. I love Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1, and Bloodborne, but I don't care so much about the rest - especially Dark Souls 2, which I think is pretty much just a giant heap of garbage (though it is apparently many people's favorite Souls game...how, I could not possibly begin to guess).

I had trouble with the second rock thing from BotW, so maybe I just suck. Or it's the switch controller. I'll go with that to feel better about myself.

I've heard that the difficulty is misplaced, because dying is the method of learning in the Souls games. I don't know how true that is, but that's true for Hades which I'm having enough fun with despite having been killed a ton of times.

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Dark Souls is well worth the price of admission, although 40$ is a bit pricey considering it's age.

I think I have DS 2 or 3 (from a sale), maybe I'll finally get around to my vidya backlog instead of doing irl (and now skype cuz the rona) pnp.

[Bartimaeus]

DS3 is much more unforgiving than DS1 - DS3 pretty much assumes you've played the previous games in terms of building up skills and problem-solving. Enemies are faster, track you (in terms of rotation and and attack precision) way better, and their move-sets are way more complex with way harsher conditional combos. I would not want to start with DS3 - if I enjoyed the gameplay of DS2, I would almost say it's a wiser idea to start with that one...but that game is so senseless and/or annoying in its design to me, so I just can't. Unfortunately, IMO the ideal game to start with is DeS, which is a Playstation exclusive, but whose design of having five different "worlds" you can go to right off the bat (each of their own individual progression and different kinds of challenges - both of which are helpful in case you get stuck on any one world). Pretty annoying that two of the best Souls games aren't available on PC - albeit only legally in the case of Demon's Souls, and unfortunately at all in the case of Bloodborne.

[Wormerine]

29 minutes ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

I think I have DS 2 or 3 (from a sale), maybe I'll finally get around to my vidya backlog instead of doing irl (and now skype cuz the rona) pnp.

3 is good. 2 is not.

[the_dog_days]

Man. I don't know if it's bugs or a corrupt save file but Elex 2 has crashed to desktop on me about 6 times the last 2 days. I know I've been doing 12 hour sessions, but come on.

[Gorth]

Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons....

 

Finished the main story last night. Haven't unlocked the Siege Turtle collection yet (something you need to do to acquire the turtle). The brilliant minds at ANet decided that it should not be easy to get, so they put it behind a map meta event. It takes two hours and on a *very* tight timer. I.e. if just a handful out of 50 people messes up, you've wasted 2 hours of your life. The unforgiving difficulties you normally associate with raids and organized raid groups, not 50 people random pug groups

 

Apparently the failure rate is still over 80%, but getting ever slowly lower (from an initial 100%) as people keep banging their heads against the fight and learning the mechanics....

 

Edit: The recipe for success... just bring 60-120 people organized into 3 raid squads made up of experienced raiders

 

[Lexx]

7 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

DS3 is much more unforgiving than DS1 - DS3 pretty much assumes you've played the previous games in terms of building up skills and problem-solving. Enemies are faster, track you (in terms of rotation and and attack precision) way better, and their move-sets are way more complex with way harsher conditional combos. I would not want to start with DS3 - if I enjoyed the gameplay of DS2, I would almost say it's a wiser idea to start with that one...but that game is so senseless and/or annoying in its design to me, so I just can't. Unfortunately, IMO the ideal game to start with is DeS, which is a Playstation exclusive, but whose design of having five different "worlds" you can go to right off the bat (each of their own individual progression and different kinds of challenges - both of which are helpful in case you get stuck on any one world). Pretty annoying that two of the best Souls games aren't available on PC - albeit only legally in the case of Demon's Souls, and unfortunately at all in the case of Bloodborne.

I thought DS3 was much easier. I almost completely breezed through the game. Was in shock when I suddenly saw the end scene.

Never finished DS1. I thought some of the mechanics were too annoying and random. For example the bonfire upgrades pissed me off, because I never knew where it makes sense to use them.

If someone asks me with what DS game to start ... honestly, I couldn't even answer. Personally I started with DS2 and liked it, played all the DLCs even. However, one thing is for sure ... if you start one (and like it), you're probably going to pump 60 to 100 hours into it.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Lexx

[melkathi]

Hmm this thread has gone past the 20 pages mark. Soon it will get locked!

Post while you still can!!!

[Wormerine]

BRING BLOODBORNE TO PC!

And Bayo2. Seriously Nintendo, Sony up.

[Katphood]

Elden Ring

I am just going to save my breath and say that the series reminds me of Five Nights at Freddie's at this point. 

But sure, I'll take it. It's still a very good Souls game: You kill big baddies, you feel good about yourself but it certainly doesn't deserve the hype it gets and George Martin should stick his writing skills where the sun never shines, provided he can actually find it. 

Edited March 7, 2022 by Katphood

[melkathi]

I thought the sun never shines in Soulslike games...

[Mamoulian War]

Just do not tell that to Solaire

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

15 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

DS3 is much more unforgiving than DS1 - DS3 pretty much assumes you've played the previous games in terms of building up skills and problem-solving. Enemies are faster, track you (in terms of rotation and and attack precision) way better, and their move-sets are way more complex with way harsher conditional combos. I would not want to start with DS3 - if I enjoyed the gameplay of DS2, I would almost say it's a wiser idea to start with that one...but that game is so senseless and/or annoying in its design to me, so I just can't. Unfortunately, IMO the ideal game to start with is DeS, which is a Playstation exclusive, but whose design of having five different "worlds" you can go to right off the bat (each of their own individual progression and different kinds of challenges - both of which are helpful in case you get stuck on any one world). Pretty annoying that two of the best Souls games aren't available on PC - albeit only legally in the case of Demon's Souls, and unfortunately at all in the case of Bloodborne.

I checked it and I have Dark Souls (1). Man, I can't remember half the **** I've got in my library lmao.

[Wormerine]

Ufff, so that was trickier to pull off then anything that FromSoftware has ever produced (Bayonetta):

I am not sure if I will have patience to platinum other difficulties. I am halftempted to do so, as combat is lots of fun, but minigames suck so badly. Honestly I don't know how I would survive that game, if I didn't discover I can make steam-overlay do button mashing for me. That's I think the only thing that prevented me from loosing my sanity during the rocket bit. 

[Katphood]

3 hours ago, melkathi said:

I thought the sun never shines in Soulslike games...

Seriously though, it's not bad but it's just more of the same and I don't get where George Martin fits in all of this.

Typical of Japanese folks though, they swallow American sh*t like bad liver wurst. 

[Hawke64]

Tried playing Alan Wake again. The gameplay and the lack of melee combat in particular were disappointing, though the design and the story seemed interesting.