Souls Thread: Dark Souls, Demon Souls, Bloodborne

[Zertes]

So, how is Lords of the Fallen, anyway? It's on sale right now, and the fact that it has troons up in arms is always nice. Is it actually any good, though? Looking at the negative reviews, a lot of them mention how janky the game feels, and how a lot of areas and enemies are really same-y.

If you go by Steam reviews, the recent update made it from a 6/10 game to a 7.5/10 game

 

[Banana Hammock]

If you go by Steam reviews, the recent update made it from a 6/10 game to a 7.5/10 game

You know what? Fuck it, it's on sale right now. I'd say that a 6-7.5/10 is worth $20.

 

[Years Ago on Mars]

You know what? Fuck it, it's on sale right now. I'd say that a 6-7.5/10 is worth $20.

But is it worth the time you put into it?

 

[Banana Hammock]

But is it worth the time you put into it?

Guess we'll see.

 

[Asian tech support]

Guess we'll see.

The game is actually pretty good now and very much worth $20. The developers didn't fix every outstanding issue but it's received a massive amount of QoL improvements since launch. The recent patch was I think mostly making the HUD/UI more slick (the original looked like something out of the late '00s) and the game runs a LOT better now than it used to. It does a pretty bad job of explaining mechanics though.

 

[BligitBloogit]

You know what? Fuck it, it's on sale right now. I'd say that a 6-7.5/10 is worth $20.

I mean right now the ultimate edition of LOTF is 24 bucks on steam. Picked it up yesterday, and while there are alot of things to get used to, it's not nearly as punishing (so far) as the souls games.

 

[BligitBloogit]

The game is actually pretty good now and very much worth $20. The developers didn't fix every outstanding issue but it's received a massive amount of QoL improvements since launch. The recent patch was I think mostly making the HUD/UI more slick (the original looked like something out of the late '00s) and the game runs a LOT better now than it used to. It does a pretty bad job of explaining mechanics though.

Agreed. The tutorials suck, and I had a bug pop up where the tutorial boss never entered the 2nd phase and wouldn't die. Second time I fought her she did. That first time it was aggravating though.

 

[marvlouslie]

Honestly, CI Games is doing the bare minimum in what devs SHOULD be doing in interacting with their audience, and I applaud them for actually taking the time to actually find out what a good majority of players want from their titles. It's refreshing to see them take a "Gamer First" philosophy in making their polls public on Twitter and actually implementing design elements from those choices. Besides, the terminally online Reddit mods banning the head dev of the studio simply because he told DEI to "fuck off" is some of the funniest shit I've seen in the space in a while. I might actually have to pick this up next month. I'm not a Souls game aficionado, but from what I've seen, LotF seems less punishing than a lot of the genre.

 

[Enter The Pooptrain]

It's a lot better than launch. Still think it has too many mechanics however. Performance has improved significantly.

 

[Asian tech support]

Honestly, CI Games is doing the bare minimum in what devs SHOULD be doing in interacting with their audience, and I applaud them for actually taking the time to actually find out what a good majority of players want from their titles. It's refreshing to see them take a "Gamer First" philosophy in making their polls public on Twitter and actually implementing design elements from those choices. Besides, the terminally online Reddit mods banning the head dev of the studio simply because he told DEI to "fuck off" is some of the funniest shit I've seen in the space in a while. I might actually have to pick this up next month. I'm not a Souls game aficionado, but from what I've seen, LotF seems less punishing than a lot of the genre.

It's important not to glaze the game too much. The game was panned upon release and rightfully so. Almost no one here liked the game very much and I felt like a bit of an ass getting my hopes up. That said, I believe the devs did the best they could with the resources they had and as evidenced by the post launch support it received, it was very much a labor of love and I hope the lukewarm reception doesn't dissuade them from taking another crack at something similar as I believe it's the closest anyone has come to emulating From's formula. The level design in particular was outstanding even if it was hampered by the umbral realm mechanic. We have a thread for the game so I'm gonna stop sperging.

 

[What can I say?]

Can I just say I LOVE alot of the weapons in Elden Ring?

There's genuinely so many cool weapons in Elden Ring, but one of my favorite line-ups would have to be the SmithScript line-up from the DLC. I can't really explain it but the feeling of just tossing your entire fucking weapon at an enemy in a series where such thing is a rarity or reserved for the big hitters just tickles my brain, being able to lob an entire fucking axe at the courageous cunt who tried to thoroughly inspect my anus with a royally decorated spear hand-crafted with titanium and gold alloys is just so fucking fun to me. I know they're far from the best weapons that not just the DLC but the entire game have to behold but they're my favorites.

I also know this sounds spoiled as fuck but I really hope one day there'll be a way to mod the game so that there can be multiple ashes of war on a weapon at once, I know we already kinda have this with some of the stance Ashes of War but I'm talking weapons like the Cleanrot Spear, being able to do both the line of golden spears we see the Cleanrot knights doing and the golden Phalanx we already have in the base game would be so cool to me, these weapons have so much potential to me and I'd love to see them expanded upon, maybe when some autistic transgender with a mild case of alcoholism gets their hands on the modding tools we'll see something like that.

I just really like the weapons in Elden Ring, that's all really.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Can't find a thread of Souls like (at least without necroing), but I want to shill the game Doll's Nest and it somehow manages to be a better Armored Core and Demons Souls clone (with a healthy dose of Blame! thrown in) than the last couple of titles made by FromSoft. It's janky but surprisingly well made.

It is coomer oriented but at you can always choose a costume that's fetishy.

 

[What can I say?]

Can't find a thread of Souls like (at least without necroing), but I want to shill the game Doll's Nest and it somehow manages to be a better Armored Core and Demons Souls clone (with a healthy dose of Blame! thrown in) than the last couple of titles made by FromSoft. It's janky but surprisingly well made.

It is coomer oriented but at you can always choose a costume that's fetishy.

I actually think I heard about that one from the Boomer Shooter (Or Ultrakill or whatever you wanna call it) thread, looks interesting, I'll be sure to check it out!

Admittedly I've never played an Armored Core game however I've heard mixed things about the latest one, should I pick it up?

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I actually think I heard about that one from the Boomer Shooter (Or Ultrakill or whatever you wanna call it) thread, looks interesting, I'll be sure to check it out!

Admittedly I've never played an Armored Core game however I've heard mixed things about the latest one, should I pick it up?

The latest one is too much anime robots. I don't remember feeling any weight for the actions. The difficulty is more frustrating than fun, I think partway through I just looked up a built because the balance was shit.

Anyways I finished Doll's Nest and it's surprising how much things it does right. The combat is weighty, every area is unique in design, looks and enemies, bosses are not just oval arenas with a single enemy that combos for several seconds. Hopefully it gains enough traction to get an online mode because there's a ton of customization (that's unfortunately pretty annoying to compare).

 

[capitalBBustard]

shill the game Doll's Nest and it somehow manages to be a better Armored Core and Demons Souls clone (with a healthy dose of Blame! thrown in) than the last couple of titles made by FromSoft.

It literally isn't and it's a really cheap and generic animu mech game where the primary selling point is lolipedo bait.

The shitter FS alog shilling this crap while dilating about FS games is hilarity.

 

[Nameless One]

 

[BlazikenLover]

Finished Shadow of the Erdtree after having dropped it on release and then again like two months after that. Got to explore more and with the help with a few guides got to find locations I thought would only unlock after beating Messmer. I wanted to keep my guide usage to a minimum since I didn't want to spoil the experience but after the whole "NPC quests advance if you get too close to the shadow keep" (which also made me drop the DLC the second time) I decided using one was for the best, specially since I intended to play the DLC once.
After finding more scadu fragments I finally began having fun against the bosses since they no longer felt brick walls that hit like a truck... until I reached the final boss, that piece of shit nearly made me drop the DLC a third time yet I prevailed (the NPC summons, as nice as they may be lorewise are such a detriment holy crap). Beating the final boss was such a rush, felt great and then the ending left me feeling both confused and empty like "is that it?".
Overall I have mixed feelings about the DLC, some areas like abyssal woods are fantastic but at the same time they felt undercooked, take Midra's dungeon for example: It is stupidly tiny and the rest of abyssal woods doesn't have much to it.
When it comes to exploration it's way too easy to miss stuff since the DLC is, in my opinion, too vertical. Sure you might see a village at the bottom of a cliff but since there's no obvious way to go down one may be assume that you gotta advance the story someway to open the way foward, when in reality the entrance to such village is hidden in a place that makes little sense and there's no intuitive way to find it.
The shadow realm blessing is both genius and annoying at the same time: Genius because it forces you to explore and not rush for the main bosses, annoying because it may kill any interest in a repeated playthrough, even more so if you add in the requisite of killing Mohg to enter the DLC to begin with, and it sucks since the DLC has plenty of choices with vastly different rewards which leads to my next point.
The NPC questlines SUCK and I totally get people who complain about them: Just getting close to the shadow keep breaks Miquella's rune which causes you to miss on dialog and potentially rewards. People might say all fromsoft games are like this but it's baffling after how well the base game avoided this bullshit. I got super pissed after finding out that merely stepping on Messmer's arena (which has ZERO indication of being his boss room) makes you lose one of Leda's/Hornsent's rewards, why the fuck couldn't they avoid moving the Hornsent UNTIL AFTER YOU RESOLVED THE WHOLE INVASION THING? The DLC is full of shit like this and I hate it for it since you gotta have a guide and a checklist at all times to avoid it. Then there are the questlines themselves, you see some of the characters so few times before the fight at the end and it's like why even add them to begin with? Maybe I got this impression since I did the early areas of the DLC nearly a year ago but still.
And back to the final boss, what an awful fucking fight, the first phase is fine even if Radahn's combos are too long for my taste but then the second phase is full of BS: Huge ass AOE which I didn't even find out you could run out of until I watched someone else, the whole rush with afterimages I still don't fully understand how to avoid oh and the fact that the boss can teleport from one player/npc to another without warning is pure CANCER. I get it's the final boss of a DLC you're meant to do after finishing with the base game but they overdid it, the boss hits like a truck (discourages you from trading) and is relentless with his attacks, which is by far my biggest issue with the fight: The window to attack is so small before you have to go back to dodging/running, which is made worse by the boss having a ton of HP and no weaknesses. It embodies EVERYTHING wrong with Elden Ring's boss design.

Lastly: I was baffled to find out how many people simply gave up at Radahn, these were people who played the dark souls trilogy, bloodborne, sekiro and even done challenge runs. They just gave up and didn't even bother with it even after the boss was nerfed.

 

[Tenshi Eating A Corn Dog!]

Ver archivo adjunto 7323614

Member berries. There're people who think this whoring out of their past isn't at least a little degrading. Seems like Demon's Souls got left out of this entire mess, but I could be disproven on release.

 

[Nameless One]

Member berries. There're people who think this whoring out of their past isn't at least a little degrading. Seems like Demon's Souls got left out of this entire mess, but I could be disproven on release.

Demon's Souls and Bloodborne are owned by Atlus/Sony. At worst they'll just throw in a reused animation or boss and reskin it as legally distinct. I think this is Bandai's marketing team whispering to Fromsoftware that Dark Souls as an IP still needs to be squeezed somehow. Just release a fucking lore bible book straight from Michael Zheki's recollections and the staff's ideas, and a half life style behind the scenes documentary to coincide with it. That's all you can do for Dark Souls, respectfully anyways. Oh wait Bandai Namco isn't exactly an unorthodox gamer centric company like Valve. More slop incoming.

Instead of stealing Western art maybe Japs can start stealing some better business practices as well.

 

[Tenshi Eating A Corn Dog!]

Demon's Souls and Bloodborne are owned by Atlus/Sony. At worst they'll just throw in a reused animation or boss and reskin it as legally distinct. I think this is Bandai's marketing team whispering to Fromsoftware that Dark Souls still needs to be squeezed somehow.

Whatever it is, look forward to the Nikke/Arknights collab in the near future when Bandai greenlights it. Sure, maybe Ranni won't be in since Fromsoft now owns that IP completely, but you get to roll for a live 2D version of Priscilla complete with jiggle bones on all animations.