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Bowsette Plus-Ultra

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With the much hyped release of Elden Ring now coasting to a successful finish in our rear view mirrors, the Souls-like genre is once again at the forefront of the gaming landscape. What began with the cult classic and later re-release of Demon's Souls (or King's Field, if you're of a particular age and have a penchant for obtuse and incredibly difficult games) has culminated in the much hyped best seller that is Elden Ring.

Ever since the release of Dark Souls, it seems like dozens of games have sought to capitalize on the popularity of the Soulsborne by introducing similar mechanics. Some of them, such as Ashen, The Surge, and Remnant: From the Ashes mimicked the formula while adding their own twist. Other games like Lords of the Fallen aimed to ape Dark Souls with few changes.

Even Breath of the Wild with its new, more cautious method of combat doesn't seem immune to the influence of Dark Souls. What are your thoughts on the genre? Are you a fan of the difficulty? Is Bloodborne definitely the best Souls game? How do you feel about aspects of Dark Souls wriggling their tendrils into so many other games?
 

Mikey the Moblin

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Elden rings not really much of a soulslike, at least not in the way that dark souls and Bloodborne have established it
It's more Skyrim than dark souls, in other words. Elden Ring still has soulslike elements to it especially in the main dungeons like Stormveil Castle, but outside of that the gameplay loops are just totally foreign

In general though I love soulslikes. They're basically crazy amalgamations of some of my favorite genres, namely metroidvania, platformer, dungeon crawler... Games like remnant have tried to broaden the genres it borrows from, with variable success. I'd love to see soulslikes branch out in the future and not just be known for, well, souls
 

Bowsette Plus-Ultra

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Elden rings not really much of a soulslike, at least not in the way that dark souls and Bloodborne have established it
It's more Skyrim than dark souls, in other words. Elden Ring still has soulslike elements to it especially in the main dungeons like Stormveil Castle, but outside of that the gameplay loops are just totally foreign

In general though I love soulslikes. They're basically crazy amalgamations of some of my favorite genres, namely metroidvania, platformer, dungeon crawler... Games like remnant have tried to broaden the genres it borrows from, with variable success. I'd love to see soulslikes branch out in the future and not just be known for, well, souls

I'd still call it a pretty straight laced Dark Souls game. It uses the same sort of gameplay. It offers an open world, but I don't think that makes it any less of a Souls game.
 
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Bowsette Plus-Ultra

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not enough boss progression webs, no gated areas, too many bonfires, no "levels" in moment to moment gameplay

I'm not sure any of those things are really inherent to a Souls-like. It isn't as formulaic as that. If anything, what makes a Souls-like is a distinct roll system, difficult combat, and an experience system you lose when you die.
 

Bowsette Plus-Ultra

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Tbf right now soulslike could just as easily mean dark souls clone so :shrugs:

That tends to be the meaning, though it feels like an archaic description. It feels akin to calling a first person shooter a Doom clone. I guess it's just more that being a Souls-like doesn't require such a specific series of requirements. Usually it's just the high difficulty, the combat, the roll system, and the checkpoint system.
 
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I'd be pretty happy if more elements/design-philosophy we see in souls-likes made their way into other areas in gaming. I'm not a huge fan of the hand-holding trend that I've seen in more recent games. Playing the souls-likes makes me feel the same way I felt playing games for the first time as a kid.

I've been having a lot of fun with Elden Ring so far. I'd definitely call it a solid souls-like, but I do agree with Mikey that there seem to be way too many Sites of Grace around. For instance, boss runs should be a thing. They're a tough thing to balance so they're not a chore (looking at you DS2 Iron Passage), but I don't think they' should be completely done away with. Elden Ring seems to do that most of the time. And when they don't have a Site of Grace outside the fog wall, they have a Marika Statue instead. And then when you beat the boss, they spawn another Site of Grace inside the boss room itself. It just seems a bit excessive.
 

Mikey the Moblin

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I'd be pretty happy if more elements/design-philosophy we see in souls-likes made their way into other areas in gaming. I'm not a huge fan of the hand-holding trend that I've seen in more recent games. Playing the souls-likes makes me feel the same way I felt playing games for the first time as a kid.

I've been having a lot of fun with Elden Ring so far. I'd definitely call it a solid souls-like, but I do agree with Mikey that there seem to be way too many Sites of Grace around. For instance, boss runs should be a thing. They're a tough thing to balance so they're not a chore (looking at you DS2 Iron Passage), but I don't think they' should be completely done away with. Elden Ring seems to do that most of the time. And when they don't have a Site of Grace outside the fog wall, they have a Marika Statue instead. And then when you beat the boss, they spawn another Site of Grace inside the boss room itself. It just seems a bit excessive.
It's less about boss runs and more about the fundamental gameplay loop of soulslikes involving set challenges that reward you with a bonfire. The "boss run" is notorious because of how repetitive it is though. Its a good example of the platformer-esque gameplay loop that soulslikes tend to have, where you tend to get really good at a small section of a level because of how much you run through an optimized path
 
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The Sites of Grace that seem more simply a point of access than a reward for getting through anything are definitely more likely to be the ones I look at and think "really?". Like all the way at the beginning with the Gate Camp. There are 3 sites you can easily access it by. 4 if you count the nearby cave. 2 of them are right on top of the camp itself, to the point it surprises me the soldiers don't run up and stab me while I'm sitting.

It could be argued that the overworld is a lot harder to divide up into discrete challenges, though. Anything can be approached from almost any direction, and combat can be ignored with the use of Torrent. Do you think it'd be better if fast travel was something you unlocked later on in the game like in DS1?
 

Bowsette Plus-Ultra

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I'd be pretty happy if more elements/design-philosophy we see in souls-likes made their way into other areas in gaming. I'm not a huge fan of the hand-holding trend that I've seen in more recent games. Playing the souls-likes makes me feel the same way I felt playing games for the first time as a kid.

I've been having a lot of fun with Elden Ring so far. I'd definitely call it a solid souls-like, but I do agree with Mikey that there seem to be way too many Sites of Grace around. For instance, boss runs should be a thing. They're a tough thing to balance so they're not a chore (looking at you DS2 Iron Passage), but I don't think they' should be completely done away with. Elden Ring seems to do that most of the time. And when they don't have a Site of Grace outside the fog wall, they have a Marika Statue instead. And then when you beat the boss, they spawn another Site of Grace inside the boss room itself. It just seems a bit excessive.

I feel like the running back to the boss room after death is something that deserved to be cut. It was always a bit of tedium that just kept you from repeating the boss sooner. Cutting it mostly just means you go from spending thirty seconds of running back to the room, to five seconds of it. Also, the bonfire spawning in the boss room is something carried over mostly from Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne.
 
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I feel like the running back to the boss room after death is something that deserved to be cut. It was always a bit of tedium that just kept you from repeating the boss sooner. Cutting it mostly just means you go from spending thirty seconds of running back to the room, to five seconds of it. Also, the bonfire spawning in the boss room is something carried over mostly from Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne.

I can see that. I suppose I'm thinking about the boss runs as more of a punishment for losing to the boss than anything else. But then again, potentially losing all of your souls/runes and having to face the boss again could be seen as punishment enough. As far as boss room bonfires, I knew where they came from, I just don't think they were always necessary. I remember a particularly silly situation after you beat Dragonslayer Armor in DS3. It spawns a bonfire in it's arena, but then there's another one 5 seconds away past the arena. I'm pretty sure you can see one from the other.

Ultimately, the bonfire thing isn't gamebreaking for me, obviously. It's something that I notice and go "hm. I mean, okay." then get back to the fisticuffs.
 

Mikey the Moblin

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The Sites of Grace that seem more simply a point of access than a reward for getting through anything are definitely more likely to be the ones I look at and think "really?". Like all the way at the beginning with the Gate Camp. There are 3 sites you can easily access it by. 4 if you count the nearby cave. 2 of them are right on top of the camp itself, to the point it surprises me the soldiers don't run up and stab me while I'm sitting.

It could be argued that the overworld is a lot harder to divide up into discrete challenges, though. Anything can be approached from almost any direction, and combat can be ignored with the use of Torrent. Do you think it'd be better if fast travel was something you unlocked later on in the game like in DS1?
The late access to fast travel is one of my only complaints with dark souls 1. I've heard the arguments for why it shouldn't be accessible right away but I don't agree and clearly neither does fromsoft.

Here's a big distinguishing factor for me- the "point of access" bonfires are still like, necessary. Checkpoints aren't something unique to soulslikes, so their presence in the game isn't what we're looking at here, it's the function. And they need to function in this way because elden ring isn't a soulslike, it's an adventure game.

Anyway, the point here that I really want to talk about is the idea of objectives having no set entries or exits. It was a philosophy that they really focused on in breath of the wild, and it's something that's somewhat present here too, but it just doesn't work in from soft games. The message system relies on player experiences being mostly uniform so warnings or advice are often completely nonsensical because of how easy it is to approach an area from a different direction than someone else, and this genuinely hurts the overall experience of the game.
It's to the point where I think they should have made more of the legacy dungeons even more linear than they already are because both the adaptive difficulty settings and the player base haven't gotten accustomed to this philosophy change yet.

The overworld bonfires can stay, but if you want to make elden ring a soulslike you have to further gate progress with these legacy dungeons
 

Bowsette Plus-Ultra

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The late access to fast travel is one of my only complaints with dark souls 1. I've heard the arguments for why it shouldn't be accessible right away but I don't agree and clearly neither does fromsoft.

Here's a big distinguishing factor for me- the "point of access" bonfires are still like, necessary. Checkpoints aren't something unique to soulslikes, so their presence in the game isn't what we're looking at here, it's the function. And they need to function in this way because elden ring isn't a soulslike, it's an adventure game.

Anyway, the point here that I really want to talk about is the idea of objectives having no set entries or exits. It was a philosophy that they really focused on in breath of the wild, and it's something that's somewhat present here too, but it just doesn't work in from soft games. The message system relies on player experiences being mostly uniform so warnings or advice are often completely nonsensical because of how easy it is to approach an area from a different direction than someone else, and this genuinely hurts the overall experience of the game.
It's to the point where I think they should have made more of the legacy dungeons even more linear than they already are because both the adaptive difficulty settings and the player base haven't gotten accustomed to this philosophy change yet.

The overworld bonfires can stay, but if you want to make elden ring a soulslike you have to further gate progress with these legacy dungeons

I feel like you've applied a bit too strict a formula to a Souls-like. The key components of it are less strict and have more to do with a distinct roll system, the bonfires, difficulty, and experience lost on death. Everything else is nebulous.
 
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I feel like you've applied a bit too strict a formula to a Souls-like. The key components of it are less strict and have more to do with a distinct roll system, the bonfires, difficulty, and experience lost on death. Everything else is nebulous.

An interconnected, dungeon-like world has been an element present in all the souls games, as well as Bloodborne and Sekiro. Even in similar games like Code Vein and Darksiders 3. It's not a stretch to say that it's also something that defines a "souls-like". However, if we say that, it basically makes the "open world" and "souls-like" genres completely incompatible. Which doesn't seem entirely right.
 

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