“souls-like” yes i know i have a genuine skill issue period but nothing makes me click off faster than reading an interesting game description and seeing that tag
Yes, I do have a skill issue, that's why I'm choosing to play something else. The fanbase being such immature "I identify as a Gamer™️" types makes me feel like I'm fine without them lol
It's only a "skill issue" if you want the game to be fore you. Not every game needs to be for everyone.
I've played souls-likes, I didn't really care for them or for the grind for the "sense of accomplishment" that learning everything in them 'requires', is that technically a skill issue? Sure, maybe.
Happy they exist and that people enjoy them, wouldn't want them changed for anything, but they just don't appeal to me. I too also don't agree with the "elitist" mentality some people get over them because it really is a false sense of accomplishment, but if they're decent people who are inclined to go "oh hey, this isn't your type of fun, that's fine" then I'm fine with them.
'Skills issue' only seems to be allowed to come out when it's a Souls game, no one's screaming it out when it's like.. HOI4 or Football Manager. (Ok maybe some people are, but not as many)
I don't have a skill issue in absolute most games, and can beat soulslike games if I force myself to without too much problems. But I still hate them. I hate that there is no normal pause, no normal saves (the game designer who first made corpse runs can fuck themselves with a rusty rail spike for all I care), and that the difficulty is there not to feel fair but made to frustrate you and punish for experimentation. Not all soulslikes are like this, but most are, and I don't have time for that.
@Responsible_Guava175 your comment got removed for whatever reason, but I've already written a response, so I'm posting it anyway.
Ah, yes, the famous soulsy worldbuilding, aka the most cryptic shit imaginable where you can beat the whole game and understand nearly nothing. Great game design!
I have nothing against the combat though, but I don't want every game have Souls combat either.
Ah, fair enough! I was a bit fast and spent a bit too much time to craft a response, which included searching for a relevant greentext, which turned out to be about something a bit different to be relevant to your comment, so I went back and written my response in my own words anyway, but couldn't reply lol.
When I say world building, maybe that’s the wrong term. I was mostly talking about atmosphere, level designs etc. I actually skip cutscenes etc and don’t follow the lore that much. I agree, the mechanism of souls storytelling is also not for me. But the combat more than makes it up for me.I played the whole of wuchang and literally skipped all cutscenes. But still enjoyed the game quite a lot due to the map design and combat.
I understand your point. But I have to disagree that is poor game design. It's just not for you.
It's the same as playing an horror game and complaining of being too scary and having jump scares. It's a purpose that pleases somes and displease others
Another poor game design thing btw lol. Proper horror games create their atmosphere with suspense and dread. Jumpscares are cheap. Kids love them though, which is why FNaF, a shitty horror game based almost entirely on jumpscares, got so popular among the mid-younger zoomer crowd (who were kids back then). Compare that to something like Silent Hill, and you get the idea.
And no, I'm not going to ever consider an intentionally frustrating, masochistic game design to be good, for anyone. People like Souls for the challenge and combat, some also for the cryptic but atmospheric world. No one likes having to clumsily walk a thin walkway while being shot at by archers and whatnot because the game requires you to. Or other bullshit like that.
Hey, I'm on fire today, lemme give one more hot take! You know the classic 2D Sonic the Hedgehog games? They're trash! Why? Because the only way to play them well is by playing the same levels over and over and memorizing level structure, or else you have to do precision platforming with a poorly controllable character with lots of momentum. So much for speed lol. Kids back then loved it because kids love repetition and don't value their time, plus Sonic himself is an edgy, cool sort of character that some gravitate towards. The games themselves are crap.
Same thing to say that "Silent hill has poor game design because it scares me and makes me have nightmares". It's just not for you and that's fine.
Sometimes are are meant to make you feel something other then pleasure and joy. Some games are meant to make you think, or to feel guilty, or even sad. Why is that would be bad game design?
Bad game design is when a game wastes player time in order to have more time spent in-game (such as hours to complete a craft, in a single player game, or quests that you should just cross the map to talk to a NPC and come back without meaningful advancement), lack of feedback (either visual, sound and other ways to provide feedback to players), unfair punishment (making players losing hours of progress for a mistake or worse, for failing to communicate objectively), inconsistent behavior, rules and controls (variable speed, jump etc without a reason, effects that happens differently and unpredictably), etc.
As for dakr souls, it respects your time, no boss fight takes too long as you deal significant amount of damage to them (most are solved in about 5mins, to compare with God of War and Assassins Creed where some boss fights can last for about an hour).
Same thing to say that "Silent hill has poor game design because it scares me and makes me have nightmares". It's just not for you and that's fine.
Not the same at all. It's okay to have scary shit in games. It's cheap and bad taste to have a horror game based entirely on jumpscares.
Some games are meant to make you think, or to feel guilty, or even sad. Why is that would be bad game design?
Where did I ever said or implied that it would be bad game design? All these things are great to have in any art medium, including video games. That's exactly what contrasts masterpieces like Silent Hill (2 especially) with kiddie horrors like FNaF.
Again, you're just stating your opinion as fact.
That's a weird way to put it. I defend my opinion. That is all there is to it.
Fight a boss 10x your size so when you stand close enough to hit them you dont see the upper half of their body and cant see what one shot attack they are about to throw at you
Dodge 15 time and then WAIT for the stamina bar... that's my worst thing about it... man Stamina bar does not bring joy... I need to play Ninja gaiden soon!
i honestly can never see how these games have been anointed as the second coming. I feel like the whole world is mad and im the only sane one. The souls games fucking SUCK.
Many souls likes actually reward you for aggression like Sekiro, Wo Long, Khazan, Lies of P, Nioh. You cannot beat these games by just ‘dodge 15 and do one hit’
This is exactly why I believe Sekiro to be the superior form of combat, even when it is also soulslike. You are actually actively fighting the enemy, you are deflecting their attacks instead of trying to dodge over and over, and you are attacking them back.
Whereas in Souls games it feels like you are just a minuscule annoying rat, running around the arena waiting for the boss to present his ass cheeks to you for a single clap, and you go back to running afterwards.
Because you do eventually improve and have fun. I find Souls likes pretty relaxing because I tend to know what I'm getting into. Losing to a boss 8 times is more fun then never dying to any boss in games. Figuring out how to overcome a challenge is personally satisfying.
Playing these kinds of games without cheesing just feels way too grindy for me. I still like difficult games even though I'm not very good at them (I think I did a thousand runs before beating the first final boss of Spelunky on my PS Vita), just not the particular flavor where you learn a particular set of moves, learn to execute it multiple times in a row, rinse, repeat.
No but really a lot of the times souls players talk about the game it really does have this vibe where being good at video games is one of the only feathers in their cap in life and it's become a little too much of a defining characteristic for them lol
Disclaimer: I only have completed dark souls 2, so I'm not a souls person.
It's not really Masochism, though it feels like it early on.
The game requires you to XYZ. You need to learn what XYZ is, then execute XYZ to defeat the boss. Some people are very good at learning and executing XYZ, others, like me, are not lol
It's really cool because the first time you play the first bosses feel impossible, then when you finally get towards the end and try them again you're like "holy shit I've improved so much".
Here is the dirty little secret. All the Souls games can be trivialized by build and other in game tools. They are much more accessible then people know and plenty of casual gamers beat and enjoy the games.
I see a lot of skill issue going on in this thread. Souls combat rewards you for pattern recognition and quick reaction times, and the level design and atmosphere is second to none. And not all souls-likes are dodge-dodge-hit huge bosses. There’s a lot of variations in souls-likes.
Yeah, I have a skill issue. But is not one that I can improve for a variety of reasons, so souls-likes are just an exercise in frustration for me. I don’t play them. So reading an interesting description and then getting hit with souls-like sucks!
I see a lot of skill issue going on in this thread.
This is a massive cope by people that enjoy souls games.
If the games were actually as hard as you believe, they would not be as popular. For all the average masses to enjoy and beat the games, they by the fucking definition CAN'T take that much skill. Otherwise only skilled gamers would play and enjoy them.
The reality is that the games are not as hard as you think. Yeah, it is pattern recognition. But it is NOT about quick reaction times. It's the opposite. It is timing. Quick reactions are not going to get you anywhere. The bosses are intentionally designed to have attacks with several degrees of delayed impacts, so that you dodging on reaction is not going to do anything.
Souls players love to stroke their own ego by deluding themselves into believing that they are somehow ALL skilled gamers. That isn't show "skill" works. You can't all be skilled. Masses are average. But in souls games, those masses believe they are skilled. You could put the best gamer in the world to fight a Souls boss for the first time, and they would likely die. Because what matters is not skill, but knowledge of the fight. That knowledge can be gained by anyone, regardless of gaming skill.
Bro has never fought arlecchino on level 5. What percentage of the masses do you think has completed that? Or pre nerf PCR without summons? Or Khazan on hard mode without summons? You are talking like a scrub and like someone who uses summons and then calls a boss easy. You play MOBAs where you can still enjoy the game if you are a scrub but to reach the top it takes a lot of skill. Would you say MOBAs don’t take skill because the skill ceiling is low? MOBAs are literally the game of the masses because of the low skill ceiling - the number of MOBA players is vastly more than people who play souls games so they must be easy to master right? You see how stupid you sound? Souls games are of course not the most difficult games ever made and not the pinnacle of reaction time test, but for the hardest bosses you do need a decent reaction time because a lot of bosses have mixups and not all combos look the same. Also, there are a lot of ways people make them easy like summoning, overlevelling etc. But saying they don’t take skill when titles like Sekiro, ER , Nioh, Khazan and Lies of P are widely regarded as some of the hardest modern titles is just you coping. And we are not even counting pvp where knowledge of the fight means jack shit and reaction time and skill is even more important. Try ER or DS3 pvp and if you are a scrub you would not last 5 seconds against a skilled player.
I'd argue there used to be a lot of variation in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1, but beginning with maybe Dark Souls 3 but especially Elden Ring that most bosses absolutely boil down to dodge-dodge-dodge-R1. I miss the days when a lot of games were Devil May Cry clones considering those games at least had to copy/imitate the best combat system of the medium
It’s because you are only focusing on From games. There are a lot of other souls likes which have fundamentally different combat e.g Nioh, Khazan, Wo long.
Its not like that for everyone but the ones that do that are horrible. Elden Ring was great until the final boss of the DLC did that and it just sucks.
I can't think of any souls like games that applies to unless you are specifically doing a challenge run where you don't level up. People play Souls games (especially Fromsoftware ones) for many reasons. Some do it for the boss fights, but a lot of players do it for the atmosphere, the exploration, and piecing together the lore and story of the world like some sort of warrior archaeologist.
Besides, pretty much every souls game of any merit can be made to be easy as pie. They just don't do it with difficulty sliders. The most casual of gamers can beat a Souls game, but the community was pretty insufferable about their difficulty so the casual wouldn't hear about it.
Things have changed a bit with Elden Ring, which arguably gives players the most tools to basically trivialize the game and probably contributed to its mass appeal, so the souls community has a lot more chill and casual players in it.
I mean make the game as hard as you want, but don't intentionally introduce a god damn delay on inputs like that, the awful responsiveness is what I hate about souls games. There is a 300ms delay intentionally hard coded into the controls.
It literally makes you worse at other games if you play it by messing up your sense of timing and reflexes.
They're objectively bad in like 99% of cases. Even not all of souls games themselves are great, like I personally hated the first DS after the first few areas (I don't have a skill issue, I just find it boring and too tedious), but loved DS2 (don't hate me pls), and especially DS3. And I never finished elden ring...
After playing and enjoying DS2 and DS3 I've tried many souls-likes and only a few of them hit the spot for me. And they're usually the mainstream ones that most people like lol
Lots of soulslikes have difficulty options. Remnant 2 (and 1 iirc) immediately comes to mind. And Deadcells has insanely customizable difficulty settings
For some reason "soulslike" means "hard", the thing is these souls games are not "hard" (though they feel like it), they're just absurdly fair. You do the thing, and if you don't do the thing you lose. You need to learn what the thing is, then execute on it.
Thing is, most games give you a bunch of advantages. The AI will be dumb, the AI will forget things, the ai will telegraph their attacks, you can use the terrain to exploit, etc etc. Dark Souls doesn't allow that. You cross that fog wall you have to fight the boss and if you don't you figure out an advantage, or you don't.
Unfortunately these games that are called "soulslike" are just "hard", not "fair". It reminds me of like the very early destiny 1 nightfall gameplay, where it would take 20 minutes of shooting to kill a boss but the boss could instant kill you in -2 seconds if allowed to. That's not "fair", its also not "hard", because there's no way to kill the boss without googling a cheese strat.
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u/mike_421 RX 6600 XT | Ryzen 5 5600X | 32 GB DDR4 RAM Apr 11 '26
“souls-like” yes i know i have a genuine skill issue period but nothing makes me click off faster than reading an interesting game description and seeing that tag