this is not a From game, you can jump* and swim
lol, just kidding.
- I mean jumping other than the x-axis, to be clear, jumping OVER things, amazing
Pretty much my very first experience with a Souls game was falling to my death after completely failing to jump in the tutorial area of DS2. That felt just right to me.
No fall damage either, though there are still plenty of bottomless pits I’m sure.
My first experience was similar. I was going up a broken set of stairs in Demon’s Souls, and an enemy charged at me, so I dodged to the right, which meant I rolled right off the stairs and off the entire castle into the fog/trees below.
I think it was the first time I’d played a game where you could dodge off stairs into your death, and I was almost offended at the very idea.
I am, I have to admit, very turned off by the death/curse penalty. I don’t like losing XP/gold on death (granted, the first time you die between shrines you can resurrect for free but if you get killed again before your next shrine visit, death is the real deal, lose half your XP towards the next level, half your gold). When you die (for real die), you also inflict a curse that hurts and ultimately kills NPC’s in the world, as the curse spreads. Cool idea, but I already feel like all my attempts at the game will lead to the darkest/bad ending possible. :(
There is a mechanic, a game stat that gives you a free death randomly with the default stat % chance set to 30. If you trigger this, you don’t lose anything on death! But, if you don’t trigger it, this number goes down a bit. I’m guessing there will be ways to remove the curse, and/or ways to recover and even boost this stat, but from what I know right now, it’s probably pretty challenging and rare.
The combat looks smooth as fuck, and really fun, but it also looks like something that’s going to quickly frustrate me and get outside my ability, like the early fight in the demo with the big nagatina guy - the player died five or six times trying to fight him and finally realized he had to like… parry INTO the big attack, or something? I’d have probably never figured that out on my own, and thrown my poor controller across the room.
I’ll look at this again if/when the buzz is crazy positive and I can’t resist, or more likely, when it’s on sale. Seems just a little too hardcore/demanding for my casual ass.
Loaded up Bloodborne yesterday just to remember why I didn’t like it. I got about 2 hours in and I uninstalled. It just runs like poo… After playing Dark Souls 3 at 60FPS with no dips pretty much ever it’s impossible for me to play a choppy 30 FPS game. Wish they would port it to the PC.
Bloodborne is my favorite From game to date.
A few years ago I was able to get used to 30 FPS games after spending a couple hours with them. These days, who knows.
I’ve gotten really spoiled with my upgraded computer. It’s the best setup I’ve ever had. I got a 144hz monitor a few months back and when you are hitting 100 + FPS in most games, it’s REALLY hard to deal with 30FPS anymore. Dark Souls is capped at 60 FPS as it will mess up the games timing, but other games like Apex when it’s cranking out 120-130 FPS is like a different world.
I have a feeling I’ll love this new game, but we shall see.
Exact same timeline for me. The visual clarity from high framerates on LCD monitors is so nice.
Every time I see clips or gifs for this I think “this is going to be cool” and every time I look up any information I read or hear something that’s just the most soul crushing thing you can hear about a game you want to look forward to.
The latest came from this preview video. I will link the video, but the (paraphrased while he was talking) quote I’ll type/paste below.
Courtesy of activication … a bunch of people really good at souls games got to fly up and play this… and everyone I talked to agreed it’s very tough. Tougher than Bloodbourne. For one thing “Souls” skills won’t translate (and I don’t have a lot of skill there, but I was comfortable with some builds) - you have to ween yourself off the dodge button. In addition to movement button, there are three avoidance buttons you have to be mindful of at all times. Jump over sweeps, dash over perilous attacks, deflect at the perfect moment (parry).
You know what build I could never do, and why I had to give up on Bloodbourne four or five times until ultimately washing out? I can’t fucking parry to save my life (or my interest). I also can’t QTE for shit - and if you don’t think jumping when an enemy sweeps or dodging when the “peril” icon pops up isn’t a QTE … oh buddy. So this entire game is built around all the stuff I don’t do well in gaming mechanics, it sounds more and more like.
It’s so cool looking, and it looks fun, but first I read about how they are dropping a lot of the mechanics I loved about Souls (this is months ago) and then I hear about the very punative sounding death mechanics, and then this guy starts going on about all the stuff you have to keep track of at a moment’s notice.
This might be the last time it happens that I look forward to this and then read/hear about something else that puts me off. I just can’t imagine ever really getting into this like I want to. Maybe if it was 20 years ago and I only got a few games a year and had to get good at them or not play games, but it’s way to easy for me to say “fuck you!” and uninstall and never play it again. Which sounds sure to happen.
I wish those of you that are great at this stuff all the best though!
I just can’t picture them making a game that’s so difficult that it turns off most of their fans. Souls fans can be pretty cranky when things aren’t difficult in the same particular way. That doesn’t mean they won’t get over it, or that it’s impossible.
A lot depends on the timing window for the parries. And if you mis-time it, you only take posture damage, not health damage.
The posture system may provide some leeway too. If it’s going badly for you and you’re able to back off and try again, then you’re basically starting from scratch.
All of this is complete speculation because I haven’t watched the videos too closely.
I’m skeptical - Nioh was supposed to have similar combat complexity and in the end you ignore it all and use the same short combo against everything - but their pedigree will get me to buy it anyway.
As far as difficulty, every single new game they’ve made since Dark Souls was “so much harder” than the previous one according to random people trying it out pre-release. Each one was difficult but ultimately you learn it and you beat it. I’m not worried about that aspect.
Except difficulty came in he wrong form, like endless stamina for enemies, endless combos, aggressive tracking and enemy attack speed and aggressiveness that would be more at home in BB not another, slower paced title that lacked mechanics to accommodate such gameplay.
I mean in the end we all git gud but it still felt cheap and the game was rightfully bashed for it.
I completely agree with the comment about Nioh though - path of least resistance is a real thing in these games and developers should be more aware of it. If I wanted to style on enemies I’d just play DMC.
I’m going to end up buying this fucking thing day one, aren’t I?
You know - I don’t think I realized before this was single player only. It’s not got a single strip of multiplayer code in it, meaning they didn’t have to “balance” move sets or anything for PVP nor did they have to make it so boss fights feel like they require co-op; it isn’t even an option.
Something about that is really appealing to me.
That razor thin hit-box.
I’m terrified of game trailers after the DMC5 final trailer debacle (which fortunately did not burn me) so I haven’t watched this one. I haven’t paid much attention in months so I might as well go in fresh. Glad to hear it looks nice.
I didn’t realize that Activision was publishing this game. They know how to make a good trailer.
Friday!
Currently working my way through the souls games, and was going to wait until I was finished to dip my toe into Sekiro, but I think it would be much more fun to go in blind with the rest of the souls (and QT3) community.
So I think i’ll be playing this alongside my souls games. Psyched!
I blew all my cheddar this week on Magic cards, so I’m going to have to wait. This is probably for the best, I’m still worried the game will be way to freaking hard for me to have fun for more than a few hours, but my son is hyyyyyyyyped af and is getting it day one, so I’ll have a chance to see and try it out.