I want to talk more about the games I tried out this year and did not get along with. There have been severeal, I see, as I have been looking over my Steam Replay timeline. Some of them are just the demos, whereas others are games I’ve bought. Oh, here’s the post I did yesterday on some of the games I played this year.
The first one is The First Berserker: Khazan (Neople), a brutal soulslike. I have one word to say to this game: NO.
To expand a bit more, I was sighing within two minutes of playing. I will say, though, get paid, Ben Starr–get your bag! He’s in everything, and he’s the main character (the player character) in this game.
I am so tired of soulslikes glomming onto the brutal difficulty part of From games and thinking that’s all it takes to make a good soulslike. Oooooh let’s make it so you can die in two hits by a scrub! Ooooooh let’s have mob after mob attack you in a way that you can’t see them coming, nor can you separate them. Ooooh let’s make it so that the opening saps your will to live. And then let’s have a mini-boss who will break your back, your spirit, and make the game not fun at all to play.
Oh, and ever since Sekiro, let’s include a parry/deflect that is an integral part of the combat because god forbid a dev dare make a soulslike these days without it. God forbid that the combat be hefty enough on its own so that you don’t have to use the parry/deflect. And god especially forbid that you don’t crank the difficulty up to a billion before I’m even out of the tutorial area.
I don’t blame From for this, but I can’t help feeling a bit bitter. I was already the dregs when it came to From games, and now, I cannot hang with many of the clones. The only way I made it through the base game of Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ) was by maxing out a consumable-forward build and using said consumables to beat every boss from the fourth one on (or fifth?) in their second phase (and they all had second phases after that point). That’s even how I beat the super-hard optional secret boss at the end of the game, plus a drastic change of my build in general. I didn’t feel good about it or proud (well, some pride on the last boss), but I did what I had to do.
I played maybe an hour of The First Berserker: Khazan and quit without hesitation. It was not enjoyable at all, and it was missing the point of Souls games, at least for me. The vast majority of people play the From games for the bosses. I felt no joy in playing the game, and I knew I would have quickly been at that place where I could no longer play the game.
I don’t know when it happened, but I’ve gone from being eager and excited when a soulslike is announced to being disenchanted, jaded, and ‘ugh, no’. It’s almost a revulsion at this point. Take, for example, Nioh 3 (Team Ninja). It was announced at… I want to say The Game Awards, but I’m not sure. It was recent, though; I know that much.
I have earnestly tried to play the first two games and got my ass relentlessly whupped. I was not having any fun, and I eventually gave up on each (for different reasons). I was numb when I saw the trailer for the third game. It did not move me in any way, and if anything, the trailer turned me off of it. I can’t think of the last soulslike that excited me. It’s not that I’ve outgrown the genre, but that it’s grown in a way that does not include me. In other word, it’s dumped me and not vice-versa.
Side note: I don’t have loyalty to any brand, not even FromSoft. Currently, I buy their games on day one or even pre-order them, but I was deeply disappointed by Nightreign and their decision to make The Duskbloods a Switch 2 exclusive. If they eventually bring it to other platforms including PC, I’ll probably buy it–but I won’t be happy about it. PvPvE does nothing for me. I’m sure they’ll do it well, but it’s not my thing at all.
Look, just because I love past From games does not mean that they earn endless grace from me. I mean, they can make whatever games they want. Clealy, they don’t need my approval to do that. But, I don’t have to buy those games if they don’t appeal to me.
I’m curious if they’ll do a sequel to Elden Ring. I can’t imagine they won’t given how successful it was, but I would rather see them move on to something else. no, I don’t want them to return to Dark Souls, either. I would like a game in which the combat was not so emphasized (and hard) and there was more focus on the exploration.
Another game that I was really looking forward to was Date Everything (Sassy Chap Games). It had a very interesting premise in that you receive this pair of glasses that make it possible for you to, ah, date everything (well, not everything, but most things) in your house. And by things, I mean things. The microwave, bed, your diary, washer, dryer, vacuum cleaner, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Erika Ishii is in it, and they play ben-wa balls named Ben-hwa. You can bet I ‘dated’ them as soon as possible. It was pretty damn hot, but also weird, which is a good tagline for the whole game.
Ben Starr is also in this game; as I said, he’s getting PAID. He’s the doors in the game, and he’s one of my favorite characters. I like talking to him, and apparently, he’s 17 doors. I have found maybe five of them?
The dialogue is snappy for the most part, but it just does not gel for me. It’s trying too hard, and I did not vibe with it. All the names are puns, and all the dialogue is written as if for a sassy sit-com. Itt’s well-written, but just not for me. Also, I learned that once you ‘date’ someone (read, bang), that’s it. There are no long-term relationships. Granted, I don’t know how long the person who told me this had played the game, but they seemed to be pretty confident about it.
I did feel it was way too easy to woo a few of the people I banged, including Ben-hwa. I felt like I was enacting a main character fantasy with the support of all the NPCs. I would have liked it to be…I don’t even know what. More authentic? But that’s not the point of the game. I mean, the very premise is weird and wild, so why would the rest of it be grounded in any way?
I played maybe a half-dozen hours of it and never really warmed up to it. Regretfully, I put it away after twice giving it a real shot. I don’t think I’ll be going back to it.