I’m still playing Stranger of Paradise; Final Fantasy Origin (Team NINJA. Note: That’s how the write their name. Previously, I had been calling them Team Ninja, but have realized they capitalize all of Ninja). I just went up against the second boss, who was much easier than the first and only had one health bar, no (noticeable) second phase. I’m playing an normal (three modes) and try to be over-leveled for each mission (because Team NINJA makes the level suggestion ludicrously low for each mission). When I was playing Nioh, I learned I should try to be at least 1 1/2 times the level they suggested. Oh, by the way, here’s part four in that series.
I was telling Ian that I really appreciated the flamboyancy of the second boss. *SPOILERS* It was a pirate…Captain, ah, Bilke, I think it was. Captain Bikke. With a siiiiiick big axe of some sort. He wasn’t very hard and afterwards, I apparently unlocked the axe category of weapons because the tutorial showed up.
Brief sidestep into the tutorials. I hate them. Not just for this game, but for all Team NINJA games. They want to show you the combos, which, fine. It’s good to know the combos. However, in the tutorial, it’s a study in frustration because you need to do the combos as they appear on the screen. For whatever reason, I cannot get the timing on the last combo on the first page of almost every category. I have Googled it, and it’s not just me. Other people have had frustrations with it as well. I watched a few vids of people doing it and most seemed to have no problem. I have to conclude that it’s my reflexes/dexterity that is the issue.
Side note: I’m watching a review of the game that I have included belowe. I am grateful to hear him say that the level design is hot trash. He mentioned several of the things that I find frustrating about the game–most especially how same-y all the corriders look. He said that it was like, “Was it down the vaguely purple hallway or the vaguely blue one?”
He clarified that he played it pretty soon after he played Elden Ring, so he couldn’t help compare the two. He was frustrated with how there were no signifiers as to where to go next, nor a map. He said the same things were true for Elden Ring, but he implied that that the level design was much better in that game. Which is very true. One of the classic examples was in Dark Souls. Blighttown is a notorious area for several reasons. One being that it is really confusing to navigate. I did not notice until I read about it much later (like, perhaps on my third or fourth playthrough or later) that the ladders all have a torch by them. It’s obvious once you know about it, but until then, it’s easy to overlook.
I have realized that I don’t like soulslikes. I know that’s a very broad statement, but it’s true. I thoroughly liked Salt and Sanctuary (Ska Studios), but that was more a 2D clone than an iteration of Dark Souls. There were one-to-one comparisons for almost everything in the game. I mean, hell, one of the classes was Hunter, for fuck’s sake. With a Hunter that looked straight out of Bloodborne. I enjoyed it tremendously, but quit halfway through a second playthrough as a melee character (was a caster in my first, natch). Once I did, I immediately forgot the game and could not remember the name of a single boss.
I also had great fun with Junkyard Souls, er, The Surge (Deck13). Here’s the thing, though. It wasn’t a very good game. I can freely admit that. But it did do a few things in a fresh and innovative way. One is that when you hacked off the limb of an enemy, you got that limb/armor with different abilities. It was very fun and creative.
Other than that, though, I have not enjoyed any other soulslike. I did finish Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ), but that was just sheer stubbornness. Everyone was raving so hard about it being the best soulslike ever, and I wanted to like it so bad. I just could not get with the meta of the deflect. And how, in my humble opinion, inferior in every way Lies of P is to any FromSoft game. I did not care of either of the Lords of the Fallen (Deck13 and HEXWORKS, respectively. 2014 and 2023), Steelrising (Spiders), Mortal Shell (Cold Symmetry), Ashen (A44 Games), Remnant (Gunfire Games), Nioh (Team NINJA), Blasphemous (The Game Kitchen), Code Vein (BANDAI NAMCO Studios), and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (Team NINJA) all have come and gone. What I mean is I’ve tried them all and did not finish any of them.
If you want to include roguelike/lites that have some Souls influencee, I was not able to play Hollow Knight (Team Cherry) because it was above my abilities, but I did barely manage to beat the final boss of Dead Cells (Motion Twin) after they nerfed the final boss (which is barely scratching the surface of the game), and I enjoyed the game very much. But I knew I was at the end of my capability and could not do the rest of the game.
What I mean is that before they nerfed the final boss, the balance was so messed up. I think I played it in Early Access, and I enjoyed it tremendously up until the last area (the castle). Up unitl this point, you could use any build, any weapon, and any skills in order to make progress. Once I made it to the castle, though, and was prepping for the final boss, I had to find the shops so I could buy any time-stopping skill I could find and…one certain kind of status. Maybe freeze? I’m not sure because that’s what I normally used. Anything else did jack and shit, and this was with me having rings and such that blocked 80% of the damage.
It took an hour to get to that point, and then the boss killed me in less than 2 minutes. That was not fun at all. I tried so many times to beat the final boss and never could. I gave up in frustration after weeks of trying. I returned to the game many months or maybe a year later when… maybe when the game actually came out? When there was DLC? I don’t remember exactly what brought me back, but I decided to do one test run just to get back into it. I made it to the castle and was resigned to dying in two seconds. Much to my surprise, I beat the boss. I knew immediately that they had to have nerfed him. I mentioned it in the RKG a while ago, and someone else had the same experience.
I didn’t feel satisfied in beating the boss, but it was enough to make me ready to put the game down and move on. It’s a fantastic game, though, and I’m sad that I could not get past the first phase of it (beating the “final” boss).
I’m done. More later.