Soulslikes is a category that has exploded in the last decade, for better and for worse. I love the Dark Souls trilorgy and Elden Ring, but I have not found many of the soulslikes to be anywhere near as good. Salt and Sanctuary (Ska Studios) was decent, and I actually finished it. But it was very slavish in its adherence to the Souls formula, I would almost call it a clone. I have tried so many of the other soulslikes, and there is not another than I enjoyed very much or finished. (Yes, I’ll get to that in a second, don’t you worry.) Many of them take the wrong lessons from the FromSoft games–including the fact that the game has to be hard as nails.
There have been things to like about most of them, but equally things to not like about them as well. Clunky combat, esoteric lore, no explanation about how to do anything, etc. Many of them are done by indie devs, so I’m a bit more forgiving because it’s usually a handful of people workin on the game. I don’t expect as much as I would from a AAA company, for example.
Before I really get into it, let me say I’m going to do a quick(ish) look at Another Crab’s Treasure by Aggro Crab. I played and finished their first game, Going Under, which is a delightful roguelike that centers on Jackie, a beleagured intern at a games dev company who finds out that the job is more than making copies and answering the phone.
The site is set upon a hellmouth of sorts that calls forth demons and such. Jackie has to go down (go under, as it were) to take care of the problem. It was clear from that game that the devs admired FromSoft, though it wasn’t explicitly stated or seen.
Remember I said that I hadn’t finished any other soulslike? I haven’t, but I have finished a sekirolite (which is what I’m terming games that are all about the parry/deflect rather than lump them into the soulslike category). That game would be Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ), and the combat definitely styled itself after Sekiro.
I did not enjoy that game’s combat. At all. Starting with the fourth boss of that game, I beat every boss in the same way. For the first health bar (and there was nearly always two. Which, ugh), I just whittled away until I got to the second stage. I used the spirit summon liberally and made sure I had the cube set to revive them as many times as possible.
Then, in the second stage, I chucked all the throwables I had at the boss. This is how I beat every boss in the late stages of the game. Well, except the very last one. I did a variation of this formula, but it did including chucknig things at the boss.
Is this cheese? Yes, it is. Is it in the game and what the devs expect you to do if you can’t parry? Also yes. In fact, just after the fourth boss (who, by the way, is the boss who took me the most times to beat and is way too harfdfor where they are in the game. They got nerfed just after I beat them, I think? Or maybe right before?), there is a vendor who became my bestie in the whole game. Why? Because he sold chuckables . Farming them was such a pain for the fourth boss and so rare to get them. I much rather just pay the vendor for as many as I can get for the money I have on hand. THen, when I farm, at least I have money as well as the one or two chuckables I got per run.
People loved this game. I did not. I almost didn’t finish it, and I am certainly not excited about the sequel (though I’ll probably check it if it’s on Game Pass).
Back to Another Crab’s Treasure. It has a jaunty and jolly tone to it. It’s bright and colorful as well. Both of these things were in the first game, and I would expect nothing less from them. I have nothing but positives on that front. This game is better than the first in both categories as Aggro Crab has polished their style.
But. And you know there had to be one. I am frustrated with the game because it’s too much like Sekiro for my taste. I have talked in other posts about the thin line between good and bad copying when it comes to From games. Of course, it’s all individual as to what is too much or just butting up against the line. In this case, it’s too much for me.
You have to know that Sekiro is my least-favorite of the six games (Souls trilorogy, ER, and BB). Unfortunately, it’s the new hotness to incorporate some versionn of the parry/deflect into the new crrop of soulslikes, which means I am going to suffer mightily.
I had a few issues with the menu. Such as it freezing for a second and me not being able to tell if it was actually working or not. Plus, when trying to go from one menu to another, it would not do anything for a second or two, then rapidly flick through the next two menu screens in a millisecond.
In addition, the inventory screen was frozen and would not move at all. I could not see what I had in my inventory. At all. This was yesterday when the game released. It was fixed by today. I can see what’s in my menu now. Which is a good thing.
Here is an interesting twist to the formula–instead of a shield, you can inhabit different shells (you’re a hermit crab named Kril). And by shells, I mean anything ranging from pop cans to bottle caps to, I prsume, actual shells. When you use left shoulder/LT, you go into the shell and block. The shells take damage, but they can break fairly easily. So you have to find a new one to quickly scuttle into once your current shell breaks.
It’s an interesting concept. I’m not sure I like it or not because it’s just one more thing you have to manage in a boss fight, and the perspective is awkward sometimes, so it’s not always immediately easy to tell if there is a new shell nearby or not.
Another aggravating thing that they’ve taken from Sekiro is the unblockable attacks by the enemy–except in this case, some of them can one-shot you. I have said many times that I don’t do games that have one-shot kills. It takes all the wind out of my sails especially after I patiently cchip away for ten minutes and reaching the end of the health bar. Oh, there is a red crab that flashes when the one-hit kill animation happens, but it’s in the middle of the screen and not on the top. And it’small. It’s really hard to see.
The game wants to be like Sekiro (and, yes, I’m going to mention that game several more times in this quick look), but it’s just not. The combat isn’t as tight, which you would think would be in my favor, but it’s weird. It’s spongy in a way that makes me not at all sure where the block/parry is. Even the scrub enemies can two-or-three hit me. You’re supposed to go in for the quick kill, deflecting all the way, but as I can’t deflect, I get hit almost as often as I block. I still don’t know what the perfect block is for any of the enemies I hame faced so far.
I’ve played several hours, by the way. Defeated two bosses. The first of which had a strong resemblance to a Sekiro boss. The second had the one-hit kill animation. I spent at least an hour looking for what to do next, and I was getting more and more frustrated because I could not get where I needed to be. Yes, I finally looked it up, but there was no way to get to the area that was my next designation.
I finally looked at a warlkthrough video in desperation, and I had missed something that made no sense in the wild. I mean, it made sense once I realized what I had missed, but it wasn’t somethnig I would naturally think of. And, again, it wasn’t esoteric in the FromSoft way, but just something my brain wouldn’t think of. So, yeah, I wasted an hour or two being frustrated because I could not follow their logic. I did not appreciate that at all.
The last thing I want to touch on is that the game has many accessibility accommodations, including one that makes the game trivial, apparently. I gave the last thing one try, and, yes, it does negate all the difficulty, but I didn’t want to play the game like that. There are also other options such as not losing your souls (money, XP, whatever it’s called in this game) upon death, how much damage you take, how much health the enemies have, and more. I did not fiddle with those, and I’m not sure I want to.
Let me clarify.
I’m not sure I enjoy the game enough to just cruise through it for the story and the exploration. Those are not up to From standards, and I felt a vague sense of ‘oh, it’s like Sekiro, except with fishes’.
Hm. I have more to say. I’ll do a second post tomorrow.