I’ve been thinking about games that I buy. Or rather, when I buy games. I’m not someone who buys big games on day one.
Side note: Yes, already. I want to preface this post by saying that when I talk about Triple A games, I am not referring to FromSoft games. I will buy any game they put out day one if it’s anywhere in the Soulsborne realm, and I don’t mean physical worlds. I mean anything with that kind of gameplay and story-telling. What I’m trying to say is anything not Armored Core.
They are the top tier for me, obviously. So much so that I have two different lists of favorites. There is the FromSoft list which includes Elden Ring/Dark Souls III at the top, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro. Sekiro is not my favorite, but it’s still better than 80% of the games out there.
Here’s my problem. This is my standard for a Triple A game. Dark Souls was one of the first hardcore games I ever played. along with Torchlight (Runic Games) and Diablo III (Blizzard). Before that, I played casual games that included Hidden Objective Games (HOG), Match-3s and such. Needless to say, it was a leap to playing hardcore games.
Dark Souls broke me. It was unlike anytthing I’ve ever done before. Not just in games, but in life. It’s like speaking English all your life and then trying to recite a poem in Greek. You’re supposed to be able to play the game fifty or so hours. So I’ve read over and over. “No one” would ever need over a hundred hours to play the game. Except me, apparently. I’m not taking it personally because I have my physical limitations and because I’m just not good at these games. But it’s a patented untruth that no one would take a hundred hours.
I know that whatever anyone says is the time to play one of the From games, I just double it. It took me roughly 225+ hours on my first playthrough of Elden Ring. That’s double what most other people put into it, if not triple. Granted, I found most of the secrets (with a bit of help from the forums), but still. That’s a hefty time investment. I’m not saying it as a negative, mind. I definitely get more bang for my buck than most people. And I have put in countless more hours than that with several more playthroughs.
On the other hand, I love cozy games. I mentioned in my last post my list of favorite non-FromSoft games. The thing most of them have in common is that they have a strong art style that really helps me vibe with a game. I remember Northernlion used to scoff at people who were picky about art styles. He used to say (paraphrased) that if a game was good, it didn’t matter how it looked.
I could not get on board with that at all. For me, if I hate the way a game looks, I’m not going to want to play it. I don’t like the pixel art style, for example. That in and of itself wont’t make me not play a game, but I’m not going to have warm feelings about it as I play.
In contrast, take a look at the Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games) trailer I included above. Look at how lush and gorgeous it is. How evocative the art is (and the music!). It’s hand-drawn, and you can tell that it’s made with love. The tagline for the game is, “Spiritfarer is a cozy management game about dying.”
I was intrigued. I went in knowing very little about the game other than you built a boat in your spare time and that you had a pet cat called Daffodil. I kind of knew it was a management sim of some sort? But that was really the extent of it. Within an hour of playing, I knew it was something special. By the time I finished playing it (3 free DLCs later AND the plat), it had rocketed into my top five (non-From) games of all time.
I want to play it again because it touched my heart so, but I’m not sure I can. Because along with touching my heart, it thoroughly broke my heart, too. The characters are all animals. There is one who was a deer. She was bitter, broken, and hurt over and over again by life. She existed on cigarettes and coffee, and she had an abusive father growing up. She was the first guest I could have helped move on, but my heart would not let me do it. I related to her so much, I needed to keep her with me. I finally let her go much later when the guilt would not let me keep her around any longer. That was so selfish of me, and she was so ready to go.
I just played one of the demos on Steam that has similar themes. It’s called Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo by Gallo, and it’s a dead cobra skeleton who is helping the living to move on. I love the vibrancy of the colors, and I think they were deeply influenced by Spiritfarer. I also feel that there is a Dia de Muertos vibe to it as well. It’s crackling with humor, but there is an undertone of sadness to it. I will say that the combat, is, ah…it’s there. I don’t think it needs to be, but I get that they want to have some setpieces, I ugess.
The game itself is not out yet, thankfully. I have too many games to play, and I do not need to add any to the backlog. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this game, and I would be remiss not to put it on my wishlist.
I love my FromSoft games. I am so hyped when a new one is announced. However, I am also stoked when a gorgeous and heartbreaking indie games comes out on the market. They tickle a very different part of my brain that does the FromSoft bit. I am happy to have them in tandem, and while I know that I will only get one From game every other year or so, I can be secure in the knowledge that there will be indie games releasing all the time.
If I had to choose one or the other, I probably would choose From games. It’s closer than you might think, though. As much as I love From games (and I love them with all my heart), there is such a limited amount of them. I can play them endlessly, obviously, but the thrill of a new one is few and far between.