I want to talk about soulslikes in general beacuse I just tried two that fell short of what I’m looking for in one. Those are Another Crab’s Treasure (Aggro Crab), also known as SeKrilo (at least in my head) and Tails of Iron (Odd Bug Studio). Both were heavily influenced by From games, specifically Sekiro. Both had their pluses and minuses, but neither really scratched that itch. I would say that overall, Another Crab’s Treasure is the better game.
Here’s the thing. Most soulslikes make me just want to go back to tthe source material, and I always have at least one From game on the go. currently, I have a finished playthrough of Dark Souls III plus DLCs because we did Return to Lothric this year in the RKG Discord. In February. I’m halfway through Dark Souls Remastered, but probably won’t go back as the quality of the game sharply drops in the second half. And I have a few playthroughs in Elden Ring at various points, including one that is loosely based on Rory’s playthrough.
I wasn’t enjoying my dex run so I’ll probably leave it be. Or I could do Rennala and respect, but why bother? The DLC is coming out in a month-and-a-half, and I have a hunch that it’ll be meaty enough for me to be obsessed with it for several months after it releases.
I want to talk about what makes the From games so special–especially the Dark Souls trilogy and Elden Ring. Every time I play a soulslike, I am left dissatisfied, and I end up going back to an actual From game.
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first. The difficulty is not the point. In fact, I think From gets tripped up when they try to make the difficulty the point (i.e., the DLCs).
This is where so many of the soulslikes get tripped up. They try to make their games hard, and it detracts from the experience. Let me give you an example from each of the games I recently tried. InAnother Crab’s Treasure, they throw so many mobs at you. SO many. And even though they are shit enemies, each one can two-shot you. I’m guessing if I was better at parrying, I would not be two or three-shot nearly as much. But it gets old to just race through an area, trying desperately to get away from a mob of enemies who can easily swarm you.
Another thing the game did that was like FromSoft, but not done as well was having an enemy behind every corner. I don’t like it in From games, but at least they don’t do it every two feet. In this game, it was all the fucking time, and it just made me sigh in exasperation. That’s not playing fair, especially when I literally cannot see around the corners. The camera was wonky in this game, and that was frustrating as well.
Again, that’s a thing is From games, too, but not to this extent. I cannot tell you how many times I yelled out, “Camera, PLEASE!” in exasperation. Or how many times I could see through objects and then not see anything at all. Or get stuck in a corner and not be able to get out.
I do understand this is an indie dev so I’m more forgiving of the glitches, but it’s still frustrating when playing the game. The only way to fix it was to quit out and start again.
Alos, the decision to put ‘archers’ (ranged shooters) every other foot was annoying as well. This is something so many soulslikes do (so did Tails of Iron), but they don’t takke any care in how they do it. Again, it is a thing in From games, but not nearly as plentiful or recurring. Except for the true boss of Anor Londo–the two Silver Knight Archers.
In fact, one of the reasons I quit Tails of Iron was because of this. They loooooooove to put adds in a fight, and most of the time, they’re archers. The one encounter that made me rage (and that I died the most in) had an archer and a harder soldier. Just two guys, but in a pretty small room. Plus, the arrow took off nearly all my health, which was outrageous. The soldier was very parry-able, but so fucking hardy. I parried him five or six times and barely made a dent in him. Oh, also ,they don’t have health bars so you don’t know when they’re going to die.
So. I know taht the strat is to rush the archer and kill them first. Then, pcik off the soldier at leisure. Except the archer was pretty hardy, too. He took half-a-dozen hits or so to die, which is bullshit. Archers are supposed to be fragile. Everybody knows that!
The whole proportions in this game were way off. That was another way they thought they should make the game difficult–by artificially inflating the health pool of the enemies.
This is why I am not really happy about soulslikes being a genre. All the devs have taken the wrong lessons from it. It’s hard because I want devs to try new things with the formula, but the games that are the best hew closely to the formula.
I did not get on with Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ), but it’s widely considered one of the best if not the best soulsike of the last few years. I would disagree with it, but the reason it clicked for other people was beacuse it’s basically Bloodborne in mood and Sekiro in combat, with a few innovative twists. Probably the most notable one (and one I actually liked) was that the weapons were all in two pieces (except for boss weapons) and you could swap and switch any head and handle.
I think the assembled weapon took on the stats of the handle? I don’t quite remember. It had the fable art of the handle, I remember that much. One of the best handles was the Kratt Police Baton handle that was a B in Motivity (strength). It was solid, fairly lightweight, and just a good all-around choice. Also, there were cranks that could up the letter grading in Motivity (strength), Technique (dex), or Advance (something akin to magicks). You can bet I called everything by the From equivalent as I played because these labels were nonsensical.
Many of the RKG people who played this game used that handle for a good portion of the game. You can get it really early on, and it’ll carry you until the last few bosses.
Here’s the not-so-sexy truth. FromSoft hit on a good forumla with Demon’s Souls. It was very rough at that stage, and they’ve been iterating on it ever since. Some people were disappointed that In Elden Ring, they did not make any big combat changes. Some people have derisively called it open world Dark Souls as if that’s a bad thing.
They’re not wrong. It’s basically Dark Souls IV, but set in an open world. Here’s the thing, though. That’s huge in and of itself. They have never done an open world game before, so the fact that they were able to blend the two together seamlessly is a major accomplishment.
That’s all for now. I’ll write more about it tomorrow.