We’re talking more aobut soulslikes and why I’m on the cusp of giving up on them. Before I get into that, though, I have to say that I talked a bit with Ian about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive), and his opinion is more in-line with mine than with other people’s. He’s enjoying it and thinks it’s gorgeous (no one has a bad word to say about the graphics and art direction), but he’s more circumspect about the combat. And he made a comment that validated my own half-baked thoughts on the combat. This is for people who like Kingdom Hearts and such. as I said in yesterday’s post, it’s a French homage to JRPGs. Which have never been my thing.
I try to avoid many of the fights because they get in the way of my exploring, and I dislike the combat so much. I am in the fifth or sixth major biome of the first act, which means new enemy types. There is one kind that holds its attack for so long, I don’t think it’s ever going to attack. There is one enemy who made a repeat appearence because it was summoned by a Petank to protect it during its boss fight. It does three super-fast hits in a row. I can’t even dodge it let alone parry. By the third or so time I had to fight it, I got the timing down a little better. I could dodge one of three or four attacks.
Sigh.
Petank is optional (and one of the recurring field bosses), but I’m stubborn. I know I can do them, so I tried again. And again. And yet again. They all have different gimmicks. This one’s is that it summons other enemies to guard it (one per turn). After failing to kill Petank three times (he flees after a certain number of turns), I did a quick look up. Wthi this particular Petank, the suggestion was to kill the other enemies with counters as quickly as possible. SIGH. Fine. I hunkered down and did my best to parry. One enemy summoned has one attack that is fairly easy to parry. The other one summoned often was the enemy who is so fast, I can’t actually see the attacks. I hate that enemy. That’s the one I mentioned above. By the end, I was able to parry it about half the time. Still not great, but much better than before.
Once Ian confirmed that the game was more JRPG than a soulslike, everything made sense. The combat, even with the parry, is not very soulslike with all the min-maxing you have to do and all the turn-based actions. I will say that I like the turn-based part of the combat much more than I thought I would. I like being able to think out what I’m going to do without being attacked, to be honest. On the other hand, I still have only a vague idea of all the different components of each attack working together. I know that you’re supposed to build on the element in your weapon, but I choose the skills I like rather than what element it’s based on.
In addition, every enemy/boss is weak to one element (or more, maybe. Not sure) and resistant to others. That’s similar to how it is in From games, but it doesn’t matter as much in those games–except for bosses. In this game, it really makes a diference what an enemy is weak to and what it’s resistant to, and I can’t keep all that straight in my brain.
I’m not even done with the first act (though I think I might be getting close), but I’m flagging. That’s like my interest in soulslikes, for sure. The problem is that I need something ineffable to make a game keep my interest all the way through.
I’ll give another example. Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions). I played it much later than its release because it was a PS4 exclusive, and by the time it got to the PC, I kinda forgot about it. I’m not a big open world person, Elden Ring, notwithstanding, and it looked like everything I dislike about open world games. Then it went on steep sale on Steam, and I knew it was highly revered by many people. I bought it, played it, and enjoyed it. I didn’t love it the way other people did, but it was engaging and absorbing.
Then, something happened in the third act that broke my faith with the game because it was such a move my face to hit your fist moment and so emotionally manipulative, it made me actively angry. I had the DLC to go, and I should have waited to do it. But that’s not my style; I gritted my teeth and slogged my way through. I did like the cats they added, but that’s a given.
I did not like the DLC at all. It was just more of the same, and the main antagonist was just ugh. I hated everything about her, and I was so burned out on the game by the time I got to the end. I reached the last mission (I think), and I just could not do it any longer. Plus, I started playing another game–but I can’t remember which. Balatro (LocalThunk). It’s Balatro. A game that consumed me, and now I haven’t touched in at least a week.
I think it may be time to give up on soulslikes. I don’t actually enjoy most of them. I was thinking of picking up Enotria: The Last Song (Jyamma Games) because it’s set in Italy–which is very unusual for a soulslike game. I tried the demo, though, and I could barely play the game. Why? Because even though it’s third person, I was getting nauseated from playing it. Someone in the RKG Discord mentioned FightinCowboy’s Let’s Play of it. I ilke FightinCowboy, so I gave it a shot. He had played the demo, and I watched the video from that. I was getting nauseous just from watching the video, and I remembered that I really did not like the demo, even aside from how nauseous it made me.
One thing many soulslikes do is confuse difficult with good. Or rather, that the From games are defined by their difficluty. I can’t blame them because the games are fucking hard. (I will refrain, with great difficulty, to go on a rant on how people have retcon the dificulty of the games.) But it’s never been the main purpose of the games–the difficulty, I mean. Except the second game, which is also something I won’t go into here.
I’m done for now. I’ll write another post tomorrw.