This is the second post on how I review things. Here is the first post I wrote about it yesterday. I really want to make it clear that when I review something, it’s more with the eye of what I like and don1’t like than what I think is objectively ‘good’. One of the funniest things I can remember (when it comes to reviewing) was in an RKG chat once for a livestream. Can’t remember the game, but the chat started talking about the best soulslike game. Almost everyone was in agreement that it was Nioh (Team Ninja). I very carefully stated that I had the most fun with Junkyard Souls, er, The Surge (Deck13).
I will be honest. I knew what I was doing. I knew that I would cause a kerfuffle, even though I stated it the way I did (and did not say that The Surge was the best soulslike). I didn’t realize how big a stir I would casue, but I also wouldn’t have cared if I had known in advance. I played roughly a third of Nioh, and I struggled every step of the way. One of the things I love about the Dark Souls series and Elden Ring is that you can play them is so many different ways. You can’t say the same about Sekiro at all, and Bloodborne is somewhere in the middle (but closer to Sekiro than the others).
When I played Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ), I felt a disconnect with other FromSoft fans. Almost everyone else gushed about it as if it was the second coming whereas the game left me cold. The deflect (or whatever it’s called in the game) was front and center in the combat, and I could not get the hang of it. I never can, and I usually give up fairly early in any of these games because it’s just not worth it for me. In the first Dark Souls game, I practiced on the Silver Knights of Anor Londo until I could get it roughly 75% of the time. Which, fine for them, but every enemy has a different parry window.
Each Dark Souls game has its own parry window as well, which doesn’t help. I didn’t even bother trying for the second or third game.
In Elden Ring, I skipped over the parry again. FromSoft added two things that greatly mitigated the need for a parry. Or rather, one thing that mitigated the need to parry and another to augment the lack of need for parrying. The former is the guard counter–which is a godsend. You block an attack and then hit the enemy with an RT. You get the ‘ching’ sound and break the enemy’s poise, then if you quickly follow up with an RB, you can do huge damage. In other words, it’s very much like a parry/riposte.
I cannot tell you how happy/relieved/gleeful that I was when I realized there was a way to get a similar result to the parry without actually having to learn the parry. Oh, the other thing I mentioned was that there as an Ash of War for the shields that is ‘No Parry’. What does that mean? Ash of war is a special skill for different weapons. Some special weapons have their own permanent ones that you cannot change. Others have an Ash of War that is just specific to that class of weapon and can be changed for others.
In order to use the Ash of War, you have to two-hand your weapon to put your shield on the back otherwise its Ash of War will take precedent over the Ash of the War of the weapon. How do you issue the Ash of War? By pressing LT. There is a skill you can buy from the warmaster, Knight Bernahl that is called No Parry for pennies. Once I got that and slapped it on my Doritos shield (brass shield), I did not look back. I don’t think I changed it once.
When it comes to soulslikes, I don’t. Like them, I mean, for the most part. I have tried. And tried. And tried again. I think I’m reaching the point where I’m admitting, at least to myself, that I don’t like soulslikes as a genre. I don’t quite have the guts to admit it out loud yet, but maybe one day soon.
I know if I ever reviewed games for real, I would get so much shit. I don’t like many of the games that other people like, and I know how cruel gamers can be about the games they love. Reviews for Lies of P were nearly unanimously raves, but there were two people who specifically went against the grain. One was Zoe from Eurogamer who gave the game a 6 and another was Elbethium, a content creator who made guides on how to beat the bosses easily. I found myself nodding along as I watched Zoe’s review–for which she got plenty of heat and hate. She mentioned the dodge was sluggish–which was very true She also mentioned that the devs LOOOOOVED their guarding system, and that was so very much true. That’s the deflect/parry system, which I hated so much. It’s worse than FromSoft’s parry because you have to do it more than once on the bosses to actually get the riposte. Which means that even if you do get the perfect parry, you don’t get rewarded for it.
That plus the boring bosses, the gruelling grind, the even more boring enemies, and the useless shortcuts made it for a very unpleasant experience. Also, the reliance on artificial diffulty that so many soulslikes rely on to pump up the challenge.
I included Zoe’s review above and here is Elbethium’s take on the artificial dififculty. Which, fairly, he lays the blame at the foot of FromSoft themselves for upping up their own ante. He mentioned the last boss of Sekiro of when it started, but it really began with the first DLC of Dark Souls III.
Elbethium mentioned bluntly both the annoyance of enemies crowding every corner, making each step unpleasant. I remember when it really kicked in for me. It was the fourth chapter and there was a rafter section that was trying so hard to be Anor Londo, but harder. It was in a church. There was a poison pit on the floor that drained your health so fast. Enemies that could kill you in three hits (which ordinary scrubs could do throughout the game). There were beefier guys on the rafters who shot magic as you as you tried to run around them (on the narrow, narrow rafters), and there were windmills that would hurt you if they touched you. They were blocking the rafters, too.
That was when I should have quit. Three chapters later, there was an even worse rafters section, and someone in the RKG Discord jokingly said they were surpised I had’nt groused about it (in a friendly way). I wearily said that I had just run by everyone and not stopped at all because I could not have been fucked to fight them. I had no joke in me at that point.
The devs mistook throwing the kitchen sink at you for difficulty, but they were so wrong. In addition, all the boss fights came down to chipping away at the health in the first phase (and there was ALWAYS two phases, even though there was only one health bar at a time. And each phase was almost always a ful health bar) and then throwing the incredibly potent chuckables throughout the second phase.
I learned that from Elbethium, and it sow me through the game. There was a vendor in the fifth chapter near a bonfire, and I went there whenevre I was low on chuckables. Plus, I leveled up every stat related to how many chuckables I could carry and how fast I could throw them. It was bullshit, and I was so glad when I finished the game. I respecced so many times–way more than I ever have in a From game.
Whew. That devolved into a rant about Lies of P. I’ll get back to the main point in tomorrow’s post.