Tag: soulslikes | A Banana Peeled

It’s all about soul(s), part two

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

In the last post, I was musing about what makes a good soulslike along with why i’m fine with Elden Ring being open world Dark Souls IV. I think that FromSoft is now in an interesting time because for a decade, they were flying under the radar and considered a genre-defining developer. They were never considered AAA, even though their games were all published by big name publishers. They seemed to be guns for hire, and basically willing to go with any publisher who would have them.

That comes with both positives and negatives. Positive: They got their games published. This is just speculation, but back in the day, that was probably their highest priority. Just getting their games out there, I mean. And this is total speculation on my part, but I think they like working with Bandai Namco the best. Why do I think that ? Well, first, they have not done sequels to Bloodborne or Sekiro, both of which were published by other publishers (Sony and Activision respectively).

There was one DLC for Bloodborne, and it was massive. FromSoft also did a weird VR game called Deracine for the PS4. Nobody talks about it, and I bet most people don’t even know it exists.

Hm. I just checked sales because I thought maybe the two games didn’t sell as well. Bloodborne has sold the least (around eight million worldwide), but that’s to be expected because it’s it was a PS4 exclusive.

Oh. I forgot about Armored Core VIFires of Rubicon, but so has everyone else. That sold nearly three million copies, so that’s by far the least-sold of the games. I don’t count it in the canon, though, because I’m talking about their action-adventure games.

It really felt like FromSoft was more restricted when working with Activision. No one talked about it, but there were things in the game that I felt were begrudging additions handed down from the men on high. I will not be swayed from the opinion that they put a map in because Activision made them. They have never had a map in one of their games before that and I would wager that most people didn’t even know there is one in Sekiro. It’s in options and then something else not named map (if I remember correctly). Plus, the map is just of the overworld and nothing detailed. It felt very much like a fuck you from From or them doing it under duress.

Not to get into the weeds, but I’m going to get into the weeds. Activision is American whereas FromSoft is Japanese. Bamco (what Bandai Namco is also known as) is Japanese as is Sony. I could see some culture clash at work with Activision as well. In general, Americans are more straightforward and prize honesty and bluntness. That has both positives and negatives, but that’s not the point of this post. In games, Americans want directions. Tell me what to do and how exactly to do it. Japanese people seem to be more ok with not being led around by the nose.

It’s all about soul(s)

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

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.

Lords of the Fallen: a quick look

Posted on October 16, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Many moons ago, there was a game called Lords of the Fallen. It was developed by Deck13 Interactive and published by CI Games. It was one of the first if not the first soulslike, and it was slavish in how close it adhered to Dark Souls. In both a good and a bad way. There were a few things they added, such as a clock to how long you had to retrieve your souls. I don’t remember if it meant that you just didn’t get them if the time ran out or if they gave you less and less infinitely, but it was not a welcome addition to the formula.

The one thing that they took from Dark Souls was that the combat was weighty. Which it is. But Deck13 took that to mean it should be s-l-o-w. So slow. So agonizingly slow. The game has been nicknamed Clunky Souls, and it’s definitely that. I played the first two hours twice as two different characters, and it just did not click with

By the way, I must say that the takeaway from the games that the bosses need to be insanely difficult is so not my favorite thing. I don’t play these games because of the bosses. I play because of the exploration and the level design, the stories, and just the delight of existing in a Miyazaki world.

The bosses are cool in design, but, honestly, at this point, I do not want to spend days on one boss. I just don’t. And that brings us to this Lords of the Fallen, which was not made by Deck13. They were going to make the sequel, but it never happened. I don’t remember why. they ended up making The Surge (and the sequel), which is affectionately known as Junkyard Souls. In a nutshell, you’re attacking robot/human hybrids. You can specify the limb you want to attack and then get that limb’s armor. Maybe you can get weapons, tooo? I don’t remember, but it’s so cool. And while it was janky as hell, it was fun. Lots of fun. Until the final boss, but let’s not talk about that.

This Lords of the Fallen is not a remake nor a sequel. It’s just set in the same universe but many years in the future as I understand it. After CI Games passed on Deck13, another studio was involved in the sequel. That fell through as well, and then years later, HexWorks was given this game.

Now it’s out. Unlike Lies of P which received nearly universal praise, Lords of the Fallen‘s reviews are all over the map. On Metacritic, they range from 40 to 100. The numbers were similar on OpenCritic. I thought the numbers were severely inflated for Lies of P (which is Lies of Pi in my brain). I started at a 7 out of 10 with that game and then it steadily decreased as I played. By the end, it had dropped a whole number. If you can perfect block, the number will probably be higher. If you can’t, then I would strongly suggest not playing that game.

As for this one, I would hesitantly put it as a 7 out of 10 after playing several hours and beating the first boss–who, by the way, is ridiculously difficult for a first boss. Obviously, if you can parry,

Wo Long and diminishing returns

Posted on March 11, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I beat that lightning boss in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (Team Ninja). I don’t take much joy in it because, well, I’ll get to that in a minute. I will say that I was bitching to Ian about the boss because–and this is actually an issue I have with all Team Ninja games–the deflect is just not consistent across the enemies. I mean, to be fair, the deflect/parry box is different for different enemies in From games as well, but at least it’s consistent within an enemy group. I can’t do it well, but that’s clearly on me.

In the last post, I wrote about some of my issues with Team Ninja games. I’m going to continue in that vein for this post because that’s how I roll. I need to talk about my current obsession to move past it.

Back to the deflect. In Nioh 2, there was something it was the burst counter. There would be a red flash, and you had to hit RT+B (I think?) at the right time. It was a different time for each enemy. In this game, it’s just B. But it’s the same thing where you had to do it at the right time after the red flash. The issue in Wo Long is that they hooooooooooooooold that flashing red to an unreasonable point. In Sekiro, the red kanji flashed and then you hit the deflect. It was very precise. I was trash at it, but the windows were consistent. In Nioh 2 and now in Wo Long, they aren’t. In this game, it’s partly because the windows are more generous. I get the deflect much more often than I did in Nioh 2. However, with this boss, I hardly got it at all. he flashed red and then held it, held it, held it, and then BAM. I got the deflect once or twice but for the most part,I just tried to hit him when I could and let my buddy take most of the damage. I buffed us with our spells (to have us take less damage was one spell and us getting healt back with each hit on the enemy as another) and then just backed the fuck way off not to get hit.

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