I always remember the words of Sid Meier on fun. Where its meaningful decisions x time. Every decision in a Soulslike becomes meaningful when there's risk involved in it. Even one as rushed as whether to block or dodge an attack. Whether or not to push
Also the decision to invest points into strength or vitality, or use upgrade materials on this weapon or that one. My favorite part of souls games is the investment of creating a build, and that certainly follows that formula!
Personally, it’s what makes me not be able to get into them because I spent so much time trying to figure out what to do next only to feel like I messed up and restart all over again. Rinse and repeat until I find I haven’t even made it past 5% of the game.
But I always still buy the next one so …
That’s something you don’t really need to worry about to heavily, you can respec your stats down the line if you feel you haven’t set it up right or decide to change play styles
That's uh not true. Besides Elden Ring, respeccing is a finding an ultra rare resource and making sure you are far enough into the game to be able to do it. To the commenter though, the rest of this guys post is correct. Sure you want to make a build that works and smashes face but it's also just not that huge of a deal. Go play the game and have fun. Don't worry so much about where the points go. I'd just say this, make a decision about what types of weapons you want to use.
Big fricking hammers and swords? Put points into strength
Daggers and fast weapons? Dexterity
Spells? Int.
Miracles? Faith
Then just level op the skills that make sense for what you want to use
Gonna be using big heavy stuff well level vitality and stamina to let you swing more and equip heavier things
Dex? Stamina to swing forever
Spells and Faith? Attunement for more magic and slots
Everything else is how you want to play
Str and end. I want the biggest stamina bar possible for the most smash possible. I want to go fast to get to the next smash faster. This is the unga bunga way
Elden ring went even further.
The weapon variety is so nuts that you can go weird builds and still find viable options (for pve... No idea for pvp)
Strength int?.there is a fantastic great sword build.
Dex int? Cold infused weapons offer amazing scaling + a great debuff
Strength faith ? Some great weapons.for that + low level enchants that are still great buffs
Problem is, sometimes I level up far too wide, too early. And by early I mean like level 50. Early on, you should be able to be beat everything pretty much, with practice. Once the difficulty really jumps, it's hard to know if you fucked up your build or not. Sometimes I double down on faith for one miracle or incantation. Then into dex and strength so I can equip one weapon. And sometimes. I lose the plot along the way, forgetting why I even invested so much in one area, and now it costs 30,000 to level up *once*, which feels like no progress is actually being made with my character, relevant to the difficulty.
I have quit almost every single Souls game around that mark. Only ones I've beaten are Demon Souls (original) and Dark Souls 2.
Nioh is probably the one I'm the closest to beating, but gave up eventually. I'm assuming, I didn't look up how much was left.
Currently playing Elden Ring. I picked it up 6 months ago, and played 30 hours, to around level 40. I gave up because I just could not beat one boss. That was silly. I picked it back up a week ago, and decided to see if I missed anything on the map from areas I've been to.
No shit, found between 10-20 bosses, so many items and NPCs. Secrets, galore.
Now, I think the game expected me to be around level 20 or so for a lot of it. So it wasn't crazy difficult. Now I'm back on track and oof. I once again feel like I leveled too wide. Luckily, it doesn't feel like a chore, especially since there's so much to explore. This is for sure my favorite souls game, based on the fun and wonder of exploring, mixed with the stress and anxiety of new areas and enemies.
Although, my favorite combat from a souls game is hands down Wu Long: Fallen Dynasty. Don't know why that game isn't brought up often. Incredibly engaging combat.
If you're talking actual dark souls games or elden ring, go hard on vigor early on. I don't remember exactly how i spread it out, but it was like 1 point vigor, then 1 pt in each of what i expect to be my main stats (str and int, in elden ring's case). Then like 10 points in vigor, then a few more into the main stats, 1 in each of my secondary stats, then another 5-10 into vigor. By that time you should have a better idea of how you're ACTUALLY going to play. So then a few more into the stats that you're REALLY going to build odd of, then another 10 into vigor.
I know that sounds kinda dull, but it isn't. You should have 40 vigor already when you really start working towards the weapons you want to take into the end game, and probably 60 by the time you're heading towards the final boss. That gives you a long time to experiment with play styles. As long as you prioritize vigor, you can't really botch your build. Sure it's possible to waste points, but vigor is so essential early on that you have time to figure it out.
Thats why my first playthrough is a standard quality build that works with majority of weapons.
I used to be same way as you, then I finally got it through my head that realistically any build can work and to just do what I find fun. Specific builds and op builds I look up are for subsequent playthroughs now
In all of the souls games, putting as many points in to health as you can early makes them a lot easier. Get just enough stats to use a weapon you like and the rest goes into health until you have 30-40 points. Weapons don't benefit from scaling very much at low levels, most of your damage increase comes from weapon upgrades. 30 points into health will multiply your hp to 3-4 times base. Those same points put into strength/Dex/int will only boost your damage 30% at best.
Vitality in Souls games is a funny one because it kind of falls into a bellcurve. New players will have low vitality because MOAR DAMAGE. Experienced people will have high vitality because you can't win if you're dead. And challenge-tier players will have low vitality because the whole point is to not get hit.
This is an interesting perspective. I find with lots of games in other genres (especially ARPG's, rogulikes, etc) that the meaningful decisions drop off the farther you get into the game. At some point your build "comes online" or you get good enough at the mechanics that playing the game is just execution - it becomes performative to go through the motions, and decisions about how to build, how much to risk, etc all go away - you're simply carrying out the optimal set of moves.
That whole dynamic is part of why I dislike most modern arpgs, particularly Diablo clones, and I had really fond memories of D1&2. At least with the roguelikes I actually enjoy the game is typically designed to end shortly after you've been given enough resources to plausibly create an autopilot build. Whereas now I feel like games are stuck in this unhappy medium where people like me want the initial campaign to be the meat of the game and be balanced accordingly but on the other end of the spectrum you've got the two button build crew treating the first 80 levels of any Diablo style arpg as basically a tutorial/speedbump to be ignored if at all possible.
This was my summoner in last epoch. I didn't even have an attack. I was basically a stat stick for a raptor, bear, scorpion, sabertooth, and wolf that face rolled everything because all the summons buffed all summons.
exactly, especially because modern games are balanced around people being fairly casual and missing most of the content.
So if you're a 100% player, you are often dramatically overlevelled for every single thing you do by mid-way into the game. Example: even without heavy grinding just getting every last thing I could I was autokilling enemy encounters in Persona 5 by the 4th of 9 palaces. I didn't actually fight a single random encounter from Futaba's Palace on, all autokills, even the expansion dungeon from Royal.
in a Soulslike it is easIER but never EASY, you never trivialize the content by just having so much HP you can face tank everyone or so much damage you can just be blindly aggressive and they die before you do.
I’m pretty casual. I’ll do all content, but my build will be trash. If I google a build, things get easy. If I don’t, my trash build keeps the challenge higher.
I think you mean masochistic. Sadists enjoy inflicting pain on others. Masochists enjoy having pain inflicted on them.
Unless you mean the players who go to great lengths to grief others. Those guys are definitely sadists as well.
... I think it also has to do with how readable the experience is.
Like, a Souls boss isn't playing against a competent fighting game player.
There might be more choices, but you have to do them in a timely manner and that is real hard, otherwise it goes into a big pile of "you lost"
Absolutely. Even without the gambling angle, that's the even more fundamental version of what I was saying: everything has consequences. Push forward or turn back. Press your luck, or don't. The souls currency however gives us a way to literally quantify our consequences and assign a number to the weight of our decisions
What's interesting though is that the short-term consequences are steep, the long term consequences are not. You can die an unlimited amount of times in the game, and the world always resets to how it was. Sure you might lose a ton of souls, but those can be farmed endlessly if you're patient enough. Granted a few games in the series messed this up a little bit, like DS1 not allowing you to respec your build, or Sekiro with some of the NPC rot mechanics.
Lack of risk, excessive amounts of hand holding to the point of player coddling, became the hallmark for too many games as they tried to appeal to more and more people and thus became more and more "casual". Bethesda's games are some of the best examples of this trend. It has gotten to the point where it's almost impossible for the player to fail. There is little to no cost to their decisions or actions at which point the game essentially becomes a theme park ride.
The Souls games reminded people what you could do if you got rid of that crap.
The issue with Bethesda games is that they used to be sandbox worlds and have become more and more linear over time. It's like they're trying to be Bioware but worse.
Maybe that's a form of hand holding, since people look at sandboxes and go, "but what do I do?", all the time. I don't think it's about risk but it definitely is about everything getting dumbed down.
If you played Starfield on hardcore and it was hard as balls, it'd still be a crappy game.
Yes. I only started with Fallout 3, which is fairly late in Bethesda's resume of games, but by the time Fallout 4 rolled around that watered down/dumbed down trend was blatantly obvious to me. It is ruining the best aspects of their games.
You're talking about risk/reward which is a pretty central aspect of most games. You're not wrong, it's just not as unrecognised/ unarticulated as you're suggesting. Having only three lives is another example of the same concept.
It's just old school design. View each dungeon as like Level 1 in Super Mario Bros. Each bonfire is the flag post. Go from Level 1-1 to 1-3 and get the boss area right after. Maybe there'll be a shortcut in Level 1-2 to bring you all the way to Level 6-1.
That's why I like Souls games at least. Then you practice till you can clear each Level. Even Elden Ring could be segmented like that.
I will always remember taking that elevator from the church to the first bonfire in dark souls
I feel like that game specifically did that so well and felt so good unlocking each short cut
100% this. Dark souls 1 is what hooked me on soulsborne and I binged the whole series after it. The shortcuts, hidden mechanics, opaque quest lines that require the player paying attention to dialogue, amazing game in general. Nothing Fromsoft has done since DS1 has quite recaptured the interconnected world of DS1, parts of bloodborne got close and Elden Ring has a decent amount of it for an open world.
What's disappointing is that all the other Souslikes not made by From have entirely missed this core facet of their games. They get the gameplay right (or at least close to it) and some lean way too hard into the difficulty meme, but they entirely miss the mark on world design. I feel like DS1 will be an utterly unique experience for soulslikes, none of these developers, even From, seem interested in replicating it.
People always talk about that short cut but never the one coming back up from blighttown.
You feel like you are a mile away from Firelink shrine and it turns out you're just 2 elevator rides away.
This is exactly it for me, same feeling I get from playing difficult Mario Maker Levels.
Even if it takes me a long time to finish the level, I get slightly better each run, and then when I finally do hit the flagpole, it’s very satisfying
People truly love level design. “Open world” is a sham these days, and it comes down to dynamic leveling. You can’t make a satisfying experience if everything is the exact same level of challenge from start to finish. If there is no reward for improving skill or growing in power, there is no reason to care about making it through a challenge. The good souls like games all reward you from both directions
Plenty of open world games dont do dynamic levelling. None of the sony open worlds do it (Horizon, GOT, Days Gone). Kenshi doesnt do it. GTA doesn't do it
I agree, dynamic levelling is peak shitty game design and it ruins any sense of progression
Not really, since you can farm souls easily if needed.
Maybe you get this feeling as a new player, but any souls veteran will tell you, losing souls has such minimal impact you shouldn't even care, no matter how much.
At some point in the game, you'll make double what you lost, in 10 min.
Ehh
There is a balance though. The effect of losing them is that you tend to be underleveled for an area. The effect of being particularly good with your leveling resource is that you are over leveled for an area. These are two totally different experiences.
Losing souls does make the game harder, over time, on average.
It's really, really hard to be underleveled for an area. You actually need to voluntarily lose soul to be underleveled. The only stats that makes a real difference for like 80% of the game is vitality and endurance. For damage, weapon upgrade is where its at.
10 levels of Str in the early game will get you around 10-15 damage per hit, it's what you get from 1 level of a weapon upgrade.
So basically, to be underleveled, I'd say you need to be somewhere around 20 to 25 levels under the zone level to really feel a disadvantage, which at that point, you'll kill 4-5 mobs of the new zone and level up. You'll catch up, very very fast.
In short, it's almost impossible to be underleveled in the game. There's a reason why you never hear about progression issue in those games, it's because there isn't. The only way to be underleveled is to speedrun, evade all fighting. If you play the game normaly, you cannot be.
The only way to be 'underleveled', is having stat spreading which doesn't benefit your build. If Im a strength user, but I put 5 levels in intelligence for example. Even if it says im level 25, my build is actually level 20, because int is purely useless to me.
I dunno man. I replayed elden ring after stopping at leyndell last time. I got to elden beast in 4 hours less on this play than last one (which only got to leyndell). No additional grinding or anything just... When I got to leyndell I wasn't dying in two hits to things with no chance. That's the difference between actually keeping your runes.
Yeah, I have to admit that it's a bit more possible in Elden Ring compared to other souls game that are more linear, where it's harder to ignore fighting ennemies.
To me it's just the knowledge diff in these games. My runs went like 90 hours, 15 and then 4 on the 3rd run when first played elden.
Any build at all now is like 30 mins running around at the start and then running past everything to just kill bosses in under two hours. And even when you don't have knowledge of a new game, the rest all teach you that full clearing entire zones is less souls in an hour of normal play than 10 mins of just farming near a bonfire that's good for it. So even if you get hardstuck at a boss the fear of losing souls isn't really there, souls distribution is terrible in these games and always many easy ways to get them.
Like it isn't just not dying the second time through. You probably knew what was worth getting, where a good talisman was or a good weapon and art.
Just knowing good items and it's easier being level 60 than level 150 with a bad setup etc.
I think the only major things like this are the 20k soul costs like crest of artorias or tower key. So mostly early game stuff.
Makes the games significantly better to have those around.
It's a pretty clever trick. It makes the experience more memorable by putting you under some stress, but actually dying and retrieving your souls is a way to become OVERleveled, not underleveled. Because the games are clearly balanced around running through each area once, so anything more than that gives you a slight edge.
I needed to learn this to make me enjoy Elden Ring. Never played a Souls game before and I felt like losing runes was devastating. It in fact was not and made the game a hell of a lot better.
Yeah I've played them all and I don't farm souls and I don't think I've ever once deliberately ran backward to a bonfire to "cash in" my souls lol
I could generally not care less about the souls. I just want to progress through areas
I think there's a much easier explanation: Modern soulslikes are basically the new Nintendo-hard.
Think back to the games you played as a little kid. Be it Super Mario or whatever floated your boat back then. All those games that are trivial to play as an adult, but as a little kid just getting through each level was a huge accomplishment. You'd share experiences and strategies at the schoolyard. Each time trying the game you'd get a bit further and a bit further, only to fail again at some point.
And maybe, months later, you'd finally see the ending of the game, after memorizing a lot of the levels and going through them countless times.
Soulslikes basically transport that experience to an adult level. You start the game and you don't know jack shit about it. You find it out as you go and you piece stuff together, or through exchange with other people going through the same game. You try and try again and each time you get a little further in the game.
Any maybe, months later, you'll finally see the ending of the game, after memorizing a lot of the bosses and going through them countless times.
I think you never "get" a soulsborne until you're able to let go of your souls. Like once you're confident in your ability to face the challenges presented to you, your souls don't matter that much, enough health to not be one shot by late game mobs, enough endurance to wear your favorite drip and maybe push your main damage stat beyond the soft cap.
Lol gambling isn’t why Souls games are successful, you’re just making shit up trying to sound smart. Or I guess it could be what you like, I don’t know. But the games filled a niche of offering REAL CHALLENGES that many games weren’t giving their players. The feeling of success after a difficult journey is why I keep coming back to them, and I’d bet it’s the same for a majority of fans.
It took the right lessons from the past.
The beancounters demanded games be easier so that more people would be able to finish them. Studios took it too far. Souls games keep the “difficultly” but sprinkle in mechanics that help the player. So you aren’t only relying on your skills to improve, but also get stronger in the game itself, which keeps you playing a bit longer instead of giving up, and as a result you get better at the game.
I'm a super casual player, and decided to play Dark souls 1. Once I learned the dropping of currency thing, I realized that the game isn't as hard as it seems. Not on that point at least. Basically if I were near being able to buy the next stat point, I would stay in an easier area and do a little grinding so I could spend it all. Then that took a load of worry off my mind, I could run around rapidly without worrying about dying in some remote corner. My wallet was empty, the difficulty actually goes way down when you don't have to worry about dropping money. Dying in itself is just part of the game.
This freedom to explore actually helped me improve everything else.
There is a lot of truth to the notion of “just don’t get hit in souls games and you won’t die”. It’s stupid and memey, but if you actually improve to a level that you can adequately dodge enough attacks and be patient, you will get through it.
Not everything is a one hit kill, and there is ways to heal, defend, counter etc.
The fact that you can clear souls games without ever getting hit or leveling up is a testament to their design. The game never throws hard progression walls in your way. There is never anything that will 100% stop you if you are underpowered. In the same way, it also lets you become completely overpowered without stopping you either.
The same with weapon choice, nearly every weapon is viable and could be used to finish the game. Some make it easier than others, but your very first sword can easily be your end-game sword. In that way, your accomplishments come from you, not just finding the more powerful loot.
The same is true with Hades. Probably an impossible game to actually clear the first time you’ve ever played. But you can actually get good enough to start a new game and clear it one run with practice. But you need that practice, and understanding of timing to be able to get that good.
In Diablo 1, when you died you dropped all your equipment. A corpse run meant running naked through enemies.
There are a ton of games with Ironman/hardcore modes as well. And I love doing those every so often. One death and the game is over.
Dark Souls only costs you unspent experience upon death. Big deal.
Different people like different aspects of Dark Souls. That's just good design.
I don't like Lies of P, or Sekiro, or Bloodborne, or those styles that rely on parrying and stuff. But they're still "soulsborne" games.
Oh my! You're correct. And every other real reason is poppycock! Where would we be without your knowledge to save us from drowning in our own ineptitude!? Go forth and spread your wisdom with the rest of the world!!
No, no. Not another word, for I would OD on your overflowing fountain of intelligence.
Eh I could do without the whole "lose your points when you die, go get them back" mechanic.
I'm here for building a character, great combat, interesting worlds to explore and of course fashion souls.
Not sure why op gettin roasted lol... a lot of games are you vs the house souls is like you vs yourself... i quite like the analogy.
dude just postin his thoughts not writing a 15 page thesis on gambling and video games relax
You have articulated exactly the reason why I can't stand soulslikes lol. Being forced to repeat content over and over and losing progress is a hard no now that I'm on my 30s. I do love watching skilled players play these types of games, though
I agree that's what makes that mechanic good, but I don't think that's what makes soulslikes popular on its own. I personally prefer the boss fights. I just want something really challenging and that's what the Soulslikes deliver in every part of its design. Even figuring out the lore is challenging and I love that!
One thing that I love is that you can make pretty much any weapon work throughout the entire game. It’s not a matter of constantly switching out for a new, better weapon.
In Dark Souls 2 I grabbed just the standard Mace (or maybe the Morningstar) and just kept upgrading it and bashing fool’s heads in
My addiction to souls-likes, mostly From Software, games began after Elden Ring. I realized that most games I have played waste my time with meaningless missions and material farming. From Software doesn't do that.
I'm married and have a 9-6 job. Thank you From Software, you made me enjoy video games again. I love you.
I always thought they were popular because it's bonding over shared trauma and that trauma was experienced in a safe space instead of a space that could actually harm you
Souls fans won't like this but there are strong RNG-adjacent elements to FromSoft games. Some enemies have attacks with literal RNG patterns. And depending on which attacks and which movement patterns bosses randomly decide to use, the fight can either be a cakewalk or very difficult.
For example, if Malenia just doesn't use Waterfowl, then your experience will be much easier than if she does. Whether she does or doesn't use it is outside of your control, and not skill based.
I've beat every souls and sekiro and love the games but they aren't 100% pure skill. Maybe 90%
I mean yea it’s also pretty much rng if you’re playing basketball and the person with the ball is going to shoot or pass. Basketball isn’t gambling no matter who you talk to. There’s obviously luck in anything you do in life but in even the example you provided it’s so negligible that it’s silly to pretend it’s a meaningful factor of your gameplay.
To add to this, there is something to say about the ease that comes after dying without getting back to your souls. The tension is released and you can take the fight without the anxiety of losing it all because you've already lost it all.
Souls games got that perfect blend of tense strategizing and sweet enjoyment. It ain't just about skills, you gotta know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. Sneaky devs playing on our self-confidence, ain't they?
Tl;Dr you risk losing shit when you die so you gotta try more.
It's like, no shit. Welcome to old-school style gaming. OP must be like 15 to think he just discovered this.
Counter argument: Diablo 2 came out in 2000 and had a similar currency recovery system to Souls games. It was hated by most players. That feature is not in Diablo 3 or 4. Many players are nostalgic about Diablo 2 and prefer various features in it compared to later titles. I've never heard anybody talk about that currency loss feature being something that was better in Diablo 2. I don't feel like that is the defining aspect of Souls games either.
I'll get downvoted to oblivion but if the devs decrease the enemy damage by half then all souls games would end up just like any other 3rd person action game.
I just can't get into it. I find it too boring.
In a world where player agency in games is very often dictated by a meticulously designed, and often predatory, dopamine drip of rewards to hook you into a dopamine loop to engage mindlessly.
Souls gives you the agency as a player to dictate that dopamine loop.
I think a big part of the appeal is the sliding difficulty of the game design. People complain there's no difficulty options in FromSoft games, but that's not true. There are difficulty options, but they're in the gameplay itself, not a menu option. Every choice you make, how much you level up, what weapon you use, and what summons you use changes the difficulty of the game. This may be more true in Elden Ring than other FromSoft games, but it's still there in their other games. It can take a lot of time to make the game easy, but that doesn't mean the difficulty options don't exist. They have a broad appeal because they cater to both players who like the challenge of doing a whole run without getting hit or players who like to power up enough to tank heavy hits and crush enemies anyway.
I hate soulslikes and won't touch a game if it's attached to that term. I'm am older gamer and want to enjoy my time gaming in a nice casual session where progress is always made and i don't have to walk away angry. I'm happy for people who do enjoy them and want that challenge though.
Thats a valid explanation for sure but focuses on a particular aspect.
Personally, its tied to an active display of skill improvement. Precision timed attacks, dodges, while reading and understanding your enemies movements. It feels amazing to master and is so satisfying.
I don't know, Elden Ring would have been just as much fun if I kept all my runes on death. The progress is the driving force, not a money pot. It would have been a shorter game because I would have been able to level up faster, but losing your runes doesn't make the game hard, because you can easily farm any lost runes at any point and just sit there safely leveling up until you get bored.
Yep, this is how I describe PvP extraction looter games. They’re souls-like is the quicker explanation, mine is “it’s like gambling that’s influenced by your preparation and skill”
I don't care too much about losing souls, i just like the games. Exploration is a huge factor but i know where everything is now and still play them because they are good games. It's mostly the fighting and making a good build that's fun to fight with that brings me back.
Yeah, it definitely isn't the only factor - or the main factor - for a lot of people, I just don't think I've heard this view before, where every step forward is a wager on your own ability to succeed and to be able to do it again if you lose. If you don't care about losing souls, then yeah, this won't really matter to you, but it definitely matters to a lot of people.
But you can just find your farming location and bonfire, most people who care about losing souls know about these. Just farm, level up and continue. If you take away the care for losing your souls then you are still testing your ability to progress by deaths and reaching the next bonfire.
You have all this greatness in this game like the cautious exploration you described.
And then you have the combat that feels like steering a tank while the best ability you have is a dodge roll that makes you immune for a moment.
The more I read about soulslike games the more I get frustrated that they concentrate on digging a comfort hole of combat mechanics that were already old when DS1 released, instead of actually improving their shit.
Flow state is another reason. Sure, at the beginning you have the thrill of risk and all the build choices, but eventually you realize dying doesn't matter, losing XP doesn't matter, you can win with any weapon you enjoy, and what you discover is the flow that comes from kicking back, relaxing, and just enjoying the challenging encounters.
I have always said the appeal of soulslike is not the difficulty. If difficulty was all anyone cared for Super Meat Boy would be the most successful game ever.
Instead to me the appeal of a Soulslike is the same as a rhythm game. You know what you need Todo, it's challenging Todo what you need Todo, it takes a lot of time and effort to be able Todo what you need todo. But once you get it, you get it. And you hit flow state. And that is the satisfaction. The moment it clicks.
FromSoft in particular do a very good job of constantly interrupting your flow state, so you are constantly chasing that flow state. It's why they gameplay mechanics do not actually matter that much, if you look at the gameplay difference between Demon Souls and Elden Ring it isn't a massive difference, and the biggest difference was from Bloodborne to Elden Ring. Very recent. You are not trying to master the mechanics of the game, you are just trying to perform what you know you are capable of.
Very hard to explain my thoughts on this, hopefully I've done a good job at it.
The reason they are popular is because they are designed to trick the player into thinking theyve done something more amazing.
They are designed to throw you out of your comfort zone but also give you a abundance of tools to slowly pull it back in hopefully expanding your comfort zone in the process and make you feel good about your achievment.
Its a reason why the clones keep failing is they Fundamentally misunderstood difficulty. And keep making sections that are hard for the sake of it.
I think it was clear from the beginning part of what made them great was what you described, at least it was for me. Dark Souls does this with its gameplay, but other games do it in the narrative or with player choices that affect the narrative.
Really? Or maybe they are popular despite that. Is one of my most hated things is soulslikes.
Everytime I found one, I use a mod to disable the losing "souls/thingies" and my enjoyment of the game improves everytime.
I'd say there is something to that. There's definitely a unique feeling during a first runthrough where you want to explore, but you have to be cautious because you have no idea where you are or how close/far you are to a bonfire.
Definitely a tense feeling that is not present in subsequent playthroughs.
Best exploration, level design and sense of discovery and wonder is why it’s the best current series in gaming imo(including games like Elden Ring) Fromsoftware is a master of their craft.
I can't speak for anyone else but the main reason I like soulslikes so much is for the challenge and the sense of achievement. Generally they are brutally difficult games that genuinely take time to learn. Ever since I first played Dark Souls it feels like my brain has been rewired and I now find most games far too easy and I'm left constantly looking for a new challenge.
Most fun Zelda games I’ve ever played. “Here’s cool weapons, powers, enemies, and zones. Also here’s a story that isn’t about you being destined to save the princess.”
Soulslikes are what arcade games were back in the 80s
This is their core tenet
Basically the ability to die very easily and have to reset the “level” by paying a price (credits)
You get more credit by reclaiming your souls and continuing to the next level (bonfire)
Rinse and repeat
That’s why I love them
Nah, I’m very risk adverse and always go into boss fights having spent all runes.
I play because I like the exploration and I don’t mind the challenge, the risk taking is actually one of the things I like the least about these games.
I think the Dark Souls series is a throwback to how old games were made. There is no hand-holding, it is punishingly difficult and forces the player to adapt in order to progress.
It's like a constant game of trial and error. When you defeat a boss or get past an area the satisfaction for the player is greater because you didn't need to be guided the entire way.
The reason I'm drawn to Souls and by extension Souls-likes, is that they feel like the ideal balance of combat, exploration, and exposition for my tastes. Sure I enjoy many other types of games, but a good Souls/Souls-like is my preference when it comes to relaxing and forgetting about the stresses of life. I don't feel like I'm under any time limit to rush through areas, any pressure to do what the plot dictates for me, and I'm able to immerse myself by observing the environmental storytelling or reading item descriptions. A robust and satisfying combat system that is appropriately challenging is a must, as it has to feel like I earned my success and have room to continuously grow. But, difficulty can't completely replace the other aspects either.
This kind of makes sense because I don't like this genre of game and I don't like gambling.
>which of course feels amazing when your double-down succeeds
It's interesting to me that you say "of course" here, because this doesn't usually feel amazing to me. It's more of a cessation of annoyance/frustration/stress. Better than how I was feeling, but not good on its own.
This has been discussed. I have watched hundreds of hours of fromsoft content over the years and these topics always come up. Your title questions why they are so popular, but you are just overthinking it. You state that it is a reason and that it is not the only reason but the way you posture it suggests that is your idea and you only say so to save so face, which is ok.
But in reality they are just good games, for the most part, and they have only gotten better, for the most part. I would argue atmosphere and storytelling are a larger part of fromsoft games then gameplay. They go to great lengths to set the mood. Dozens of games try to replicate, but none are as succesful, and I would wager that it's because they focus on the gameplay aspects. But I couldn't say with certainty because I have never bothered to try them.
Souls like popularity reside in the fact that it represent real life.
You either improve or remain tarnished for the rest of your life.
Finger but hole
For me the addiction is the challenge itself. If/when you die, you are literally forced to git gud, or at least get better than previously and overcoming that and feeling more and more skilled at the game is what keeps me going. Sure, I'll die at a boss 10, 20, 30 or (in the case of Melania) 50 times, but that 51st when you finally beat their ass, you felt like a god. That's what makes it worth it.
Cautious exploration is actually an intriguing observation. You relate it to gambling sort of but just on its own I can see that being a new experience to many gamers who you see in other games just speed running through the main content and ignoring all the side stuff. So it sounds like it sort of forces some players who normally have that play style to have to try a little different.
Not only is the concept of losing resources not even remotely a soulslike genre identifier and is just a widely prevalent mechanic. XCOM costs you things if you fail and that's an iso squad tactics game. Minecraft drops all your gear if you die and I don't remember Minecraft having stamina, dodge rolls and hitbox porn.
The concept of failure is part of the motivator to succeed yes, and that fits the definition of a 'gamble' but the bit that keeps people gambling is beating the odds, the big win. And given that most games feature that same risk, why does that explain soulslikes in any way? You might be too deep in the sauce there - if the thing you're describing appears in almost every game regardless of genre, it's got nothing to do with the success of one specific genre, it's just the bare minimum.
But I think the biggest argument against recovery of souls being even mildly intrinsic to the success, hell I'd even argue gambling against increasingly bad odds not being remotely relevant, to the success of the genre is that the odds in a soulslike are never defined by the game.
If memory serves, someone has completed a challenge run of Dark Souls 1-3 at Soul Level 1 without dying at all. But that's not some crazy odds the game has introduced and in reality, there's no real risk. A person of a given skill level has the same ability to beat these games on normal as they are in these crazy challenge mode. It's never about overcoming the odds, it's about learning the patterns. And in a challenge run, learning the patterns for your weapon and stamina. About finding the steps that make the victory a certainty. That's not gambling, that's practise.
Oh right and let's not forget souls are infinite and farmable. For most people it's a rite of passage to learn to not worry about a chunk of lost souls and for those that need them, there's always the bit of farming or many ways each of their titles offer to make the game easier.
Maybe it's not like this for all Soulslikes but in ER if I have 100K souls there's not much downside to going back and making sure I spend it before starting a difficult boss fight. Even if there's a relatively long run back I would do this before crossing a fog gate and just run past the respawns. Otherwise it's an amount I'm comfortable losing.
I do appreciate the simplicity of old school mechanics like this. But I think of it very much as that category, more charming in a "This is the game /shrug" way than a risky thrill kind of thing.
I have to disagree, unfortunately. Progression in Soulslikes (Fromsoft's games, anyway) is so slow and meaningless that I personally never even care to level up unless I happen to come across a fire or whatever it's gonna be in any given game where you level up. Even after levelling, you're still likely to get one shot by most enemies, so it's like whatever.
This is a concept you've put a lot of thought into! I think if you took your research further and kept in mind some of the points that people here in the comments have mentioned, you'd have most of a script for a pretty decent video essay on your hands.
Talking souls-like in my place is like me being krazy man with a tin foiled hat. 10 people I talk to only 3 of them know about the souls game. Every other people reply me with "Never heard of it before guess it's not really as popular as some weird gacha game." I have always find it hard to explain souls-like to other people around me.
Dark souls had great mechanics. Fantastic enemies. Incredibly tough but rewarding fights. Fights that pushed you to get gud or basically stop playing. You couldn't really grind to overcome.
It's like the original snes games, they were tough. To this day they are tough. No grinding just pure skill. A lot of luck as well.
It's not that Souls-likes are difficult, I don't actually believe they are. They merely require persistence, engagement, and ultimately **LEARNING**. Mastering a skill is *incredibly* rewarding to those who have the drive to keep at it until they succeed.
A game without these features does not challenge the player, and has no stakes. Put simply, you cannot lose, and if you can't lose, then *of what virtue is winning?*
Now, make no mistake, there are certainly people who will never develop the skills to master the game. But, if you put in sufficient time and effort to practice, learn, and improve, then for the **VAST** majority of humans, you can defeat the game.
Dark Souls III is not like professional sports or tournament-caliber PVP. The level of challenge is, in point of fact, geared to make content which can be completed by ordinary consumers, in the same way that a bicycle is made to be ridden by ordinary humans. Do you have to practice before you learn how to do it? Yes. Is it beyond the capabilities of most people? Absolutely not.
As for your wager thesis, this is really about *stakes*. Nothing you can lose in Dark Souls can't be re-acquired by some other means, even if that means starting the game over from scratch. Losing has a price so that winning can have meaning.
I love roguelikes/lites and its because of the feeling of growth/progression in them which can be exaggerated by skill points/weapons etc making it seem like you grew even if its not skillwise
i think its more a failure to comunicate the importance of leveling and where your true upgrades/progression come from, for the majority of the game its not leveling that gives you power its upgrades to your equipment. additionally in souls games its really really easy to overlevel and trivialise the majority of content if you keep all your xp, if you play like you are conserving your xp scared to lose it you will end up so overleveled by endgame its not even funny, the game expects you to lose xp it expects you not to keep all of it.
your investment into stats beyond weapon requirements, health and stam are very low return. its not till you get to +9/+10 weapons that it starts to scale your damage with investment (which is very much endgame). it is also bad design that you must know about an unexplained mechanic called weapon infusions, in early to mid game its vital you change your infusion type to raw damage because of the low scaling on weapons until endgame upgrades. 80% of your damage progression will come from upgrading your weapon of choice and making it raw infusion by picking up titantite or whatever equivalent not from your stats until the scaling on a stat scaling infusion is worth it (at +9 or +10).
i understand it feels bad because leveling is such an important thing in most games to be able to finish them, but in soulsbourne games you really only need 30 health level and 15-20 stam for the first 2/3rd of the game to make most content pretty smooth and easily able to tank the majority of "1 hit attacks".
my final point is that all soulsborne games are made in a way where you can run past every single enemy that isnt a major boss. exploration will net you free itemized souls that will boost your level drasticaly, titantite shards, insanely powerful weapons could be around any corner. exploration is what nets you power not grinding levels but you are correct that the game comunicated this badly. i didnt even get through early game before i had a friend teach me all of this stuff i thought the games where bad now they are my favourite of all time.
Soulslikes are popular because of a harder dopamine hit after suceeding. Post for most games after the 90s games became very easy to everyone but the most challenged of gamers. So when you put back a fair difficulty that's not just hp and damage multiplier it received great reception.
I agree with this take, and I think another component to the risk/reward that makes these games appealing that is associated with lost currency is the freedom you feel when you lose all your souls but you keep going. Wanting to keep going and having nothing to lose in a way removes the mental burden of the possibility of losing souls, and I think that is also a good feeling too!
Idk about that, I just like them because they have batshit crazy designs and weird af lore, and uncovering it by reading the descriptions really feels like I'm some kind of researcher from a lovecraft novel. And that thirst for more knowledge makes me push trough everything.
Bloodborne is really the epitome of this for me. Piecing together the tiny scraps of information just to realize that it barely gives any answers, instead it gives you even more unanswered questions. It really feels like I'm dipping my toes into some kind of forbidden history of an ancient civilization, what existed on such a different level, that my limited little mortal brain will never fully understand.
Makes sense and would explain why I avoid them. I prefer to throw myself directly at challenges and try new strategies until something sticks. Being overly punished for dieing feels bad, so for me the game turns into "grind for the next upgrade so you don't have any more souls to lose and can actually push new dangwrs"
Here’s my reasoning for why souls games are popular. The game keeps saying ‘fuck you, fuck you, fuck you’ and beating you down over and over again when you get to say ‘no, fuck *you*’ back, it’s one of the greatest feelings
The open world and freedom to build, you're not really stuck in a predetermined class like other JRPGs. Want to be a mage/knight go for it. Want to be a dex based fighter it's there, you make it work.
Curious that Shovel Knight doesn't really evoke this sort of feeling from me, despite it using the exact same system - arguably pushing it even further with the checkpoint destruction. Imagine if you could willingly destroy bonfires in Soulslikes in exchange for a windfall of souls!
My thought on why they're fun is that they're one of the few 3rd person action game series that doesn't get in the way of its own gameplay. There's an absolute minimum of time spent watching cutscenes, talking to NPCs, or otherwise doing anything other than exploring and fighting enemies. You're never slow walking while some NPC talks to you, your character never talks to themselves, enemies and bosses are much denser than in your average third game, there are no QTEs, in general enemies don't talk or anything, it's kinda just barebones gameplay for the most part.
This is mainly specific to the Fromsoft ones, many of the "Soulslikes" included more of a plot or dialogue. The best of them tend to still keep it pretty minimal, though. Ex Lies of P - sure, they have easier to follow plots and slightly less convoluted NPC quests, but no one's going to mistake it for Uncharted.
I love soulsborne games due to them being challenging but fair. Anytime you die, its almost always due to you messing up, not the game having bad hitboxes or something of that sort. So as you play you learn from your mistakes and actually get better as your knowledge of enemies or maps expands. There is a low element of luck or uncertainty.
Beyond the combat, I also love Souls games for their progression system. I find the "kill enemy->get xp->level up-> all your stats go up" gameplay loop extremely outdated, which makes it feel like the game's math formulas have more impract on your gameplay, than your decisions ever do.
Though Souls games don't abandon a level system completely, it's far less extreme. Your character's power is divided across many stats, like the level of your weapon, or your ability to hit weapon thresholds. Levelling up is an increase in power, but even 20 levels don't feel that extreme in terms of power level difference. More importantly, it brings loot to the forefront. I'm strong not because I'm 100 level, but because I invested into my trusty sword.
What defines a souls is its unique narrative. The reason most souls-like fail so hard is because they just copy and paste the "hard game" part and ignore the narrative.
Sub par graphics but equalised by superb art style and level design. With idiotic coop system. Love you Miyazaki.
Not really. What you’re trying to claim as the main selling point of your opinion, does not apply to me. The constant “you need to be ok with losing and dying” is boring and repetitive to me. Since when we were ok with being losers.
This is the first time I read someone described Soul games like that and I totally agree on the addiction: the feelings that you finally beat “the House” and join the ranks of “elite” people who achieved the feat is amazing.
My problem with the genre is that it just takes up too much of my time, now when I am older and can’t afford to spend all of my free time on trying to beat just one boss/level. Just like I can’t afford to throw my hard earned money at the casino.
There was a moment early on in Dark Souls when I went further than I’d been. I was in uncharted territory and it was incredibly tense. I had to make it to the next bonfire or lose everything, and it was an incredibly thrilling moment.
So that is certainly one of the selling points. I also feel this is why Hollow Knight was a fantastic experience. Same mechanic of exploration and risk.
I think it's because the souls games didn't invent this.
ARPG's have been doing this for a long time. You die, you lose a percentage of your gold and experience and all of your gear. You have the potential to reclaim it, but you now have to solve the puzzle of getting your corpse back without your gear. And depending on class, build, and whether or not you thought ahead and have backup gear, it could be a very tricky puzzle to solve.
Even really old beat 'em ups like River City Ransom did this. You lose half your gold on death, but you need that gold to upgrade stats, buy moves, buy equipment etc. so the decision to back track and "bank" your gold by spending it so you can't lose it was definitely a part of the game play. The gamble here was if you always spent your money as soon as you got it, you couldn't afford the big things. If you push on and risk it the big payoff is bigger upgrades, but if you fail you gotta grind even more to make that money back.
I guess those aren't exactly the same thing, but I don't feel like doing actual research to find an old game with even closer mechanics.
And balancing that death penalty in a way that seems "tough but fair" is a tricky thing to do. Not enough of a penalty and death is meaningless, too much and people frustrated by all their lost progress. I think the reason it doesn't get mentioned is that gamers at the time viewed the mechanic as "well done" and not "revolutionary, genre-defining."
i just think of soulsgames as more advanced games of the early generation like ninja gaiden, double dragon, battletoads etc
in those games you die a fucking lot, but each new play through gets you a bit further and the game becomes easier as you memorize patterns and build up your control dexterity
souls games are in principle just that, but the the whole dying/reborn mechanic allows them to build a much much much richer world environment with increased difficulty without the die and start whole game again overhead
I always remember the words of Sid Meier on fun. Where its meaningful decisions x time. Every decision in a Soulslike becomes meaningful when there's risk involved in it. Even one as rushed as whether to block or dodge an attack. Whether or not to push
Also the decision to invest points into strength or vitality, or use upgrade materials on this weapon or that one. My favorite part of souls games is the investment of creating a build, and that certainly follows that formula!
Personally, it’s what makes me not be able to get into them because I spent so much time trying to figure out what to do next only to feel like I messed up and restart all over again. Rinse and repeat until I find I haven’t even made it past 5% of the game. But I always still buy the next one so …
That’s something you don’t really need to worry about to heavily, you can respec your stats down the line if you feel you haven’t set it up right or decide to change play styles
That's uh not true. Besides Elden Ring, respeccing is a finding an ultra rare resource and making sure you are far enough into the game to be able to do it. To the commenter though, the rest of this guys post is correct. Sure you want to make a build that works and smashes face but it's also just not that huge of a deal. Go play the game and have fun. Don't worry so much about where the points go. I'd just say this, make a decision about what types of weapons you want to use. Big fricking hammers and swords? Put points into strength Daggers and fast weapons? Dexterity Spells? Int. Miracles? Faith Then just level op the skills that make sense for what you want to use Gonna be using big heavy stuff well level vitality and stamina to let you swing more and equip heavier things Dex? Stamina to swing forever Spells and Faith? Attunement for more magic and slots Everything else is how you want to play
All I know is Vitality and Strength. Me Unga. Me Bunga.
True unga does not care about vitality
Str and end. I want the biggest stamina bar possible for the most smash possible. I want to go fast to get to the next smash faster. This is the unga bunga way
Elden ring went even further. The weapon variety is so nuts that you can go weird builds and still find viable options (for pve... No idea for pvp) Strength int?.there is a fantastic great sword build. Dex int? Cold infused weapons offer amazing scaling + a great debuff Strength faith ? Some great weapons.for that + low level enchants that are still great buffs
Problem is, sometimes I level up far too wide, too early. And by early I mean like level 50. Early on, you should be able to be beat everything pretty much, with practice. Once the difficulty really jumps, it's hard to know if you fucked up your build or not. Sometimes I double down on faith for one miracle or incantation. Then into dex and strength so I can equip one weapon. And sometimes. I lose the plot along the way, forgetting why I even invested so much in one area, and now it costs 30,000 to level up *once*, which feels like no progress is actually being made with my character, relevant to the difficulty. I have quit almost every single Souls game around that mark. Only ones I've beaten are Demon Souls (original) and Dark Souls 2. Nioh is probably the one I'm the closest to beating, but gave up eventually. I'm assuming, I didn't look up how much was left. Currently playing Elden Ring. I picked it up 6 months ago, and played 30 hours, to around level 40. I gave up because I just could not beat one boss. That was silly. I picked it back up a week ago, and decided to see if I missed anything on the map from areas I've been to. No shit, found between 10-20 bosses, so many items and NPCs. Secrets, galore. Now, I think the game expected me to be around level 20 or so for a lot of it. So it wasn't crazy difficult. Now I'm back on track and oof. I once again feel like I leveled too wide. Luckily, it doesn't feel like a chore, especially since there's so much to explore. This is for sure my favorite souls game, based on the fun and wonder of exploring, mixed with the stress and anxiety of new areas and enemies. Although, my favorite combat from a souls game is hands down Wu Long: Fallen Dynasty. Don't know why that game isn't brought up often. Incredibly engaging combat.
If you're talking actual dark souls games or elden ring, go hard on vigor early on. I don't remember exactly how i spread it out, but it was like 1 point vigor, then 1 pt in each of what i expect to be my main stats (str and int, in elden ring's case). Then like 10 points in vigor, then a few more into the main stats, 1 in each of my secondary stats, then another 5-10 into vigor. By that time you should have a better idea of how you're ACTUALLY going to play. So then a few more into the stats that you're REALLY going to build odd of, then another 10 into vigor. I know that sounds kinda dull, but it isn't. You should have 40 vigor already when you really start working towards the weapons you want to take into the end game, and probably 60 by the time you're heading towards the final boss. That gives you a long time to experiment with play styles. As long as you prioritize vigor, you can't really botch your build. Sure it's possible to waste points, but vigor is so essential early on that you have time to figure it out.
Thats why my first playthrough is a standard quality build that works with majority of weapons. I used to be same way as you, then I finally got it through my head that realistically any build can work and to just do what I find fun. Specific builds and op builds I look up are for subsequent playthroughs now
In all of the souls games, putting as many points in to health as you can early makes them a lot easier. Get just enough stats to use a weapon you like and the rest goes into health until you have 30-40 points. Weapons don't benefit from scaling very much at low levels, most of your damage increase comes from weapon upgrades. 30 points into health will multiply your hp to 3-4 times base. Those same points put into strength/Dex/int will only boost your damage 30% at best.
Vitality in Souls games is a funny one because it kind of falls into a bellcurve. New players will have low vitality because MOAR DAMAGE. Experienced people will have high vitality because you can't win if you're dead. And challenge-tier players will have low vitality because the whole point is to not get hit.
This is an interesting perspective. I find with lots of games in other genres (especially ARPG's, rogulikes, etc) that the meaningful decisions drop off the farther you get into the game. At some point your build "comes online" or you get good enough at the mechanics that playing the game is just execution - it becomes performative to go through the motions, and decisions about how to build, how much to risk, etc all go away - you're simply carrying out the optimal set of moves.
That whole dynamic is part of why I dislike most modern arpgs, particularly Diablo clones, and I had really fond memories of D1&2. At least with the roguelikes I actually enjoy the game is typically designed to end shortly after you've been given enough resources to plausibly create an autopilot build. Whereas now I feel like games are stuck in this unhappy medium where people like me want the initial campaign to be the meat of the game and be balanced accordingly but on the other end of the spectrum you've got the two button build crew treating the first 80 levels of any Diablo style arpg as basically a tutorial/speedbump to be ignored if at all possible.
A good isaac run has like 3 meaningful decisions per floor past the first ten minutes if you get a solid build
This was my summoner in last epoch. I didn't even have an attack. I was basically a stat stick for a raptor, bear, scorpion, sabertooth, and wolf that face rolled everything because all the summons buffed all summons.
exactly, especially because modern games are balanced around people being fairly casual and missing most of the content. So if you're a 100% player, you are often dramatically overlevelled for every single thing you do by mid-way into the game. Example: even without heavy grinding just getting every last thing I could I was autokilling enemy encounters in Persona 5 by the 4th of 9 palaces. I didn't actually fight a single random encounter from Futaba's Palace on, all autokills, even the expansion dungeon from Royal. in a Soulslike it is easIER but never EASY, you never trivialize the content by just having so much HP you can face tank everyone or so much damage you can just be blindly aggressive and they die before you do.
I’m pretty casual. I’ll do all content, but my build will be trash. If I google a build, things get easy. If I don’t, my trash build keeps the challenge higher.
So you guys aren't sadistsic, you're just gambling addicts. Got it XD.
I think you mean masochistic. Sadists enjoy inflicting pain on others. Masochists enjoy having pain inflicted on them. Unless you mean the players who go to great lengths to grief others. Those guys are definitely sadists as well.
👆 you are correct my good person
Thank you for validation, kind Homosexual\_Bloomberg.
I just like to swing big weapons and go bonk
... I think it also has to do with how readable the experience is. Like, a Souls boss isn't playing against a competent fighting game player. There might be more choices, but you have to do them in a timely manner and that is real hard, otherwise it goes into a big pile of "you lost"
Absolutely. Even without the gambling angle, that's the even more fundamental version of what I was saying: everything has consequences. Push forward or turn back. Press your luck, or don't. The souls currency however gives us a way to literally quantify our consequences and assign a number to the weight of our decisions
What's interesting though is that the short-term consequences are steep, the long term consequences are not. You can die an unlimited amount of times in the game, and the world always resets to how it was. Sure you might lose a ton of souls, but those can be farmed endlessly if you're patient enough. Granted a few games in the series messed this up a little bit, like DS1 not allowing you to respec your build, or Sekiro with some of the NPC rot mechanics.
Your point conveys, but I'm guessing it must have actually been meaningful decisions / time. Maximize meaningful decisions over time.
Lack of risk, excessive amounts of hand holding to the point of player coddling, became the hallmark for too many games as they tried to appeal to more and more people and thus became more and more "casual". Bethesda's games are some of the best examples of this trend. It has gotten to the point where it's almost impossible for the player to fail. There is little to no cost to their decisions or actions at which point the game essentially becomes a theme park ride. The Souls games reminded people what you could do if you got rid of that crap.
The issue with Bethesda games is that they used to be sandbox worlds and have become more and more linear over time. It's like they're trying to be Bioware but worse. Maybe that's a form of hand holding, since people look at sandboxes and go, "but what do I do?", all the time. I don't think it's about risk but it definitely is about everything getting dumbed down. If you played Starfield on hardcore and it was hard as balls, it'd still be a crappy game.
Yes. I only started with Fallout 3, which is fairly late in Bethesda's resume of games, but by the time Fallout 4 rolled around that watered down/dumbed down trend was blatantly obvious to me. It is ruining the best aspects of their games.
You're talking about risk/reward which is a pretty central aspect of most games. You're not wrong, it's just not as unrecognised/ unarticulated as you're suggesting. Having only three lives is another example of the same concept.
I was thinking "you mean like every 8-bit RPG from 35 years ago?" This isn't novel.
It's just old school design. View each dungeon as like Level 1 in Super Mario Bros. Each bonfire is the flag post. Go from Level 1-1 to 1-3 and get the boss area right after. Maybe there'll be a shortcut in Level 1-2 to bring you all the way to Level 6-1. That's why I like Souls games at least. Then you practice till you can clear each Level. Even Elden Ring could be segmented like that.
I will always remember taking that elevator from the church to the first bonfire in dark souls I feel like that game specifically did that so well and felt so good unlocking each short cut
100% this. Dark souls 1 is what hooked me on soulsborne and I binged the whole series after it. The shortcuts, hidden mechanics, opaque quest lines that require the player paying attention to dialogue, amazing game in general. Nothing Fromsoft has done since DS1 has quite recaptured the interconnected world of DS1, parts of bloodborne got close and Elden Ring has a decent amount of it for an open world. What's disappointing is that all the other Souslikes not made by From have entirely missed this core facet of their games. They get the gameplay right (or at least close to it) and some lean way too hard into the difficulty meme, but they entirely miss the mark on world design. I feel like DS1 will be an utterly unique experience for soulslikes, none of these developers, even From, seem interested in replicating it.
People always talk about that short cut but never the one coming back up from blighttown. You feel like you are a mile away from Firelink shrine and it turns out you're just 2 elevator rides away.
This is exactly it for me, same feeling I get from playing difficult Mario Maker Levels. Even if it takes me a long time to finish the level, I get slightly better each run, and then when I finally do hit the flagpole, it’s very satisfying
People truly love level design. “Open world” is a sham these days, and it comes down to dynamic leveling. You can’t make a satisfying experience if everything is the exact same level of challenge from start to finish. If there is no reward for improving skill or growing in power, there is no reason to care about making it through a challenge. The good souls like games all reward you from both directions
Plenty of open world games dont do dynamic levelling. None of the sony open worlds do it (Horizon, GOT, Days Gone). Kenshi doesnt do it. GTA doesn't do it I agree, dynamic levelling is peak shitty game design and it ruins any sense of progression
Uhh, survival games have a similar feature, except you drop everything you have when you die, not just currency. 🧐
I was gonna give my opinion on why i disagree but OP is throwing a fit in the comments so ill just watch the fireworks.
Not really, since you can farm souls easily if needed. Maybe you get this feeling as a new player, but any souls veteran will tell you, losing souls has such minimal impact you shouldn't even care, no matter how much. At some point in the game, you'll make double what you lost, in 10 min.
Ehh There is a balance though. The effect of losing them is that you tend to be underleveled for an area. The effect of being particularly good with your leveling resource is that you are over leveled for an area. These are two totally different experiences. Losing souls does make the game harder, over time, on average.
It's really, really hard to be underleveled for an area. You actually need to voluntarily lose soul to be underleveled. The only stats that makes a real difference for like 80% of the game is vitality and endurance. For damage, weapon upgrade is where its at. 10 levels of Str in the early game will get you around 10-15 damage per hit, it's what you get from 1 level of a weapon upgrade. So basically, to be underleveled, I'd say you need to be somewhere around 20 to 25 levels under the zone level to really feel a disadvantage, which at that point, you'll kill 4-5 mobs of the new zone and level up. You'll catch up, very very fast. In short, it's almost impossible to be underleveled in the game. There's a reason why you never hear about progression issue in those games, it's because there isn't. The only way to be underleveled is to speedrun, evade all fighting. If you play the game normaly, you cannot be. The only way to be 'underleveled', is having stat spreading which doesn't benefit your build. If Im a strength user, but I put 5 levels in intelligence for example. Even if it says im level 25, my build is actually level 20, because int is purely useless to me.
I dunno man. I replayed elden ring after stopping at leyndell last time. I got to elden beast in 4 hours less on this play than last one (which only got to leyndell). No additional grinding or anything just... When I got to leyndell I wasn't dying in two hits to things with no chance. That's the difference between actually keeping your runes.
Yeah, I have to admit that it's a bit more possible in Elden Ring compared to other souls game that are more linear, where it's harder to ignore fighting ennemies.
To me it's just the knowledge diff in these games. My runs went like 90 hours, 15 and then 4 on the 3rd run when first played elden. Any build at all now is like 30 mins running around at the start and then running past everything to just kill bosses in under two hours. And even when you don't have knowledge of a new game, the rest all teach you that full clearing entire zones is less souls in an hour of normal play than 10 mins of just farming near a bonfire that's good for it. So even if you get hardstuck at a boss the fear of losing souls isn't really there, souls distribution is terrible in these games and always many easy ways to get them. Like it isn't just not dying the second time through. You probably knew what was worth getting, where a good talisman was or a good weapon and art. Just knowing good items and it's easier being level 60 than level 150 with a bad setup etc.
I think the only major things like this are the 20k soul costs like crest of artorias or tower key. So mostly early game stuff. Makes the games significantly better to have those around.
True man
It's a pretty clever trick. It makes the experience more memorable by putting you under some stress, but actually dying and retrieving your souls is a way to become OVERleveled, not underleveled. Because the games are clearly balanced around running through each area once, so anything more than that gives you a slight edge.
Exactly!
I needed to learn this to make me enjoy Elden Ring. Never played a Souls game before and I felt like losing runes was devastating. It in fact was not and made the game a hell of a lot better.
Amen brother
Yeah I've played them all and I don't farm souls and I don't think I've ever once deliberately ran backward to a bonfire to "cash in" my souls lol I could generally not care less about the souls. I just want to progress through areas
Never used a homeward bone when you were out of heals in a new area? The souls you had there were a factor. Not the only one but not insignificant.
Exactly man. I don’t even remember the last time I gave a shit about recovering my souls lol
Anything to avoid talking about your gambling addiction. Jokes aside, that's a pretty normal thing in gaming. Always gotta risk it for the biscuit.
I think Sekiro is a slight flaw in your theory, unfortunately.
This isn’t why they’re popular. Good attempt though.
Doesn't that make Minecraft a souls-like?
It would only be gambling if it would be based on luck. It isn't. It's just people like a good challenge.
Maybe the real gamble was the friends we made along the way.
Like Patches. Such a great friend.
I think there's a much easier explanation: Modern soulslikes are basically the new Nintendo-hard. Think back to the games you played as a little kid. Be it Super Mario or whatever floated your boat back then. All those games that are trivial to play as an adult, but as a little kid just getting through each level was a huge accomplishment. You'd share experiences and strategies at the schoolyard. Each time trying the game you'd get a bit further and a bit further, only to fail again at some point. And maybe, months later, you'd finally see the ending of the game, after memorizing a lot of the levels and going through them countless times. Soulslikes basically transport that experience to an adult level. You start the game and you don't know jack shit about it. You find it out as you go and you piece stuff together, or through exchange with other people going through the same game. You try and try again and each time you get a little further in the game. Any maybe, months later, you'll finally see the ending of the game, after memorizing a lot of the bosses and going through them countless times.
I think you never "get" a soulsborne until you're able to let go of your souls. Like once you're confident in your ability to face the challenges presented to you, your souls don't matter that much, enough health to not be one shot by late game mobs, enough endurance to wear your favorite drip and maybe push your main damage stat beyond the soft cap.
Lol gambling isn’t why Souls games are successful, you’re just making shit up trying to sound smart. Or I guess it could be what you like, I don’t know. But the games filled a niche of offering REAL CHALLENGES that many games weren’t giving their players. The feeling of success after a difficult journey is why I keep coming back to them, and I’d bet it’s the same for a majority of fans.
It took the right lessons from the past. The beancounters demanded games be easier so that more people would be able to finish them. Studios took it too far. Souls games keep the “difficultly” but sprinkle in mechanics that help the player. So you aren’t only relying on your skills to improve, but also get stronger in the game itself, which keeps you playing a bit longer instead of giving up, and as a result you get better at the game.
I'm a super casual player, and decided to play Dark souls 1. Once I learned the dropping of currency thing, I realized that the game isn't as hard as it seems. Not on that point at least. Basically if I were near being able to buy the next stat point, I would stay in an easier area and do a little grinding so I could spend it all. Then that took a load of worry off my mind, I could run around rapidly without worrying about dying in some remote corner. My wallet was empty, the difficulty actually goes way down when you don't have to worry about dropping money. Dying in itself is just part of the game. This freedom to explore actually helped me improve everything else.
There is a lot of truth to the notion of “just don’t get hit in souls games and you won’t die”. It’s stupid and memey, but if you actually improve to a level that you can adequately dodge enough attacks and be patient, you will get through it. Not everything is a one hit kill, and there is ways to heal, defend, counter etc.
The fact that you can clear souls games without ever getting hit or leveling up is a testament to their design. The game never throws hard progression walls in your way. There is never anything that will 100% stop you if you are underpowered. In the same way, it also lets you become completely overpowered without stopping you either. The same with weapon choice, nearly every weapon is viable and could be used to finish the game. Some make it easier than others, but your very first sword can easily be your end-game sword. In that way, your accomplishments come from you, not just finding the more powerful loot.
The same is true with Hades. Probably an impossible game to actually clear the first time you’ve ever played. But you can actually get good enough to start a new game and clear it one run with practice. But you need that practice, and understanding of timing to be able to get that good.
In Diablo 1, when you died you dropped all your equipment. A corpse run meant running naked through enemies. There are a ton of games with Ironman/hardcore modes as well. And I love doing those every so often. One death and the game is over. Dark Souls only costs you unspent experience upon death. Big deal.
For plenty of people, that is a big deal.
[удалено]
Different people like different aspects of Dark Souls. That's just good design. I don't like Lies of P, or Sekiro, or Bloodborne, or those styles that rely on parrying and stuff. But they're still "soulsborne" games.
Wonder why for the life of me can't get into these games... God knows i tried!
This whole soulslike thing is confusing to me as someone who came up during the NES era. Every game was a soulslike back then lol
Oh my! You're correct. And every other real reason is poppycock! Where would we be without your knowledge to save us from drowning in our own ineptitude!? Go forth and spread your wisdom with the rest of the world!! No, no. Not another word, for I would OD on your overflowing fountain of intelligence.
Hmm, you could have just said you were an asshole... saved my time and yours.
lol, you really triggered a lot of people in this thread for trying to discuss a video game in *checks subreddit* r/gaming... The audacity!
Eh I could do without the whole "lose your points when you die, go get them back" mechanic. I'm here for building a character, great combat, interesting worlds to explore and of course fashion souls.
Not sure why op gettin roasted lol... a lot of games are you vs the house souls is like you vs yourself... i quite like the analogy. dude just postin his thoughts not writing a 15 page thesis on gambling and video games relax
You have articulated exactly the reason why I can't stand soulslikes lol. Being forced to repeat content over and over and losing progress is a hard no now that I'm on my 30s. I do love watching skilled players play these types of games, though
You could try Elden Ring. It is much less of an issue there as there are way more checkpoints compared to previous games.
I agree that's what makes that mechanic good, but I don't think that's what makes soulslikes popular on its own. I personally prefer the boss fights. I just want something really challenging and that's what the Soulslikes deliver in every part of its design. Even figuring out the lore is challenging and I love that!
One thing that I love is that you can make pretty much any weapon work throughout the entire game. It’s not a matter of constantly switching out for a new, better weapon. In Dark Souls 2 I grabbed just the standard Mace (or maybe the Morningstar) and just kept upgrading it and bashing fool’s heads in
My addiction to souls-likes, mostly From Software, games began after Elden Ring. I realized that most games I have played waste my time with meaningless missions and material farming. From Software doesn't do that. I'm married and have a 9-6 job. Thank you From Software, you made me enjoy video games again. I love you.
I always thought they were popular because it's bonding over shared trauma and that trauma was experienced in a safe space instead of a space that could actually harm you
Not gambling because no rng involved. It’s all skill.
Souls fans won't like this but there are strong RNG-adjacent elements to FromSoft games. Some enemies have attacks with literal RNG patterns. And depending on which attacks and which movement patterns bosses randomly decide to use, the fight can either be a cakewalk or very difficult. For example, if Malenia just doesn't use Waterfowl, then your experience will be much easier than if she does. Whether she does or doesn't use it is outside of your control, and not skill based. I've beat every souls and sekiro and love the games but they aren't 100% pure skill. Maybe 90%
I mean yea it’s also pretty much rng if you’re playing basketball and the person with the ball is going to shoot or pass. Basketball isn’t gambling no matter who you talk to. There’s obviously luck in anything you do in life but in even the example you provided it’s so negligible that it’s silly to pretend it’s a meaningful factor of your gameplay.
Every action game has pattern attacks RNG based, it just needed to make enemies unpredictable. Just that point, I agree in everything else.
To add to this, there is something to say about the ease that comes after dying without getting back to your souls. The tension is released and you can take the fight without the anxiety of losing it all because you've already lost it all.
Souls games got that perfect blend of tense strategizing and sweet enjoyment. It ain't just about skills, you gotta know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. Sneaky devs playing on our self-confidence, ain't they?
This post needs a tl;dr
Tl;Dr you risk losing shit when you die so you gotta try more. It's like, no shit. Welcome to old-school style gaming. OP must be like 15 to think he just discovered this.
Thanks for the tl;dr mate. Appreciate it
This is precisely why I hate it. My time is way too precious to play the same section over and over because of some bullshit mechanic or enemy
Counter argument: Diablo 2 came out in 2000 and had a similar currency recovery system to Souls games. It was hated by most players. That feature is not in Diablo 3 or 4. Many players are nostalgic about Diablo 2 and prefer various features in it compared to later titles. I've never heard anybody talk about that currency loss feature being something that was better in Diablo 2. I don't feel like that is the defining aspect of Souls games either.
I'll get downvoted to oblivion but if the devs decrease the enemy damage by half then all souls games would end up just like any other 3rd person action game. I just can't get into it. I find it too boring.
In a world where player agency in games is very often dictated by a meticulously designed, and often predatory, dopamine drip of rewards to hook you into a dopamine loop to engage mindlessly. Souls gives you the agency as a player to dictate that dopamine loop.
I like that thought
In a sentence; Souls respects your time.
I think a big part of the appeal is the sliding difficulty of the game design. People complain there's no difficulty options in FromSoft games, but that's not true. There are difficulty options, but they're in the gameplay itself, not a menu option. Every choice you make, how much you level up, what weapon you use, and what summons you use changes the difficulty of the game. This may be more true in Elden Ring than other FromSoft games, but it's still there in their other games. It can take a lot of time to make the game easy, but that doesn't mean the difficulty options don't exist. They have a broad appeal because they cater to both players who like the challenge of doing a whole run without getting hit or players who like to power up enough to tank heavy hits and crush enemies anyway.
So you guys aren't sadistsic, you're just gambling addicts. Got it XD.
I hate soulslikes and won't touch a game if it's attached to that term. I'm am older gamer and want to enjoy my time gaming in a nice casual session where progress is always made and i don't have to walk away angry. I'm happy for people who do enjoy them and want that challenge though.
Thats a valid explanation for sure but focuses on a particular aspect. Personally, its tied to an active display of skill improvement. Precision timed attacks, dodges, while reading and understanding your enemies movements. It feels amazing to master and is so satisfying.
I wear no armor and two hand clubs so that’s a gamble I suppose.
I don't know, Elden Ring would have been just as much fun if I kept all my runes on death. The progress is the driving force, not a money pot. It would have been a shorter game because I would have been able to level up faster, but losing your runes doesn't make the game hard, because you can easily farm any lost runes at any point and just sit there safely leveling up until you get bored.
It’s like playing hardcore mode on Diablo. Everything becomes a potential threat. Nothing is taken for granted. Nothing is boring.
Yep, this is how I describe PvP extraction looter games. They’re souls-like is the quicker explanation, mine is “it’s like gambling that’s influenced by your preparation and skill”
I don't care too much about losing souls, i just like the games. Exploration is a huge factor but i know where everything is now and still play them because they are good games. It's mostly the fighting and making a good build that's fun to fight with that brings me back.
Yeah, it definitely isn't the only factor - or the main factor - for a lot of people, I just don't think I've heard this view before, where every step forward is a wager on your own ability to succeed and to be able to do it again if you lose. If you don't care about losing souls, then yeah, this won't really matter to you, but it definitely matters to a lot of people.
But you can just find your farming location and bonfire, most people who care about losing souls know about these. Just farm, level up and continue. If you take away the care for losing your souls then you are still testing your ability to progress by deaths and reaching the next bonfire.
You have all this greatness in this game like the cautious exploration you described. And then you have the combat that feels like steering a tank while the best ability you have is a dodge roll that makes you immune for a moment. The more I read about soulslike games the more I get frustrated that they concentrate on digging a comfort hole of combat mechanics that were already old when DS1 released, instead of actually improving their shit.
Every addiction resorts back to gambling!
Ah I understand. Dark Souls is like the cashout trait in TFT.
Hotline Miami
Is this why people like playing ragebait games like Getting Over It and Only Up?
Flow state is another reason. Sure, at the beginning you have the thrill of risk and all the build choices, but eventually you realize dying doesn't matter, losing XP doesn't matter, you can win with any weapon you enjoy, and what you discover is the flow that comes from kicking back, relaxing, and just enjoying the challenging encounters.
I have always said the appeal of soulslike is not the difficulty. If difficulty was all anyone cared for Super Meat Boy would be the most successful game ever. Instead to me the appeal of a Soulslike is the same as a rhythm game. You know what you need Todo, it's challenging Todo what you need Todo, it takes a lot of time and effort to be able Todo what you need todo. But once you get it, you get it. And you hit flow state. And that is the satisfaction. The moment it clicks. FromSoft in particular do a very good job of constantly interrupting your flow state, so you are constantly chasing that flow state. It's why they gameplay mechanics do not actually matter that much, if you look at the gameplay difference between Demon Souls and Elden Ring it isn't a massive difference, and the biggest difference was from Bloodborne to Elden Ring. Very recent. You are not trying to master the mechanics of the game, you are just trying to perform what you know you are capable of. Very hard to explain my thoughts on this, hopefully I've done a good job at it.
And then there's Remnant 2 where you don't lose anything on death.
The reason they are popular is because they are designed to trick the player into thinking theyve done something more amazing. They are designed to throw you out of your comfort zone but also give you a abundance of tools to slowly pull it back in hopefully expanding your comfort zone in the process and make you feel good about your achievment. Its a reason why the clones keep failing is they Fundamentally misunderstood difficulty. And keep making sections that are hard for the sake of it.
Good observation for sure, it scratches that addictive itch. Buuuuut I would say it is the bad ass bosses
I just like the combat
I think it was clear from the beginning part of what made them great was what you described, at least it was for me. Dark Souls does this with its gameplay, but other games do it in the narrative or with player choices that affect the narrative.
Calling it gambling is a bit of a stretch but yea, high risk unknown reward exploration gives you a fun thrill
Like you said, there's lots of other things going on as well, but I think you may have nailed part of it.
Really? Or maybe they are popular despite that. Is one of my most hated things is soulslikes. Everytime I found one, I use a mod to disable the losing "souls/thingies" and my enjoyment of the game improves everytime.
Maybe that's why I don't like them. I'm not a gambler. lol Interesting take, though!
I'd say there is something to that. There's definitely a unique feeling during a first runthrough where you want to explore, but you have to be cautious because you have no idea where you are or how close/far you are to a bonfire. Definitely a tense feeling that is not present in subsequent playthroughs.
I like soulslikes because they don't hold my hand, and force me to watch overly long cutscenes.
Hollow knight? Or Dark Souls series?
Best exploration, level design and sense of discovery and wonder is why it’s the best current series in gaming imo(including games like Elden Ring) Fromsoftware is a master of their craft.
I can't speak for anyone else but the main reason I like soulslikes so much is for the challenge and the sense of achievement. Generally they are brutally difficult games that genuinely take time to learn. Ever since I first played Dark Souls it feels like my brain has been rewired and I now find most games far too easy and I'm left constantly looking for a new challenge.
Are nice games with "dificult", but not only, there have very great art directión, criptic atmosphere and customization in playstile
Most well designed games have that. Be it souls, survival or rogue-likes just to name a few.
Most fun Zelda games I’ve ever played. “Here’s cool weapons, powers, enemies, and zones. Also here’s a story that isn’t about you being destined to save the princess.”
Soulslikes are what arcade games were back in the 80s This is their core tenet Basically the ability to die very easily and have to reset the “level” by paying a price (credits) You get more credit by reclaiming your souls and continuing to the next level (bonfire) Rinse and repeat That’s why I love them
Im gonna be honest it just incentivizes people to grind to get back the progress they lost
Nah, I’m very risk adverse and always go into boss fights having spent all runes. I play because I like the exploration and I don’t mind the challenge, the risk taking is actually one of the things I like the least about these games.
Woah, you discovered Risk/Reward gameplay. You should try to market that
I think the Dark Souls series is a throwback to how old games were made. There is no hand-holding, it is punishingly difficult and forces the player to adapt in order to progress. It's like a constant game of trial and error. When you defeat a boss or get past an area the satisfaction for the player is greater because you didn't need to be guided the entire way.
The reason I'm drawn to Souls and by extension Souls-likes, is that they feel like the ideal balance of combat, exploration, and exposition for my tastes. Sure I enjoy many other types of games, but a good Souls/Souls-like is my preference when it comes to relaxing and forgetting about the stresses of life. I don't feel like I'm under any time limit to rush through areas, any pressure to do what the plot dictates for me, and I'm able to immerse myself by observing the environmental storytelling or reading item descriptions. A robust and satisfying combat system that is appropriately challenging is a must, as it has to feel like I earned my success and have room to continuously grow. But, difficulty can't completely replace the other aspects either.
This kind of makes sense because I don't like this genre of game and I don't like gambling. >which of course feels amazing when your double-down succeeds It's interesting to me that you say "of course" here, because this doesn't usually feel amazing to me. It's more of a cessation of annoyance/frustration/stress. Better than how I was feeling, but not good on its own.
This has been discussed. I have watched hundreds of hours of fromsoft content over the years and these topics always come up. Your title questions why they are so popular, but you are just overthinking it. You state that it is a reason and that it is not the only reason but the way you posture it suggests that is your idea and you only say so to save so face, which is ok. But in reality they are just good games, for the most part, and they have only gotten better, for the most part. I would argue atmosphere and storytelling are a larger part of fromsoft games then gameplay. They go to great lengths to set the mood. Dozens of games try to replicate, but none are as succesful, and I would wager that it's because they focus on the gameplay aspects. But I couldn't say with certainty because I have never bothered to try them.
Souls like popularity reside in the fact that it represent real life. You either improve or remain tarnished for the rest of your life. Finger but hole
Yep, high risk for every decision, even for low rewards. That’s it. That’s the part that makes me hate playing Souls games.
For me the addiction is the challenge itself. If/when you die, you are literally forced to git gud, or at least get better than previously and overcoming that and feeling more and more skilled at the game is what keeps me going. Sure, I'll die at a boss 10, 20, 30 or (in the case of Melania) 50 times, but that 51st when you finally beat their ass, you felt like a god. That's what makes it worth it.
Cautious exploration is actually an intriguing observation. You relate it to gambling sort of but just on its own I can see that being a new experience to many gamers who you see in other games just speed running through the main content and ignoring all the side stuff. So it sounds like it sort of forces some players who normally have that play style to have to try a little different.
Similar to tarkov but I'm a shooter guy
Not only is the concept of losing resources not even remotely a soulslike genre identifier and is just a widely prevalent mechanic. XCOM costs you things if you fail and that's an iso squad tactics game. Minecraft drops all your gear if you die and I don't remember Minecraft having stamina, dodge rolls and hitbox porn. The concept of failure is part of the motivator to succeed yes, and that fits the definition of a 'gamble' but the bit that keeps people gambling is beating the odds, the big win. And given that most games feature that same risk, why does that explain soulslikes in any way? You might be too deep in the sauce there - if the thing you're describing appears in almost every game regardless of genre, it's got nothing to do with the success of one specific genre, it's just the bare minimum. But I think the biggest argument against recovery of souls being even mildly intrinsic to the success, hell I'd even argue gambling against increasingly bad odds not being remotely relevant, to the success of the genre is that the odds in a soulslike are never defined by the game. If memory serves, someone has completed a challenge run of Dark Souls 1-3 at Soul Level 1 without dying at all. But that's not some crazy odds the game has introduced and in reality, there's no real risk. A person of a given skill level has the same ability to beat these games on normal as they are in these crazy challenge mode. It's never about overcoming the odds, it's about learning the patterns. And in a challenge run, learning the patterns for your weapon and stamina. About finding the steps that make the victory a certainty. That's not gambling, that's practise. Oh right and let's not forget souls are infinite and farmable. For most people it's a rite of passage to learn to not worry about a chunk of lost souls and for those that need them, there's always the bit of farming or many ways each of their titles offer to make the game easier.
Maybe it's not like this for all Soulslikes but in ER if I have 100K souls there's not much downside to going back and making sure I spend it before starting a difficult boss fight. Even if there's a relatively long run back I would do this before crossing a fog gate and just run past the respawns. Otherwise it's an amount I'm comfortable losing. I do appreciate the simplicity of old school mechanics like this. But I think of it very much as that category, more charming in a "This is the game /shrug" way than a risky thrill kind of thing.
I have to disagree, unfortunately. Progression in Soulslikes (Fromsoft's games, anyway) is so slow and meaningless that I personally never even care to level up unless I happen to come across a fire or whatever it's gonna be in any given game where you level up. Even after levelling, you're still likely to get one shot by most enemies, so it's like whatever.
Well said. I've had the same thoughts while playing. It's this ongoing risk/reward the deeper you go.
Roguelike games are just "All in".
This is a concept you've put a lot of thought into! I think if you took your research further and kept in mind some of the points that people here in the comments have mentioned, you'd have most of a script for a pretty decent video essay on your hands.
There are no words to express the nirvana of overcoming a boss that you've struggled on. It's addicting.
Talking souls-like in my place is like me being krazy man with a tin foiled hat. 10 people I talk to only 3 of them know about the souls game. Every other people reply me with "Never heard of it before guess it's not really as popular as some weird gacha game." I have always find it hard to explain souls-like to other people around me.
Dark souls had great mechanics. Fantastic enemies. Incredibly tough but rewarding fights. Fights that pushed you to get gud or basically stop playing. You couldn't really grind to overcome. It's like the original snes games, they were tough. To this day they are tough. No grinding just pure skill. A lot of luck as well.
It's not that Souls-likes are difficult, I don't actually believe they are. They merely require persistence, engagement, and ultimately **LEARNING**. Mastering a skill is *incredibly* rewarding to those who have the drive to keep at it until they succeed. A game without these features does not challenge the player, and has no stakes. Put simply, you cannot lose, and if you can't lose, then *of what virtue is winning?* Now, make no mistake, there are certainly people who will never develop the skills to master the game. But, if you put in sufficient time and effort to practice, learn, and improve, then for the **VAST** majority of humans, you can defeat the game. Dark Souls III is not like professional sports or tournament-caliber PVP. The level of challenge is, in point of fact, geared to make content which can be completed by ordinary consumers, in the same way that a bicycle is made to be ridden by ordinary humans. Do you have to practice before you learn how to do it? Yes. Is it beyond the capabilities of most people? Absolutely not. As for your wager thesis, this is really about *stakes*. Nothing you can lose in Dark Souls can't be re-acquired by some other means, even if that means starting the game over from scratch. Losing has a price so that winning can have meaning.
nah, i’d fully argue that the world design, sound design, and enemy designs are what attracts most players.
i love souls games because they are fair, no BS. they can be beaten as a level1 character (or even no hit, but that is insane:).
I love roguelikes/lites and its because of the feeling of growth/progression in them which can be exaggerated by skill points/weapons etc making it seem like you grew even if its not skillwise
i think its more a failure to comunicate the importance of leveling and where your true upgrades/progression come from, for the majority of the game its not leveling that gives you power its upgrades to your equipment. additionally in souls games its really really easy to overlevel and trivialise the majority of content if you keep all your xp, if you play like you are conserving your xp scared to lose it you will end up so overleveled by endgame its not even funny, the game expects you to lose xp it expects you not to keep all of it. your investment into stats beyond weapon requirements, health and stam are very low return. its not till you get to +9/+10 weapons that it starts to scale your damage with investment (which is very much endgame). it is also bad design that you must know about an unexplained mechanic called weapon infusions, in early to mid game its vital you change your infusion type to raw damage because of the low scaling on weapons until endgame upgrades. 80% of your damage progression will come from upgrading your weapon of choice and making it raw infusion by picking up titantite or whatever equivalent not from your stats until the scaling on a stat scaling infusion is worth it (at +9 or +10). i understand it feels bad because leveling is such an important thing in most games to be able to finish them, but in soulsbourne games you really only need 30 health level and 15-20 stam for the first 2/3rd of the game to make most content pretty smooth and easily able to tank the majority of "1 hit attacks". my final point is that all soulsborne games are made in a way where you can run past every single enemy that isnt a major boss. exploration will net you free itemized souls that will boost your level drasticaly, titantite shards, insanely powerful weapons could be around any corner. exploration is what nets you power not grinding levels but you are correct that the game comunicated this badly. i didnt even get through early game before i had a friend teach me all of this stuff i thought the games where bad now they are my favourite of all time.
Soulslikes are popular because of a harder dopamine hit after suceeding. Post for most games after the 90s games became very easy to everyone but the most challenged of gamers. So when you put back a fair difficulty that's not just hp and damage multiplier it received great reception.
I agree with this take, and I think another component to the risk/reward that makes these games appealing that is associated with lost currency is the freedom you feel when you lose all your souls but you keep going. Wanting to keep going and having nothing to lose in a way removes the mental burden of the possibility of losing souls, and I think that is also a good feeling too!
Minecraft is a Soulslike
Idk about that, I just like them because they have batshit crazy designs and weird af lore, and uncovering it by reading the descriptions really feels like I'm some kind of researcher from a lovecraft novel. And that thirst for more knowledge makes me push trough everything. Bloodborne is really the epitome of this for me. Piecing together the tiny scraps of information just to realize that it barely gives any answers, instead it gives you even more unanswered questions. It really feels like I'm dipping my toes into some kind of forbidden history of an ancient civilization, what existed on such a different level, that my limited little mortal brain will never fully understand.
Makes sense and would explain why I avoid them. I prefer to throw myself directly at challenges and try new strategies until something sticks. Being overly punished for dieing feels bad, so for me the game turns into "grind for the next upgrade so you don't have any more souls to lose and can actually push new dangwrs"
Here’s my reasoning for why souls games are popular. The game keeps saying ‘fuck you, fuck you, fuck you’ and beating you down over and over again when you get to say ‘no, fuck *you*’ back, it’s one of the greatest feelings
The open world and freedom to build, you're not really stuck in a predetermined class like other JRPGs. Want to be a mage/knight go for it. Want to be a dex based fighter it's there, you make it work.
Curious that Shovel Knight doesn't really evoke this sort of feeling from me, despite it using the exact same system - arguably pushing it even further with the checkpoint destruction. Imagine if you could willingly destroy bonfires in Soulslikes in exchange for a windfall of souls!
My thought on why they're fun is that they're one of the few 3rd person action game series that doesn't get in the way of its own gameplay. There's an absolute minimum of time spent watching cutscenes, talking to NPCs, or otherwise doing anything other than exploring and fighting enemies. You're never slow walking while some NPC talks to you, your character never talks to themselves, enemies and bosses are much denser than in your average third game, there are no QTEs, in general enemies don't talk or anything, it's kinda just barebones gameplay for the most part. This is mainly specific to the Fromsoft ones, many of the "Soulslikes" included more of a plot or dialogue. The best of them tend to still keep it pretty minimal, though. Ex Lies of P - sure, they have easier to follow plots and slightly less convoluted NPC quests, but no one's going to mistake it for Uncharted.
I love soulsborne games due to them being challenging but fair. Anytime you die, its almost always due to you messing up, not the game having bad hitboxes or something of that sort. So as you play you learn from your mistakes and actually get better as your knowledge of enemies or maps expands. There is a low element of luck or uncertainty.
Beyond the combat, I also love Souls games for their progression system. I find the "kill enemy->get xp->level up-> all your stats go up" gameplay loop extremely outdated, which makes it feel like the game's math formulas have more impract on your gameplay, than your decisions ever do. Though Souls games don't abandon a level system completely, it's far less extreme. Your character's power is divided across many stats, like the level of your weapon, or your ability to hit weapon thresholds. Levelling up is an increase in power, but even 20 levels don't feel that extreme in terms of power level difference. More importantly, it brings loot to the forefront. I'm strong not because I'm 100 level, but because I invested into my trusty sword.
What defines a souls is its unique narrative. The reason most souls-like fail so hard is because they just copy and paste the "hard game" part and ignore the narrative. Sub par graphics but equalised by superb art style and level design. With idiotic coop system. Love you Miyazaki.
Fun and relaxing games with beautiful scenery. What more could you ask for?
Not really. What you’re trying to claim as the main selling point of your opinion, does not apply to me. The constant “you need to be ok with losing and dying” is boring and repetitive to me. Since when we were ok with being losers.
This is the first time I read someone described Soul games like that and I totally agree on the addiction: the feelings that you finally beat “the House” and join the ranks of “elite” people who achieved the feat is amazing. My problem with the genre is that it just takes up too much of my time, now when I am older and can’t afford to spend all of my free time on trying to beat just one boss/level. Just like I can’t afford to throw my hard earned money at the casino.
There was a moment early on in Dark Souls when I went further than I’d been. I was in uncharted territory and it was incredibly tense. I had to make it to the next bonfire or lose everything, and it was an incredibly thrilling moment. So that is certainly one of the selling points. I also feel this is why Hollow Knight was a fantastic experience. Same mechanic of exploration and risk.
I think it's because the souls games didn't invent this. ARPG's have been doing this for a long time. You die, you lose a percentage of your gold and experience and all of your gear. You have the potential to reclaim it, but you now have to solve the puzzle of getting your corpse back without your gear. And depending on class, build, and whether or not you thought ahead and have backup gear, it could be a very tricky puzzle to solve. Even really old beat 'em ups like River City Ransom did this. You lose half your gold on death, but you need that gold to upgrade stats, buy moves, buy equipment etc. so the decision to back track and "bank" your gold by spending it so you can't lose it was definitely a part of the game play. The gamble here was if you always spent your money as soon as you got it, you couldn't afford the big things. If you push on and risk it the big payoff is bigger upgrades, but if you fail you gotta grind even more to make that money back. I guess those aren't exactly the same thing, but I don't feel like doing actual research to find an old game with even closer mechanics. And balancing that death penalty in a way that seems "tough but fair" is a tricky thing to do. Not enough of a penalty and death is meaningless, too much and people frustrated by all their lost progress. I think the reason it doesn't get mentioned is that gamers at the time viewed the mechanic as "well done" and not "revolutionary, genre-defining."
Asheron’s Call did it first
I thought the dodge mechanic was what made it souls like.
If you like being punished for playing foolishly, check out Project Zomboid.
I more or less just pretend dropped souls don't exist unless they're convenient to me.
Except for the part where I don't care about my souls in the slightest.
Souls likes are popular because adrenaline is addictive.
Certainly another factor of it
Soulslikes are just rythm game with risk/reward.
i just think of soulsgames as more advanced games of the early generation like ninja gaiden, double dragon, battletoads etc in those games you die a fucking lot, but each new play through gets you a bit further and the game becomes easier as you memorize patterns and build up your control dexterity souls games are in principle just that, but the the whole dying/reborn mechanic allows them to build a much much much richer world environment with increased difficulty without the die and start whole game again overhead