Here’s your reminder to come join us for some Elden Ring seamless co-op tomorrow! Here’s the link to the details: https://lemmy.zip/post/63498569
There’s lots of motivations to replay any game: the gameplay, the story, completionism, a feeling of home.
For me it’s usually gameplay first but closely followed by completionism, actually. I adore the gameplay of Sekiro, Bloodborne, Lies of P and Khazan, and that was usually the driving factor for me to replay the game. However, I am a bit of a completionist, so it’s also alluring to me to have a platinum trophy in my collection to be fully “done” with a game.
What about you?
I finally jumped the gun and installed Nioh. So far it seems like a very arcady souls like, but that might not be bad for me right now. And a lot of the mechanics seem interesting.
I’m currently playing Demons souls remaster for the first time having started with the original back in the PS3 days. It looks how I remember it but has some lovely quality of life upgrades (hold down to select the first thing in your hotbar). It’s almost a comfort game for me at this point. It’s by far the easiest souls game, shields are OP in this and tanking behind one will see you through most things. Level ups all increase defence and soul farming is easy to do.
I’ve had a similar thing happen to me when I played Diablo 2 Resurrected. It obviously looks a lot better and modern than its 20-year old first rendition, but I swear the game looked back then like it does in the remake
It’s finally race week in F1 after five weeks of break so I might not be playing as much over the weekend as I usually would. Will probably watch the F2 races as well.
All the same I’ll probably get at least some gaming in. Currently I’ve started playing two new games, one Soulslike and one not. To begin with the latter I couldn’t help myself and bought Titanium Court. I’ve played a couple of hours now, and well… It’s hard to say much about it without spoiling things that would be much better experienced first hand. It’s a very hard game to describe. My best attempt is this: what if David Foster Wallace didn’t kill himself and instead made a modern interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a match-3 game? It’s pretty cheap (€9 with the launch discount) and you will definitely know if it’s for you or not within the refund window. I still have barely scratched the surface but it will be a strong contender for Indie GOTY I believe.
On the Souls front I nabbed AI Limit on sale, and I’m looking forward to getting into that. I know I’ve been raving about Chrono Ark recently and between that and this my stance of “I don’t really enjoy anime” is looking less than believable but listen: I’ve heard really good things about this game. Fun combat with no stamina and supposedly really good exploration and level design with nice interconnected areas á la DS1. Only played the first hour so far so can’t say much more other than the game looks pretty great.
I’ve heard similarly good things of AI Limit, but the visuals also kinda leave me cold. Although, I had similar reservations about Khazan and I ended up liking that cell shaded look quite a lot.
I’m still only in the first area, but so far im digging the look of it. I’m ambivalent on the character designs and the way they look, but the environments look great. The cell shaded look is working for me and I’m using my classic combination of RTX HDR and DLDSR x1.78 and the environments look crisp and quite good, better than they did in videos and screen shots. Level design opens strong too with secrets and winding sewers.
Sounds promising. Enjoy your time!
I’ll definitely report back on my thoughts as I get deeper into it, as I am wont to do 😅
All the reasons you listed, with an emphasis on the story. I need to do multiple playthroughs to get a sense of what the hell is going on. And I find confort in repetition, so when I like something it’s hard to move on sometimes, gotta extract all the dopamine I can from it. Heh
That’s interesting, because I’m probably almost the exact opposite! Now don’t get me wrong there are games I return to repeatedly, but for me I get an enormous rush of satisfaction of seeing the credits roll, leaning back in my chair and instantly hitting “uninstall”. It’s like the satisfaction of finishing a good book and putting it back in the shelf. It’s why I’ve moved from open-ended forever games like MMOs, Dota and Civilization over the past years into discrete narrative gaming experiences with a clear end.
I get an enormous rush of satisfaction of seeing the credits roll, leaning back in my chair and instantly hitting “uninstall”.
Oh Lawd, that could never be me XD. My satisfaction comes from gitting gud and that’s a never ending endavour. But of course, nobody becomes a gaming connoisseur such as yourself replaying the same stuff over and over…
I commend your capacity to truly apreciate the medium, variety is the spice of life… ( or so they say)
I think it may be an ADHD thing too, bizarrely. I suck so much at finishing tasks and projects and general everyday things that I don’t get that satisfaction much elsewhere.
Also yeah, I do enjoy mixing it up with genres and games. It’s another thing where you know, I try to give myself some variety in experiences through gaming because I don’t get all that much variety in my day to day otherwise. Even though it would be easier to just succumb and play my comfort games all day. But I’ve already had that habit for years and years when I was younger and it just made days disappear even faster.
I suck so much at finishing tasks and projects and general everyday things that I don’t get that satisfaction much elsewhere.
#relatable
Well, I’ll keep listening to your recs and trying to expand my gaming horizons ;) I’ll keep an eye out for your coments on ai limit. The anime girl style is one aesthetic that puts me off so much.
The anime girl style is one aesthetic that puts me off so much.
I’m not into it either, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about the level design and gameplay and what I am into is post-apocalyptic megastructures. And so far so good on that front! Plus it was pretty cheap.
Oh how the discounts beckon so sweetly. Tbh I’m a total aesthetic snob, if the art doesn’t sit right with me the game doesn’t get played. I’m curious if you manage to shift ny perspective on this one.
I am an art/aesthetic enjoyer, but not really a snob I don’t think. I’m not sure I can think of any game I’ve refused to play because of aesthetics. There have been many cases of games where the art was a driving factor in deciding to actually play them though, like GRIS, INMOST, most recently eying REPLACED…
^Side note: what’s with these artsy indie games using all caps for their titles? When did this become a thing?^
I feel you about getting your value out of the game. But I also need to weigh my enjoyment of the game vs getting “the most” out of the experience. Like, I liked Khazan, a lot really, but the story was really dull and the level design left a lot to be desired, so I opted against finishing my second playthrough somewhere around the third boss or so even though the gameplay is stellar.
In comparison, I finished Sekiro like 5 or 6 times, similarly to Lies of P, just because the level design and story were also very good in addition to the gameplay being good.
Now that you’ve finished Sekiro, do you think you’d interested in Khazan? The gameplay can feel a little more intense in some aspects, but the heavy focus on parrying and perfect dodges makes it really fun to sink your teeth into it. Is the demo still around on PS5?
Yeah, I totally want to give khazan a shot. I have a lot of playthroughs on a limbo right now, so I want to at least finish ds3 and enotria before i jump into a new game. I don’t think the demo is available tho, but I’d have to check 'cause I could be wrong.
You also said you would give Withering Rooms a shot 👉👈
Oh yeah, I’ll get to ot soon…I’m mentioning soulslikes only.
This is me rn
Or this? XD
Oh I see. Am I the only delinquent who talks about non-soulslikes in this community? Maybe I am, hah.
Also very relatable. The backlog is an ever growing obelisk that is starting to blott out the sun for me. This is my constant state of being:
Does absolum count? I’m sure not, but the dodge mechanics give me soulslike vibes, so I’ll say that. I’m addicted to it. The music. The characters. The amazing builds. Too much fun.
We’ve had this discussion some month back on what exactly defines a Soulslike, and what makes something more of a “Souls-lite” and so on. For me I would say the bare minimum is that you have checkpoints (ie bonfires) and resting at a bonfire respawns the enemies in the world. I am pretty sure some game could get away with calling itself a Souls-lite with only that. More properly, there should also be some sort of upgrade currency or resource that you lose when dying and can recover by successfully retrieving your corpse. I think those design principles are at the heart of the genre, then beyond that there are some other more vague design philosophy stuff.
Absolum looks great though, like a very solid beat 'em up. Someone recommended it to me because of its great animation and it’s been on my wishlist for a bit.
Variety. That’s the biggest reason for me to replay a game. I want to be able to approach a new playthrough in a different, varied way. It’s not only about different weapons and builds, but also about taking a different progression path through the game. And the way these gameplay systems interact with each other.
[Warning long ramble]
For these reasons, Elden Ring is by far my most replayed Souslike game. So much fun can be had in each playthrough. If I want to do a sorcery build I might go to Raya Lucaria, but to beat the Academy early I should go to Caelid for Gravity Sorceries and when I’m there I might as well kill Radahn, but the festival hasn’t started yet; should I go to Altus? or maybe go to Ranni since there awesome spells in her questline? These are just a few decisions you can make in a playthrough. In a different playthrough I might set myself a restriction like not leveling, which the forces a whole lot of other decisions: Early Godskin Noble or rushing the capital etc.? Maybe I just want to take a totally insane path through the game: did you know that you don’t have to visit Altus a single time to beat the game, no glitches required?
In each playthrough you can make a whole lot of different decisions and have as a consequence a whole other game. This sheer variety draws me in again and again.
No Soulslikes for me this weekend. Still addicted to Slay the Spire 2 (I’m now so good at the game that I realize just how bad I am at the game.)
Man, I’d love to enjoy Elden Ring as much as the average user here. I’m happy for you, tho. If a soulslike offers variety, then it’s definitely ER.
Haha, you’ll get there, and I know exactly what you mean! I’m not bad I’d say, but I’m also not a pro either. Just recently watched a couple videos on the fundamentals of turn strategy and that kinda screwed over my play intuition I’ve built up over the past 300-400h of total play time in StS and StS2. It takes time to get into it.
Who’s your favourite character thus far?
You said multiple times that you didn’t quite mesh with Elden Ring, but I don’t remember ever reading what specifically didn’t mesh with you?
My favorite StS2 character for now is definitely Necrobinder. I love her ;) What ever random nonsense I put to together as a deck somehow always works with her. The different archetypes in her synergize quite nicely Osty, Soul, Doom etc… It’s probably because of the insane draw power of Souls and which card player doesn’t like drawing cards.
For the other characters:
- Ironclad: A bit to straightforward; I want something quirky.
- Silent: Draft and Sealed runs have ruined her for me; you can make a Sly OTK deck so easily in Custom and that’s just not possible (for me) in normal runs.
- Regent: Sovereign Blade is quite fun, but for me it’s not quite consistent and the archetypes don’t synergize like with the Necrobinder.
- Defect: I really don’t quite get it(?). I don’t really know what cards to choose to make the Orb generation and defense consistently work. (Barely beat Act 3 with him; it was mostly Creative AI beating it for me.)
What’s your favorite character in StS2?
I got burnt out on the game before I’ve ever played it. And then some more over the course of the playthrough my fiancée and I started together. I think we sunk in like 200h combined over two characters, and even before starting the first one, I already knew everything there is to explore and all the bosses there are to beat. Spoiled the fun out of it, basically. And by the time SotE rolled around, I just wasn’t interested, really. My fiancée was quite adamant about our giving it a shot, and I really did try to force myself to play and enjoy it, but it just didn’t work. Whenever I’d play it, I just saw all the things I got used to in Sekiro and Lies of P and Bloodborne all of which are missing from ER. Plus the open world is just in my way of engaging with the content I’m actually interested in: legacy dungeons, interconnected level design and cool boss fights. So much walking and meaningless exploration for meaningless rewards. The bosses are also sooo stupidly spammy. The list really goes on and on with me :D
Probably Defect since Defect is my second-favourite from the first game (favourite being Watcher - maybe you’ve seen her in videos or something). I like what they’ve added to them to expand the existing archetypes. Haven’t gotten a good claw/zero-cost run to work here yet, but playing around Lightning and Frost is really fun.
I’ve come around to Ironclad some more because there are some cool new cards to expand his archetypes.
Silent is really fun with the new sly mechanic, so it’s just straight better gaming than in the first game whilst keeping everything cool she had about her.
Regent I’m kinda eh on, sadly. I like the design, I like the idea behind him, I like this kinda voltron approach with the sword, but usually, it just falls flat because so many of the cards are just not good enough. They’ve started pushing some patches to rebalance his power, which seems to be helping so far, but overall there are just other characters I prefer.
Same boat as you concerning Necrobinder. She feels like a classic Black mage from Magic the Gathering with some really cool and unique card designs.
Ah, now I remember. You talked about it in the Open World discussion a couple of months ago a bit. I adore the Open World. Mostly because you can actually see something and then not only go there but see and traverse the entire way there; plus the sheer interconnectedness it provides. Also without Torrent, I wouldn’t like it nearly as much. Torrent is so insanely fast.
About the rewards, I see it like that, to bring it full circle: almost no reward in Elden Ring is meaningless; many are just meaningless right now, but in the next replay ;) Seriously you can find use for just about anything in Elden Ring, which is the beauty of it.
You are a big fan of deflecting, if I remember correctly. That’s not really in Elden Ring. There is the Deflecting Hard Tear in the DLC, but you didn’t really mesh with that iirc. I’m more of a dodging Souls player myself, but I’ve come around a bit on deflecting after LoP.
What exactly do you miss from Bloodborne? I find the pace of the combat has caught up in ER. The weapon design is more like Dark Souls, but I find the sheer variety makes more than up for it, but that might be a matter of taste. About the spammy bosses: you really need to get into the tempo of the bosses in ER. In LoP most Bosses have a kind of similar tempo (you eventually get a feel for when the 5 meter Puppets/flesh-monsters do their swing). Anything Margit sized can have a vastly different tempo. For example: Margit, Morgott, and Messmer have a completely different tempo despite being of similar size and build. And then the building sized bosses are another thing entirely; i adore Bayle, but he cost me hours of my life to really get into his tempo.Sorry for the long ramble ;) I can just write about ER for ages. Also this just reflects my opinion and experiences and I meant in no way to undermine you opinion or experience. I just like to hear the opinions of other people about a game I love.
Oh, I need to watch a couple of videos about Watcher, she looks interesting. Maybe they are gonna add her later. I read somewhere that MegaCrit are gonna add another one or two characters.
Maybe you could give me a couple of tips about Defect since he’s your favorite?
I did a Claw run in Custom - Sealed Deck, I think - and came to the conclusion that I’m never attempting a Claw run in normal mode unless the first 5-ish rewards are specifically geared towards that.I find it wild that there is only one tutor for the Sovereign Blade. If they tweaked the numbers a bit, maybe the Sovereign Blade could always be added to your hand, if you forge, even if it’s already been played? That would definitely help with consistency.
End of Days is currently my favorite Necrobinder card. It’s such a unique AoE attack which bypasses many defensive effects. Also I never got into Magic the Gathering – probably better for my wallet. I only occasionally look at the really cool artwork.
Fair points about the open world. To me, the open world just isn’t as appealing as other constituents of Elden Ring, so I personally don’t gain as much enjoyment out of it. But I still very much see the appeal. I enjoyed BotW thoroughly, for example, and Miyazaki himself mentioned that they borrowed from Zelda’s design philosophy for ER.
I also somewhat agree about your points with the usability of items. I guess I’m the type of player to not fully engage with every bit of a soulslike, so in an average run most of these are pretty much useless to me. But I see the value in repeat/challenge runs.
The Hardtear was a nice attempt and it did bring me some joy, but it’s just not the same as Sekiro, LoP or Khazan - different strokes for different folks.
I guess the visceralness of BB’s combat juxtaposed to the methodical approach to combat? The latter feels a bit lacking to me in ER.
It’s definitely skill issue and not specifically the fault of the game about the pace of the bosses. Like in any soulslike, you need to adapt and re-evaluate your approach to combat. Overall, however, it just feels like too much to me, unfortunately.
No worries - you’re passionate and that’s awesome!
I’ll edit later for StS-related stuff :)
Yes it’s been said that a few more characters might be coming. Judging by the release trailers, Watcher might be added later, but she’s a bit of a controversial character. She basically only has one build and some feel like she’s too strong. If they add her back to the game, I’m afraid they might have to change her fundamentally or nerf her which would kinda break her power fantasy.
I’m not sure if that’s really the case, but to me it feels like Claw is much rarer than it was in the first game. Did they bump up the rarity? Generally speaking, the first act is the most difficult one - once you a good deck rolling with some solid basics, you’re gonna have a much easier time in the following acts.
In the first game, you’d wanna front-load adding damage cards to your deck; here it depends on the add you get. In the Overgrowth, you want to front-load damage, in the Underdocks you want to front-load defensive cards.
A solid and pretty easy archetype to build most of the time is a Lightning build, with some added Frost synergies if you want defensive options. There’s a couple really good Lightning cards, like Lightning Strike or that dense card that channels a Lightning orb at the beginning of your next two turns. Adding some focus to the mix for strong passive orb procs helps a lot too - even the ones that exhaust themselves for some surprise burst. A Frost orb build is a bit more passive and scales into the late game quite well.
There’s also a status card build you can play, but I haven’t really tried that yet - seems solid, though. Generally speaking, just pick a card you don’t know here and there and get a feeling for the character to see what works and what doesn’t is the most basic methodology for any character. Since you’ll rarely get the one run with all the cards you want, you need to be adaptable and know what to pick up when. So it’s not super easy to give general advice. However, there’s a channel I can recommend to you that’s really good: https://youtube.com/@calebgannongaming
Not sure if that would end up being too strong since it can get to one-shot territory rather quickly and would maneuver around having a bigger deck a little too consistently. But maybe I’m wrong. :)
End of Days is really really good, even outside dedicated Doom builds. It just clears so many early hallway by itself AoE fights.
Thanks for the advise!
That yt channel looks interesting and informative. It’s a bit difficult to find good and reliable information on StS2 especially in text form there is a lot of AI slop out there.
