am I interpreting it properly
I guess Mario is a Souls-like game now, just fail to dodge two hits and you’re dead
Now that I have read everyone’s responses I have a few things to add that others haven’t mentioned yet:
I actually very rarely roll in this game, it’s reserved for certain quick manuvering which is not always required, because most of the time I am actually positioning myself to be in the “blind spot” of the enemy.
Parrying and backstabbing is really important. Granted I have skipped parrying and mostly backstab when needed, but if I was patient enough I could easily just one shot many enemies and parry bosses.
The community is actually not very toxic, although it may have that reputation, honestly there are people like that in every popular fandom 😔 griefers, g*mers… but people who cherish this game for it’s anti-fascist sentiments get it. They’re cool people.
The plot of the first game is very vauge and not really explained that much. To me this makes it much more endearing. There is a lot which is implied but not outright said, perhaps leaving it to interpretation. What one might consider the “good” path is a trick, supported by liars (in my view) There are characters who turn out to be shitty. And there are characters who feel like they care about your well being.
Everything in this game that is a boon to you feels precious. There is something about the spirit of resilience in here, and the shared resilience of those who take the journey with you.
Above all: Don’t give up, Skeleton!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Here’s a very in-depth video on the dark souls trilogy made by a reviewer that is bad at games and loves the series. And his follow-up on the 3 post dark souls games.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
everytime i tune into a stream where someone is playing one of these games they are just rolling around on the ground like wtf are you doing just play sanic the gofer or whatever if you want to roll into a ball and move around on the floor
lol that’s me, i’m the one who rolls :^)
This would describe expedition 33: Claire obscura pretty well.
fr lol
Souls-like is defined by the need to decide between attacking, blocking, dodging or parrying. With the additional factor of attacks having a fixed commitment to the attack animation that leaves you vulnerable and likely to get hit if you press it at the wrong time.
It’s mostly just 2D fighting game combat translated into 3D with a lock on targeting system.
Maybe this explains it, I neither enjoy 2D fighting games nor ‘Souls-like’ combat.
This is spot on. I like fighting games and I after playing a bunch of fighting games I will be better at the spacing and timing in a souls game.
It’s mostly just 2D fighting game combat translated into 3D with a lock on targeting system.
fighting games are fast tho. if a fighting game had souls combat it would be boring af
fighting games are fast tho
Not Soul Calibur (the WORST soulslike)
Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and swords, eternally retold
I am incredibly upset that this emoji requires a user to misspell “Worf”
Super Smash Bros - the original Souls-like game
smash bros is intentionally designed to be the least like fighting games it can be, i think sakurai has some youtube videos about the design concepts.
Yeah, it’s not a fighter, it’s a Souls-like
Souls-like just means m “rhythm games with swords and magic instead of dancing and neon shapes”
maybe that’s why people have used dance pads to play the game 😁
Fighting is infact a form of dancing
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According to the Skyrim modding community, Souls-like combat means:
-You have a camera lock on function
-You have a dodge or roll button
-You have ‘attack commitments’ that hold the player and enemies in place during attacks to make the attacks feel more weighty
You have slightly more optional aspects like having weapons with somewhat varied movesets or the punishing difficulty but as far as changing Skyrim’s combat into a Souls-like, those seem to be the defining traits
According to this definition, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is souls like
Well more like Souls games are Zelda likes but yeah
I’m playing Demon’s Souls now and it really feels like a Zelda game, but edgier, more RPG and with a Stamina bar. In particular because of the many gimmick bosses.
Then Dark Souls 1 and onwards started being more and more of just an Action game, until DS3 (or Bloodborne had I played it) where it’s an action game first. Which is also good. Just different.
need more hya!! hup! hyaah!!! in souls likes tbh
I suppose the jump attack is pretty committal but the attacks in OoT are pretty quick
Try playing with only three hearts and only using the Biggoron sword. It is absolutely a Soulslike.
Sure fine ok
I actually think Zelda and Dark Souls are almost the same game so unironically yes. Dark Souls 2 is basically just one giant Zelda dungeon
I want to see the “I’m a gaming badass souls-like hard game master” types try Zelda 2 for the NES on original hardware, within a single weekend like a proper rental experience. No emulation save states. No internet guides. Original controller. No Game Genie. They play it the way we elder millennials played it. Let’s see how good they really are.
I love Souls games and think Zelda II is awesome. I think I liked Zelda II more than Elden Ring tbh
No cheese-crouch-stabbing Shadow Link.
Nah cheesing the bosses is a key part of the Dark Souls experience, you can’t take that away from them for Zelda. Are you even a true Souls fan if you haven’t tricked Iron Golem into falling off the side?
Back when Demon/Dark Souls were new I remember people making this comparison explicitly. The only thing they don’t have compared to Z-targeting Zelda is the gadgets, but they add in a lot of depth to the sword stuff that Zelda doesn’t.
You have ‘attack commitments’ that hold the player and enemies in place during attacks to make the attacks feel more weighty
Imo the point of this isn’t how the game feels, feel is just a byproduct. The point is to have what some might describe as more consequential positioning and decision making with attacks, because you can’t just swivel mid-animation to hit someone who got around the initial path of your attack.
Ah yeah you’re right, the better explanation is that adding attack commitment allows the Souls-like dodge rolling to function at all. In base game Skyrim enemies will swivel 180 degrees to track you during an attack, and your intended way of dodging them is fully backing away and then rushing back in again while you’re playing the game in first person.
you can’t do that in a fighting game either but fighting games manage to feel fast. slow in souls combat is slow like if everything was the 35 frame charge unblockables in soul calibur
Fighting games aren’t that functional a comparison because mobility works completely differently in them.
it’s probably closest to arena fighters. i’m sure there’s some no-budget indie arena fighter i’ve never heard of that plays like whatever souls game the devs liked the most.
soulslike is when animation priority and when you have a whole lot of animation priority, you get QTE
“souls like” is when your character is doing a slow “return to idle” animation so you press a button to stop that and do the next thing, but they have no visible reaction, then the situation changes so you press a different button, then five years later they finish their animation and act like you pressed the first button
Combat is mostly rolling.
I appropriated your gag. Sorry, comrade.
but also that if you’re bad at it you’re dead immediately, right
And die and die and die and die and-
If you put a moderate amount of stats into HP most attacks do not kill you in one shot. Smaller enemies hardly ever have ridiculous damage attacks if you’re not taken by surprise.
There are bosses and enemies that ARE very punishing but no, I’m not that great at them and I’m not always dead.
to me there is nothing quite like dark souls 1. even later iterations are “souls like” (while still being their own thing)
to me its a game where the stakes are relatively low; you can die a lot and it doesn’t really matter. You just have to learn the movesets of the bosses / enemies, and however long it takes you to execute damage within the windows given. It requires a lot of patience, memorization, and some motor skill effort depending on what you’re trying to do. It’s difficulty means that any hardship you overcome feels well deserved and rewarding. You can grind and get levels / gear that helps, or go bare bones. While the game is punishing, and does have some “gotcha!” moments (such as saying “no” to a cat) you can always work to overcome it. I don’t think the developers intended to be cruel or to punish one too much.
And then there is ds1 pvp which I hear is like starting all over again and overcoming a wall, but is unique in it’s delivery.
really, when other games say “soulslike” I think they just mean their game is difficult and requires memorizing the movesets of bosses. Hades 1-2 has some aspects of this but it’s not exactly the same. But dying has different consequences, starting over from the very beginning.
For some reason, it really seems like no matter how people try to sell these games to me, I still can’t get over the fact that I’m going to die over and over again. I play games to be rewarded, not punished repeatedly before finally obtaining the small satisfaction of overcoming the thing that killed me 30 times. That just doesn’t feel like a win to me.
I think that is what it is for me, too. I wish I could get what other people get from these games because it really does sound so rewarding. But I have short spurts of playtime available to me.
But, DS games felt like the kind where you really have to be in the zone or rhythm of it, and by the time I warmed up to that point, I had to put the controller down and I had either none or barely any progress in the actual game.
to me its a game where the stakes are relatively low; you can die a lot and it doesn’t really matter.
That’s the big key part, right alongside combat loops that are built around getting to iframe/quickly reposition out of attacks or otherwise mitigate them on reaction/prediction. People always incorrectly focus on the difficulty aspect when the important parts are the QoL features like “dying literally does not matter just try again” and the tools it provides for players to overcome challenges in more reactive and streamlined ways than more traditional “just face tank it lmao” or “play cover” or “just run around until the boss sits down and exposes its weakpoint” styles of combat.
I remember losing a bunch of souls in DS3 once and never playing again lol. The dying felt too punishing. Maybe one day I’ll play again, though. It just took so much time to collect all those 😭
These days souls like combat means basically anything. Action RPG? Souls like. Dodging and parrying mechanics? Soulslike. Drop your items on death? Soulslike. I recall a review of Expedition 33 that called the combat soulslike which is absolutely ridiculous.
The word has become like the word rogue like in that it is so overloaded it’s essentially meaningless
Having a high damage to health ratio is common but not remotely essential, while people would consider having stamina much more important for the character of the genre because it introduces resource management. Another common example of resource management is having a heal with a limited number of uses that is restored at checkpoints. There’s also usually a mechanic where when certain conditions are met, you can go to the enemy and do a much stronger attack with a canned joint animation between attacker and recipient (backstabbing and whatever the other one is called in DS are like this).
There are also other structural aspects of the game outside of the immediate combat, like the existence of those checkpoints that restore health and certain resources, certain elements of the world design (centered on shortcuts and unlocking doors, usually), the bloodstained mechanic, the soapstone mechanics for letting players leave each other messages, and a few other things.
