Comment on is black myth wokong a good game?
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 days agoThere is difficulty to be had but not once was it unfair or anger-inducing. A boss defeating you is a lesson to move on and come back.
That is a perfect description of Elden Ring.
Jumbie@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I vehemently disagree. I slogged my way through that game so I could speak with experience on the subject. That game only feels fair to Souls players because it tried to be less annoying than the games that preceded it.
It’s unfair, the bosses are too large for the screen and your character wins by luck and repetition. No skill required (because it’s luck when you beat a boss).
I cannot stress enough how much disdain I have for “Souls-like” as a category. Developers should note: Putting that descriptor in your game is shutting out a vast majority of the gaming community. The fans are a niche; a sliver of the gaming community.
I have no problem with people liking the genre but the genre is not mainstream for a reason. We can have challenge in a game without it being frustrating.
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
I played through Elden Ring, and while it’s not my personal favorite game, it is objectively an excellent game. I never finished any of the DS games, they were too linear for me.
To say that all the wins are based on luck and no skill is objectively false. The most extreme ER enjoyers regularly clear the entire game, entirely naked, without ever once being hit. That means the mechanics are highly deterministic and thus completely learnable. And for the record, spam rolling or spam attacking is the quickest way to die in nearly every fight. If that’s the strat you went with, I could see it being quite the slog.
I agree it doesn’t offer a “power fantasy”, it requires the player to observe, learn from failure, and develop a plan. If you don’t do that, I agree, it can be a very infuriating game loop. But I would argue that’s not the game’s fault.
I agree that sometimes the camera is a total pain to deal with vs the scale of the enemy.
Most games don’t market themselves as a “souls-like”, it’s typically a comparison the gaming community makes, but also it’s definitely over-used to just mean “hard game”. That’s not what I would say makes a souls like. THE “souls like” mechanic, I would say, is the notion of dropping “souls” on death, and having to retrieve them without dying again. Which means there are definitely turn based souls likes, and I would not consider the Megaman series “souls likes”.
But IMO it’s experience vs simulation. If you want your game to inevitably shuffle you through an experience that you will inevitably get through, that’s totally fair and one aspect of gaming that I think closely mirrors film or literature. I would put excellent story experiences like TLOU in that camp. But if you want a game to put you through a simulated challenge which tests your resolve, subverts your expectations, and evokes emotional responses in a unique way that I believe only games can, then the souls games offer one slice of that experience.
Jumbie@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
It is a great Souls game. The end.
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
I’ll give wukong a shot eventually, I read journey to the west as a kid, so your description of an actual story in addition to fun movement mechanics sounds enticing. Cheers.
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
You are extremely, verifiably wrong