The Souls Series Replayed

[bluegate]

I have really fond memories of Sekiro and the fact your sole focus was on learning the boss and the combat system as opposed to "Am I leveled enough? Is my Gear right for this fight?" because the leveling doesn't make much difference in the long run and the tools are situational for the boss.

I'd say it's a bit of a toss up.

Collecting prayer beads, using Boss Memories, unlocking passive abilities that increase Poise damage dealt and decrease Poise damage received most definitely help.

Try going to Hirata Estate and fighting Lady Butterfly with your starting stats versus fighting her just before you take down Genichiro for the first time.
Aside from being able to survive more hits because of your collection of prayer beads, you'll have an easier time racking up poise damage as well.

- - -

Decided to do a clean up run of my own Dark Souls 2 trophy list and after 3 years I finally got around to getting all the magic spells in the game.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I'd say it's a bit of a toss up.

Collecting prayer beads, using Boss Memories, unlocking passive abilities that increase Poise damage dealt and decrease Poise damage received most definitely help.

Try going to Hirata Estate and fighting Lady Butterfly with your starting stats versus fighting her just before you take down Genichiro for the first time.
Aside from being able to survive more hits because of your collection of prayer beads, you'll have an easier time racking up poise damage as well.

- - -

Decided to do a clean up run of my own Dark Souls 2 trophy list and after 3 years I finally got around to getting all the magic spells in the game.

True, there is more of direct “upgrade” path in Sekiro, but it does take a while to see tangible benefits. Lady Butterfly was the second boss I fought in NG and it was like free climbing Devil’s Tower in how much precision it required at low level, but after that the learning curve kinda plateaued (much like said tower).

Fighting her again in NG+ was kinda cake, where even a messy fight was highly survivable.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I think the point he's making is there's not much option but a boring build.

Yes, you could build super-tank in Havel (or Great Bull) armour and a greatshield. So you can stand around and get hit while taking longer to kill the boss. Or a mage and just not engage with most of the mechanics at all and press R1 from outside the range of the enemies attacks.


You're not making crowd controllers, healers, summoners, or even status builds (outside of ER, and they nerfed one status and bleed is basically the boring DPS build but faster). Or a rogue using traps. Or really much of anything. You certainly aren't making charisma based characters or any of that dialog RPG type stuff.


Your options are Hit, Shoot or Block then hit, or if you're particularly inspired you can use magic to make a sword in your hnad instead of shooting but you're putting in a lot of effort to circle around back to option A.

A friend of mine said he tried DS3 and couldn’t get into it because it was just killing the same enemies over and over again, saying it was too boring. But at the same time loved RDO, which by many personal accounts could be considered even more boring. I personally don’t share that sentiment in either case, but it goes to show how differently people can value things. Different strokes/one man’s trash…etc. renders most of these kinds of quibbles null & void.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

In what game is it preferable to take longer to kill enemies? Maybe some action games for style points or combos, but regardless you’re always babbling about DPS like it’s some big revelation or detrimental thing.

Make no mistake, I read everything you say; I just don’t agree with much of it here. You have your own preferences which is fine, but even a simple Google search would reveal your mistake is thinking that automatically invalidates everyone else’s.

I don't get the point in enemies getting more health and you doing more damage because it ends up doing literally exactly what you do at the start of the game. What's the difference if I'm doing 10 points of damage per hit and enemies have 30 HP vs doing 100 points of damage per hit and enemies have 300 HP? You still kill them in 3 hits. Sure, you might be visually killing a dragon vs a rat, but you're still doing exactly the same thing. But give me some new move or skill that lets me change how I engage them in combat and that's a meaningful change in combat. DS does the former and Borderlands does the latter.

You don't read everything I say because you said that I want DS to have rations and stuff for stamina and be just like Monster Hunter for some reason when I never said any of that at all.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I don't get the point in enemies getting more health and you doing more damage because it ends up doing literally exactly what you do at the start of the game. What's the difference if I'm doing 10 points of damage per hit and enemies have 30 HP vs doing 100 points of damage per hit and enemies have 300 HP? You still kill them in 3 hits. Sure, you might be visually killing a dragon vs a rat, but you're still doing exactly the same thing. But give me some new move or skill that lets me change how I engage them in combat and that's a meaningful change in combat. DS does the former and Borderlands does the latter.

You don't read everything I say because you said that I want DS to have rations and stuff for stamina and be just like Monster Hunter for some reason when I never said any of that at all.

Different types of attacks can cause status conditions, or crit chances in Souls. It’s why literally every boss has strengths/weaknesses and this isn’t limited to Souls by any means. If you want to mash R1 the entire time and call it boring that’s on you.

Also if you ever stopped using Monster Hunter as a counterpoint to Souls combat, I wouldn’t have to keep pointing out how stupid it is.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Different types of attacks can cause status conditions, or crit chances in Souls. It’s why literally every boss has strengths/weaknesses and this isn’t limited to Souls by any means. If you want to mash R1 the entire time and call it boring that’s on you.

Also if you ever stopped using Monster Hunter as a counterpoint to Souls combat, I wouldn’t have to keep pointing out how stupid it is.

And this depth of combat applies to the other 90% of combat in a Souls game that is just boring trash mobs where you just do mash R1 to win all the time?

Monster Hunter does stamina right so it's any easy thing to point at because one does it right and the other does it wrong. Literally the only thing I ever said with what Souls should do (if it wants to keep a stamina system, not that it has to) that MH does is force you to have the amount of stamina points to do an action so if dodging requires 20 points of stamina, you should have to wait until you get 20 points of stamina to dodge. I don't know how that single change is turning Souls into MH in your head. Also, Sekiro easily has the best combat of a From game, and it makes you actually manage a meter, does that make Sekiro just like MH then because they have like one thing loosely in common? And IIRC as it's been awhile, doesn't Sekiro have consumables that helps your posture bar just like MH has consumables for stamina? They must be like the same game to you then.

Don't you see why certain things from a game mechanic standpoint are bad regardless of the game? Why have a stamina system if you don't need to bother with managing it? Take it out or fix it. There's also a reason why like every RPG requires stat investment to increase damage, because not doing that allows you to make broken characters, it's like a basic tenant of RPGs. The fact that DS1 allows you to forgo stat investment for increasing damage in both physical weapons and fire "magic" is very poor RPG mechanics. And I'd say the for any game regardless of if I like the game or not because it's bad mechanics.

 

[sXeth]

Critical Hits in Souls (or to be more accurate, lets just call them finisher/mercy/execution whatevers, because they do not share commonality with the wider definition of critical hits) are achieved by attacking a poise broken or parried enemy or backstabs.


They distinctly are not caused by executing a particular combo. And with the exception of backstabs, have no care for positioning of any kind. PArries are literally the Assassin Creed/Arkham counter minus the prompt (or well, I guess we could say the Assassins Creed 1 counter which had no prompt). As the Souls series has gone on, they've also been ever-increasingly reducing the options for these with non-parriable attakcs and backstab immune enemies. By the time you hit Elden Ring (which added other ways to get crits), they've actually niched down to only making sense to use for 2 weapon classes, every other weapon does more if you ignore the crit window and keep mashing.


The four total status effects in Souls (and being generous to count Toxic/Rot and Poison as separate) are all flat DPS effects. You get damage over time, damage burst when the bar fills, or damage burst when the bar fills + brief window of bonus damage. Not unique to Souls by any means (Salt and Sacrifice for instance, features equally silly Fire/Poison/Ice/Spore status all being generic DoTs (light makes things easier to stun, I have no idea what Dark or Dragon damage does). But its a veil of pretense to consider them anything but another DPS build, especially when the method of applying status in Souls is exactly the same as the method of doing regular damage.


Status effects in general are very tough to actually apply meaningfully. And with Souls being very focused on making it awkward to use things in tandem (one spell or item without fiddling around with the bars) it misses out on most chances for interaction. Whereas other games will often have quick wheels, or even Warframes R1+face button to quickgrab a spell/ability from 4 options. Most of the ones that allow for more complexity are based on interactions either between statuses and other effects, or with the environment. Where you have crossover effects like Bioshock/Dying Light/Path of Exile's get the enemy wet then hit them with lightning (or cold as well, in the PoE case) effect.


As far as it goes, I don't think Souls aspires to be a build-based game. Its possibly the weakest aspect of its gameplay formula, typically being a one note "Focus on this stat for the particular brand of hitting stick you prefer til it hits 40, then just alternate HP/STam, maybe do a bit of the latter beforehand if you find yourself strained". It definitely falters in much player choice or interaction within the story to really fulfill the other half-slab of what we'd define as RPG. Its prettymuch left to being a third-person action game, and the vast majority (or well, in the prominent space) others in that genre have deeper mechanics with higher skill and difficulty ceilings (though not all apply them fully. Zelda has never exactly pushed you to the limit of using multiple abilities in tandem despite having all those additional mechanics present)

 

[Brokencontroller]

Critical Hits in Souls (or to be more accurate, lets just call them finisher/mercy/execution whatevers, because they do not share commonality with the wider definition of critical hits) are achieved by attacking a poise broken or parried enemy or backstabs.


They distinctly are not caused by executing a particular combo. And with the exception of backstabs, have no care for positioning of any kind. PArries are literally the Assassin Creed/Arkham counter minus the prompt (or well, I guess we could say the Assassins Creed 1 counter which had no prompt). As the Souls series has gone on, they've also been ever-increasingly reducing the options for these with non-parriable attakcs and backstab immune enemies. By the time you hit Elden Ring (which added other ways to get crits), they've actually niched down to only making sense to use for 2 weapon classes, every other weapon does more if you ignore the crit window and keep mashing.


The four total status effects in Souls (and being generous to count Toxic/Rot and Poison as separate) are all flat DPS effects. You get damage over time, damage burst when the bar fills, or damage burst when the bar fills + brief window of bonus damage. Not unique to Souls by any means (Salt and Sacrifice for instance, features equally silly Fire/Poison/Ice/Spore status all being generic DoTs (light makes things easier to stun, I have no idea what Dark or Dragon damage does). But its a veil of pretense to consider them anything but another DPS build, especially when the method of applying status in Souls is exactly the same as the method of doing regular damage.


Status effects in general are very tough to actually apply meaningfully. And with Souls being very focused on making it awkward to use things in tandem (one spell or item without fiddling around with the bars) it misses out on most chances for interaction. Whereas other games will often have quick wheels, or even Warframes R1+face button to quickgrab a spell/ability from 4 options. Most of the ones that allow for more complexity are based on interactions either between statuses and other effects, or with the environment. Where you have crossover effects like Bioshock/Dying Light/Path of Exile's get the enemy wet then hit them with lightning (or cold as well, in the PoE case) effect.


As far as it goes, I don't think Souls aspires to be a build-based game. Its possibly the weakest aspect of its gameplay formula, typically being a one note "Focus on this stat for the particular brand of hitting stick you prefer til it hits 40, then just alternate HP/STam, maybe do a bit of the latter beforehand if you find yourself strained". It definitely falters in much player choice or interaction within the story to really fulfill the other half-slab of what we'd define as RPG. Its prettymuch left to being a third-person action game, and the vast majority (or well, in the prominent space) others in that genre have deeper mechanics with higher skill and difficulty ceilings (though not all apply them fully. Zelda has never exactly pushed you to the limit of using multiple abilities in tandem despite having all those additional mechanics present)

Im of the stance that Elden Ring isnt a Souls game. It is a successor but not a part of the series the same way Sekiro isnt. A lot of the foundational dna is there but the fame clearly has a different focus on exploration and building your character for a specific weapon art or spell.

This made a lot of the combat in ER much different than Souls with how it is supposed to be played. And the people who approached ER like a souls game only handicapped themselves because they expected another souls experience.

 

[sXeth]

Im of the stance that Elden Ring isnt a Souls game. It is a successor but not a part of the series the same way Sekiro isnt. A lot of the foundational dna is there but the fame clearly has a different focus on exploration and building your character for a specific weapon art or spell.

This made a lot of the combat in ER much different than Souls with how it is supposed to be played. And the people who approached ER like a souls game only handicapped themselves because they expected another souls experience.

I mean, you can do ER the same way you do Souls, minus a couple of gimmick fights (primarily Crystlians)


The most noteable variance being that Elden Ring almost every enemy of note has a forced reset mote (sometimes a giant AoE with multiple hits, sometimes a nonsensical leap, sometimes an outright teleport) designed to shake people who can otherwise just use their non-corporeal transdimensioanl shift... I mean combat roll to stick on them.


The stagger/finisher gimmick they added looks cool, but for 95% of weapons is actually less damage then if you just kept hitting them normal way (outside of the Crystallians where its semi required or they keep 99% damage reduction).

 

[Brokencontroller]

I mean, you can do ER the same way you do Souls, minus a couple of gimmick fights (primarily Crystlians)

You CAN but doing so gimps you. By ignoring the abilities of weapons that are everywhere you effectively hinder your progression. Playing the Souls way is like being stubborn and forcing yourself to play the game that isnt intended.

But people have taken it as some sort of pride thing when they beat the game without spirit summons or weapon arts. And it is fine to an extent, but just because you played ER the "souls" way, doesnt make the game a Souls game.

 

[sXeth]

You CAN but doing so gimps you. By ignoring the abilities of weapons that are everywhere you effectively hinder your progression. Playing the Souls way is like being stubborn and forcing yourself to play the game that isnt intended.

But people have taken it as some sort of pride thing when they beat the game without spirit summons or weapon arts. And it is fine to an extent, but just because you played ER the "souls" way, doesnt make the game a Souls game.

I mean, I played it as a Faith caster primarily, so I know all about gimping myself lol. (I think circa Caelid somewhere I gave up and put the points in to use the Winged Scythe finally)

Never got super-involved with the summons cause I'd just co-op one of my buddies in most such situations if I wanted to.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I always liked Matthewmatosis' critiques of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. For anybody who wants some more analysis on the games and has about 10 hours to kill.

 

[Dalisclock]

I always liked Matthewmatosis' critiques of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. For anybody who wants some more analysis on the games and has about 10 hours to kill.

I know the dark souls 2 one got hbombeeguys dander up somewhat and he ended up doing a long ass rebuttal

 

[CriticalGaming]

I know the dark souls 2 one got hbombeeguys dander up somewhat and he ended up doing a long ass rebuttal

The Mauler did a long ass rebuttal to Hbomberguy and the content circle continues.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

And this depth of combat applies to the other 90% of combat in a Souls game that is just boring trash mobs where you just do mash R1 to win all the time?

Monster Hunter does stamina right so it's any easy thing to point at because one does it right and the other does it wrong. Literally the only thing I ever said with what Souls should do (if it wants to keep a stamina system, not that it has to) that MH does is force you to have the amount of stamina points to do an action so if dodging requires 20 points of stamina, you should have to wait until you get 20 points of stamina to dodge. I don't know how that single change is turning Souls into MH in your head. Also, Sekiro easily has the best combat of a From game, and it makes you actually manage a meter, does that make Sekiro just like MH then because they have like one thing loosely in common? And IIRC as it's been awhile, doesn't Sekiro have consumables that helps your posture bar just like MH has consumables for stamina? They must be like the same game to you then.

Don't you see why certain things from a game mechanic standpoint are bad regardless of the game? Why have a stamina system if you don't need to bother with managing it? Take it out or fix it. There's also a reason why like every RPG requires stat investment to increase damage, because not doing that allows you to make broken characters, it's like a basic tenant of RPGs. The fact that DS1 allows you to forgo stat investment for increasing damage in both physical weapons and fire "magic" is very poor RPG mechanics. And I'd say the for any game regardless of if I like the game or not because it's bad mechanics.

A MH stamina system in DS would change the flow of the game, and make it more convoluted than it ever needs to be. Besides,


Hardly ever uses even 20% of available stamina pool and seems to be doing just fine while wailing away at the thing. Whether that’s possible through perks/items/etc. is kind of irrelevant as it renders the whole system rather pointless, so why bother having one with different requirements to manage it.


Souls games have stat requirements as well as a damage scaling tier based on respective stat levels, so the effect is synergistic when combined with the correct weapon. Not sure how or why that would be a bad thing, but it’s far too common a trend with you to overlook or dismiss things like that.

 

[sXeth]

A MH stamina system in DS would change the flow of the game, and make it more convoluted than it ever needs to be. Besides,


Hardly ever uses even 20% of available stamina pool and seems to be doing just fine while wailing away at the thing. Whether that’s possible through perks/items/etc. is kind of irrelevant as it renders the whole system rather pointless, so why bother having one with different requirements to manage it.


Souls games have stat requirements as well as a damage scaling tier based on respective stat levels, so the effect is synergistic when combined with the correct weapon. Not sure how or why that would be a bad thing, but it’s far too common a trend with you to overlook or dismiss things like that.

I mean, in that video the main player is kind of trash. He'd be toast 30 seconds in if the other 3 weren't distracting it to let him stand there doing nothing but attacking madly (at the legs with a hammer, no less. Everyone knows you bonk the head with the hammer). He fails to dodge basically every attack aimed at him, and the sword and shield is likely playing support to actually keep him alive (they might also be refilling his stam every now and then, but he's more not using it by not dodging)


As a stamina management example, its like posting "NO HIT" then being a summon using the mega mage laser 80 feet from the battle in Souls terms.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I mean, in that video the main player is kind of trash. He'd be toast 30 seconds in if the other 3 weren't distracting it to let him stand there doing nothing but attacking madly (at the legs with a hammer, no less. Everyone knows you bonk the head with the hammer). He fails to dodge basically every attack aimed at him, and the sword and shield is likely playing support to actually keep him alive (they might also be refilling his stam every now and then, but he's more not using it by not dodging)


As a stamina management example, its like posting "NO HIT" then being a summon using the mega mage laser 80 feet from the battle in Souls terms.

Well, basically the same here though -



Only lost a decent chunk when trying to avoid the ridiculous AoE attacks.

 

[sXeth]

Well, basically the same here though -



Only lost a decent chunk when trying to avoid the ridiculous AoE attacks.

I mean, i don't get what you two were all in all debating, I'm just critiquing the video.

If you want stamina management samples in monster hunter, bust out the bow, glaive, or dual blade vids though. Maybe a lance.

Greatsword is all about positioning and timing windows, which that dude is clearly got quite a handle on. Evading too much will actually stop you doing all those neato charge attacks.

 

[BrawlMan]

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[hanselthecaretaker]

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Rykard was a more peculiar surprise but I think the Fire Giant brought the epic feels more.