I’m sure this popped up several times in the main thread, but I did wretch and fell into the trap teleporting me to the Morrowind mines. Incredible, but at 2 hours in I had just made it back to the start without a single piece of cloth to show for it
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Nope that’s the first I hear of this trap. That reminds me of Dark Castle
I likewise still found myself entirely naked an hour in so I paid the church vendor 1500 for a chainmail chestpiece. Minutes later a chestpiece dropped from a nearby knight
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Games have so much trouble with humor but there really are game-native senses of humor and they’ve got it like almost no one.
Playing through Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, and 3 over Christmas with my wife really hammered this in, too - how Kojima team is always so great at understanding absurdities generated by game mechanics and photoreal robots with a brain that can make all of a half-dozen decisions.
Ah, games are so stupid, it’s so great
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Related, one of the pathologies of AAA is that, in order to achieve fidelity and scale they tend to be built on ever-more-baroque hacks and cheats. Each one moves it farther from simulationism and towards a stripped-down model of only the necessary behavior. But the stripped-out unexpected non-performant chaos often has the really interesting and surprising bits in it, and the bits that don’t fit in the game design proper.
One of the ways that the weak CPU baseline established by the PS4 and Xbox One really did matter, a lot.
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I do this but I always feel guilty about it. Cave Story, La Mulana, La Mulana 2, Hollow Knight. All abandoned upon reaching the final boss. And I played through Cave Story twice.
For the Souls games I just summon someone to help. Except Demon’s, because in that game I could almost never find anyone for anything. And DS3, now that I think about it, because that boss was easy enough that I didn’t need help.
Edit: I just remembered that I killed King Allant with poison arrows. I guess I can be very patient with that type of approach but not with practicing endlessly for a “real” victory.
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That’s interesting. I gave up the La Mulanas due to puzzle obscurity long before the final boss.
You must mean, you killed False King with poison arrows. Since King Allant dies in four hits of R1. (I love how Demon’s subverted endgame expectations.)
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I agree with Toups that the mines in DeS are very Quake-y, in the way they are designed.
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Not sure if I agree with your statement (DS2 containing the best and the worst dark souls game).
If we take away dlc2 and dlc3, I think the 95 per cent of the remaining areas is consistently great (I would exclude Drangelic castle and Heide’s tower of flame).
On the other end, some of the most uninspired parts parts I have played are in DS1 (Izalith, duke archives’ garden, Crystal cave) and Bloodborne (e.g. the Sewers, the library level before accessing nightmare frontier, the dlc Research hall, Cainhurst castle)… The latter manages to get away from being criticized because of the art being generally (although not always consistently) being so great.
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Strong disagree that the lecture building in Bloodborne is uninspired, it’s even among the most inspired environments From has created. It brought back memories of when I was a college student pulling all-nighters in the claustrophobic basement of an old university building.
The level subtly makes you roleplay a draconian lecturer when you enter a lecture hall and first go behind the lectern (to pick up an item), and then you stride up between the seats and slash the lazy, sleeping students like they deserve. Simultaneously it puts me in the mindset of a student burning out under the pressure to fill their brain with cold abstractions: the only relief from that dark windowless space made entirely out of rectangles and mahogany is the door to Nightmare Frontier
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I finished Dark Souls for the first time and I’m really happy I did, reading a lot of peoples impressions here about elden rings aligned with the constant sense of (re)discovery I felt exploring Lordran. For ng+ I plan on buying the master key so I can change up my route this time and I haven’t been as conscious about route planning in any other souls game. I think that speaks to Dark Souls greatest strength over the other soulsbornes I’ve played: it feels like an adventure game at heart. I really enjoy games that place an emphasis on mapping out a journey and appropriately planning resources for it, where that is its own meaningful reward. I’m a big fan of Dragon Quest 3 and Morrowind for those reasons. Making the long climb to Anor Londo, falling with style into Blighttown, I think all my favorite moments occurred while traveling or mentally connecting the places I visited into one cohesive world. I think that’s where I got the most out of the narrative too, considering how the games ideas reinforced themselves in the world design. Going up to Anor Londo requires vertical ascension through Lower/Upper Undead Burg and then Undead Chapel, making you re-experience the pilgrimage experience that the Gods of Anor Londo created to reinforce their deliberately stratified society. Whereas the mostly lateral level design of Blighttown and Lost Izalith alludes to chaos and structural ambiguity. I really enjoy Dark Souls 2 and 3 but I can’t say that they made me consider how their worlds, themes, and sense of escalation aligned (more so 3, 2 does do this a bit). I think I’m able to say now that it’s my favorite soulsborne game for these reasons.
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yeah the character creation screen really felt like it did a lot to set up the vibe of DS1 whereas its appearance seems more like a formality in subsequent titles
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i loved discovering the lecture building but i’m not sure if it was just the method of entry and the starkly different lighting/contrast from the rest of the game hitting all at once and telling you this wasn’t a strictly physical place
so much of bloodborne works on evoking that initial sensation of “whoa, this is COOL”, which it sometimes (but not often) manages to sustain over a long period. it’s a difficult game to evaluate post mortem
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Oh my, Demon’s is so, so good. The level structure makes it feel just a little bit like Armored Core somehow lol. False King was a wonderful, terrifying fight, Shrine of Storms is absolutely brutal but fabulously designed… getting close to the end now
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tutorials are a worthwhile craft but i respect games that forgo them in favour of starting with a bang as much as i respect games that implement them well
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i finished demon’s souls! i really liked it, one of the most enjoyable games i’ve played in a long time
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The True Demon’s Souls Starts Here…
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yeah I mean the difference to me is that the weakest parts of DS2 are weaker than those of DS1, and they hurt the overall experience much more. drangleic castle is a major landmark that you spend considerable time and energy to reach, and is comparable to anor londo in that way – but it’s dramatically worse in every way and is underwhelming when it really needs to be the opposite. I’d include the iron keep in the list of disappointing areas, and it stings particularly because it’s the end of one of the early game’s most interesting/compelling opening routes. I think DS1 is also easier to forgive when its relatively underbaked because you still feel like it’s all going somewhere. DS2 doesn’t really hand that kind of coherence to you… it’s lacking it in a lot of ways, although I think the coherence is there. it just isn’t really evident until you’ve completed the game and maybe played through it again, but even then, you have to assemble so much more on your own and there is still so much excess.
on the other hand, that is part of what I like most about DS2. it’s the closest to an icebergvania the series has ever come (excluding elden ring for the moment). it maintains a sense of mystery, surprise, and danger throughout, and I think it has the most satisfying lore and atmosphere of the series. I love how ballsy it is with difficulty, I love the untargetable shade enemies in the shaded woods. I love that it never lets you take anything for granted. I love the memory of giants sequences, and how much they stir the deep melancholy of the game’s backstory. there is so much to love… but there is also so much to hate. sometimes they even overlap! it’s great.
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interesting. with this in mind, what parts of the game do you think are most essential?
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sega…
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this is better
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