From Khazan to Wukong to even Elden Ring: Long gone are the days of very methodical, deliberate combat like in Dark Souls 1 or even Dark Souls 3.
I’m not sure if it can be exactly pinpointed to it, but with the release of Bloodborne, the genre experienced a noticeable change towards fast-paced combat that doesn’t give much breathing-room, considering DS3 as well as Elden Ring are noticeably faster with their combat compared to previous entries. Games like Khazan, Wukong or Wuchang take it even further, leaning more so in the direction of third-person action games like Devil May Cry.
Boss fights with huge strings of combos, wide-reaching attacks, leaving barely any time to prepare for the next wave of attacks, are what comes to mind. In Khazan, for example, I felt well-prepared for these because Khazan can be equally flashy with his combos - it’s a more even playing field. However, in Elden Ring, I was struggling quite a lot, personally, because the tools I have access to aren’t congruent with the amount of BS hurled my way with some enemies.
How do you like this evolution in combat? Do you prefer the slower, more methodical gameplay from earlier entries, or do you welcome the change of pace, adapting to modern audiences?
I am generally okay with it provided there’s a decent mix of slower enemies, but Elden Ring is about the upper limit of what I can manage. To take ER bosses as an example set, Morgott and Maliketh are too quick for me to do cleanly and I can basically only win by clinging on and getting a bit lucky. They’re not notoriously difficult bosses in general due to their low health, but they’re always major roadblocks for me. ER does have the likes of Godfrey, Radagon, Placidusax and plenty others that operate at much lower tempos but still have a lot of interesting challenges, though, so I am okay with Morgott and Maliketh because that’s the variety of the game and it’s not entirely outwith my reach.
I actually don’t mind how outmatched my character feels by the boss because that’s kinda the point, isn’t it? To quote Gred Glintstone: “You’re not supposed to feel like a god in Elden Ring. You’re not supposed to feel like a cool devil guy with a leather jacket making quips and surfing on demons while you play the electric guitar. You’re just a dude named Butthole, you’re just a guy.” Provided that my toolset is enough, which I personally think it is in ER, then that toolset has to be only just enough to do the job if the feeling of the game is to be preserved. That’s a difficult balance to strike because I’m better at these games than many people and many more people are far better than me, but it is essential.
I would like slower Soulslikes to remain a thing. I like racing games a lot; I do not play the fastest, wildest arcade ones because I enjoy the focus and tension of a more sim-like one (similar to a Soulslike in that regard, I suppose). I often don’t even race the faster cars in the sims because I enjoy squeezing lap times out of shitty cars. I understand why that’s never going to be the most popular option, and stuff like GT3 and F1 cars will remain dominant in sims, but I’m happy that some of them still include a 1995 Fiat Uno for people like me
You said it best in regards to Elden Ring, the tools are there… There’s maybe even too many.
Plenty of build variety as well.
That said… It’s also ok to not vibe with the game. And it would be interesting to see a modern soulslike demand a slower approach, sadly it’s just not what the market wants right now.
I wonder if a shift of tone could work for a slower one. Something more akin to Journey or Shadow of the Colossus where it gives you a bleak and lonely beauty rather than the decaying misery of once-great things that FromSoft tend to do. Keep the Soulslike gameplay of course, just present boss fights as laying wonderful but troubled things to rest instead of slaying gods and demons to take their place
Yeah, that’d be cool. I see the vision!