Do you usually play action-adventure role-playing games, or are soulslikes the exception? Have you found tastes in games be majorly influenced by your liking Soulslikes?
I don’t think it’s had an influence on the games I like but more so on my being rather picky when it comes to combat-focused games. Games that are too spammy or don’t feature good boss fights don’t really interest me these days (with some exceptions here and there). I do like to play other games after having a bit of a break since the last soulslike really had me in its grips.
What about you?
Edit: Also sorry for the lack of posts recently. I admit to having browsed reddit using Stealth for the past couple years which helped me with ideas for posts and memes. Since that’s been shut down recently, I have pretty much no clue what’s happening in the genre right now. I’ve also got exams, so that probably isn’t helping either. :D
It’s an interesting question. I am definitely more of a general gamer who sometimes plays Soulslikes, rather than a full-blooded Souls gamer. And that’s not really been changing recently, if anything the ratio is slipping. I’ve said it before but there is definitely a concern in the back of my head that I might be falling out of love with the genre. That appetite for bashing my head against a boss for days and days is really diminishing. I still love the type of exploration and level design a good Soulslike offers but… I might not be cut out for them anymore. I don’t know. Maybe I just need a longer break until the next one.
So yeah, no Soulslikes for me right now. Although I was actually very very close to grabbing Hell Is Us on the Steam Summer Sale, but decided against it. I did buy five other games though so might dig into one of those, if I have any time between World Cup games and F1. Or maybe I’ll keep playing Splinter Cell: Double Agent first, I finished the first mission today and might actually be getting into it a bit.
I feel somewhat similarly. To me, Souls like solved melee combat. If I play any game that has swords and the like, 3rd person melee combat, I expect it to play like a souls, if not, it is, in my opinion, a subpar design. But, combat is not all I want in a game, actually, these days, I care less and less about it. I’ve been having a hard time playing pure souls likes because just the combat is not enough to keep me entertained anymore, I haven’t even finished Elden Ring because it just felt “samey”. I wish we’d see more souls likes that innovate around other gameplay elements, Ashen was a game that particularly struck me as being an interesting direction to go, where combat rebuilds the world.
For me actually I think I’m the opposite. I’ve played a lot of Ninja Gaiden the past year, and coming back to Souls afterwards combat felt bland and stale. I’ve come to prefer a more active and proactive approach rather than the reactive paradigm of memorising patterns and pressing B for thirty seconds straight then R1 once and then repeating for ten minutes. In fact, I think claiming any 3rd person melee combat that isn’t Souls is straight up subpar design is absolutely crazy.
Same here. Bloodborne is the only non-fully-reactive/more-proactive Souls, and no wonder it’s considered by many as their favorite (including me).
I’m now playing Crimson Desert, and their fighting game approach to combat is incredible. I’ve played like 300 hours and I’m still discovering new moves and combos every now and then.