Soulslikes - Reviews and Recommendations

[dejost]

Long time ago, when Dark Souls came first out, I thought this would be right up my alley: Innovative ARPG, well received, challenging.

I tried it a few hours, but I did not have fun - I did not know, where am I, where I am supposed to go, what to look for; what's even the point. Difficulty and (at that time) novel control scheme did not help either.

Sometime later I gave it another try, had some technical problems, but did not have fun either.

For a couple of years I gave up on the genre as a whole.

[dejost]

A few years ago I got Surge in Humble Choice, and I gave it a try and liked it enough, to later try other soulsikes I got in bundles.

pro
- rather accessible and straight forward

your mileage may vary/not my cup of tea
- uneccessary labyrinthine, I ended up using a guide that only told me where to go, because it was frustrating


next one was Nioh 2

pro
- different weapons, good mixture/choice of blocking vs dodging, strength vs speed etc
- visitor system - you can fight "shadows" of other players for equipment and one of the many currencies, with which you can summon other players' avatars to help you. they can sometimes make the game really easy, but they are completely optional

your mileage may vary/not my cup of tea
- overly complex/complicated. there are several currencies, and don't get me started on the smithing materials. also a lot of abilites with poor descritptions ("makes some (!) attack stronger when your [other stat] is high (!)"), maybe you are supposed to min-max.
- way too long, overstays it's welcome - no reason the stretch the main campaign alone out to 40h. there are optional sidequest, an online mode, extra difficult missions.
- story is a yokai-version of the rise and fall of Oda Nobunaga and Hideyoshi (don't know if it would have been better or worse if I've known more about Japanese history).

con
- really grindy - you can grind about two dozens skill trees (eg. one for each weapon, one for magic, one for transforming, one for ninja skills), you collect expierence for each individual weapon, but you can grind the weapon themself by smithing, the individual yokai abilities and so on
- leveling up feels ineffective: due to the grindy nature, you are leveling up something most of the time, but rarely anything feels different or better through it.
- grinding does not make you stronger - I was level ~140 when the game recommended 95, but it still took a long time to take down any but the weakest enemies (again, maybe more min-maxing required, but I dislike min-maxing and would not have known which of the many things need to be min-maxed)

[dejost]

Steelrising

An automat fights other automats an the behest of Marie Antoinette to start a very alternative French revolution

pro
- rather accessible
- compass, a completely optional equipment which shows you the direction to your goal (mainquest & sidequests)

your mileage may vary
- rather easy for a soulslike, especially most bosses
- sidequest are unnecessary drawn out, don't give much rewards and sometimes send you on unnecessary long treks, although there would have been shortcuts, which just never open
- very interesting ideas, but many are poorly executed or not finished
- setting is good, story has a few good ideas, jumps around (first a focus on Marie Antoinette, then Athenais, and the end is suddenly about Louis) but is disappointing
- it is not that long, but felt much longer

con
- janky
- requires high specs (it looked worse than all other soulslikes so far, still played on the same computer)