It’s off to the wonderful land of mods for me, because my mission is to try out Seamless Co-op on Elden Ring after sad-detective-man’s excellent propaganda push

I don’t think I have an answer for one that disappointed me, but that comes with the caveat that I’ve only really played From’s soulslikes

I’m playing Death Howl this week. It’s a turn based Soulslike grid-based strategy deckbuilder (quite possibly the biggest genre salad I’ve played so far). It’s been okay so far. Love the art, it’s got a beautiful minimalistic but expressive pixel art in a very distinctive muted color palette. The story so far is fairly mediocre. It’s okay but it’s very obviously a story of a mother’s journey towards accepting the death of her child, with every major area of the game representing one stage of grief. It feels like it was written with the intent that the player doesn’t put this together, but I don’t know. It’s all fairly obvious. I mean, the big bad is called “Sorg” which literally means grief. So I am mostly bored with the main story and waiting for the penny to drop for the protagonist, but I guess your mileage may vary there.

Gameplay is fine, even though I have some issues with it. One major mechanic is that each region has its own set of cards, that you have to gradually unlock and craft by beating a bunch of enemies in that zone. Each zone’s cards also cost an additional mana if you try to use them in a different zone. On the one hand this forces you to keep switching play style and introduces some forced variety into the gameplay. But on the other hand your creativity is severely limited in deckbuilding. You basically have to pick one of the two archetypes offered by your area and then build that deck. It also makes the game fairly grindy as you need to regrind your deck every time you enter a new area. There are also a bunch of small QoL issues I have with it, and it can also feel cheap at times because you have no way of knowing what an enemy’s special attack does until you see it - there is no tooltip. So sometimes you just die because it’s the first time seeing an enemy. Chrono Ark that I played recently gave you all the information upfront, and I much prefer that.

Anyway it’s an okay time and the battles themselves can be pretty fun, although challenging. And it’s nice to have a slow paced game I can play relaxedly with a cup of coffee.

I don’t think I’ve played a 3D Soulslike I’ve been disappointed in yet - although I own both Steelrising and Flintlock after a Humble Bundle so either of those might be it. But I was a little disappointed in Blasphemous and GRIME I guess. Although I suppose it’s mostly a matter of taste. Both had much more platforming with instant kill hazards than I realised, and both had stuff like runbacks and limited fast travel that - combined with enemy placement deliberately made to waste your time - frustrated me a bit. GRIME I still haven’t finished - I have played like 9h total and whenever I pick it up I play for like 30 minutes and can’t get into it.

I haven’t been disappointed, but this is the second strike for thymesia . Purchased it on a whim and I could not refund it. It was cheap tho. I guess I’ll try it when I have nothing else

This is a first since I joined lemmy or this comm but no soulslikes for me this week, the Hades 2 port caught me by surprise so everything is on pause until further notice. If it manages to hog my attention like the first one did remains to be seen. So far, I’m loving it.

☽. ¡¡¡ Death to Chronos!!! ִ☾

For me it was Sekiro. It just didn’t click for me for whatever reason, maybe it was the deflection heavy combat but I really liked other deflection heavy ones like Nine Sols, might give it a try again from the start, that worked for me with the original Dark Souls.

I went back to play through 2 and 3 after having played DS1 and ER a bunch, finished 2 last week and been working through 3 this week. 3 feels shorter to me for some reason. Keep meaning to go back to a ng+ run of Another Crab’s Treasure since they added new stuff for that last year.

No soulslikes for me this weekend either. I’ve been playing Haste, as well as a lot of Dome Keeper which just released a DLC.

Sekiro is the one that didn’t click for me. It’s still installed and I plan to try and git gud and finish it one day, but I need to muster up a whole bunch of patience and motivation first.

For me it’s Dark Souls 3. At least for the games I finished. Maybe ‘disappointed’ is a bit strong. For me the problem with DS3 was my expectation: I envisioned a fusion of Bloodborne and DS2, both games I massively enjoyed and that exceeded my expectations. DS3 just couldn’t live up to that… It’s world wasn’t as immersive, it’s graphical style wasn’t quite as good. It’s areas are mostly good if a bit linear and it has some phenomenal Boss fights. The combat system is on the whole very enjoyable, it is still a Dark Souls game, but it wasn’t so much of a step forward as my expectation made me wish for.

Now, Elden Ring on the other hand exceeded my massive expectations and then some…

This weekend, I again didn’t play any Soulslikes. At the tail end of a cold I mostly lounge on my Sofa and played more Pokémon. Now done with Heartgold and now in the middle of Black. Now there is the story worthy of a Soulslike! Okay, maybe not… And Souls games have for the most part more of a world-building vibe than a story and I’m just spamming past dialog and I don’t know where I was going with this.

Both of those were ones I passed on too. Thymesia had really cool artistic design for bosses, but yeah just a little too unrefined

I’ll probably try Lords of the Fallen again some day. That lantern world was cool, It just felt like a chore