Topic: Souls-likes (& dislikes)

@colonelkilgore I was perusing my library the other day and saw Nioh 2 staring me in the face.

I was looking back at my comments earlier in the thread and still plan to do the From games first, but now I think I’m really most curious about Lies of P as a potential Souls-like. Still, that’s a while away for me.

I saw I had planned to get to Dark Souls 2 by end-of-year and well.. so much for that. 😅

I’ve kept to part of my plan otherwise, having cleared Jedi Survivor within the year and on the tail end of FF16. Never got around to HFW or GoW Ragnarok though. 😞

But I am inching towards my next Souls game though. It’ll be a while. Also curious to see what Rise of the Ronin is like. According to the limited gameplay it seems more action-oriented and so may not be a true Souls-like.

@Th3solution yeah I’d agree that finishing off the Souls series first at least before moving onto non-from souls-likes would be the best option. I’d definitely consider leaving Sekiro & Elden Ring on the back burner after Dark Souls 3 though… as it could be nice to come back to experience some From after you played some of the games inspired by them.

@colonelkilgore Nice work! I was just thinking, if you run into a real snag with a boss, I’d be more than willing to team up sometime!

@Jimmer-jammer ah cheers dude, appreciate the offer 👊. So I think I’m about halfway through(-ish) at the mo… beat that one-armed frozen sumo-samurai (twice, once in the main mission and in a side-mish straight after) this morning and then did a few side missions. Was half-way through the last main-mission of Shadow before I logged off to play some CoD co-op (a sentence I never thought I’d say 😅)

I’ll deffo keep your offer in mind in case I hit a road-block 👍

@colonelkilgore Oh, man. I remember that fight vividly. I had a lot of trouble with it, especially when the revenant shows up. Congrats! Honestly, if you can take him down, you can take on anything the game throws at you. Although some of the end game boss rush content is just insane. I’ve still never finished some of those missions!

@Jimmer-jammer sounds ominous 😬… well I’ll deffo be going for the plat, so if you do fancy dipping back in maybe we can help each other through that end-game ridiculousness?

@colonelkilgore Sounds like a plan!

@PixelDragon I’m still to try a 2D souls like… although I do have a few in the backlog ready to go.

I normally try to play two souls-likes per year (with this years being Nioh 2 and Lords of the Fallen (2023)) but I might start adding a 2D souls-like in as well if I can. It’s about time I finally got around to Salt & Sanctuary, so will hopefully be able to squeeze that on somewhere.

@PixelDragon Most of the 2D ones are I've played are more like Metroidvanias, with combat similar to the Souls games. Salt & Sanctuary is probably my favourite, as it has a full on rpg system. Blasphemous and Hollow Knight are also really good, but I never completed the latter. The game did not want to end lol.

@Jimmer-jammer well I’ve just spent god knows how many hours getting whupped by that boss that is like a huge boar-samurai. I eventually beat him in the end but that was insane!

Nicely done! I recall his grab attack is total BS. Think you’re nearing the end of the game now though.

@Jimmer-jammer good to know and cheers bud… I’d have to put him up there with Owl-Father from Sekiro as the two bosses who required the most amount of attempts. 😅

@colonelkilgore Funny how that can be different for everyone. For whatever reason I don’t remember owl father being that crazy hard for me. The two apes on the other hand…and I’ve still yet to beat the final boss. It bothers me that I still haven’t finished Sekiro but I just can’t best him 😂

@Jimmer-jammer so there are two Owl fights tbh… Great Shinobi Owl and Owl Father. It’s possible youre thinking about the former as he is a fight you have to have, while the later is a secret boss (and much much more difficult).

edit. Nope just checked and you deffo beat pops (kudos 🫡)

But you are right though, one of the aspects of souls-likes that I find most intriguing is how one person’s wall can be the next persons door-mat (& vice-versa), it’s pretty fascinating and plays into each players build and mindset (and more I’d imagine).

@colonelkilgore Totally! It really is interesting. Sometimes I think it just boils down to the right A.I/RNG mix on a specific attempt. We’ve all had a boss inexplicably spam their cheapest move 😂

@Jimmer-jammer one of the interesting little things that royally ****ed me up during my battles with el tusk today… was that prior to going in, I’d attuned a new yokai soul. The thing was, the new soul had a passive which activated my yokai shift when critical (little to my knowledge 🤬). So what transpired for the first eleventy-first or so attempts, was that my yokai shift would get automatically activated (and therefore wasted) during a terrible run… and then when I’d have a half-decent effort, my yokai would still be in cool-down. Once I worked out what the hell was going on with that, I started to get somewhere (thank god!).

@colonelkilgore Thats such a pain. Sometimes the depth on offer with Nioh II is almost too much to deal with. I’ve put well over 100 hours into it and still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface! It’s impressive but also a little mind numbing at a point.

@colonelkilgore @Jimmer-jammer I found the majority of bosses in Sekiro hard as nails tbf. The secret Owl fight, the Demon of Hatred and the final boss all took me many, many attempts. I really enjoyed the Demon of Hatred fight though, it felt almost zen like when you get into the flow of it. And that first Guardian Ape fight is a pure chef's kiss moment, and one of my favourite in gaming. 👨‍🍳

@JohnnyShoulder yeah I struggled with quite a few Sekiro bosses too… but for some reason got through Sword Saint (who many people struggle with) in about 3 or 4 tries.

Although the Nioh 2 gameplay is far more Souls than Sekiro (albeit considerably sped up) I have found similarities in the boss fights between those of Nioh 2 and Sekiro. Although the specific mechanics are quite different… the feeling of identifying a plan of action and then having to attempt it again and again until you’re able to implement it perfectly seems very similar to me.

So this has sparked something that could be interesting… I’m gonna add my list of Souls-like bosses that I found the most difficult. Hopefully it’ll show how diverse individual players experiences are… ie people will see that I had a horrendous time with Demons’s Souls Dragon God 😉 and call out my hopeless gaming skills, while I wiped the floor with someone else’s arch-nemesis.

I found that my main struggles came from the various From Soft games, the Nioh games, a few of the bosses from Remnant from the Ashes and then the odd one here and there from other souls-likes that I’ve played, so I’ll put out my top 3 most difficult bosses from each game and the a top 10 listing from all the games mentioned (but feel free to add bosses that you found difficult from other souls-likes… like Lies of P etc. I just haven’t played that yet):

Demon’s Souls
1. Flamelurker
2. Old Ling Allant
3. The Maneaters

Dark Souls
1. Black Dragon Kalameet
2. Demon Firesage
3. Four Kings

Dark Souls 2
1. Lud & Zallen
2. Darklurker
3. Blue Smelter Demon

Dark Souls 3
1. Darkeater Midir
2. Demon In Pain And Demon From Below
3. Slave Knight Gael

Blood borne
1. Ludwig the Accursed
2. Amygdala (Defiled Chalice Dungeon)
3. The Orphan of Kos

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
1. Owl Father
2. Genichiro Ashina
3. Demon of Hatred

Elden Ring
1. Malenia
2. Dragonlord Placidusax
3. Radagon of the Golden Order/Elden Beast

Nioh
1. Yuki Onna
2. Hino Enma
3. White Tiger

Nioh 2 (still have a few bosses that I’m yet to face)
1. Shibata Katsuie
2. Kamaitachi
3. Enenra

Remnant from the Ashes
1. The Dreamer
2. Ixillis
3. Scourge

Bosses from other Souls-likes that were troublesome
1. Sissna - Ashen
2. The Virgin Born - Code Vein
3. The Keeper - Lords of the Fallen 2014

My Top 10 Hardest Souls-like Bosses
1. Owl Father - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
2. Malenia - Elden Ring
3. Lud & Zallen - Dark Souls 2
4. Darkeater Midir - Dark Souls 3
5. Black Dragon Kalameet - Dark Souls
6. Shibata Katsuie - Nioh 2
7. Genichiro Ashina - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
8. Ludwig the Accursed - Bloodborne
9. Amygdala (Defiled Chalice Dungeon) - Bloodborne
10. Darklurker - Dark Souls 2