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Comment by mrbonner | Hacker News Reader

Me: dying for a hundred times at the same spot. I just wish those "soul" games are more accessible to mortal like me. I'm an avid gamer (FPS) but those games are taking a toll in my confidence. Playing them feels like doing a chore, repeatedly. I tried Bloddborne because the atmosphere and art works are fantastic but couldn't even get over the first level (or act?). I really wanted to give Elder Ring a try but, the horror of doing chores :-)

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It's funny because I cant play FPS for the same reason. Getting killed by actual preteens over and over while occasionally getting a kill here and there isnt fun for me. I've been okay to good at FPS and it came from suffering 100's or 1000's of deaths and slowly getting better.

With FPS it is not worth it for me because I'll never have as much time as a kid to dedicate to the game. With Soulslikes at least I can memorize the boss moves and eventually get by or go level elsewhere and then cheese the boss.

The frustrations of the genre feel very similar to me but soulslikes I have options on how to get better.

I’m the same. I love the look of it all but I can barely manage to make progress in something like Hollow Knight never mind Souls games.

With work and family and ageing I don’t have the time, patience or reflexes for this type of game unfortunately.

I really enjoyed Jedi Fallen Order, which is ostensibly a Souls type game. I managed most of the game on regular difficulty before one boss bested me and I was able to drop to easy difficulty.

I get that the desolation and feeling of hopelessness against insurmountable odds (and finally overcoming) is part of the gameplay loop. I just can’t do it.

Souls games offer a true sense of accomplishment. Making it “more accessible” would basically ruin that.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was by a wide margin my favourite game of the past few years. An amazing world, incredible characters, and a wonderful story. But never once did I feel like the game was apathetic to my existence. The game wanted me to win. Winning was guaranteed. So while I felt so many emotions, accomplishment was not one of them.

One thing Souls games get right is that they’re fair. They’re consistent. You almost never die in a way that wasn’t your fault. And that’s what makes the sense of accomplishment possible. You get better. Your reflexes improve. You learn to be patient, studious, thoughtful. The game isn’t an amusement park ride. The difficulty isn’t simulated like it is in most modern AAA games.

I remember playing DS1 and the first enemies I found at Firelink Shrine was the indestructible skeletons. I never run away so fast when I found they were respawning, and I needed a divine weapon – which I had no idea where to find. The aspect I enjoyed the most was fighting with all you had to reach the next bonfire, then realize you've grown in terms of skill when the next rerun is much shorter and easier.

Elden ring is a lot of fun once you get the horse.

My typical approach for open world games is: find travel mechanism, explore, find items OP to my current level, figure out how to level up, then have fun.

Elden ring is a huge world and I'm really enjoying it! It is my first souls game, and I've learned that you shouldn't care much about the bank balance of runes/souls/gold/etc.

Elden Ring is the easiest one of these games by far, you don’t have to play it the “hard way”. If you want to get through the game just play a sorcery build and level up a bit. With summons you’ll be able to get through many bosses without even getting hit.

Definitely agree on easiest so far. The checkpoints are much more forgiving and summoning doesn’t take any resources. Also with the horse, you have a lot of escape options. With those QOL improvements alone it makes it a lot easier.

I started with Bloodborne after mostly playing FPS and adventure games like Uncharted. Gave up twice in frustration. I think learning how to step back and do visceral attacks, which the opening area gives you space to learn, was critical. Now it’s my favorite game ever.

Also the game is designed around collaboration. People are supposed to discover things and share what they learned on wikis / Discord / etc, and help each other with cooperative multiplayer.

I had a similar experience when I first played Bloodbourne. It was my fist FromSouls and I kept dying to this big troll dude on the first level. I got so frustrated and I quit, not understanding at all what the fuss was all about.

For some reason I come back to it 6 months later, and persevered through (not realizing that you absolutely DONT need to fight that damn thing). I kept dying until something clicked, and from then on everything become much easier and I enjoyed every minute from then on.

Same with Demons Souls, I kept dying to Armour Spider, got really angry, frustrated, then something clicked and I broke through, and the rest of the game was amazing.

Not saying this is/would be your experience, and I generally agree that the difficulty does get in the way sometimes, but maybe it's worth it to see if you can break through. I do think Elden Ring is the hardest of all the ones I've played, BUT the open world means it's as hard as you make it, if something is too hard in ER, you can just nope out of there and explore somewhere else.

You can also just play as a spell-caster and the game gets much easier.

Same here. I've now played Elden Ring for 70 hours, and I'm about to give up. I gave it a chance but it seems that this type of game is not for me. I'm not able to get better at it, and there's no feeling of accomplishment at all.

I had the same problem with sekiro, but found a fov fix (for pc) that also included a slowdown option. 95% speed was already enough for me to make it enjoyable, but still a challenge.

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