Comment by uejfiweun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by uejfiweun | Hacker News Reader

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Just a phenomenal game. IMO, all the From Games are great, but none of them really matched up to the original Dark Souls... until now. I've literally played this every day since it came out, I have over 150 hours, and I still haven't beat it. And still I'm discovering cool new areas, items, and lore. The amount of times I've gotten to a new area and just gone "what in the actual fuck" is too many to count, it's just jam packed full of surprises and cool sights to see.

Of course, I think that "open world" is a pretty broad label at this point, as there are other open world games that are totally different from ER but just as good. For instance, Fallout 4 (survival). It doesn't have as good enemy variety, locations, or combat as ER, no question, but the questlines are a lot better, the settlement stuff is awesome, and the general level of interactivity makes it an experience just as immersive as ER.

But overall, for that type of "combat/exploration" focused open world game, ER absolutely takes the cake. I hope the BOTW sequel takes some inspiration, especially for the dungeons. But I do think Bethesda still rules for the "simulation" style open world games.

I'm not a FromSoft aficionado and have only played Bloodborne for about 10 hours, which I enjoyed but probably would never finish. I've followed all the Souls games and now ER, have watched many hours of gameplay, and I honestly don't get the appeal and cult-like following around them.

I can appreciate the detailed environments and characters, the deep lore, RPG aspects, and probably the best combat mechanics and hitbox detection in the industry.

What turns me off is that the entire gameplay loop consists of boss rushes and fighting lower level enemies, just so you can gather loot, level up and fight more enemies and more difficult bosses. It all feels very one dimensional, and before ER introduced the open world aspect, very linear.

I suppose most games can be boiled down to their essence like this and sound boring, but in a game like Fallout 4, BoTW or Skyrim there's much more to do than just combat, crafting, leveling up and exploring. There's a quest system, cooking, companions, horses (the one in ER seems just for traversal?), challenges, complex NPC interactions, branching storylines, etc. They offer a much richer experience than any Soulsborne title I've played or seen.

My impression before ER is that all Soulsborne titles are essentially minor improvements on the same formula, with a lore and environment swap. ER introduces the open world aspect, but ultimately keeps the one dimensional gameplay loop.

I'd love to be proven wrong, and get the appeal of these games, so please correct anything I'm mistaken about above. I don't even have a problem with the difficulty curve if the game would give me reasons to keep playing and git gud. It's just that it doesn't, so the high difficulty is frustrating enough to stop playing.

The combat IS the driving force behind their games, even in Elden Ring. It doesn’t need all that other stuff to make the game more “rich”. It focuses everything into the combat, both in terms of the actions the player can take and the sheer variety of encounters.

If you don’t enjoy the combat, then yeah, you’re not going to see the appeal. I would argue it takes quite a few hours (maybe 30?) of playing soulslike games to get to the point where the combat becomes more satisfying, as certain actions start to flow and feel more natural.

With all that said, there is a more to Elden Ring than just the combat. There are quests, actually quite a lot, with a bunch of variety, and many of them are quite long and epic. There’s upgrading weapons and upgrading summons, and all the complexity that comes along with that, such as ashes of war etc. Then there’s the secrets. So. Many. Secrets.

Thanks, I guess like another commenter pointed out, the game/genre is just not for me.

And I feel a bit hypocritical since I do enjoy roguelikes like The Binding of Isaac, which can certainly be seen as "just" exploring, grinding, leveling up and fighting enemies. Yet for some reason in those kinds of games I get more satisfaction from progressing and the mechanics feel more enjoyable, which keeps me playing for hours on end.

I'll probably give ER a try eventually. Maybe it clicks for me this time. :)

I'd say, just force yourself to beat it. This is what I did with the first Dark Souls, which got me hooked. I hated it at the start, the combat seemed clunky, and I got stuck on the first major boss for days. But the extreme adrenaline rush of beating that boss gave me the motivation to keep playing, and after many more exciting fights and encounters, I came to the realization that it was one of the best games I had ever played. But it's easy to get stuck on the first big hump, no doubt.

  I honestly don't get the appeal and cult-like following around them.

Dark Souls came out in 2011, right when Youtube started heavily promoting gameplay videos (Minecraft came out the same year). It was probably the only "hardcore" action-adventure game available in consoles, so it picked up a niche.

The basic formula is nothing special really: take any action-adventure game, give regular enemy mobs 5x the HP, 20X for bosses. Crank up enemy damage so that player dies in 3 hits, 4 tops. Boom, you've got a Souls game.

Lots of mechanics are very out of place for a modern game. Enemies just follow their very limited waypoints until you get into their aggro range, then chase using what is very outdated pathfinding: they won't climb trees or get to you if they're not in almost a straight line of sight. Often they'll stay in a walking animation as soon as finding an obstacle. Ladders seem to be an exepetion, though.

Combat AI is very old-timey too. Enemies have 2, 3 animations that they alternate. And they are very rigid: they'll perform their fixed animations through obstacles -clipping through-, like columns or trees, trying to get to the player in a straight line of sight.

I don't think it's fair to call it an open "world" either. A world almost entirely populated by barebone AIs that exist solely to patrol their 2 waypoint routes waiting to attack the player and respawn after resting at a checkpoint makes sense as a "world". Reminds of early 2000s MMOs, specially Lineage II.

Only the player character is actually doing stuff. Everything else just sits and waits.

It's like the game doesn't even pretend not to be a game. In that I think it's somwhere in the oposite of something like Assasin's Creed that tries to explain its videogameness away, where the assasin gameplay is explained as what happens when your character relieves their ancestor's memories.

But the Soulsbourne games scatch a particular itch...

the general sin of melee action games is how unchallenging the combat is. Most of the time feels like swinging a weightless sword with a baseball bat animation much too fast. Or shooting arrows with a bow will be like a machine gun for toothpicks. Show the game to the non-initiated and the first thing they'll mention is how it takes a long time to attack. Also one of the first games with shield mechanics. RPG games before basically slaped a +25% defence! and called it a day.

I think I agree with you, but we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss that this style of game definitely appeals to a large audience. After all, games don't need to be super complex to be enjoyable. As long as they nail a single gameplay mechanic, it's fine if they stick to it and polish it over time. From what I've heard/read, ER is the best Soulslike ever, and that deserves praise on its own.

Tons of people liked World of Warcraft in a cult way too, Some people just like grinding.

Comparing Elden Ring to WoW is doing it a massive disservice.

Disservice to ER or WoW? Why?

It's just not for you, and that's ok.

Personally, I still like sekiro alot more. I think the lack of build diversity in that one really let them polish how the fights are supposed to go. Elden ring is definetely my second favorite though

You sure? Bethesda has rereleased the same game 7 times in the last 10 years.

I am partial to the argument that Fallout: New Vegas is close to the perfect open-world game out there.

It gets the open-world aspects right. All of the world is accessible from the start, the only limitations being your ability to tackle stronger enemies (like deathclaws). Exploration is rewarding, not forced. The world is designed such that exploration is driven less by quest markers, but by the player noticing interesting things in the world, like say a giant dinosaur out in the distance.

It has a main storyline, but it is a storyline that can accomodate a huge variety of choices made throughout the game. There's no artificial "essential NPC" mechanic, you can literally kill everyone in the game and the story still works. This makes the game very immersive - the player has absolute free choice in how they want to approach the game, and more importantly it feels like the choices you make and the factions you side with actually matter to the world

New Vegas wasn’t a Bethesda game?

Which is part of why its so great.

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