[Discussion] What is THE defining characteristic of a soulslike to you and how important is difficulty?
[Discussion] What is THE defining characteristic of a soulslike to you and how important is difficulty?
I was watching a few videos on the difficulty in Khazan recently (https://youtu.be/iRn_4QtYFiM and a different one which I can't find any longer) where the creators argued that the difficulty, while very hard, is essential to the experience of the game. If the bosses were any less difficult, they would not pose enough of a challenge to players, thus diminishing the sense of accomplishment when beating the boss.
This made wonder if difficult bosses really are the most defining characteristic of soulslikes since that's what most people seem to focus on. Dark Souls was notoriously marketed as the difficult game franchise, with FromSoft even leaning into this reputation with their DS1 Prepare to Die edition. But is difficulty really that important to a good soulslike?
Demon's Souls, for example, mainly has gimmick bosses. Sure, Allan and Maneaters are quite difficult objectively speaking, but apart from Flamelurker (?) there was no boss in the game that gave me major trouble - it was primarily the brutal level design and lack of bonfires.
DS1, which had been heralded as this super hard game, doesn't pose too many super difficult boss fights, by modern standards, either - the level design and interconnectedness of the world is the primary focus.
I feel like Sekiro (and maybe Nioh? haven't played any of them) pushed the genre to include suuper difficult bosses, then Elden Ring did, now lower-budget studios with games like Lies of P or Khazan do, whilst the other pillars of what make up a "standard" soulslike take up a little bit of a background role.
With all that said, I was just wondering what your experience with difficult bosses has been recently and if you value difficult bosses over any other aspect of the games. Maybe you don't care about difficulty at all and rather want to explore and feel the atmosphere of the world you're in.
Have a nice weekend ✌🏻
What speaks to me is how they feel like the "truest" RPG experience.
You are in this completely unfamiliar world, you are holding a sharp stick and trembling with a crappy flap of leather as a shield...
You have to creep through this terrifying dungeon world, having no idea what is around every corner. Every map layout tells a miniature story of what's going on in that area, and it can be so subtle, sometimes it's just the enemies they choose to place, or other small world details.
It is such a true sense of bewilderment, despair, and scrambling to grasp where you are and what is happening and how to control it
What are these weapons, how do they work? The game leaves it to you to discover for the most part. I'm going to use this pickaxe on this giant rock guy! Wow what a difference and now the feeling of a shred of control. You can deduce so many vulnerabilities in enemies just by paying attention.
And it just keeps going from there.
The best part of playing a Souls game is never looking at a Wiki. And fucking hating that you are stuck or can't get past a spot and need to up your game. Not necessarily in the git gud sense but actually willingly learn and play the mechanics of the game sense. Or just try to discover more and find new solutions.
I love that you simply cannot have a singular build and realistically expect to be able to have success throughout the entire game world. I love that at the very least you need to use a range of tools, not necessarily upgrade them, but you're going to have a sad time if you think you can just hack and slash with some ultra mega dragon sword. Or get the pointiest magician hat and everything is going to be cool. Or think that because you are build x, you're not ever going to be served by a bow.
I have the most fun when I play the games in the dark, no hype, no wiki, no hints, no Googling answers. Making my own little maps and notes and trying to figure it out.
So I guess to me that's what it is, it's a game world that is scary and brutally dangerous, but it gives enough tools to the player that they can squeak by.
The defining factors for me are the dropping of souls on death/ the ability to pick them up again, and the dodge roll with i-frames. Everything else is not unique to soulslikes.
Interconnect world? Metroidvanias.
Combat and boss fights? Zelda.
Difficulty? Ghouls 'n Ghosts.
If you were to give me examples of the soul-dropping mechanic and i-frame dodging in other games, then I would probably have to adjust my definition to include some or all of the above factors along with those two. But for now that's it.
Non consentual adversarial multiplayer.
Yea I said it. Watchdogs was a souls like.
I think "diffciulty" is poorly defined.
The souls games have a kind of difficulty, but I think what throws people is more the change in kind than degree.
The games are largely deterministic. There's little to no random factor.
You level up and improve your numbers, but the difference between starting health and the soft cap is typically a factor of five or less. Compare with like final fantasy where the factor is like 50 (a starting HP of 200 to 9999). Baldur's Gate is typically a factor of ~10. The underlying math in souls games doesn't provide that big of a buttress.
You don't get a lot of super moves as you progress. There are some spells or weapon arts that can be strong with the right build (blasphemous blade!), but nothing really like getting Fireball in DND or Knights of the Round in ff7.
This stuff comes together into an interesting cocktail. The game is mostly about you, the one holding the controller. Your stats and equipment matter, but are secondary. This is very different than like old final fantasies where I can hand you my save and you could win any fight (just do quad magic ultima and mimic).
I think a lot of games try to set up paper tigers for the players. They want the player to feel threatened , without any real danger of losing. Most of the Bethesda games, you might have a scene where there's a death claw or whatever, but you can always pause the game to heal. Most of the final fantasy fights are not a real threat. They wear down your resources, but you're sitting on a stack of healing items.
I think it's also worth noting that the fights also aren't a super long challenge. Most of time, the winning match is over in a few minutes. It's not like an MMO raid that's a 30 minute ordeal.
This isn't my most organized post but I'm on my phone, so editing is hard.
I appreciate your thoughts on this - all organised too!
That's a very good point you bring up about degrees and kinds of difficulty. It's like comparing DS1 to Khazan. DS1 was difficult because no other game existed like it before. Khazan is difficult because players had around 15 years or so of playing other difficult soulslikes, so the difficulty here needed to be magnitutes higher to justify the crazy kit and movement you have by the end of the game. Different group of people in mind too.
Its skill based difficulty, rather than grinding for xp. Many games have this and are more satisfying for it. Starcraft, quake arena, even getting high scores in tony hawk. Dark souls does it for ARPGs, but added traps and a unique multiplayer that really mixed it up. Getting help meant probably getting invaded which was a whole new obstacle on the difficulty curve. Almost no "dark souls like" games do that and to me its what they're really missing. It was even my biggest issue with Elden Ring - no covenents, and having 3 people only ever invaded by one person never felt like much of a threat. The "oh shit" moment of getting invaded was gone, and that was way less exciting. Sekiro at least made up for it by being really hard but entirety well balanced and achievable. You really did have to get good, no help is coming, but damn when you nail that parry rythm it was fucking awesome. That was the most ninja I've ever felt like in any game.
"Door does not open from this side" = Soulslike
To me it's not precisely the difficulty, it's the thought and consideration you have to have for each enemy. Even with end game gear, facing 2-3 of the lowliest enemies, you can't just charge in and button mash.
For me it's about finding a situation that seems impossible at first, then eventually beating it by learning the enemy (both the actual enemies and the environment) and getting better myself.
That doesn't just include bosses, level design is a big part of it too, and it's what I enjoy (and sometimes detest) the most about souls games.
Edit: forgot the question I was answering, lol. Difficulty is an essential part of my experience, but more as a method and not the goal. It creates tension, keeps me focused, makes me notice things that I would have missed otherwise, and gives that great feeling of winning against the impossible.
Not difficult bosses, difficulty in general. Unforgiving, deadly fights with even the basic enemies (unless hopelessly overleveled), and sense of crushing despair in the world around you, to the point where acomplishments feel more earned since they're harder to achieve. That, and usually some punishment mechanic for dieing repeatedly. Thats what makes a souls-like to me. And big fuck off bosses where you're fighting their toes.