Being able to refight bosses is such an awesome addition to Sekiro and Lies of P, it’s surprising that there aren’t move soulslike out there that offer that. Or some sort of gauntlet, like in Hollow Knight or Khazan. Khazan even let’s you refight bosses to farm materials for your armour/weapon crafting.
Difficulty settings would also be a welcome addition to all soulslikes. Those who want them can use them, those that don’t don’t have to.
What’s another feature you’d like to see more often?
Just had a whole comment brouhaha about difficulty options. Don’t want to rehash it, but I think in-game ways of addressing difficulty is under appreciated. Not everything needs to be a menu option outside the game.
“These sword snakes are too fast” -> “fuck it, I’m going to snipe them from this rooftop” or “I’m just going to summon a jellyfish to kill them”. That’s better than “everyone must fight these sword snakes in close range melee”. It feels more satisfying, to me at least, to bypass a challenge through in-universe mechanics than changing out of game config.
I’m not against settings, but I think in-game options don’t get enough credit.
But I am working on an assumption that not everyone will be able to execute every part of the game well. I couldn’t do a parry based build because I’m not great at it and don’t want to practice, so I don’t. I wouldn’t find it satisfying to run the game in slo-mo. But, like, you do you. It’s your fun.
In other words: multiple approaches and tools for challenges in the game.
I think this is one of the reasons Elden Ring did so well. Boss one-shots me repeatedly? Fuck it, I’ll explore. A certain style isn’t working? Vary things up a bit. Or go in through a different side of the building. Or snipe. Or…
Or Wuchang, where you can basically respec for every boss according to their weaknesses. I ran one build against most bosses, but changed it for a few specific ones where my regular build didn’t work well.
Huh. Was thinking of playing, but is that exhausting? Sounds rough.
Jumping.
We have the technology.
Elden Ring set the bar for every soulslike after it. Sekiro too, but it didn’t have as much of a reach.
It’s a whole nother dimension to combat and exploration. It’s the clear evolution of the next generation of soulslikes. It’s even kind of weird to think about how popular these games are without a jump, while jumping has been in other genres for decades.
A dedicated jump button It’s good to have but easy to abuse. I like how it’s done in bloodborne but I agree it’s unnecesarily effortful, reserved for style points. :P
A Vaatividya that explains what is happening in the game I am playing
Every game has such thing, it’s called wiki. And it’s also more credible than Vaati’s videos
That is a far stretch at least for not-that-popular games
Like a tag-along?
I really like the developer’s voiceover in Getting Over It. He generally only speaks when you either make it past a difficult obstacle or lose a lot of progress. I could see that format working with NPC summons. Have them join you for the boss runback and tell you a little snippet each time, and also join you to say something else at the post-boss bonfire. This could happen regardless of whether the player chooses to actually bring them through the fog gate or not too. Keep up that pretence of them being summoned from their own world by having them be like the ghosts of players you see running about
Pause button.
Hard disagree.
Invading another player and not knowing whether they just left the room with the game still on is thrilling.
You can start fucking with them; kick them into a corner and push some explosive barrels around them and see them freak out when they return.
Or you get close and you realise they’ve played possum and they come alive like a fucking golem and push your shit in.
It’s all part of the experience. I love it.
That’s fair enough but sometimes I gotta answer the door in the middle of a boss fight. Kills my fun to just lose an attempt because of dumb design.
Imo, there’s room enough in the genre for both. Some games have compromised with allowing you to pause the game in offline play but you can’t access the menu or anything while the game is paused, and I think that that works pretty well. Those ones usually have asynchronous multiplayer only anyway, where PVP isn’t an option.
Patches Emporium as some kinda armory for new characters.
New game plus isn’t for everyone, but starting with your favorite weapon might be.
Bonfire Ascetic
![[Discussion] What's a feature that every modern Soulslike should include?](https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/994e5829-eb9f-465b-b442-20101a52e84b.webp){kind=link}