@Machina We yet again agree on something and my journey was kind of similar to yours in getting into this style of game. My first experience with it was annoyance with the 2015 game awards because I was a HUGE fan of The Witcher 3 and kept seeing it put up against Bloodborne and often losing out. TW3 blew my mind and was the first game to do so to that extent since Skyrim in 2011. Every video I watched of Bloodborne's gameplay confused me because it just seemed so simplistic - Oh how wrong I was.
A few months later I saw Bloodborne for $20 at a local retailer and I bit. I was intrigued to understand what the hype was. I bashed my head against the wall for a couple of weeks and managed to get to Father Gascoigne after about 10 hours. And that's where I hit a wall. No matter how hard I tried (and even attempted to cheese) that boss, I couldn't do it.
In my reading of the Father Gascoigne boss fight online I came across explanations of how this is the boss that will make you learn to play on Bloodborne's terms and how you need to unlearn how you play Dark Souls with turtling and playing reserved. And that explanation really spoke to me. I wanted to turtle. I wanted to take my time. So I took a look at Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition and felt like I didn't want to make the $60 investment to see if it would gel. Instead I found Lords of the Fallen for $5 and gave it a shot.
Needless to say I wasn't impressed. I shelved my interest in the style of game and just kept giving Father Gascoigne 2-3 hours of my life every couple of months and failing for the next 2 years. Then in the middle of 2017 I saw this trailer for Dark Souls 3. It immediately grabbed my attention as Agnes Obel is one of my favourite artists and I already loved that song. But even moreso, the visuals and style of the game set my imagination ablaze. It's like all the imagination I possessed but couldn't put to paper due to my lacking artistic skills had come to life right before me. I immediately put the game on my wishlists and started looking for deals. This was going to be my next attempt at Souls. After a couple more months I found a great deal - $30 for the base game and the DLCs. I immediately pulled the trigger and the rest was history.
- Dark Souls 3
- Elden Ring
- Sekiro
- Hollow Knight
- Dark Souls: Prepare to Die/Remastered
- Bloodborne
- Remnant: From the Ashes
- STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order
- Death's Door
- Nioh - DNF - Played about 30 hours
- Mortal Shell - DNF - Played about 2 hours
- DarkSiders 3
- The Surge 2 - DNF - Played about 3 hours
- The Surge - DNF - Played about 2 hours
- Lords of the Fallen - DNF - Played about 7 hours
I've never given Dark Souls 2 a chance. And I'm not sure if games like Death's Door and Jedi: Fallen Order, and DarkSiders 3 should count.
But for me Dark Souls 3 has my favourite world, lore, music, boss fights, and visual design of all of the games listed above. It comes in second for pure combat next to Sekiro. It was my gateway into this style of game and I've played it through a good 5 times since with different play styles. Of the games that changed gaming for me this generation (TW3, Zelda:BOTW, RDR2, GoW, DS3), it's the one I feel compelled to play more of the most. And with a Steam Deck I'm at risk of playing it anywhere at any time and continue to ignore my backlog! XD
It was a really tough call between Sekiro and Elden Ring for #2. Initially I gave Sekiro the second place position but switched them just before posting. In terms of pure combat, Sekiro is exhilerating in a way that no other title on this list is. But it's also not a traditional "Souls-like" and is also a game that I've never been able to bring myself to start a second playthrough of despite it. It's also not going to be too different in terms of play style a second time through, while Elden Ring has immense flexibility.
I gave Hollow Knight the edge against Dark Souls 1. Although Dark Souls is the more groundbreaking title that set a lot of this in motion (in combination with Demon's Souls - which I've only just started and am beginning to work through), Hollow Knight is the best example of a non-FROM Souls like for me and had to be of immense quality for me to put 80+ hours into it. And that's saying something as I typically get scared away from 2D games because I'm so bad at them. But I pushed myself to get through that game because it's just that good. It combines the precise and risk/reward combat of Sekiro with the exploration and build variety of a Dark Souls 1/3. Alternatively though, I don't think I'll ever play it again while I see myself regularly going back to DS1 and DS3 in the future.
And to conclude my Bloodborne story, after finishing DS3 and blasting through DS:Prepare to Die/Remastered as a follow up, I decided to dive back into Bloodborne with some more confidence. I started all over and still got stuck on Gascoigne for a couple of weeks but eventually I did it. And once I did I couldn't put Bloodborne down. I blasted through it in a weekend! It's an incredible game but it's another one I can't go back to because it's stuck at 30 fps with a poor framerate/frame-pacing which just destroy the experience of playing it. It's a game I simply can't go back to until that's updated. And heck, once it is I can see it becoming second or third fairly easily.
Last edited by trasharmdsister12 - on 24 December 2022
