I’ve never played a soulslike games because they are a bit intimidating to me. Amy recommendations for soulslikes games to start on or for beginners to the genre?
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Of the ones I’ve played, Elden Ring. The biggest aid for new players being that if something’s too tough, you just go somewhere easier and come back later. The opening area has a boss roaming a field designed to teach you exactly that lesson.
I’ve also heard the magic in Elden ring makes it easier than the others. Any thoughts on that?
The magic is similar to Dark Souls 3. I don’t know that it’s any more overtuned or anything, but there’s a lot of fun in finding broken builds, and there are tons of them.
I hate other souls like games but managed my way through Elden Ring because of this and what /u/ampersandrew said about going away and coming back after exploring and leveling a bit more.
Cool. How’d you like it?
I had a great time with it (mostly) but I don’t want to play it again… If that makes any sense? Ha ha.
It’s too big. Simple as that.
Doesn’t linking users work differently here? I thought @ampersandrew@lemmy.world would be the canonical way to mention users, given that it includes their instance. I’m still fairly new to Lemmy, so maybe that’s app/instance-specific
Oh yeah, my bad. Did that completely on autopilot!
It is the most wizarding friendly game FromSoftware has made.
Through their other games the pattern was for wizards: the level getting to the boss was tough managing your spell uses, but then the boss was easy if you reserved enough.
In Elden Ring there are less ‘levels’ and almost none of the classic ‘runback’ to a boss if you die. So you almost always can full power a boss.
Which feels easier in comparison. Though the Elden Ring bosses were designed around that more.
Imminent DLC will shake things up too.
I liked the magic in Elden Ring. First Souls game I played magic in and I feel it was very strong. If you’re going with sorceries, just be aware that the first magic teacher is easily missed. Look up where they are if you get too far into the game without finding more magic.
You could try “Another Crab’s treasure”. It even has accessibility options to make it easier if it’s too intimidating.
Ah yes.
The game that just straight up gives you a giant handgun if you simply ask.
lol that’s hilarious
Elden Ring is the best one for beginners, because if you get stuck at a boss you can just leave that area and go somewhere else. You are very rarely ever “stuck”. That is not the case with any of the other Soulsborne games.
In addition, it has spirit summons which make the game significantly easier.
And since it’s the newest one AND has a DLC coming out soon, it’s also the most played one right now. So finding other players for co-op is easy.
I also consider the bosses, on the whole, to be the easiest of all of the FROM Software games.
I second this, one of my good friends only started gaming over covid. We were all hardcore souls players and helped her get through bloodborne and ds3 but she was basically just letting us handle most of the fighting. But when ER came out she got really into it and has played through solo several times. From Software took a lot of the pain points out of the format while keeping it challenging and fresh. Elden ring also has great online, I wasn’t a huge fan of the game (I prefer Bloodborne, Sekiro and AC 6) just I spent hundreds of hours just running around the Lands Between with my friends during covid.
Yeah you’re right. I forgot to mention that with Elden Ring, FROM smoothed away a lot of the rough edges of the older games. And because of that it is much easier to get into for newer players. I’m glad your friend enjoyed it.
Also the biggest positive is the capability of fast traveling from your map from anywhere as long as you aren’t in combat.
It removes the hesitation to explore areas from which you can’t return easily.
That’s the biggest thing that made Elden Ring significantly less stressful for me.
Plus you don’t have to worry about weapon durability.
Fallen order. You can adjust the difficulty!
Oggdo Boggdo flashbacks.
He’s just a harmless little froggo. It’ll be fiiiine
“Oggdo Boggdo, I’ve come to bargain!”
“For the love of all things holy, it’s just a pink poncho, please leave me alone.”
Fallen order has this magnetic attraction between you and the enemy when swinging that really urked me. Felt likes souls on rails. Beautiful game though and nice levels
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Darksouls 1 makes the most sense, it’s where most fans started.
No way lol, dark souls 1 is likely the most difficult in the series because it doesn’t hold your hand at all, and it’s very easy to get lost. There’s a reason it people kept comparing any super hard game to dark souls despite the fact that DS2 and DS3 were fairly accessible.
The combat is very slow im ds1 compared to other games which makes it far easier. People say dark souls meaning the whole series not specifically ds1.
I haven’t played ds2 or 3 yet, but found ds1 to be easier than fallen order / sekiro with how you can level up your way through tough enemies even if you dont take the intended route
I really disliked the ability to get lost combined with the challenge in Dark Souls. In most games, if I come upon an area that’s extremely hard, it’s clear that I’m not supposed to go there yet. But with Dark Souls, I know it’s supposed to be hard and had a harder time gauging if there was somewhere else I should be going.
I was about to recommend the same. Dark Souls is hard to get into, but it will train you to play a Souls like game like a Souls like game. However Elden Ring might be a good intro into the genre too, and is a bit more modern and accessible too.
I’de just jump on elden ring. Get some experience before shadow of the eartree comes out.
I’d avoid non-DS1/3/ER souls-likes to start with, because they tend not to have multiplayer.
There’s nothing wrong with summoning a friend or stranger to help you get through a difficult bit.
Lies of P is fairly easy in comparison to the FromSoftware souls games but it’s still a lot of fun. Great worldbuilding and some interesting mechanics too
I found Lies of P much more challenging than any of the FromSoft games I’ve played. I loved it, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for an easier introduction to the gameplay.
It’s got a huge focus on parrying, but it’s very forgiving on timing so it can be easy if you get that down. (But I’d still probably suggest starting with Elden Ring or Dark Souls 1).
I think it’s actually less forgiving on timing, just in terms of parry window number of frames. If I remember correctly, your timing just has to come towards the end of the attack animation (as opposed to FromSoft parrying which is generally closer to the beginning) I think, or I may have those reversed. On top of that though, something like dark souls 1 is much slower paced and the combat feels more give-and-take where Lies of P to me felt like parry, dodge roll for an opening and punish.
They did nerf the most difficult bosses and minibosses after release which made it a lot more approachable I think.
Ah gotcha, maybe that was it. I still find the dark souls style combat much smoother and approachable for a beginner to not worry too much about parrying or other mechanics. I made my first playthrough of dark souls without ever learning most of them, just blocking, dodging, and attacking like duels. It felt less dependent on twitchy reflexes and more just repetition and reading the enemies movements. All great games, maybe it just comes down to preference!
Honestly, I disliked Souls-like games until I played Hollow Knight (at that point, I tried Dark Souls but didn’t get very far). It isn’t a Souls-like game (2D Metroidvania), but as it shares some of their themes and elements, after finishing it I was motivated to try Dark Souls again (and ended up doing a full playthrough).
elden ring probably. like you i found souls-style games scary. i think i installed dark souls 3 and quit before getting anywhere but i managed to beat elden ring even though I did initially refund it :D
Start with the one you want to play most. That’s the one that will get you hooked. There’s so many now if you figure you don’t like it you can play another one. The feeling everyone is telling you to chase with starting at demon souls or dark souls 1 isn’t as it was back then. I play through them every other year and its fun but the grand reveal on reality has been had and is done. My favorite souls like I have played recently is Hellpoint, it can be janky and doesn’t hold your hand at all but I love it.
Demon’s Souls isn’t available on PC, but it is the original Soulslike game. Your best bet is to start with Dark Souls 1. They’re not necessarily easy, but it is the origin to an entire genre, so I feel like those may be a better intro to Soulslike. Also, Elden Ring is too demanding - unless you have a good rig, in that case, you can pick that first. For a gothic vibe, you can go with Bloodbourne.
I primarily game on the steam deck and I think Elden ring is one of the top played games so I’m sure it works well on that.
Elden Ring runs just fine on my Deck, but it drains my battery pretty fast.
But I have a refurbished non OLED deck so ymmv.
You could try dark souls 3 for the closest to eldenring experience while being 60fps. Then go onto eldenring or dark souls remastered. Dark souls 2 is a black sheep that plays and feels different to the rest and has all around wild design choices.
From the posts out there, it looks like the game runs somewhere in the 30-40fps range, so the game is playable, but definitely not in the 60fps range. You may or may not like the frame-rate inconsistency, and it requires some sort of tweaking here and there.
I think Elden Ring would be a good place to start since it’s the one that lets you customize your difficulty the most. You can use spirit summons (both other players and NPCs) and vary up the order in which you do things, so if you get stuck on something, you can go do something else and then come back with more experience and better equipment
Seconding Elden Ring. It’s also going to be more active since people are hyped for the new content - which means you’re more likely to get help if you need it.
It has a handful of QoL features too that’ll make the learning curve more manageable
Agree. Elden Ring is the only one I’ve liked personally. And a big reason is being able to fuck off and go do something else if you find a boss battle or section of the game too difficult. There’s so much to do and explore and check out that it didn’t feel like I was “grinding” ever.
Dark Souls 1. It’s not impossible and it has some of the best level design in the genre.
Tunic! Bonus points for being one of the best games of all time.
I didn’t know that’s a soulslike! Been wanting to play that.
Dooooooo iiiiiiiiiiiit
