Okay so I have never been into the Souls games. The whole “brutally difficult” thing never appealed to me, and watching my friends play was enough to turn me off.
However I decided to take the plunge and try Elden Ring recently because of all the amazing hype. Tons of “I’m not a Souls gamer but I loved it!” kind of hype.
And it’s pretty fun! I get why it got so much love.
But I also, after a week or two of play, have identified exactly what I don’t like about Souls games. It turns out it’s not the difficulty. I grew up playing in arcades and on the NES so I’m no stranger to trying things over and over until I get it right.
It’s the damn death penalty. I cannot express the depth of my hatred of losing progress. Games with save points that are too far apart or games where you can lose items when you die, etc, are just the worst for me. And in Elden Ring, the stress that goes along with trying to get back to my corpse to get my money/XP back is stress I don’t want or need.
So I ask you all this: can you recommend a Souls style game with the fun gameplay loop but without the punishing death penalty? Does that even exist or is it just not a Souls game without that? I’d love the carrot of [learn fight, get better, epic win] without the stick of [now go grind low level mobs for XP, loser].
Interestingly I’d say Elden Ring is the most forgiving when it came to the “death penalty” you mention compared to all the other titles. There were far more rest points and things were so much more interconnected so you can stroll through/around most of the enemies to get back to where you died. Not always but a lot of times.
Also I found that really using your summons (especially mimic!) really helped with the difficulty. Also using magic makes life way easier. A lot of people just tend to go for the pure melee build which is making life really hard for yourself.
Yeah, I have no pride about using summons for the boss fights. I figure I can be l33t and solo bosses on my New Game+ play through if I ever get that far.
I do have alt-itis bad in these kinds of games. I started with a 2h Strength build, tried dual wield, sword and board, pure int mage, pure dex sword/bow, and dex/int spellblade. So far my 2h build and my spellblade have been the most fun for me. As you mentioned, I realized that the versatility of the spellblade worked really well… the ranged magic trivialized some areas and having a melee tool let me hold my own when range wasn’t an option. I am starting to think I need a better dex sword than the Estoc/Rapier tho. The poke poke move set is really bad against groups.
ANYWAYS, I’ll look into the mimic!
I did a int/dex build as well and loved it. I used the Demi Human Queens Staff and Moonveil Katana upgraded to the max, I may have switched the staff at some point but that took me very far. You should also look into the FP physik tears, especially the Cerulean Hidden Tear + Magic Shrouding Cracked Tear which makes it so easy to blast off some big spells for free and high damage. I especially recommend using it with the Comet Azur to wreck bosses right off the bat.
Yeah Moonveil is on my radar but it’s a bit further into the game. I just beat Stormveil Castle on that character. I also am thinking about going for that Fire/Death sword that requires Int and Faith. I’d have to respec later for it but it looks fun.
I’ll look into those tears. Honestly, I forget to use the physik flask a lot. I have a thing in games about hording scarce materials in case I need them later, and ending up never using them. Single-use flasks fall squarely into that category. lol
The nice thing about it is that it refills whenever you rest so it’s not as bad as actual one time use items. I tended to use it for big bosses/hard fights and never really changed the setup once I found that combo. I also play in a way where I scour through every crevice so I did end up overleveled for a lot of fights.
But yea I def also hoard materials and barely use the other consumables other than the boules. Those are a lifesaver in later areas when there are literal lakes of rot/poison/sadness you have to get through.
The standard Uchigatana katana is what I used until Moonveil and it also took me very far if you upgrade it. So you can try that instead. There is a dungeon near the beginning that has it from what I remember. Also one of the merchants had it too.
Dark souls 1 or the remaster is still worth playing. The map design is once-in-a-lifetime good. There is a pretty hefty penalty like in other souls games, but it’s just getting hollowed and losing some souls. DS3 is also good, maybe a more refined version of 1, but I personally don’t think the world is as cohesive with the loading screens.
The trick is to just get used to being hollowed all the time and spending souls asap when you get them. You don’t lose gear when you die, and gear is pretty important. The real progress comes from learning how to deal with each enemy though, and that comes from dying. I guess it sort of boils down to “git gud”, even though that wasn’t what I was trying to say here lol.
Dying and losing your runes in Elden Ring isn’t as big a deal as you think. The runes you collect from general enemies throughout the game areas are mostly inconsequential across the whole length of the game. The bulk of your rune income is earned by killing bosses, and there’s almost always a grace to spend those runes after you down a boss.
I used to get the same anxiety as you when playing Souls-likes. Once I accepted that losing my runes a few times is inevitable when navigating an area for the first time, that anxiety lifted and I could focus on just exploring and having fun.
Thanks, I’ll work on that. You’re not the first person in the thread to say it so it seems like I’d be prudent to try.
It’s funny, this year I played a lot of a card game called Marvel SNAP. It has a ranked ladder with no unranked mode and I found that supremely stressful until I learned to just ignore rank. Once that happened, I had a lot more fun playing and, ironically, ranked up more. I was constantly telling stressed people on the subreddit that they need to embrace ignoring rank. Seems like a similar lesson applies here.
Death is another obstacle in all the soulslike I’ve tried. I’ve learned to not put so much stock in valuing souls/xp as they come and go, but more important is upgrading gear/learning move sets
Yeah I definitely try not to worry about it. But sometimes I find myself dying at the same spot over and over and that pile of XP keeps growing as I kill mobs to get back to that spot then die again and that just adds to the frustration and stress of dying in the same damn spot over and over! deep breath Sorry.
But yeah, I try not to worry about it but that yellow flower is always there taunting me…
If you are looking for “learn fight, get better, epic win” without much of a death penalty, maybe look at Monster Hunter?
It’s not the same as a Souls game - not much world exploration, not much plot, zero gothiness - but it is 3D Fantasy Boss Fights: The Game. With 14 genuinely different weapon classes to choose from.
And if you faint three times and fail the quest, all you’ve lost are the consumables you spent on the attempt. (If you give up early and bail, you haven’t even lost that.)
I also second this. After you master your weapon and go into ‘advanced’ play of MH, it’s harder than any soul game, without penalty tho.
By advance play, I mean normally for each weapon, you can go in and keep attacking, you will win eventually. But your hunt might take a long time. After you get better and better, you will learn that the weapon of your choice has meta-play; you will want to try that and get better, you will keep practicing, and you will learn monster move set, timing, and their weak points, min-max your gears, etc… that’s when the real game of Monster Hunter started ;)
I played for thousands of hours and used to play every day just to get better and better. It’s a very relaxing and rewarding play.
MHW is one of my all time favorite games. I have a LOT of hours into it. One of the reasons I like Elden Ring so much is because the fighting reminds me of Monster Hunter. Good call!
Try celeste and super meat boy if you want a skillful platformer with low penalty.
If like the “beat your head against the wall until you win”, but dont care too much about the rpg elements and losing your progress, Furi is a great game.
The game is JUST boss fights, so there’s no trekking back to the boss every time you die. But the actual bosses are brutal, multi-stage journeys that scratch that same itch that Souls games do.
Thanks, I’ll look into it!
Elden Ring was my first Souls like game, and the biggest thing for me was to stop worrying about “losing” progress. You end up with so many opportunities to get runes that I never felt like I had to grind once and leveled up naturally as I played the game.
I think it is kinda a big aspect of the Souls-like genre, no reward without risk. I will say I was very similar to you about not enjoying it. I bounced off of DS1 very hard. However, if you can manage ER, DS3 is a worth trying. It is a more conventional game with more clear goals and leveling. It also gets pretty steep discounts on Steam. DS3 taught me how to play a Souls-like aggressively, which massively changes the flow of combat.
It’s also worth saying that the death penalty is a mentality thing. I’ve been playing God of War, and I get way more frustrated when I die in that. GoW is a power fantasy ties together with an emotional narrative, so that’s what I want. DS games are about facing insane challenges with basically no hope, but through practice and determination you can succeed. Souls/runes are easy come, easy go, but you always gain knowledge. As hard as it can be, I’ve never been as satisfied in a game as I was when I first beat Midir or Gael.
It’s funny you bring up GoW. I was so fucking annoyed when I got that game blind because I thought I knew what a GoW game was, even a reboot. I was blindsided by how they’d turned it into a very different game. I found the combat super frustrating and quit pretty quickly despite how good the story was. I was also really confused by the bizarre controls.
I realize now that they turned it into a Souls style game but at the time I just felt like I’d wasted $60.
Maybe I should retry that one since the sequel is out now too.
It’s a 2D Metroidvania-type game but Ender Lilies is the closest game I can think of to that delivered the same sort of challenges as the Souls games, like having to sometimes fight a boss battle dozens of times before you finally learn the patterns, without a disheartening death penalty or needing to go back to retrieve anything (you do return to your last checkpoint with respawned enemies though). It’s admittedly a little rough around the edges especially with some questionable level designs (In one spot I had the hardest time spotting the waterfalls over the background - but also I played it on a small Steam Deck screen so that might not have helped) - also it’s not a terribly original setting/story but I still liked it overall.
Maybe you would like Tunic, it’s souls-like but you do not lose all your currency on death and you can adjust the difficulty in several ways
I’ve heard of that game, didn’t realize it was a souls-like. I’ll look into it, thx!
Sifu maybe?
That’s got some definite soulslike features, but it’s wrapped up in a completely different aesthetic and vibe. It’s still very punishing though.
I played that on PS5 when it came out and really enjoyed it. It was still extremely difficult but very fair. And it even had meta progression, which was cool.
Thinking about it, Sifu is EXACTLY the kind of game I’d consider a Souls-like without the XP death penalty. It’s funny because there’s still a death penalty but it feels different enough that it doesn’t trigger me the way losing runes does. Really good call on Sifu. Might have to pull that game back out. I never beat it… it’s really hard!
I finally got around to it on Steamdeck a few months ago and was blown away by it to be honest. Tough but fair and incredibly demanding in the best way. There’s no fluking this, you’ve got to learn the game, otherwise you’re going to get absolutely smashed.
I keep trying souls games in the hopes that it will somehow click. But no, it doesn’t. It feels more like a punishment than it does a game. Like some sort of hell I have to force myself through. I think I lasted all of 2-3 hours in elden ring before I just said “fuck this shit” and walked away never to return. I’m not wasting my money anymore on them. Sometimes you just have to accept that what game critics like is not what you like.
You can even get an item in Elden Ring called the Twiggy Cracked Tear about a third of the way through that lets your Physick flask grant the same effects as a Sacrificial Twig for 3 minutes. Once you get that, the stress of losing Runes can be greatly diminished.
Simply drink it prior to crossing a fog wall or at a difficult point on the path to Rune retrieval.
If that’s not enough, and you’re on PC, you can download a simple mod off Nexus which eliminates Rune loss on death entirely.
I know it’s different, but you might enjoy the new Zelda games. The combat is kind of similar with the i-frames and learning attack patterns. It’s definitely more casual.
Which are the new ones? Like Breath of the Wild?
People might flame me for this but I’d say skip BotW and play Tears of the Kingdom. Those are the two new ones. If you like the fantasy action adventure type thing, you’ll probably want to check out the Zelda franchise as a whole. It’s much more lighthearted than Souls - it could be enjoyed by all ages.
Thanks, I’ll look into it!
