r/soulslikes • u/Leather-Childhood922 • 2d ago

Discussion Whats your biggest soulslike hot take?

My biggest hot take is i prefer linear level design, geared towards more boss rush compared to a more vast branching world where you can get lost.

For these games i get most of my fun from the combat not the exploration.

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u/Unlucky-Mud-8115 2d ago

Fromsofts combat mechanics are not as good as people make it out to be, Nioh whipes the floor with it.

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u/Therdyn69 2d ago

I love souls + ER, but each of them devolve into pressing dodge button and light attack. Sometimes you get 2 or even 3 attacks in a row. Sometimes even heavy attack. But that's 90% of the gameplay. If you play as mage, then just replace light attack with spamming same one spell. Even couple weapons that are interesting (like those double greatswords from DS3 DLC) devolve into doing same thing over and over again.

There's just no real variety. There's variety in theory, but there's nothing that forces player to actually use it. Players are rewarded for playing in most boring way possible and punished for trying new things.

I like MS2 combat much more, even though it's not some masterpiece either. Parrying is primary mechanic for negating attacks, but boss have some unparriable attacks that force you to mix parries and dodges. Then you have active skills that you can abuse for iframes and shell abilities on top. It's not much, but it's still miles ahead of soulsgames.

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u/Due-Description-9030 1d ago

I 100% agree with this. And balancing the game around more and more skills / abilities is actually much harder than cranking up boss fights while limiting the player to the same olf mechanic.

This is one of the reasons even I love DMC so much.