In recent years, the genre has won a lot of new followers and got lots of praise for its accomplishments. They’re as popular as ever and everyone wants a piece of the cake. New games are released several times a year with varying degrees of quality. In discussing the genre, some people feel overwhelmed by the amount of new games entering the genre and some feel burnt out or fatigued.
I definitely get that thought and could see myself also being annoyed somewhat by the sheer volume of soulslikes released. But I don’t think I’m fatigued per se. If a title interests me, I’ll give it a try - if it doesn’t, I don’t. I don’t feel the pressure of playing everything new and shiny as I did a few years ago.
Where do you stand on this? Do you ever feel pressured to play a game because it’s new and talked about a lot? Or maybe because it’s another entry in the genre and you don’t want to miss out?
No, and gameplay wise I find very few games outside the genre/adjacent genres as satisfactory, or well rounded across all my personal enjoyment metrics. it’s kind of a pain.
The current output and wide spread adoption of soulslike mechanics feels like a lot… Yes , but personally I’ve never felt pressured to constantly try new stuff (maybe with NR recently a little) . I’m patient and I need to feel “The Call” TM so to speak.
I’ve been gaming a lot more in recent years and my current binge shows no sign of stopping; but there are games that I’ll still wait a good while before getting into, like Khazan, or the Nioh franchise for example. I’ll get to them, eventually.