From Khazan to Wukong to even Elden Ring: Long gone are the days of very methodical, deliberate combat like in Dark Souls 1 or even Dark Souls 3.
I’m not sure if it can be exactly pinpointed to it, but with the release of Bloodborne, the genre experienced a noticeable change towards fast-paced combat that doesn’t give much breathing-room, considering DS3 as well as Elden Ring are noticeably faster with their combat compared to previous entries. Games like Khazan, Wukong or Wuchang take it even further, leaning more so in the direction of third-person action games like Devil May Cry.
Boss fights with huge strings of combos, wide-reaching attacks, leaving barely any time to prepare for the next wave of attacks, are what comes to mind. In Khazan, for example, I felt well-prepared for these because Khazan can be equally flashy with his combos - it’s a more even playing field. However, in Elden Ring, I was struggling quite a lot, personally, because the tools I have access to aren’t congruent with the amount of BS hurled my way with some enemies.
How do you like this evolution in combat? Do you prefer the slower, more methodical gameplay from earlier entries, or do you welcome the change of pace, adapting to modern audiences?
I think the upper limit in terms of boss speed has been reached and I feel the strat may have pivoted to adding waaay too much vfx to inflate fight difficulty on top of that. Which I hate, at least for me those are the most challenging ones.
Most of my favourite fights are fast paced, so I don’t really complain in that front. Maybe because Bloodborne was my entry point i got ok at maneuvering them and look for the logic within the chaos (thanks orphan!), but even so… I was stomped by Maliketh at first as well. XD
That damage-over-time effect does so much to stress you out and make you look for a healing opportunity that he is absolutely not going to give you
Haven’t looked closely at recent releases, but it sounds like natural evolution of the genre, or even a potential split forming, like metroidvanias and 3D platformers coming from 2D platformers, the 3 still being around, however.
There is definitely an arms race happening that is not necessarily to my liking. Ultimately I think both styles should be able to coexist, and faster games like Nioh and Khazan that start bordering on CAG territory but with stamina can be released alongside slower and more tactical Soulslikes.
But the pace is only one thing, the actual moveset design is something I dislike more I think. This escalation of fakeouts and infinitely delayed attacks with increasingly small reaction windows is just not to my personal taste, and one of my major gripes with modern Fromsoft design. I understand that between their attachment to their image of creating really hard games and their audience getting more skillful over time they feel the need to escalate, I just don’t enjoy this particular aspect. These delayed attacks overemphasize memorization of patterns, which while it does add to the difficulty stand in the way of me being able to play in a flow state.
I also think the punish windows are getting too small, and sometimes it feels like you have to roll for like a minute straight for every time you earn the right to press R1 once, but I guess that is a separate issue.
I think it depends on the spirit of the game. Bloodborne and Sekiro were upfront with how they wanted players to approach the gameplay vs DS (even poking fun at the use of shields). Overall the mechanics of the game matched the enemies that were faced.
If the flow of combat is supposed to be fast, the player should have gameplay mechanics to match that speed. If it’s slower, it needs to have mechanics that keep things interesting. If there’re special cases where there’s an atypical boss, then there needs to be something we’re supposed to realistically exploit.
ER was pretty good about this in the base game, but the DLC felt different, especially the final boss. It had such long attack chains and a large moveset that made it difficult to tease out what was needed just to get to phase 2. Then after getting to phase 2 I had to relearn phase. I’m debating if I preferred the Fume Knight to that fight.
They took everything too far with PCR. I love ER, dlc is great but I reach the end and my enjoyment diminishes.
It’s getting out of control for sure. I guess I don’t mind the pacing so much but the endless movesets you just have to wait through can be irritating.
My biggest gripe is these boss moves they have been adding to punish trying to heal or catch a roll. Like I don’t mind when either happens but when it happens because it was obviously designed that way - that just feels cheap and ruins the organic feel of a battle.
I love souls-likes, but nothing about them has ever felt organic go me. I view them as akin to rythm games. You learn the attacks, the inputs to counter those attacks, and the timing at which to do those inputs, then just grind it out like a song and dance.
With that view, an attack added in to punish a roll isn’t cheap, it’s just the wrong input, like playing the wrong note in Guitar Hero. (Which is a huge simplification, but you get the idea)
I also love rythm games.
It’s fun nailing the timings of those. “Oh, he’s doing that big grab to piledrive me. If I dodge through it, there’s just enough of a recovery animation to get a flask in”. Like, get fucked, warrior demigod twice my height, you whiffed and I just stood behind you sipping some refreshing juice
I am generally okay with it provided there’s a decent mix of slower enemies, but Elden Ring is about the upper limit of what I can manage. To take ER bosses as an example set, Morgott and Maliketh are too quick for me to do cleanly and I can basically only win by clinging on and getting a bit lucky. They’re not notoriously difficult bosses in general due to their low health, but they’re always major roadblocks for me. ER does have the likes of Godfrey, Radagon, Placidusax and plenty others that operate at much lower tempos but still have a lot of interesting challenges, though, so I am okay with Morgott and Maliketh because that’s the variety of the game and it’s not entirely outwith my reach.
I actually don’t mind how outmatched my character feels by the boss because that’s kinda the point, isn’t it? To quote Gred Glintstone: “You’re not supposed to feel like a god in Elden Ring. You’re not supposed to feel like a cool devil guy with a leather jacket making quips and surfing on demons while you play the electric guitar. You’re just a dude named Butthole, you’re just a guy.” Provided that my toolset is enough, which I personally think it is in ER, then that toolset has to be only just enough to do the job if the feeling of the game is to be preserved. That’s a difficult balance to strike because I’m better at these games than many people and many more people are far better than me, but it is essential.
I would like slower Soulslikes to remain a thing. I like racing games a lot; I do not play the fastest, wildest arcade ones because I enjoy the focus and tension of a more sim-like one (similar to a Soulslike in that regard, I suppose). I often don’t even race the faster cars in the sims because I enjoy squeezing lap times out of shitty cars. I understand why that’s never going to be the most popular option, and stuff like GT3 and F1 cars will remain dominant in sims, but I’m happy that some of them still include a 1995 Fiat Uno for people like me
You said it best in regards to Elden Ring, the tools are there… There’s maybe even too many.
Plenty of build variety as well.
That said… It’s also ok to not vibe with the game. And it would be interesting to see a modern soulslike demand a slower approach, sadly it’s just not what the market wants right now.
I wonder if a shift of tone could work for a slower one. Something more akin to Journey or Shadow of the Colossus where it gives you a bleak and lonely beauty rather than the decaying misery of once-great things that FromSoft tend to do. Keep the Soulslike gameplay of course, just present boss fights as laying wonderful but troubled things to rest instead of slaying gods and demons to take their place
Yeah, that’d be cool. I see the vision!
I never found Elden Ring to be too fast, but Bloodborne (playing now) definitely has a few bosses that are that way for me.
I admittedly sorta like the more responsive player input, because I think it’s very frustrating in those scenarios where you are animation locked for several seconds, an obvious attack is coming your way, and you are trying to react but just can’t. And I know that’s part of the expectation of the earlier games, that you’re supposed to learn when your punish windows are and when to back up/defend. But when you’re supposed to learn through failure, yet failing has consequences (the long run back), that just doesn’t feel as great.
If you play too cautiously, each pull just turns into death by 1,000 cuts. But then when you try to tease out the boss’s limits and see what you can get away with, you die more often and have those long runs back.
Elden Ring is definitely faster/riskier than early Dark Souls, but IMO it made things perfect through the implementation of Stakes of Marika. Having little to no run back so you can just focus on the boss was great, IMO.
Bloodborne, though, I just can’t help but feel like the bosses so far are far too punishing for how fast paced everything is, and then you have some runs back. I’m never sure when I’m even able to parry with the gun, and they seem intentionally made to be deceptive with their punish windows (moments that were punish windows in the first half of the fight often get follow-up attacks in the second half of the fight to trick players into falling for it). The only saving grace for Bloodborne for me is that the blood vials are very instant use and you can go in with a lot of them, but the finite nature of them (having to buy/farm more if you run out) has me worried of relying on them too much for bosses that I anticipate I’ll die to a lot.
