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].
If you have a PS5, Returnal is the game that taught me how to enjoy “difficult” games. Admittedly, that’s not been the case for everyone, I’ve read plenty of comments complaining about the difficulty. But it clicked for me, and I naturally started thinking of it almost like a puzzle game, where each attempt was just part of a trial and error cycle.
Death is…kind of punishing, insofar as it’s a roguelike so you start from the beginning, but the underappreciated progress is in weapon traits, which are randomly attributed to each weapon you pick up and are improved through use. It’s persistent progress and is critically impactful for the damage you can do.
But the most important thing to say about it is that its mechanics are an equally (if not moreso) fine-tuned machine as you’ll find in the From games. Controls are tight and responsive as hell, and the economy, upgrades, weapons, and enemies are carefully balanced.
Actually, one final note: the weapons themselves are a major standout. Some of them are really unique and almost all of them are super fun to use. Anyway, the game’s awesome and I highly recommend it 😀.
Returnal is good! To progress each run, just get more ether to buy/unlock more items at the door! You will get stronger with more choices of items that can drop for you.