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What you don't like about "Souls-like combat"?

What you don't like from "Souls" combat?

  • It's too slow

    Votes: 45 24.7%

  • It's too clunky

    Votes: 67 36.8%

  • It's too repetitive

    Votes: 54 29.7%

  • Relies on stamina bar

    Votes: 43 23.6%

  • Bad camera

    Votes: 51 28.0%

  • Poor offering of combat options

    Votes: 28 15.4%

  • Too focused on single enemy lock-on

    Votes: 44 24.2%

  • Too unbalanced

    Votes: 29 15.9%

  • Ranged combat options not appealing

    Votes: 50 27.5%

  • It's the same if you're fighting a rat or a giant Dragon

    Votes: 46 25.3%

  • Other (specify in comments)

    Votes: 35 19.2%
  • Total voters
    182
Heimdall_Xtreme

Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
dark-souls-mushroom-punch.gif


It makes me laugh sometimes because of the slow and repetitive movements.
 
RickMasters

RickMasters

Member
I think its great but I like it best when it feels even.,...IE...Id rather fight a highly skilled bad ass looking knight with excellent parry skills than a dragon or some giant with huge AOE damage. Make it feel like great duel. make me feel like warrior, focused on the kill. and make me work for it. thats when its most satisfying. I always pick the swordsman/knight class in trhese games because I hope for good skill based duels.


Edit: Probably why I love fighting games so much. Come to think of it...all this talk of combat has me in the mood right now........who wants to get slapped around on tekken for a bit, real quick? Im gonna go jump online and do some damage ,regardless..... but im just saying any of you guys can get slapped on tekken right now seeing as we are talking about the vices and virtues of one on one combat in games. *shadow boxes and picks up pad..."lets do this, kazuya :messenger_grinning_sweat::messenger_grinning_sweat::messenger_grinning_sweat:"*
Get Ready Smile GIF by BANDAI NAMCO
 
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radewagon

radewagon

Member
I feel like focusing on just the combat mechanics is a disservice to the Souls genre. My favorite thing about the games is probably in how they really force you to be aware of your surroundings and to approach each encounter smartly. It reminds me a lot of early Castlevania, where the environment was just as much of a concern as the enemies you needed to fight. The Souls combat is only a fraction of what's going on. It's one on one combat, terrain, spacing, and enemy prioritization. The games are hard, I suppose, but beyond general enemy concerns, the encounters, more than anything, punish stupidity and recklessness more than they punish a lack of combat skill.
 
Robb

Robb

Member
Slow, clunky and takes too long to kill the enemy/boss you’re fighting. I’ve never been a fan of souls/souls-like games. Probably the same reason I’ve never enjoyed Monster Hunter as well.
 
DragoonKain

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
I like it but I have to be in the mood for it. I can’t just pick up a souls game on a whim and play it. Because with Souls like combat you have to be focused and on at all times. You can’t just relax and coast. And often when I game I like to just relax and coast through combat. I don’t like having to be completely focused and dialed in all the time. It’s usually why I can only handle one Souls like game per every 6 months to a year.
 
Pejo

Pejo

Member
The real answer is rolling and i-frames. The community have glomped onto it as the defacto defensive mechanic, when I would prefer they'd penalize it for anything other the absolute lightest loadouts. Even then I'd argue it should be less about iframes and more about controlling distances and avoiding hitboxes altogether than timing your rolling through things. The combat would be a lot more interesting if bosses weren't designed to be rollspammed and you had to balance rolling/dodging with blocking/parries/etc, instead of it being the best damage avoidance all the time.
 
nikos

nikos

Member
All of the above. I've still played them all to some extent.

Wo Long actually remedies some of the things I don't really like about these types of games.
 
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C

CGNoire

Member
Not a fan of standard enemies with multiple health bars or bullet sponge like mechanics. Its not about being hard its just tedious.
 
A

abstract alien

Member
I love series outside of DS2, but the invincibility frames of the dodge/roll look stupid. As a long time fighting game player, I definitely get it, but it doesn't translate well visually. It just looks like the move is going through you instead of you dodging it.
 
Fredrik

Fredrik

Member
I love it but the close up camera is absolutely horrible and in no way suited for fast or big enemies and bosses.
 
Rykan

Rykan

Member
Because the combat is shallow as can be. You have your standard light attack/heavy attack and 3 strike combo for your weapon, item usage and/or magic if your build supports it and...that's about it. Comparing it to actual combat focused series like DMC or even GoW is insane: the amount of moves and abilities that you have at any given time is vastly greater than any souls game.
 
N

Neilg

Member
What I don't like about it is that I play games to relax after work, usually from 11pm-1am, but I can only progress in souls games if I've had a coffee and I'm 'on'. They feel like work. There's nothing relaxing about them.
I don't get any satisfaction from finally beating a hard boss, the longer it took, the more of a waste of time it feels. I'd rather be making music or working on art if I'm going to punish myself like that. The sense of satisfaction the games are supposed to give us totally lost on me.
I beat Bloodborne and got 50 hours into elden ring. I just don't find that level of 'personal challenge' in my free time enjoyable. But dipping back into dmc to do a boss better is extremely enjoyable. I think it's because it doesn't matter, the souls level of 'you can't progress without grinding this out' makes me feel 'fuck off I already do that every day at work'.
 
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kiphalfton

kiphalfton

Member
Played a little bit of Demon's Souls and my main issue is the dodge roll feels useless. Also the lack of jumping (which would probably be useless as well, based on how useless dodge roll is).

Dont remember this being an issue in Bloodborne, but I didn't beat that game and only had probably 30 hours in it.
 
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GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
Camera is dog shit usually, a perfect camera in every occasion would lower the challenge of at least 30/40%.

Lock on when it lose its target, in ER it was broken even to change target.

Weapons compenetrations, you think you are safe but walls and obstacles work differently in souls games.

Jumping and platforming has always been floaty, unprecise crap.

A lot of enemies can be just circled around and backstabbed, IA is not always great.


After some many games they never fixed any of these problems because players hang from miyazaki dick and can't be bother to make him notice this stuff.
 
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Nickolaidas

Nickolaidas

Member
I guess the only thing I hate is the Souls Retrieved mechanic. I get the stress level it contains, but the more you level up, the more souls you need to accumulate in order to level up. It's insane to have gathered 300,000 souls, you get thrown off a cliff, you respawn and go aaaall the way back to retrieve your souls only for a rando to invade your game and kill you on your way, making you lose all those souls forever. It is what it is, and I accepted it into the gameplay, but this is what I detest. Not having to go all the way back to fight the boss again, but having to lose all your currency in case you make a second mistake, or get invaded and die.
 
Esca

Esca

Member
I use to really liked soulsbournre but I'm kind of done with them for awhile (besides bloodborne). It's the same shit, roll roll roll, I hate parrying(I've always struggled with it in gaming). , clunky. More than two enemies in a fight becomes a mess.
 
SCB3

SCB3

Member
I generally like it, in Souls games, a lot of other games suffer because they try to shoehorn it in thinking thats what people want and it can actually turn people away from the game, for example, I love Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order and the combat in that can be fun, but its also really hard for a mainstream SW game so it will turn a lot of people off it
 
mrmustard

mrmustard

Member
Actually it's as basic as the Hellblade gameplay. They just made it super tough.

The formula is very simple: trial&error + learning patterns = time sink². After ER i'm a little bit fed up with the genre and didn't even play or plan to play Wo Long although it's 'free' on Game Pass.
 
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fermcr

fermcr

Member
Souls games combat is essentially slow and clunky.
Some may consider them to be the best games ever, but they simply aren't for me.
 
hemo memo

hemo memo

Member
fermcr said:
Souls games combat is essentially slow and clunky.
Some may consider them to be the best games ever, but they simply aren't for me.
Click to expand...
Yeah Souls games are like that Pizza place (let’s call it Souls Pizza) that a group goes to that serves salty and not that good of a pizza but frequent visitors to that place will try convince it is the best pizza place in the world. Why? Because of that burn taste in the pizza that other better pizza places don’t make because it will taste bad. Same people would go to another pizza place that would give them that burned pizza taste but they will say it is awful/bad but go back to Souls Pizza which is worse but they will call it the best place ever.
 
The artful mincer

The artful mincer

Member
Rykan said:
Because the combat is shallow as can be. You have your standard light attack/heavy attack and 3 strike combo for your weapon, item usage and/or magic if your build supports it and...that's about it. Comparing it to actual combat focused series like DMC or even GoW is insane: the amount of moves and abilities that you have at any given time is vastly greater than any souls game.
Click to expand...
Souls is actually the classic wide as an ocean shallow as a puddle type of game.

It's x factor is that's it's hard as well so replaying it with a different build or weapon etc is actually worth doing.

Gots tons of options in the menus but barely any in the fight
 
nightmare-slain

nightmare-slain

Member
Was going to vote but then I seen it's for people who don't enjoy it. I love these games!

The only thing I was going to vote for was the camera. The camera sucks. I hope in the next game they give us a wider FOV and design boss areas better. As I type this I'm getting flashbacks to Capra Demon :messenger_fearful:

The rolling is a bit shit too. I wish there were more ways to dodge attacks. Bloodborne and Sekiro aren't as bad. Look at this boss fight in Bloodborne/Sekiro compared to Souls/Elden Ring.







 
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LostDonkey

LostDonkey

Member
It seems to exist on a flat plane of forward, backwards, left, and right. There's no verticality, no diagonals, no up and over.

It's slow, it's clumsy. It relies on poor animation and physics to get its point across.

It's shit basically.
 
darrylgorn

darrylgorn

Member
There's nothing wrong with the combat as far as I'm concerned but I just don't have the patience for that kind of experience anymore.

Games used to be fun because there was a narrative and linear progression through an environment and dark souls (along with spelunky) bolstered the roguelike genre.

I guess this is just my own personal gripe about the genre being tired so maybe let's forget I said anything and pretend I complained about iframes instead.
 
Bragr

Bragr

Member
The difference between hard and annoying sits on a razer's edge, a poorly designed boss within the Soulsbourne formula can quickly become a test of frustration.

But for the most part, the biggest issue I have is how long it takes to get back to the boss, if you have to run far, or if the loading is long, it becomes tedious. I feel modern Soulsborne games know this, but some of the earlier ones were ridiculous at times.

Also, area-of-effect attacks suck, it increases dodge timing to where it becomes borderline RNG.
 
Starforce2005

Starforce2005

Member
Souls game in general had extremely bad crowd control, the system is good for duel not for crowd based melee fight.

I personally find Nier Automata had the best combat, speedy, balanced, flashy, and functional
 
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Ar¢tos

Ar¢tos

Member
Robb said:
Slow, clunky and takes too long to kill the enemy/boss you’re fighting. I’ve never been a fan of souls/souls-like games. Probably the same reason I’ve never enjoyed Monster Hunter as well.
Click to expand...
You must have missed the FF16 videos if you think souls bosses take too long to kill...
 
Robb

Robb

Member
Ar¢tos said:
You must have missed the FF16 videos if you think souls bosses take too long to kill...
Click to expand...
Yeah I think I’ve only seen one of the trailers for that game. I have no interest in the FF franchise.
 
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Humdinger

Humdinger

Member
Too difficult, too picky about input timing, too much dying. Yeah yeah, I know: "git gud." I don't feel like it, because the rest of the game (the atmosphere, the lore, the characters, the environments) doesn't draw me in. Just not my style.
 
L

Lasha

Member
I dislike everything between the bosses. I could live with a shadow of the colossus style souls where I wander around and just fight bosses. Maybe some mini bosses. Bossfights in souls are great. The rest of the fights are tedious.
 
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