Alyx Hinata 🇹🇩🚫💀 @alyx@gameliberty.club

#FreeGames

ARK: Survival Evolved on Epic Games
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/ark

Gloomhaven on Epic Games
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/gloomhaven-92f741

This was hilarious, but I have to ask: is boob insecurity a common trope Vtubers must conform to if they want to stay in the business?

>ketchup bottle has "vegan" label on it
Why?! What moron would think there's something "un-vegan" about tomato sauce?! You might as well put a vegan label on your bottled water.

I love the Dark Souls world. I love the art design, I love the interconnected world, I love the weapon design, love the upgrades and leveling, love most of the enemies and bosses, even love the visuals.

The only thing I hate about Dark Souls is the actual gameplay. I hate that the movement never feels accurate. Movement animations never feel responsive. Everything feels sluggish. I constantly feel like I'm fighting to get my guy moving how and where I want him to move. I hate that I feel like the game is punishing me for it's own inadequacy. I hate that when I beat a though area, I don't feel like I got better, I just feel like I got lucky, usually with the dodges.
Speaking about dodges, I hate that I simply don't feel like I'm actually controlling the dodging. It feels more like I'm asking my guy nicely to dodge, and sometimes he listens. Which is why I never managed to give up relying on blocking with the shield, and we all know that's not what Dark Souls is about.

But Remnant... well Remnant doesn't have shields. So I was a bit apprehensive when I started it up. Especially when I realized that you're forced into melee at the start of the game. But then I dodged an attack for the first time, and I had an eureka moment. I was plunged in pure euphoria as I felt good, fast, accurate animations that enabled me to successfully and repeatedly dodge choreographed attacks.
I'm by no means a dodging master, but at least Remnant allowed me at all times to feel: "this is doable, I CAN DO THIS".
In Dark Souls, when I went into a boss fight, I was praying for a lucky roll of the dice. In Remnant, I was focusing on what worked in this attempt, and what I can do better the next one. I feel like Remnant actually gave me the tools to win so I was focusing on how to use them better, while with Dark Souls, not so much.

A lot of Dark Souls feels like the developers didn't want you to finish the game. Too much of the game feels like it's trying to cheat you. As a consequence, you're pretty much encouraged to cheese it. And I hate cheese. If you have to even think about cheesing a fight, that's proof that something is deeply wrong with it.
Haven't felt the need to cheese with Remnant though. The closest thing to cheese is realizing there is no best weapon, and that you should change equipment around for different areas or bosses. And that just made me feel more like I was playing a Dead Space than a souls-like. I'm sure somewhere there is a way to cheese and exploit the game, but you don't reach that point of exasperation to where you start looking for the cheese instead of using the regular mechanics.

A lot of me wants to like Dark Souls, but secretly I deeply hate it's most critical part. I think Dark Souls became successful not because of it's actual gameplay, but rather what the gameplay was supposed to be like. People fell in love with an idealized image of it's gameplay, that they've formed in their mind, because they were so god damned starved for a good game.

P.S. Also, there is indeed something to be said about an "easy mode" for souls-like games. Remnant has 4 difficulty levels, beginning with normal as the "easy". I finished the campaign on normal, then played a bit on hard.
Normal is by no means a walk in the park for anyone new to the genre, but if you get the hang of everything, have the right gear, and are careful and pay attention, there is a chance at beating a boss on first time. So a Dark Souls equivalent difficulty is definitely at hard, or slightly above, from the damage taken/given standpoint. But Remnant is still likely to feel easier, just from the controls being more responsive.

But what I wanted to say with this side note, is that normal difficulty gave me the space to see that the game's mechanics work how they should and it gave me the confidence to WANT to play on harder difficulties.
Ultimately you either are able to use the mechanics available to you or not, you either learn to dodge or not. Changing damage taken doesn't fundamentally change the game any more than being more patient with you to learn.

If the game's difficulty is fundamentally broken because of mechanics, an easy mode won't fix it. There is a mod for Dark Souls that can reduces damage done to you, and I've tried it. And... well it was pointless. It didn't actually help, because where Dark Souls fundamentally places it's difficulty is in ways to cheat you. I could still say it's more patient with you to learn the mechanics, but if it's broken by design, it doesn't matter much.

And that's my conclusion on this debate so far. "Easy" mode doesn't break a souls-like, it helps a bit with the steep learning curve, but the game will still expose the ruthlessness or brutality of it's mechanics, if that's how the game is set up.