Towards the end of the PS4's life I finally got around to playing what was considered the first "must play" exclusive. I wasn't massively impressed to be playing one of the best games ever, let alone best on the PS4, honestly. It felt like a very average-good game.
This was also my first ever real soulsborne game, so a steep learning curve was needed. It is pretty rewarding to see your own improvements. At the start I pretty much got walled by every single boss after the first 2, and needed co-op help, but by the end I was taking most bosses down in a few tries by myself.
However even once I "got good" the game felt like it was just hard for the wrong reasons many times. Having enemies that can kill you in 2 hits, even normal enemies that come in massive mobs, and can attack you far faster than you can attack, and have ranges far longer than you have, doesn't feel fair. With a few exceptions I never felt like I was doing any kind of strategy to beat anything, it was just a case of being overly defensive while trying to get a hit in every now and then with an extremely high consequence for any single error.
Speaking of being defensive, the amount of options is shockingly low. You have your dodge/side step of course which is what you'll use most of the time. Then there's the parry system which is pretty neat, but doesn't even work against 90% of bosses. And personally, although this is probably my own fault, I found it to be wildly inconsistent even on bosses it does work on. Sometimes they'll just ignore it and attack through the shot, sometimes my locked-on gun will just miss the target 1 foot in front of it completely. There's no blocking or anything like that.
Unfortunately the bad parry system also meant the gun felt useless 99% of the time too, since it's not really used as a ranged weapon but just as a parry button.
There are other annoying features that made it a drag to play. The whole losing souls system upon dying twice just felt frustrating and did little more than to waste the players time and efforts. Having consumables not be replenished after dying to a boss isn't "hard", all it means is the player wastes more time grinding for each try. Having the closest checkpoint to a boss be a 5 minute trek isn't hard, it's just a waste of time. Losing to a boss 10 times before finally figuring out how to beat it can be satisfying. Having to grind for potions and walk back to it every time only serves to be anti-fun, which is the worst thing a game can be.
The co-op system kinda sucks. It didn't work a lot of the time I tried to use it, or it took about 10 minutes to actually find a password-set partner standing in the exact same spot as me. And then you and your partner can only explore the single area you summoned them in, and if either of you die it doesn't auto-join back, and beating a boss will cause your partner to leave. So you have to constantly re-apply a summon if you want to play through with a friend.
Plus for some reason the game has some enemies that ring a bell, which will allow other plays to come into your own game and grief you. That happened to me twice while I was just minding my own business and I can't think of a worse system in a game that let's other plays actually just barge into you while you're trying to have fun and just ruin it for you. I could turn the game to offline mode, but then I'd lose all the player-written notes or the ability to see other players ghosts playing at the same time as me, and I liked those.
The game often felt like it struggled, having a few frame rate drops or weird pop-ins. And NPCs mouths that don't even move when they talk, making the animation in the game feel like ps1-era cheapness.
The entire aesthetic of the game is boring. Only like 2 locations actually standout while everywhere else looks exactly the same as everywhere else. However a lot of locations can be memorable through the experiences you have there, which in many ways is more impressive than simply remembering an area because it stands out.
The actual monster designs on the other hand look incredible.
The map itself is pretty great. It's highly explorable, and rewards you by giving you shortcuts back to safe spots, meaning each time you explore a new area you give yourself a way to traverse through parts you've explored faster.
There's quite a few great little details, hidden things, choices you can make etc. I had a friend who was walking me through the game so I found a lot of them on my first playthrough, but it's a system that massively rewards replays.
it really sucks to not like a game that everyone else seems to think is perfect, but I just don't get it. It's a game that at its best can be pretty fun with a lot of details to uncover, while at its worst it's dull to look at, is full of frustrating features and time wasting mechanics, and generally feels unpolished.
This was also my first ever real soulsborne game, so a steep learning curve was needed. It is pretty rewarding to see your own improvements. At the start I pretty much got walled by every single boss after the first 2, and needed co-op help, but by the end I was taking most bosses down in a few tries by myself.
However even once I "got good" the game felt like it was just hard for the wrong reasons many times. Having enemies that can kill you in 2 hits, even normal enemies that come in massive mobs, and can attack you far faster than you can attack, and have ranges far longer than you have, doesn't feel fair. With a few exceptions I never felt like I was doing any kind of strategy to beat anything, it was just a case of being overly defensive while trying to get a hit in every now and then with an extremely high consequence for any single error.
Speaking of being defensive, the amount of options is shockingly low. You have your dodge/side step of course which is what you'll use most of the time. Then there's the parry system which is pretty neat, but doesn't even work against 90% of bosses. And personally, although this is probably my own fault, I found it to be wildly inconsistent even on bosses it does work on. Sometimes they'll just ignore it and attack through the shot, sometimes my locked-on gun will just miss the target 1 foot in front of it completely. There's no blocking or anything like that.
Unfortunately the bad parry system also meant the gun felt useless 99% of the time too, since it's not really used as a ranged weapon but just as a parry button.
There are other annoying features that made it a drag to play. The whole losing souls system upon dying twice just felt frustrating and did little more than to waste the players time and efforts. Having consumables not be replenished after dying to a boss isn't "hard", all it means is the player wastes more time grinding for each try. Having the closest checkpoint to a boss be a 5 minute trek isn't hard, it's just a waste of time. Losing to a boss 10 times before finally figuring out how to beat it can be satisfying. Having to grind for potions and walk back to it every time only serves to be anti-fun, which is the worst thing a game can be.
The co-op system kinda sucks. It didn't work a lot of the time I tried to use it, or it took about 10 minutes to actually find a password-set partner standing in the exact same spot as me. And then you and your partner can only explore the single area you summoned them in, and if either of you die it doesn't auto-join back, and beating a boss will cause your partner to leave. So you have to constantly re-apply a summon if you want to play through with a friend.
Plus for some reason the game has some enemies that ring a bell, which will allow other plays to come into your own game and grief you. That happened to me twice while I was just minding my own business and I can't think of a worse system in a game that let's other plays actually just barge into you while you're trying to have fun and just ruin it for you. I could turn the game to offline mode, but then I'd lose all the player-written notes or the ability to see other players ghosts playing at the same time as me, and I liked those.
The game often felt like it struggled, having a few frame rate drops or weird pop-ins. And NPCs mouths that don't even move when they talk, making the animation in the game feel like ps1-era cheapness.
The entire aesthetic of the game is boring. Only like 2 locations actually standout while everywhere else looks exactly the same as everywhere else. However a lot of locations can be memorable through the experiences you have there, which in many ways is more impressive than simply remembering an area because it stands out.
The actual monster designs on the other hand look incredible.
The map itself is pretty great. It's highly explorable, and rewards you by giving you shortcuts back to safe spots, meaning each time you explore a new area you give yourself a way to traverse through parts you've explored faster.
There's quite a few great little details, hidden things, choices you can make etc. I had a friend who was walking me through the game so I found a lot of them on my first playthrough, but it's a system that massively rewards replays.
it really sucks to not like a game that everyone else seems to think is perfect, but I just don't get it. It's a game that at its best can be pretty fun with a lot of details to uncover, while at its worst it's dull to look at, is full of frustrating features and time wasting mechanics, and generally feels unpolished.
Reviewed on Sep 16, 2020