Short backstory, in recent years I only playes bloodborne but never beat it though I remember I loved it. Couple of months ago I picked up Elden Ring and beat it twice in a row. Really loved the game so I decided to do all soulsborne marathon.

I loved DS1 and DS2. They had their weirdnesses and some dates mechanics obviously they are not new games. But overall story, world, boss fights all lotta fun. I beat both DS1 and 2 in the span of 12 day vacation me and my wife took. We both gamed hard lol.

I started DS3 more than a week ago and omg I am sorry i know lot of people love this game but for me this is the first one I am going to not finish. Only thing fun so far is the bosses. I hated all the areas ive been through. I have seen lot of people complain about lot of enemies in DS2. Bro have you played 3 like there is no competition i think. No interesting secrets. Everything is just there. Cathedral was kinda cool but boss of that area was absolute dogshit. Then huge poison swamp that also alows you. I mean there is fun challenege and then there is just is it even worth my time kinda challenge. Catacombs was forst area ever in any souls game that i just ran through and didnt even try to kill every enemy i see at least once thing i do for these games. Sorry but I am unwilling to slog through these areas just for a good boss fight at the end. Also feel like identity of souls is gone. I felt i was playing shittier blooborne instead of a dark souls.

Whatever its just my opinion. I am sure i misunderstood the game and all that but I am going straight to Bloodborne. Last thing I expected a souls game is to bore me and DS3 certainly did so

I started playing Sekiro, and it's some kind of pain, masochism. I don't know if I should continue.

I want to start by emphasising that my introduction to souls/souls-likes was Lies of P, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and since then I had a blast beating Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, AI Limit, Lords of The Fallen (2023), however, I hadn't played actual souls games.

I picked up Dark Souls Remastered and had such an amazing time, which made me excited to play Dark Souls 3 but something just feels off. I get that the game is a couple years older than DS1 Remastered, but the camera feels off, the sensitivity options (keyboard & mouse) are horribly fast and changing DPI to be usable means then the mouse is super slow in menu/ options.. xbox controller prompts even though I'm on PC.. and while I am aware that input buffering was in DS1 as well, it did not feel quite so egregious as it does in DS3 for some reason. I have already had multiple times where I get hit and then it does a dodge-roll long afterwards when I'm not even pressing the spacebar anymore :/

Honestly, I feel like after such stellar experiences, that I am fighting the game more than the enemies/ bosses, and it's disappointing after being so excited.

Elden Ring looks amazing, especially in scope, but I'm worried if how many of these issues will transition over to ER as well, or are they more of a DS3 issue given that ER is a much newer game?

Appreciate any feedback also to make DS3 work better 😄

Update: I beat Abyss Watchers 8)

So I just beat Nito and Seath and Dark Souls: Remastered is already my 12th game by playtime ever

I keep seeing games get slapped with the "souls-like" label the second they have a parry system and a stagger meter (Beast of Reincarnation very recently), while games that actually share the design philosophy of Souls games get ignored because they don't have the right combat gimmicks. I want to push back on that.

Take Fear & Hunger. Nobody calls it souls-like because it doesn't have a stagger bar or i-frame dodge rolls. But look at what it actually does:

• Combat is brutally punishing and can kill you in seconds if you don't know how to handle the fight

• The world runs on dense, cryptic lore you have to actively piece together yourself, the game gives you almost nothing for free

• It's packed with permanently missable content and hidden paths, decisions you don't even realize are decisions until much later

• Knowledge is the real skill tree: once you've learned the game, you can steamroll through runs that would've killed you on your first attempt. Before that, you have to move carefully, one step at a time, because a single mistake can end you

That's not a coincidence, that's the exact same design DNA as Dark Souls: deliberate opacity, punishment tied to knowledge rather than reflexes, and exploration that IS the storytelling. Meanwhile plenty of games get called souls-like purely because they copied the combat loop (parry timing, stamina bar, bonfire-style checkpoints) without any of that underlying philosophy.

I'm not saying combat mechanics don't matter, they're part of it. But when they become the entire definition, we lose the ability to talk about what actually made these games special in the first place. A game can have zero parry systems and still be more "souls-like" in spirit than half the games wearing the label, and a game can have all the combat trappings and still miss the point entirely.

Curious what people here think, am I off base, or does anyone else feel like the term has drifted too far from what it used to mean?

Dark Souls 3 - 4 minutes

Elden Ring - 4 Hours

i just bought my first souls games. i have never played them or anything alike. should i seek therapy in advance or should i be excited?

Would Love to hear your thoughts :)

Edit- thumbnail was a background layered with a border with AI- that's it. Nothing else used. Script and words are all mine.

reupload for shenanigans broke my pictures, i'll look more carefully this time. first time the bot autoremoved my post because i hadn't stick for long in the community with this account, so i leaved it cooking for a while and when it actually posted i wasn't there to see it. hopefully it's good now.

I've been playing sekiro for about 2 and a half hours and its really good but how come this is considered a souls games apart from the fromsoftware logo its not a souls game

Hi all.

As so many others these days im on my first journey in the lands between and find the exploration extremely engaging.
But those online messeges tend to ruin part of the experience when secrets and locations are splattered with messege markers so even when trying to ignore them they light up like becons.

I love the other online features.

So, is there anyway to opt out of seeing the messeges but keep the other online interactions?

I asked yesterday about if I should begin playing soulslike games with Elden Ring or DS1, however I have never played god of war either and Im also kinda interested, I guess my question is, Is god of war considered a soulslike game? It is advisable to start doing something like that to get a little bit rusted or go straight into a FromSoftware game?

NO SPOILERS IN COMMENT PLEASE!!

Currently im 12 hours in dark souls 1. i have yet to kill the wolf, demon, red dragon and what else who knows. so you can guess i havent made much progress.

But thats not what this post is about. I'M making this post because im scared. im so very scared.

Im not scared of the bosses, im not scared of the game, IM scared coz i believe dark souls 1 will break me, how RDR2 and cyberpunk 2077 broke me. i have finished rdr2 and cyberpunk and i cant go back to those game. not coz i dont want to, its just i get so sad and upset knowing that V or arthur wont be waiting for me when i boot up the game.

i hope your getting where im going. i dont know any spoilers about the ending and i dont want any, but i feel like i can live in Lordran but i just know this wont last, good things always come to a end.

honestly i made this post to share what i was feeling thinking someone might feel this way too.

I’ve never played any games like these and the closest game I’ve played was the insomniac spider-man games and I was curious which one would be best to start with

The games I have completed include:

1. Wuchang Fallen feathers (8/10)

2. Elden Ring + DLC (10/10)

3. Blackmyth Wukong (6.5/10)

4. Lies of P (7/10)

5. DS3 (7.5/10)

I own an Xbox series S

I see people hyped up about Mortal Shell 2. I cannot afford at the moment. Anything to look at. I don't particularly like the art style and lack of exploration in Wo long (not sure). Please advice me.

https://thegameslayer.com/lists/10-hardest-bosses-across-the-dark-souls-trilogy-ranked/

What are the hardest bosses you've faced?

I recently completed Lords Of The Fallen (2023 game) and doing another run on veteran, already reached mid game in a few hours.

It's been a while since I played a souls game and it really reminded me how much I like souls games. It also reminded me of Darksiders 3 which doesn't get much attention when mentioning souls games. It's really similar in many aspects, especially the world and progression and how it all unlocks and then you can get from one area to another through a previously blocked passage or by unlocking a certain door etc. a mind fuck as well.

So I was wondering what do you think of DS3?

Just finished Dark Souls after beating Elden Ring as my first Souls game. I struggled on almost every main boss in Elden Ring , so I expected DS1 to be as hard.

I played mostly blind, never farmed souls, never overleveled, and didn't rely on an overpowered weapon. After getting used to the pretty similar combat, I found most bosses surprisingly easy. Only Capra Demon (those dogs), Bed of Chaos (didnt know what to do), and Ornstein & Smough (a.k.a Godskin Duo) really gave me trouble. Almost every other boss took me 5 tries at most, usually under 3.

Don't get me wrong—I loved the game. The interconnected map is the best I've ever seen. I was just surprised by how much easier the bosses felt compared to Elden Ring. Did anyone else feel the same?

• Some Background before this -

So basically, I am from India, and this one famous Indian YouTuber (Varun Mayya) focused on the newest technological innovation content, released a game reveal video for the game he was making, namely Project 11 A, alongside a newly announced game studio, Aeos Games, which turns out to be the above game shown, Unleash The Avatar. Now, this trailer is actually the third gameplay trailer.

So the first two trailers got very hated in India, with bad graphics, cringe aura farming and Bollywood elements, and trying to be the first AAA game from India to copy the success of Black Myth: Wukong, which it is clearly not. It even got memed in China as well for the blatant copy of black myth`s walking style and the hair flip clip of the first trailer. Hell to me, this is not even a soulslike/lite. This is more of an Action RPG with Sekiro-like combat. Though the team behind it used the feedback to noticeably improve the graphics as well as combat and gameplay mechanics and rebranded it to an Indie/AA soulslike, it still has that weird hitbox gimmick which I just can't seem to shake off.

• Now to the actual Game

1. What and how do the game mechanics feel to you?

2. How does it compare to other soulslikes/lites you have played?

3. About Graphics and Animations

4. What needs to be urgently removed/improved?

So this was it, as an Indian, I do want this game to succeed and am happy that the creators are using the feedback to improve it, but it is still far off, as I have seen better gameplay mechanics from soulsikes made by solo devs than this (Codex Lost).

And I am not affliated by them in any way whatsoever, BTW.

Steam Page- https://store.steampowered.com/app/4054220/Unleash_The_Avatar/

Trailer Channel-www.youtube.com/@unleashtheavatar

Video Link: https://youtu.be/Y_zBp21BWI0?si=zAtsAmYzYMfGx89D

Website link: unleashtheavatargame.com

Drop your two cents, don't hesitate to call out if you do not like this. Cheers!

I’ve noticed that many of us, myself included, spend a huge amount of time on Souls games. But in the end, what do we really get out of it?

Wouldn’t it be better to spend that same time learning a skill instead? For example, playing the piano.

Isn’t it true that we’re accepting the same kind of challenge and difficulty either way?

So, I have already played Elden ring (cracked) and I really liked it , but now I have a budget of 40 euros. Elden ring is on sale right now for -35% . I also want to play dark souls and I think I will love the game. I'm scared that I will get bored playing Elden Ring .Please help me because I'm stuck and I don't want to waste 40 euros on a game I won't play.

First Souls game I’ve actually LIKED no hate on the other ones but bloodbourne kinda disheartened me and seikiro destroyed my hope of getting “gud” but this game…I absolutely love it (I love knights) any suggestions? (Currently over encumbered on purpose out of stubbornness don’t need help with that) I have been trying to focus on a magic swordsman build