Personally there are a few games which left me very dissappointed, after hyping myself up for years in certain cases.
Divinity Original Sin: turns out I prefer more streamlined, less packed games (love Pillars of Eternity) and that coop play in a CRPG stresses me out.
Wasteland 2: I actually managed to finish this one but secretly I admit I was hoping for a better Fallout which I didn’t really get. New Vegas did the cowboy theme much better.
INSIDE: while the design was cool, it was just a ton of boring, easy puzzles in comparison to LIMBO, its predecessor.
Elden Ring
It’s just Dark Souls 3.5. Which is not necessarily bad if you really liked DS3 and just want more of the same thing, but I considered DS3 by far the weakest in the series to begin with, and playing the Nioh series after it has opened my eyes to just how much room for improvement there is in the DS series as a whole. From Soft has basically followed the same path as Bethesda - they used to make varied games until one of them randomly became wildly successful, and from that point onward they haven’t had the balls to deviate from the winning formula and have just been remaking that same game over and over with a slightly different coat of paint each time. Which makes sense from a business point of view, I guess, but after this many repetitions, it’s become clear to me From Soft is totally creatively bankrupt. Hell, it’s been more than a decade since Demon’s Souls, and they still can’t even figure out a better counter to the “roll behind them and stab them in the butt” strategy than making enemy tracking ever more effective and their movements ever more spasmodic and unreadable in each subsequent game. The end result of this complete lack of willingness and/or ability to innovate is that despite being expertly crafted, Elden Ring feels very by-the-numbers and utterly soulless (if you’ll pardon the pun).
I often describe Elden Ring with the following sentence: “If you gave me this game with no title and told me it’s Dark Souls 4, I would have no reason to doubt you”.
It’s great for everyone that wanted more Dark Souls, and ER is arguably a good starting point for anyone that hasn’t played any of the Dark Souls, but it’s still Dark Souls. If someone had tried Dark Souls in the past and realized that they don’t like the game, I really wouldn’t expect Elden Ring changing that.
For me personally: Elden Ring is pretty much my favourite game of all time. I feel like it’s the “culmination of Dark Souls design”, and just happens to be exactly what I was personally looking for in DS games - but even with this in mind, I don’t feel the need of getting more of the same.
But hey, as for Fromsoft just doing the same thing over and over - Armored Core VI coming out next week, and that’s quite different. :D
I’d probably feel the same way if I hadn’t played a few other similar games while waiting for ER. Nioh and especially Nioh 2 showed me how much more Dark Souls could do. Their combat system is much richer and deeper, and I find it baffling that From Soft hasn’t tried copying even a few of their ideas. I hadn’t realized anything was missing from the Souls formula until I played them, but now I can’t unsee it. Maybe my expectations are excessive. From Soft seems incapable of copying even its own good ideas. Dark Souls 2 made quite a few good (if relatively minor) changes to the formula, all of which were erased the moment Miyazaki took back control of the series.
I also recently replayed Blade of Darkness, which I consider the forgotten true originator of the souls-like genre. Being more than twenty years old, it’s much simpler than its spiritual successors, but it showed me that Dark Souls also does a bunch of things it really doesn’t need to do, such as bullshit artificial difficulty. I used to think BoD was really hard back when I played it for the first time more than two decades ago, but after several thousand hours in Souls and Nioh, it feels easy. And you know what? That makes it great fun. Enemy attack patterns are quite basic and easily readable and predictable, there are no surprise ganks and no spoiler enemies (which is what I like to call annoying enemies specifically added in order to spoil what would otherwise be a fun combat encounter). Hell, there’s even friendly fire among enemies, so it’s much harder for them to gang up on you, and you get none of that toxic and abusive encounter design based around ranged enemies shooting you through melee ones that From Soft seems so very fond of. Nioh showed me what the Souls series is missing, and BoD reminded me that sometimes less really is more.
Seeing that ER is just more of the same has really sapped my motivation to play, and I haven’t gotten very far in it as a result. I’ll probably finish it someday, but I’m definitely not going into the NG+ cycle and PvP for hundreds of hours like I used to do with previous Souls games.
Ah yes, the sixth game in a series. More than halfway to double digits. Such innovation. ;D
I do like Nioh, it’s always on my list of suggestions for people interested in that type of games. But I feel like it’s also quite a different game from Dark Souls - there’s room for both in the market, and I enjoy both for different reasons. While similar, Nioh’s combat feels more like a fast-paced arcade-y brawler, while DS feels slower and more methodical. Personally I can’t really say one is better than the other, since I just enjoy both of them - but they’re different enough that it’s clear that some players will prefer one over the other.
Outside of combat, I again feel like DS is a bit “slower”, I spend more time just exploring and wondering where to go next, etc. Nioh areas and levels are (usually) a bit more straightforward and faster to progress due to its mission structure. Storytelling format is also really different. But again, I just enjoy both of them for different reasons.
Especially during New Game+ rounds 2 to 5, Nioh also gets much deeper in the gear minmaxing department compared to DS - I’ve 100%d all DLCs in both Niohs. The gearing system in Nioh is also made in such a way that sometimes it’s useful to just go farm the same bosses over and over - this is something that doesn’t really exist in DS. Then there’s even the infinite boss arena mode. I personally often think about Nioh as “a game with DS-style combat design, Diablo-style progression”. I love the end result.
As far as I know, they’re planning to do similar DLC content in Wo Long too (new round of NG+ per DLC), and I’m waiting until they release all DLCs so I can go complete those too.
Blade of Darkness has been on my to-do list for quite a long time now, I really should get into it some day. :D
I was originally about to mention Fromsoft also creating Sekiro and Bloodborne in between Dark Souls sequels, but I guess it can be argued they’re all just the same with different skin. AC is at least completely different. Personally I have no issues with game devs finding what they do best and just keep doing it with only minor improvements - as a player, I can just choose to play games from different devs anyway.
I think the combat speed is probably the most noticeable difference between DS and Nioh, and I’d probably prefer some middle ground between the two, but IMO it’s far from the most interesting or impactful one. For example, I love the sheer variety of attacks in Nioh and the emphasis on special moves. In Dark Souls, you mostly just spam the same basic attack over and over. Nioh gives you three stances to switch between (a system copied from the old Jedi Knight games, btw.) and a bevy of special attacks that you can learn. And I love that those special moves aren’t tied to specific weapons but rather to your character and those three stances, so your moveset is not only much larger than in DS but also customizable. And I do think this is straight-up better than DS, because it’s not just a difference, it’s an addition. All that complexity and depth is there for you to explore if you want to, but you don’t have to. If you wanted to, you could play Nioh like Souls and just use the basic medium attack. The reverse is not true, you can’t play Souls like Nioh.
Another interesting difference is that Nioh lets you put pressure on enemies in ways that DS disallows. In DS, when an enemy’s stamina is depleted and their guard broken, you’re given the opportunity to do a finisher. But regardless of whether or not you take it, they regain their stamina and the fight basically resets, forcing you to dodge the enemy’s attacks and chip away at them again. That can also happen in Nioh, but you can also choose to forego the finisher and keep the pressure up instead with a zero-ki combo. Attacking an exhausted enemy again will knock them on the ground, opening them up to a different type of finisher, but you can also still attack them normally (probably requiring a stance switch) in order to force them to stand back up without giving them the opportunity to regain their ki/stamina. At the same time, you can use well-timed ki pulses to replenish your own stamina, so if you have the timing down, you can keep an enemy stunlocked pretty much indefinitely. And you can even do this to bosses. Dark Souls doesn’t allow you to keep the upper hand in a fight, it goes so far as to give the enemy several seconds of invincibility after a finisher in order to reset the fight. Nioh isn’t like that, it does let you keep the upper hand and really exploit it if you know what you’re doing. And once again it’s not a difference, it’s an addition. That basic DS cycle of “dodge enemy attack, break their guard, do a finisher, rinse and repeat” is present in Nioh too, but whereas in DS it’s the end point and the pinnacle of player skill (because they game doesn’t allow you to do anything else), in Nioh it’s the start. It’s what newbies do. Over time you learn to dominate enemies in far more effective ways, and it feels oh so much more satisfying than anything Souls can offer.
In short, I think Nioh is just a straight upgrade to Souls in terms of gameplay. Souls starts you off as a weak little hollow, and you fight like one. That’s all well and good, but you never move beyond that, you’re always the one under pressure even after you’ve absorbed the souls of lords and acquired legendary weapons. That slow, methodical combat is also present in Nioh, but it’s an early-game element, it’s something for you to grow out of as you upgrade your character and improve your own skills as a player. That late-game fast-paced brawling action is no less skill-based, mind you, I’d even argue it requires way more skill than Souls. But it also rewards you for your skill way more than Souls ever does.
I could list Wo Long right alongside Elden Ring as a game I found disappointing. It doesn’t seem to have been very well received in general, and I stopped playing at the first boss. I could write a whole other diatribe about how the tutorial bosses in From Soft games become more and more unfair bullshit over time, and to my dismay the first boss of Wo Long is basically Iudex Gundyr, whom I absolutely despise. In other words, he’s a fairly easy humanoid boss with clearly telegraphed attacks in his first phase, but in his second phase he turns into a mutated shapeless blob that spazzes the fuck out all over the place in ways specifically designed to kill you because you can’t tell WTF he’s even doing. You know the saying “when people show you who they are, believe them”? When Team Ninja showed me they were doing a Dark Souls 3, I believed them and lost all interest in playing further.
Sekiro and Bloodborne are interesting, since they’re variations on the formula that show that From Soft is actually capable of trying new things. It’s just a shame that, as with DS2, basically none of the improvements they pioneered were carried forward to Elden Ring (such as showing you the enemy stamina bar, which is also something Nioh does). Pretty much their only legacy is the replacement of poise with hyperarmor, which I consider a detriment. In Nioh, stunlocking an enemy is possible but requires a lot of game knowledge and practice to get the timing right. In From Soft games since Bloodborne, stunlocking an enemy requires nothing more than hitting them before they hit you, at which point you’re free to keep swinging for as long as your stamina lasts. That’s just dumb and boring.
As for farming a specific spot over and over, that is absolutely something that exists in Souls. It’s usually not a boss, since most of the games don’t let you easily respawn bosses (DS2 being the exception, with the Giant Lord specifically designed to be farmed), but farming for souls and/or upgrade materials has been a staple of the series since its inception.
If you do play Blade of Darkness, temper your expectations. I love it because of massive nostalgia, but it was clunky as hell even by the standards of its day. There are good reasons it wasn’t a commercial success.
I’d be down for just more Dark Souls if it wasn’t for the fact that Elden Ring’s boss fights are the worst of the Soulsbournes. They’re super cheap and poorly balanced.