Okay so I have never been into the Souls games. The whole “brutally difficult” thing never appealed to me, and watching my friends play was enough to turn me off.
However I decided to take the plunge and try Elden Ring recently because of all the amazing hype. Tons of “I’m not a Souls gamer but I loved it!” kind of hype.
And it’s pretty fun! I get why it got so much love.
But I also, after a week or two of play, have identified exactly what I don’t like about Souls games. It turns out it’s not the difficulty. I grew up playing in arcades and on the NES so I’m no stranger to trying things over and over until I get it right.
It’s the damn death penalty. I cannot express the depth of my hatred of losing progress. Games with save points that are too far apart or games where you can lose items when you die, etc, are just the worst for me. And in Elden Ring, the stress that goes along with trying to get back to my corpse to get my money/XP back is stress I don’t want or need.
So I ask you all this: can you recommend a Souls style game with the fun gameplay loop but without the punishing death penalty? Does that even exist or is it just not a Souls game without that? I’d love the carrot of [learn fight, get better, epic win] without the stick of [now go grind low level mobs for XP, loser].
If you are looking for “learn fight, get better, epic win” without much of a death penalty, maybe look at Monster Hunter?
It’s not the same as a Souls game - not much world exploration, not much plot, zero gothiness - but it is 3D Fantasy Boss Fights: The Game. With 14 genuinely different weapon classes to choose from.
And if you faint three times and fail the quest, all you’ve lost are the consumables you spent on the attempt. (If you give up early and bail, you haven’t even lost that.)
I also second this. After you master your weapon and go into ‘advanced’ play of MH, it’s harder than any soul game, without penalty tho.
By advance play, I mean normally for each weapon, you can go in and keep attacking, you will win eventually. But your hunt might take a long time. After you get better and better, you will learn that the weapon of your choice has meta-play; you will want to try that and get better, you will keep practicing, and you will learn monster move set, timing, and their weak points, min-max your gears, etc… that’s when the real game of Monster Hunter started ;)
I played for thousands of hours and used to play every day just to get better and better. It’s a very relaxing and rewarding play.