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What was a game you instantly regretted buying? (piefed.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/askgaming@piefed.social
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[–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's clearly a good game, and like you say it's doing some cool stuff. I love the art direction and the world building is really interesting. The graphics are beautiful too. The absorb system with the traits is an interesting take on character building.

I just find - more and more with age - that my enjoyment of struggling with games is decreasing. Maybe it's my skill and reflexes worsening, I don't know. I'm not getting much enjoyment out of super hard games anymore, and increasingly I notice that even if I manage to beat a particularly hard boss I don't feel that jubilant rush of elation afterwards but instead just feel a tired sense of "I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore".

It's funny though because I recently played through the whole Ninja Gaiden 3D franchise and those didn't give me that feeling despite being hard so maybe it really is just Soulslike fatigue.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I feel you there. I think I had a similar experience with Thymesia. I thought I could hang because I had already beat Sekiro and Lies of P but there does seem to be a trend towards ratcheting up the reaction times and amount of moving parts without signposting the mechanics at play.

    Part of it feels like jank which is to be expected from smaller studios but part of it is making me think I might just be getting old too

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Difficulty inflation is definitely a trend, which is to be expected to an extent as there is clearly a market for it and that market is generally getting more and more skillful with each game they play in the genre. Even within FromSoft for example it's noticeable that they feel the need to one-up themselves with every new release to the point that I felt no desire to try my hand at the Elden Ring DLC. Malenia was already more than enough for me.

    I think you're right about smaller studios too, I imagine playtesting and getting the difficulty just right takes a lot of resources and is probably why so many small-studio Soulslikes either end up feeling way too easy or way too hard - both often in an unfun way.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    God, yeah. The clearest indicator to me when difficulty is coming at the expense of the game is when I'm seeing most other players fight Malenia with only 1 of 2 builds (those who aren't doing a challenge run anyway). In that particular case maybe reducing the talisman effects to only +3.5% HP was just going to cause every player to give up whatever they were doing before and just play as Glintstone Tragoth Chungus or Rivers of Blood Radahn.

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