"Maybe I should unplug my PlayStation 5 from the Internet," I mumbled to myself last week.
I've spent the last few weeks slowly playing the Demon's Souls remake for PS5, and it's been a delight to revisit such a revolutionary game, one that still feels quirky and fresh, even in 2020. But it's also been a chance to re-experience bad memories, ones that remain seared into my psyche, even all these years later. Chief among them is one of the game's most unique bosses, Old Monk, a decaying leader who lurks at the end of the creepy Latria.
what iâm hearing is you canât play anything at all offline on ps5 without doing something so dramatic as unplugging the cable, which
is this actually the case?
i feel like all it took was signing out of psn or something like that. iâm certain i stopped playing dark souls 2 online at some point without disconnecting my ps3 entirely. itâs been awhile since i played it though.
I have watched Hasan get so mad at this game that he ended stream abruptly not once, but twice. And it brings me a weird sick joy that I cannot be happy about lmao.
And while I enjoy playing Dark Souls co-op with friends, I kind of feel like Sekiro having no multiplayer is one of the best design decisions Fromsoft has ever made and that none of their games should have pvp going forward.
All the qtâs to this remind me why people donât like playing Souls games. Agree or not, his gripes sound sincere and everyoneâs like âGIT GUD YOU FUCKING NORMIE LOSERâ
I would actually argue that the Old Monk is the worst pvp implementation theyâve done in the souls series, and they wisely walked it back for all their future entries. Gating progression behind mandatory competitive multiplayer in a primarily single player game is a terrible idea.
Iâm glad that when I eventually play it I wonât have PS+ so I wonât have to worry about it.
Ironically Demonâs Souls is the exception, as playing in soul form is actually the optimal way to play. You do a lot more damage in soul form and the reduction in HP can easily be made up for with a ring you get early in the game. Thereâs really no reason to ever go into human form unless you specifically want to engage with the multiplayer.
Not surprised to see some people being taken aback by how agro Demonâs Souls is. It makes Dark Souls look extremely focus tested, and I was curious how much of that stuff would end up getting tweaked. For as aggressive as the aesthetic overhaul was, it seems like they pretty much left the mechanical side of things alone?
Iâd be really curious to see if they ever release like a âdirectorâs cutâ of Demonâs Souls as DLC, that cuts out all the bullshit that is infamously unpopular for a more mainstream experience.
Bluepointâs a bit strange about this, they seem to view gameplay as the only essential part of the games they remake. (Although changing the control scheme in Colossus comes close to changing gameplay.) So theyâre fine changing things aesthetically, character creator, etc., but will never touch whatever they consider âgameplay.â
Compared to later games where PvP is just a mechanism for Honorable Duels⢠and the design did just about everything possible to disincentivize sporadic invasions, things like soul formâs huge health penalty are good mechanics for making the potential of enemy invasions something you have to factor into walking around in body form.
DeSâ best quality was how it was so willing to buck conventional design with ideas like invasions and world tendency, or bosses like Maiden Astraea and Old Monk. The seriesâ continual adherence to fan expectations of homogeneous design thatâs hard but totally free of âgimmicksâ to create any sense of friction with the core play experience, has been the number one thing making me totally bored with the later games from Bloodborneâs DLC onward. Going back to DeSâs more rough-hewn structure was eye opening, and I donât like that theyâre treated as mistakes from growing pains rather than ideas meant to foster a very unique type of play experience.
âFree of gimmicksâ is not how I would describe Soulsbornes. From what I remember of Dark Souls (never played Demons), most bosses have a âgimmickâ. I would also imagine âforced PVPâ itself is a gimmick. I imagine you mean something specific but Iâm not sure I understand what youâre going for.
Later games (BB/DS3/Sekiro) have different visual themes for the bosses, but the majority of them have the same general idea: you learn a bunch of weird attack timings, then dodge/deflect and punish. Those games arenât without bosses that buck the norm (Micolash, Folding Screen Monkeys), yet every Archdemon and a few regular bosses in DeS are what the souls community would call âgimmickâ fights since they arenât principally about mastering the combat game systems.
Dragon God is a pretty bad broken stealth mission and Old Monk chafes against people trying to avoid PvP at all costs, but Iâll take a dud or two if it means more variety in the gamut of bosses.
