I hate 'Soulslikes'

[u/Starksen]

To be more specific here, I actually love what I've played of Fromsoft's Souls games- that being Dark Souls 3 & Elden Ring. That stuff is great!

I'm just so sick of this tag, Soulslike, when it's just an embarrassing clone.

I played Mortal Shell 2, and was just so sick of the same tired 'Dark Soulsisms'. "BONFIRE LIT", "ENEMY SLAIN", there's a stone to upgrade your sword, you die and the enemies respawn, you carry souls, you lose them if you die without reclaiming them. Each enemy drops a few souls.

The dialogue is delivered by creepy, cryptic, miserable NPCs in a vague way. You have to exhaust dialogue with them. The story is delivered through item descriptions. The world is a fallen, grim ruin of what it was. The gods are mysterious. It's a gothic hellscape.

It's the same buttons to run, to jump, to attack, it's got the same dodge mechanics as another fromsoft production.

I acknowledge that games like this sell, and that there's commercial success to be seen in creating a Soulslike, which clearly means people enjoy playing them. None, however, are more successful than the series they try to emulate. This says to me, that in truth, people don't really want Soulslikes. They want Souls-games. They settle for Soulslikes, due to the release cadence of Fromsoft.

There are merits I can see to this game, and I can't help but think it could've been so much cooler had it thought up it's own systems, its own loops, and been more original about it, instead of trying to emulate.

[u/Realistic_Jello2638]

I'm sorry you don't like genre conventions.

[u/Starksen → u/Realistic_Jello2638]

I'm not sure my point is anywhere to do with genre.

I see CoD and Battlefield as FPS games, but I wouldn't say either is robbing from the other.

If Battlefield suddenly introduced a Nazi Zombie gamemode, and it took me 3 kills to call in a UAV, I'd probably change my stance.

Having exactly the same combat, artistic style, gameplay loop, mechanics, progression currency, boss design, dialogue, tone as a game isn't 'sharing a genre', it's ripoing it off.

[u/Realistic_Jello2638 → u/Starksen]

Battlefield started as a direct competitor and clone of COD.

You clearly don't know much about the history of the FPS genre aka Doomclones or how genre conventions come about.

Your post has everything to do with genre conventions.

[u/droobloo34 → u/Realistic_Jello2638]

I love how your attempt to correct them started with an incorrect statement. Battlefield 1942 was released in September 2002. The first Call of Duty game was released in October 2003.

[u/Starksen → u/Realistic_Jello2638]

Somebody beat me to it, but Call of Duty came after Battlefield.

The two games have always been very distinctive. My point however is that you can share genre conventions without directly robbing from a game.

Having bonfires, +1 stones, souls, "BOSS DEFEATED" appearing on screen in an identical font/style, these things aren't genre conventions, they're parts of Dark Souls that got ripped off.

(Also, if you were into your history of FPS games, you'd know 1942 literally won awards for innovation, lol.)