I was watching a few videos on the difficulty in Khazan recently (https://youtu.be/iRn_4QtYFiM and a different one which I can’t find any longer) where the creators argued that the difficulty, while very hard, is essential to the experience of the game. If the bosses were any less difficult, they would not pose enough of a challenge to players, thus diminishing the sense of accomplishment when beating the boss.

This made wonder if difficult bosses really are the most defining characteristic of soulslikes since that’s what most people seem to focus on. Dark Souls was notoriously marketed as the difficult game franchise, with FromSoft even leaning into this reputation with their DS1 Prepare to Die edition. But is difficulty really that important to a good soulslike?

Demon’s Souls, for example, mainly has gimmick bosses. Sure, Allan and Maneaters are quite difficult objectively speaking, but apart from Flamelurker (?) there was no boss in the game that gave me major trouble - it was primarily the brutal level design and lack of bonfires.

DS1, which had been heralded as this super hard game, doesn’t pose too many super difficult boss fights, by modern standards, either - the level design and interconnectedness of the world is the primary focus.

I feel like Sekiro (and maybe Nioh? haven’t played any of them) pushed the genre to include suuper difficult bosses, then Elden Ring did, now lower-budget studios with games like Lies of P or Khazan do, whilst the other pillars of what make up a “standard” soulslike take up a little bit of a background role.

With all that said, I was just wondering what your experience with difficult bosses has been recently and if you value difficult bosses over any other aspect of the games. Maybe you don’t care about difficulty at all and rather want to explore and feel the atmosphere of the world you’re in.

Have a nice weekend ✌🏻

  • Panties@lemmy.ca
    4·
    6 days ago

    For me it’s about finding a situation that seems impossible at first, then eventually beating it by learning the enemy (both the actual enemies and the environment) and getting better myself.

    That doesn’t just include bosses, level design is a big part of it too, and it’s what I enjoy (and sometimes detest) the most about souls games.

    Edit: forgot the question I was answering, lol. Difficulty is an essential part of my experience, but more as a method and not the goal. It creates tension, keeps me focused, makes me notice things that I would have missed otherwise, and gives that great feeling of winning against the impossible.