I like Dark Souls!
She’s great!
In fact I love the whole genre!
Ya got Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls the Third, Bloodborne Souls,
Ashen Souls, Sekiro Souls… other ones I’m sure?
The combat, the exploration, the worldbuilding and storytelling, everything about these games
is so fresh and fun!
And, yes, they are hard games, but that’s not the point.
Please stop saying, “Dark Souls is good because it’s hard.”
It’s good because of the brilliantly crafted interconnected world it’s set in and the
tight little combat system you get to utilize.
Saying it’s good because it’s hard is an incredibly shallow viewpoint and, frankly,
a misunderstanding of the whole point of the genre.
Anyway, despite the fact that I love the Souls Genre, it does have a ton of huge flaws and,
no, I’m not talkin’ about bugs or goofy physics or anything.
No, I mean actual game design issues that I think seriously need to be addressed going
forward, especially seeing as how often the Souls game design philosophies are being adapted
these days.
The biggest problem I think all these Souls and Soulslikes have is the runback.
Simply put, the runback is the path you take from a checkpoint back to the boss room to
make another attempt at beating said boss.
These can range anywhere from a short leisurely stroll to a tiny room to a mile long marathon
through hordes of undead who are impossible not to aggro.
Now, obviously I don’t have a problem with the first example there, a tiny trek from
bonfire to boss with no danger in between is trivial, this isn’t Super Meat Boy, you
shouldn’t just immediately respawn directly inside the boss room when you die.
Where I do take issue is when the section between you and the boss is so littered with
enemies, avoidable or not, that you end up more annoyed than anything upon death.
Let’s talk specifics!
Alright, so you’re playing Dark Souls and you just mucked your way through the technical
and physical nightmare that is Blighttown.
You ride down the water mill thing and find a new bonfire.
You rest up and and start exploring the big poison pool around you and eventually stumble
into a spider-infested hole and are confronted by Quelaag.
Boss time!
You try your best, but inevitably die.
Then it hits you.
To make another attempt at fighting Quelaag you have to trudge through the poison, avoid
the little bug fucks, dodge past the rock boys, and THEN enter the fog gate and try
to kill Quelaag.
I don’t know if it’s just me, and it very possibly is, but that’s annoying as hell.
I’ve already cleared this whole area, I just want to kill the boss, let me do that!
The Souls games have a huge problem with these types of runbacks in particular, just unnecessarily
long ones.
The Taurus Demon and the Bed of Chaos in Dark Souls, the Blazing Bull in Sekiro, Father
Gascoigne in Bloodborne, these all are so annoyingly long and just force you to repeat
parts of the game that you have clearly already proven yourself capable of doing.
This is really more on the world design than anything.
Enemy placement does affect these longer runbacks, which I’ll get to in the next part, but
it’s usually just the annoyance of having to run all the way back to a place you’ve
already been.
It’s like if when you failed a test you had to redo the entire course before attempting
the test again.
People don’t like having to repeat content, that’s why progression is so satisfying.
Spawn me in front of the fog door or move the bonfire/lantern/sculptor’s idol/whatever
closer!
Dealer’s choice!
So like I alluded to earlier, the enemies on these runbacks can seriously affect the
quality of them.
Usually you just run past everything and they’ll aggro, but they won’t be fast enough to
fuck with your health before you get to the fog door, but this isn’t always the case.
Take this runback in Sekiro from the Ashina Reservoir idol to this big fat spear boy.
God, fuck this guy, by the way.
Anyway, there are so many enemies on the way from the idol to the temple behind spear boy
that it is, I’m pretty sure, impossible to not trigger anything.
This is the same case in the Taurus Demon runback, but in that one it’s a lot easier
to avoid things and you go through a fog door where enemies can’t mess with you anymore.
This guy though, oh no, this guy’s got FRIENDS WITH GUNS!
I was stuck on spear boy for longer than I would have liked, but I was so much more annoyed
with his runback than the actual fight because of the randomness of Cliff McShootshisgun
and his friends General McWarrior Bros.
And even when I was able to find a path where it was incredibly rare for the gun guy to
shoot me, I had to sit in the temple and wait for the rest of the dudes I aggroed to stop
looking for me and walk back to their posts so I could engage with spear boy without interruption.
And, yes, I know his name is Shikibu Toshikatsu Yamauchi, not spear boy, but he doesn’t
deserve to be called by his true name.
Ugh.
This is actually a huge problem in Sekiro specifically, the waiting for enemies to stop
hunting you.
In the other Souls games the bosses are locked behind fog doors that enemies outside can’t
follow you through, but since the minibosses are usually in an open area surrounded by
other enemies in Sekiro, you oftentimes have to sit there doing nothing for like thirty
seconds before you can engage the small boss man, which sucks.
Now, a good counter to the enemies along a runback being a problem is that they are considered
part of the boss fight and add to the difficulty of the game.
I disagree with this because they are, especially in the more traditional Souls games, physically
separated from the boss room.
If they were intended to be a phase or a part of the boss encounter then they would be closer
to the boss or in the room itself.
For example Juzou the Drunkard in Sekiro has a group of adds around him and the Ancient
Wyvern’s arena in Dark Souls 3 is littered with normal dragon guys to slow you down on
your ascent.
Either way, the enemies posted along any given runback will definitely fuck with you on your
way to the boss room and I hate that.
Okay I’m gonna go ahead and assume not a lot of you have played Ashen, a Soulslike
by A44, so I’ll try and be vague here, since I’m about to talk about the final boss of
it.
Great game, by the way, if you like classic Dark Souls and cute environments, check it
out!
It actually spawned this video idea, because of how god awful the labyrinths are where
bonfires are so few and far between that it’ll make you wanna shoot yourself.
So it’s not perfect, but still good!
Anyway, at the end of the game you return to the hub village and make your way toward
the cave that serves as a last small area before the final fight.
This runback to the final area and boss is honestly the worst I’ve ever seen and enunciates
both of my previous points perfectly.
Not only is the cave itself a lengthy walk away from the village’s spawn point, once
you get there it’s full of small paths with enemies blocking your way, enemies with semi-unpredictable
movement, and, my favorite thing, long drop-offs that the goofy Dark Souls jumping system will
definitely have you falling down.
And of course once you make it to the point where enemies can no longer follow you, there’s
a completely unnecessarily long path from the cave exit to the boss arena.
Just put a bonfire right after you get through the cave!
There’s no reason not to!
You’re just wasting your player’s time!
Ugh!
Also, slightly unrelated, but since we’re still harping on Ashen.
This game has the gall to occasionally halt your progress completely until you kill a
certain enemy on the way back to the boss.
Like here, right before Shadow of the Ashen, there are these guard statues that block you
from fighting the boss until you kill the enemies nearby.
That is such garbage.
So what’s my answer to this problem?
The obvious would be to put the checkpoints right in front of the boss arena, which is
actually not unheard of in these games.
Look at this idol literally steps away from the Guardian Ape!
Like??
More of that, please!
That would be fine, I’d be very okay with that, but I do have another option.
It’s a little more drastic, so hear me out.
Make respawning enemies when resting at a checkpoint an option.
I understand that this would be a massive change to the genre’s game design philosophy,
but I think it’s ultimately beneficial and would be a fantastic reward for clearing an
area.
So here’s the game plan, developer boys.
I am totally qualified to be telling you what to do!
Let’s go back to Undead Burg because apparently I have a lot of shit to say about it?
You arrive at the first bonfire after killing the bow guy and his friends.
You rest and they come back, no big deal, you kill them again and explore the rest of
the area, killing everything in your path.
Maybe you get to the Taurus Demon and die a few times so you decide to grind the area
a bit more and remember a pretty strong black knight bro who you haven’t been able to
quite defeat yet.
Eventually you best him and clear out the area once again.
You head back to the bonfire to respawn everyone and level up and, oh shit?
“You have cleared the Undead Burg, you now have the option to revive enemies here or
leave them dead.”
Suddenly the runback to the Taurus Demon is so much less annoying.
This could be implemented in a variety of ways: spending Souls, buying an item, etc.
I would also say that the enemies should be forcibly respawned after the boss of the area
is killed so that the player isn’t roaming around an empty world forever.
Not only does this retroactively solve a ton of runbacks in already existing Souls games,
it gives more agency to the player and makes clearing an area that much more satisfying.
Plus, in a genre of games fully committed to making everything cryptic, including how
to play the damn game, it gives the player a little more of an idea of their progress.
They wouldn’t know if they got every item or solved every puzzle, but they would know
they’ve killed every regular enemy in the area.
A sense of accomplishment rewarded with a nice and easy stroll toward their next challenge.
It’s a huge change, I know, but I think it could help.
So there ya go.
That’s the ‘fatal flaw of the Souls genre’ that I clickbaited you with.
I do have a lot of other problems with this genre (none of which are the difficulty, so
shut up about me needing to git gud).
This one has just always been the most glaring to me.
Okay, that’s enough out of me!
I’m gonna go find some more controversial opinions to murder my channel with now.
Bye bye!