ResurrectedContrarian
Suffers with mild autism
Confession: this is sort of a stealth brag that I'm getting to enjoy this game for the first time, whilst all of you can never erase your memory and have that experience of true surprise again.
The basics:
- middle-aged gamer, but somehow never played a Souls game until now
- got a PS5, signed up for plus, downloaded this and never looked back at anything else since
- truly going in blind and have looked at nothing; no spoilers please, because I don't like knowing anything about a game like this one when I start
My experience so far: I shut off the lights & put on headphones once the kids & wife were all asleep one night just after Christmas, and dove in. For the first 15 minutes, I wasn't sure if the genre was ultimately going to be traditional survival horror... the werewolf in the lab area was pretty frightening to creep up on without weapons, and I had no idea that I was supposed to die at that point. In fact, I tried to find a weapon or some way around it for a good little while before finally just getting killed. And even then, I was frustrated, thinking the dream was only a failure hub, and went immediately back in to try and fight or escape the werewolf a second, and then third time and fourth time still empty-handed, before finally talking to the skeletons to receive a weapon in the dream. To be fair, the skeletons had nothing but tutorial tips until that point, so I had no reason to expect that they'd give me a weapon, so I'd ignored the ones with the "gifts" for a while. I assumed I had simply failed to fight properly and was determined to beat this injured / weakened werewolf before going forward with anything else.
In general, the function of the dream world is the most confusing part of the game when you go in without having seen any prior games from the related series, and with zero knowledge of how things work. I wasted a few hours of play before I understood any of the consequences of moving between the real and dream worlds, or even understood just what kind of saving the game does. Since all the monsters reset themselves when I went to the dream and back, I assumed that entering the dream at the same lamp point as before was a kind of failure to progress, and that I needed to reach a second lamp in order to "save" any of my killing I'd done and keep them dead--so I just kept trying to reach a second lamp for hours without any care for points or leveling, thinking of each death as full reset. Everything about the dream's role, how saving works, and the risk / reward system was confusing at first. So I died a lot of times just trying to work out the combat and experiment, only to find that it seemed the enemies were perhaps getting stronger while I wasn't.
Anyhow, once I finally understood everything through trial and error (how to "level up" with the doll, the meaning of the blood points, what dying does, etc), I just decided to start over from the beginning and do things right. On second go at it, things went much smoother. I made it very far through the main area on a single life and obtained an insight point in the sewer area to get the doll, with a ton of points to spend and finally level up enough to take down the first boss on my very next run. Upon beating that boss, however, I was still a bit confused to gain a new lamp that doesn't lead anywhere new, and to find that nothing except the boss stayed dead. Now I see that it's just the way the game works, but none of that is intuitive.
The world / city looks fantastic once you get outside, and is the real highlight of the game for me. Combat is still a struggle and felt sluggish at first, but I'm getting it now. I think I mainly need to figure out how to balance dodging with attacks and do more "dodge into the enemy" moves aggressively for a follow-up shot instead of dodging away. I died at the second boss fight I encountered, the old hunter, and paused at that point to just explore further before taking him on again.
That's it so far. A very enjoyable game that reminds me at times of the moods from one of my favorite childhood games, Castlevania III, just for the world's feeling of despair. Don't spoil anything, because I don't like knowing things about games until I see them for myself. Generic tips about combat are fine if they don't spoil an item or area etc.
The basics:
- middle-aged gamer, but somehow never played a Souls game until now
- got a PS5, signed up for plus, downloaded this and never looked back at anything else since
- truly going in blind and have looked at nothing; no spoilers please, because I don't like knowing anything about a game like this one when I start
My experience so far: I shut off the lights & put on headphones once the kids & wife were all asleep one night just after Christmas, and dove in. For the first 15 minutes, I wasn't sure if the genre was ultimately going to be traditional survival horror... the werewolf in the lab area was pretty frightening to creep up on without weapons, and I had no idea that I was supposed to die at that point. In fact, I tried to find a weapon or some way around it for a good little while before finally just getting killed. And even then, I was frustrated, thinking the dream was only a failure hub, and went immediately back in to try and fight or escape the werewolf a second, and then third time and fourth time still empty-handed, before finally talking to the skeletons to receive a weapon in the dream. To be fair, the skeletons had nothing but tutorial tips until that point, so I had no reason to expect that they'd give me a weapon, so I'd ignored the ones with the "gifts" for a while. I assumed I had simply failed to fight properly and was determined to beat this injured / weakened werewolf before going forward with anything else.
In general, the function of the dream world is the most confusing part of the game when you go in without having seen any prior games from the related series, and with zero knowledge of how things work. I wasted a few hours of play before I understood any of the consequences of moving between the real and dream worlds, or even understood just what kind of saving the game does. Since all the monsters reset themselves when I went to the dream and back, I assumed that entering the dream at the same lamp point as before was a kind of failure to progress, and that I needed to reach a second lamp in order to "save" any of my killing I'd done and keep them dead--so I just kept trying to reach a second lamp for hours without any care for points or leveling, thinking of each death as full reset. Everything about the dream's role, how saving works, and the risk / reward system was confusing at first. So I died a lot of times just trying to work out the combat and experiment, only to find that it seemed the enemies were perhaps getting stronger while I wasn't.
Anyhow, once I finally understood everything through trial and error (how to "level up" with the doll, the meaning of the blood points, what dying does, etc), I just decided to start over from the beginning and do things right. On second go at it, things went much smoother. I made it very far through the main area on a single life and obtained an insight point in the sewer area to get the doll, with a ton of points to spend and finally level up enough to take down the first boss on my very next run. Upon beating that boss, however, I was still a bit confused to gain a new lamp that doesn't lead anywhere new, and to find that nothing except the boss stayed dead. Now I see that it's just the way the game works, but none of that is intuitive.
The world / city looks fantastic once you get outside, and is the real highlight of the game for me. Combat is still a struggle and felt sluggish at first, but I'm getting it now. I think I mainly need to figure out how to balance dodging with attacks and do more "dodge into the enemy" moves aggressively for a follow-up shot instead of dodging away. I died at the second boss fight I encountered, the old hunter, and paused at that point to just explore further before taking him on again.
That's it so far. A very enjoyable game that reminds me at times of the moods from one of my favorite childhood games, Castlevania III, just for the world's feeling of despair. Don't spoil anything, because I don't like knowing things about games until I see them for myself. Generic tips about combat are fine if they don't spoil an item or area etc.