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Developers had no clue why soulslikes are great


Silencer0004

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I really liked the first 4-5 hours of the game. But Apexion shows that the developers had no fkin clue why soulslike games are so great or rather what makes them great. The only way for them to make the game challenging is to beam enemies right in front of you, quickscoping 50% of your health and immediately teleporting into nowhere. That's the worst way of challenging people I ever experienced in a soulslike so far.

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42 minutes ago, Silencer0004 said:

I really liked the first 4-5 hours of the game. But Apexion shows that the developers had no fkin clue why soulslike games are so great or rather what makes them great. The only way for them to make the game challenging is to beam enemies right in front of you, quickscoping 50% of your health and immediately teleporting into nowhere. That's the worst way of challenging people I ever experienced in a soulslike so far.

yep I hated the game doing that crap till I found out you can find hidden armour statues to get a abit of def from dmg but does not make up for it

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Yeah Apexion sucked finally got through that part.

Once you finish that it is a little easier.

One tip dont run in apexion they spawn and shoot way too fast.

When you learn their spawn points it gets easier.

I do like the game but Apexion should be changed.

 

Edited by Vive_ut_vivas
typo
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5 hours ago, Vive_ut_vivas said:

Yeah Apexion sucked finally got through that part.

Once you finish that it is a little easier.

One tip dont run in apexion they spawn and shoot way too fast.

When you learn their spawn points it gets easier.

I do like the game but Apexion should be changed.

 

 

Got past it a couple of minutes after my rant. But my mind is unchanged as this is the worst trial and error passage in this genre. You have to KNOW where every enemy spawns as there's no chance to react to what's happening if there are more than two enemies and depending on your path it's possible that two enemies spawn at once.

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51 minutes ago, Silencer0004 said:

 

Got past it a couple of minutes after my rant. But my mind is unchanged as this is the worst trial and error passage in this genre. You have to KNOW where every enemy spawns as there's no chance to react to what's happening if there are more than two enemies and depending on your path it's possible that two enemies spawn at once.

Yeah true that IT was annoying as hell after 2 runs per sector i figured their spawns, most of them atleast 

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10 hours ago, Silencer0004 said:

 

Got past it a couple of minutes after my rant. But my mind is unchanged as this is the worst trial and error passage in this genre. You have to KNOW where every enemy spawns as there's no chance to react to what's happening if there are more than two enemies and depending on your path it's possible that two enemies spawn at once.

 

Yeah, you don't need to do trial and error in Souls. I usually get through most sections of a new Souls game without dying at all, even with a boss at the end. Trial and error isn't really a thing in Souls, but those who struggle can probably do that. It shouldn't be the default.

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2 hours ago, MMDE said:

 

Yeah, you don't need to do trial and error in Souls. I usually get through most sections of a new Souls game without dying at all, even with a boss at the end. Trial and error isn't really a thing in Souls, but those who struggle can probably do that. It shouldn't be the default.

Exactly. When I played Demon's Souls back in the days I died every 2mins. But after playing Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1-3, Bloodborne, The Surge and Sekiro I adapt very fast to this kind of game. But here are parts where it's a 100% death no matter how patient or attentive you are. Fortunately, Apexion seems to be the worst of all areas (I visited so far) despite later enemies also appearing out of nothing as well.

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not trying to defend these devs or anything like that, but I really started to hate these copy and paste " Souls like " due to how many time everyone is reuses this stuff ( you die in one or two hit no matter how powerful you are, every enemy projectile have a heat seeking system, you die you lose all your hard works and return to the beginning of the area, the difficulty is over the roof, people online will invade you to ruin your day if it's not already been ruind )

 

remind me of how all of a sudden most of the hack n slash games reuses the mindless dynasty warrior style of killing half the population of enemies that stand still doing nothing to you so you can cut them off.

 

and now most of the online only games is a battle royale doing the same stuff over and over.

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On 11.10.2019 at 1:08 PM, yellowwindow7 said:

(...)you die in one or two hit no matter how powerful you are, every enemy projectile have a heat seeking system, you die you lose all your hard works and return to the beginning of the area, the difficulty is over the roof(...)

 

This is exactly what happens here. I just finished the game and Apexion was no "small slip" by the devs but just the beginning. Later they placed this out-of-nowhere spawning enemies with shotguns who pin you down. In many situations there are two of them. Get hit by one and you're 100% dead as they pin you and shoot you rotationally. It feels sooo wrong to just walk reaaaaally slowly when you enter a new area as it's not about reaction like in any soulsgame but about exactly knowing their spawn location and aiming for them in advance.

 

I really tried to like the game and I liked it for a couple of hours. But after finishing it I have to say that it is by far the worst soulslike I ever played....and I guess I played all of them :D

Edited by Silencer0004
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  • 3 weeks later...

On the topic:

You can skip a huge part of apexion with an optional teleport found on the way to iska.

Concerning the initial aproach to the cathedral you can use an aspect called grit which you get from the ravager commander bossfight.

This aspect reduces damage you take when using a syringe by 40% and increases stability by 100.

You can run up the stairs, tank hits while healing and reach the obelisk easily.

 

A lot of people dont apreciate the game or critisize it a lot.

Imo it is great.

It is a different experience than souls and imo a lot harder.

The game forces you to come up with strats to handle the challenges.

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The game was pretty mediocre, but it was also mostly fun to play. I had three major issues however....

  • The NPC voice acting is criminally monotone. It gotta be the worst voice acting I've experienced in a video game, especially Bren, who apparently has amnesia and doesn't have a clue why she is on Arden, what happened, etc, has such a lack of emotion in her voice, it's unreal. She is the most extreme, but the voice acting was very bad overall. 
  • Like mentioned above, Apexion is very badly designed. Trial and error shoudln't be a thing in these type of games, and the teleporting granade launcher enemies that one-shot you on NG are an insult. Funnily enough, on NG+ the enemy placement is different, and there are way less of those dudes around. Plus, from NG+ all the way to NG++++ you can one-shot them with the right build. Regardless, it is a very badly designed section. 
  • Aras is by far the worst boss in the game, and quite honestly, I think the devs just wanted to make him a giant middlefinger in your face. 
    So while proceeding towards Iska you start encountering enemies that are immune to anything but energy weapons. So you start using energy-based weapons, obviously. From Iska you get the best weapon in the game, the Silver Spear, which is also energy-based. And this trend continues with the Moonbeam, etc. 
    Plus, the level layouts are so that you learn to fight with some range... With pits, narrow passages where it is difficult to engage in close quarter combat, etc... And then there is Aras, immune to energy surrounded by a protective shield. If that isn't a "fuck you" from the devs, then I don't know. 

 

It probably doesn't help that 7 playthroughs are required for 100% (or 5, if you do everything with a crippled character), so the game becomes quite repetitive at some point, since nothing changes from NG+ upwards. 

 

But it is very easy to become OP in this game, and there are many intended and unintended sequence breaks that can be used to shorten the length of a playthrough. When I was doing my last two playthroughs as The Cursed One, I needed to be a bit more careful on NG and got that playthrough done in about 6 hours. But with the right weapon from the start, NG+ only took 2.5 hours. 

 

Definitely the worst "soulslike" I've played, but not a bad game overall. Just.. very mediocre in all aspects.

Edited by Arcesius
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  • 2 months later...

I don't know why but I loved this game. Something about the level design and combat just felt really good. I liked how there were very inventive shortcuts through the game and there was a huge variety of enemies that belonged to their own worlds and levels.

 

The Apexion challenge is hard but it isn't insurmountable. I felt like it was nothing worse than anything Dark Souls 2 would throw at you with its sneaky mob placement and catchment areas. The teleporting enemies could suck but if you took them out one by one I felt they were never really too overwhelming and they all seem to die pretty easily. I did suck a bit that I did Apexion as the 3rd level and even though I'd been playing through and levelling up the enemies here were still one-shotting me. On subsequent runs with enough health the area becomes fine though.

 

A few things I'd like to see and think the devs could improve if this ever gets a sequel:

  • Make enemy weaknesses more apparent. Sometimes I felt like some enemies were resistant to everything but pure physical, even though they were colour coded blue and shooting ice which made me think they'd be resistant to fire.
  • More weak-points. I was cool having to circle strafe round enemies to attack them for bigger damage but would be cool if a few enemies had areas other than their head or back that you could had to aim at. I know shooting off the arms would disarm them and that was cool but just for a bit of variety weak-points on toes for example could be all right.
  • Make some enemies less humanoid. Lots of humanoid enemies which I understand because of the gun combat but you could have things like tanks or mounted animals. That could help with the weak-point variety,
  • Better story. The story here was good though and there was a lot of effort in the collectable items but unfortunately when you compare it to something like Dark Souls picking up artefacts to give you a bit of history felt out of place. Have proper weapon and item descriptions that build on the world and don't rely so much on the collectables to tell the story. For a game like this more cinematics wouldn't have felt too out of place either.
  • Allow me to switch from over the shoulder right to over the shoulder left. It was really annoying in a shooter not to be able to swing my aim over to get a better shot at enemies while staying behind cover. I know this wasn't a cover shooter but that would have still helped greatly.

I'd love to see a sequel to this with a bit more care in the level design throughout. I thought the first three areas were great and while the latter half of the game is still good the levels do start to feel like long corridors. Overall I really enjoyed the game though.

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