[Megathread] PlayStation 5

[Tech614]

It can't get any easier to exploit AI then a series where you avoid the majority of enemy attacks just by circle strafing right.

[Showtimes24]

Sony Now Expecting PS5 Shortages to Continue Into Next Year

Sigh.

Those who have a PS5: How did you get it? My brother spammed refresh on BestBuy, but I always miss the Twitter notifications about sales.

Depend where you live, if you live in canada. There was a ton that dropped lately for Amazon, Costco, Walmart. There is twitter account you can follow that lets you know the instant they are live on specific website. That is how I got mine.

[Lefrog]

Souls games don't hold your hand but they by and large are not difficult at all. There are some exceptions, Bloodborne, DS2 and DS3 DLC are all by far harder then anything in the base games by a long shot but otherwise not really. Still not sure how this meme came into existence for a franchise that started with Demon's Souls which is one of the easiest ARPGs you can ever play.

Just make a game without a notable tutorial and its hard these days I guess /shrug.

I categorize any game where you can die from 1 or 2 real time mistakes while following the story only to be hard. If I die too much in any game I give up.

What I like about most rpgs is that they add those kinds of things outside of the main story. So you can grind, gear up, and challenge yourself when you want to...and can just chill and slaughter things any other time.

[Tech614]

I categorize any game where you can die from 1 or 2 real time mistakes while following the story only to be hard. If I die too much in any game I give up.

What I like about most rpgs is that they add those kinds of things outside of the main story. So you can grind, gear up, and challenge yourself when you want to...and can just chill and slaughter things any other time.

If you just want to grind you can make a Havel Monster in souls games that gets tickle by any attack there is? So yea, the same is true here. Even with a normal build I can't think of many bosses that can 2 shot you unless you specifically went glass canon.

[everydaygamer]

Souls games are all about pattern recognition, once you get a firm understanding of how enemies attack only the absolute hardest fights will ever give you any trouble.

[PACOX]

'Soulslike' is a subgenre up for interpretation, like 'roguelike'. You have your defining features, hardcore difficulty isn't necessarily one of them.

Jedi Fallen Order is a 'soullike' game. Its not particularly hard (unless you set it to be). I've seen people argue that God of War (PS4) and Ghost of Tsushima are 'soulsish'. Hell the way I first conceptualized Souls games in my head was Legend of Zelda (before BotW) but without training wheels. People are too caught up with 'soulslike' meaning a Souls game with different devs assests and boss designs.

[Tech614]

'Soulslike' is a subgenre up for interpretation, like 'roguelike'. You have your defining features, hardcore difficulty isn't necessarily one of them.

Jedi Fallen Order is a 'soullike' game. Its not particularly hard (unless you set it to be). I've seen people argue that God of War (PS4) and Ghost of Tsushima are 'soulsish'. Hell the way I first conceptualized Souls games in my head was Legend of Zelda (before BotW) but without training wheels. People are too caught up with 'soulslike' meaning a Souls game with different devs assests and boss designs.

Ghost is 100% a polished Assassins Creed game prior to them trying to be Witcher clones. Nothing souls like about it at all.

God of War might have a little inspiration. Hell on Give me God of War the optional bosses, especially the last one make any souls game look like Pokemon in comparison.

[infinitemeridian]

I'm finding Demons Souls to be much harder than the other souls games. I think it's because it's much slower, which takes getting used to.

I hate farming grass and the way the levels progress is nonsensical - why would you leave an archstone after beating a boss to go to another one? The progression of the game intends you to NOT continue forward after killing a boss and you won't know this unless you google why enemies suddenly became much more challenging.

Also...hallways. Half the game is cramped quarters and hallways. I love the souls games, but this one is definitely pretty weak. Still fun though.

[Tech614]

I question how you can find Demon's Souls hard after player the later games in the series when it has the most basic and telegraphed attacks of them all. Also the levels can be done in any order you want, there is no required or intended order, that's the entire point.

[Video Games]

Maneater is the hardest boss of any game ever of all time

[infinitemeridian]

I question how you can find Demon's Souls hard after player the later games in the series when it has the most basic and telegraphed attacks of them all. Also the levels can be done in any order you want, there is no required or intended order, that's the entire point.

Maybe not harder per se, but more frustrating. i.e., grass farming, unintuitive zone progression, bad level design. Also missing things like the plunge / jump attack is hitting me hard lol.

[Zenfoldor]

I mean, "hard" is relative, right? Rocket science isn't hard to a rocket scientist.

Most games nowadays are nearly impossible to lose. So by comparison, a game where death is certain and constant must be harder...but not necessarily. Difficulty in the souls games mostly revolves around how much base health you have and how much damage you can do. That is why I said they can be so easily balanced. Take most souls games, double the starting health of the PC and half the starting health of the enemies, you have a very easy game. Once you have "enough" health, many areas of the games open up(DeS oddly sidestepped this a bit with its level based structure, kinda arbitrarily, and ideally a playthrough for a new player will include some recommendation about which order to tackle those levels, not perfect design).

The games themselves are about progression(and the reward felt when overcoming adversity of a malevolent developer's wicked tricks), and the difficulty only lasts through the opening act and just beyond. Once you beat the Snake Boss in Nioh 2, things get much easier, for example.

On the Souls games, they actually compound that non traditional progression by intentionally messing with you while you are playing. The real key to the formula, imo, is in the non-linear worlds(for those iterations who have them) because of the way they are animated and malevolently designed, those worlds also mess with you. Probably far worse than a jump scare or a rolling boulder.

That feeling of uncertainty, where you don't know where to go or even where to start, where you just have to start clearing sections over and over again until you recognize them, and finally find that hallways or doorway you overlooked to move on to the next section, those areas, and that kind of malevolent intent, which most of these games often open with(see Nioh 2's opening 2-3 enemies, lol), it is clear the game designer is trying to chase you away. They are filtering you and they want you to know it, lol. It is really fun, in a way. Just you against all the traps they try to trick you with.

After they run out of steam, the games usually turn pretty normal difficulty wise(barring of course the DLCs and some later bosses which can be pains, Ornstein and Smough /cough).

Sekiro is different. You will hear it is by far the easiest souls-like(and yes, many do not even classify it as such) and some might say it is the hardest, because instead of building your character or learning the levels, that game is about combat. I don't think it was great combat. It was very similar to the souls series, but it was also very different. In the souls series, often knowing the enemy would lead to an easy fight. In Sekiro, on non-bosses, knowing the enemy isn't as important as fast muscle reactions and knowing the animations for counters(encounter knowledge is still the only key to success in boss fights, but even then fast reaction time is often necessary). "Knowing-the-enemies" style grinding is intentionally nerfed and non-boss telegraphing is tightened to make fast reaction time mean more, similar to other quick time event games like Until Dawn.

I think they went into the game saying that no encounter should be perfunctory, and they came close...I'll admit the game was rather difficult for me.

If your twitch skill is solid and reaction time average or better, I could see anyone claiming Sekiro was the easiest game here or at least on the easier side.

I also don't like Sekiro. I do, however, very much enjoy the 3D Ninja Gaiden series and they just couldn't be more different imo.

I realize many will disagree, this is just my opinion and perception. Just to clear it up for anyone who may have played Sekiro only, Souls-like games should not be judged by Sekiro. If you played that and didn't like it, well I agree. I'm a huge souls fan and I really don't like Sekiro but I love Ninja Gaiden. So yeah.

[Tech614]

Maybe not harder per se, but more frustrating. i.e., grass farming, unintuitive zone progression, bad level design. Also missing things like the plunge / jump attack is hitting me hard lol.

Grass farming is a joke when blue and red knights are 100% drop on multiple grass per kill, this is part of what makes Demon's Souls easy AF you can have nearly unlimited healing compared to other souls games. Takes like 5-10 mins to cap out grass and in return the game is easy as hell. I wouldn't call that a difficulty spike for sure.

I also fail to see how the game's progress is anymore confusing then Dark Souls 1 where you can go to pinwheel as first area if you want to. Demon's Souls couldn't even hope to allow you to make such a stupid decision in it, by time you can do any level it is 100% doable, and not difficult. 5-2 is a troll ass level as most swamp levels are in souls games but outside of that I don't get bad level design take either its typical Souls shit.

[Jester Joe]

Maneater is the hardest boss of any game ever of all time

Screw that fight.

Almost all my deaths were to the stupidest things. And the amount of times the boss would charge, but then start ascending midcharge and then just stand on the air?
Awful.
Hated it.

[Video Games]

Screw that fight.

Almost all my deaths were to the stupidest things. And the amount of times the boss would charge, but then start ascending midcharge and then just stand on the air?
Awful.
Hated it.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, and then there's 2

[Dead Moose Fandango]

Screw that fight.

Almost all my deaths were to the stupidest things. And the amount of times the boss would charge, but then start ascending midcharge and then just stand on the air?
Awful.
Hated it.

Lucky. Most of my deaths were to Dragon God. I am not good at dodging.

[Edge-]

https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/...2021/GNS_E.pdf

Welp, Uncharted 4 ain't gonna be a PS exclusive any longer. And apparently Sony's IR team doesn't know that the upcoming God of War game hasn't been officially announced, much less had any logos released, so they slapped a fan-made GoW: Ragnarok logo into their IR report.

Surprised to see PS Now over 3M subs, I'd kinda written the streaming service off.

I feel bad for the poor dudes that are likely sweating bullets waiting for the furious call from their bosses, but this is amusing shit.

[everydaygamer]

https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/...2021/GNS_E.pdf

Welp, Uncharted 4 ain't gonna be a PS exclusive any longer. And apparently Sony's IR team doesn't know that the upcoming God of War game hasn't been officially announced, much less had any logos released, so they slapped a fan-made GoW: Ragnarok logo into their IR report.

Surprised to see PS Now over 3M subs, I'd kinda written the streaming service off.

I feel bad for the poor dudes that are likely sweating bullets waiting for the furious call from their bosses, but this is amusing shit.

Ragnarok was announced last year.

[Edge-]

Ragnarok was announced last year.

Damn, I meant the real name, but that was wrong too. I just double checked and it seems that the logo included may not be official at the very least, I can't find it in the initial announcement.

https://twitter.com/corybarlog/statu...98404268929024

Cory Barlog is not having a good day, though.

[Tech614]

It was announced, but it's not called Ragnarok according to Cory. It was just known as a sequel to GoW without a name as of yet. This is just some graphics guy being a doof, should of just put the logo from the announcement trailer on the slide and said "GoW sequel".