Action-RPG combat games discussion for 2022

[Malkiah]

With Dad of Boy 2: Ragnarok not coming out for several more months, i've been trying to dig through games i haven't played yet in the genre and feel like i'm running out of titles to check out, so turning to the forums in the hopes of inspiration.

assume if the title would show up on a 'best of' list, i've heard of it or played it - we don't need to jerk each other off over ghosts of shashimi or horizon: overwrought game title.

for example...
immortals: fenyx rising - not a small indie game by any means but one that doesn't get much attention (and rightly so, it's not very good) - but, it was fun enough to be fine with buying used.
another example would be mad max - a 2015 ARPG that suffered a bit from a lack of narrative structure, but had a rather pleasing combat gameplay loop.

and here's a general question: are all of the 'souls-like' games as horrendously god-awful in terms of clunky controls and sluggish animations as the ones i've played?
code vein, nioh, whichever dark/demon one i tried to play once - seems like their difficulty was in how horrible the gameplay was, not in the actual encounter design.
everyone and their mother keeps babbling about elden ring but i've been avoiding because i simply cannot stand how those games feel to play, but if they managed to make elden ring playable i might give it a shot.

[deenman]

you tried grim dawn?was my favorite arpg by far

[thilicen]

you tried grim dawn?was my favorite arpg by far

Loved that one, could absolutely reccomend it.

[Kumorii]

Elden ring plays just like any other souls game.
If you don't like that combat, you won't like Elden Ring.

[Daedius]

The Surge series is great.

[Exkrementor]

If you liked Mad Max you should try Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Story is okayish but the combat feels pretty good and the world is massive.

Also the old PS2 Baldurs Gate games got released for PC recently. I suggest playing it on an emulator and saving 30 bucks though.

I dont know what you have played or what you would consider Action-RPG but here are some of my favourites: Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Oblivion, Skyrim, Dragon Age Origins, Grim Dawn, Titan Quest.

and here's a general question: are all of the 'souls-like' games as horrendously god-awful in terms of clunky controls and sluggish animations as the ones i've played?
code vein, nioh, whichever dark/demon one i tried to play once - seems like their difficulty was in how horrible the gameplay was, not in the actual encounter design.
everyone and their mother keeps babbling about elden ring but i've been avoiding because i simply cannot stand how those games feel to play, but if they managed to make elden ring playable i might give it a shot.

All the Souls clones are clunky as fuck. Start by playing Dark Souls 1, then play Dark Souls 3 and then Elden Ring. Honestly they are not that hard. Its mostly clickbait marketing bullshit. But the combat design needs to click with you. It takes some time. Its not a game you will master after 30 minutes.

If everyone is talking about Elden Ring its because its easily one of the best games ever made and you should really try to get into the Souls series. You will not regret it.

[Video Games]

Nioh 2 and sekiro are fantastic. If you dont like the genre just stop playing it

[deenman]

All the Souls clones are clunky as fuck. Start by playing Dark Souls 1, then play Dark Souls 3 and then Elden Ring. Honestly they are not that hard. Its mostly clickbait marketing bullshit.

lol cmon,yeah the souls games may not seem hard if you played them since they launched and are use to em,or the old school 2d games difficulty curve,but these days for any gamer in their teens that just play the big name games like assains creed,cod,far cry,bethesda games etc,compared to those the souls games are a nightmare difficulty wise,its not even close,i can play any of those games on max difficulty and not die more than once or twice in an encounter,but in souls games even good players can die dozens of times,or if your asmongold a few thausand times per boss

[Malkiah]

All the Souls clones are clunky as fuck.

ok thank you, that is the information i was looking for.

Start by playing Dark Souls 1, then play Dark Souls 3 and then Elden Ring. Honestly they are not that hard. Its mostly clickbait marketing bullshit. But the combat design needs to click with you. It takes some time. Its not a game you will master after 30 minutes.

yeah not so much for me. i see a big difference in "it's difficult because you need to know what you're doing" and "it's difficult because the design is a pile of bullshit"

a go-to example for me: the valkyries in god of war, or the duels in ghost of shashimi, both strike me as what i'd call "fun difficult" - yes you had to learn the moves, get your timing down, die several times while figuring out the attacks, all of that is fine.
but, contrast that to code vein which i'm playing through (and from what i hear plays exactly like a souls game) and i'm finding 99% of the difficulty being in the fact the attack animations are sluggish and chunky, and the input is finicky and often unresponsive.

difficult by design, i'm OK with.
difficult because stupid just annoys me.

If everyone is talking about Elden Ring its because its easily one of the best games ever made and you should really try to get into the Souls series. You will not regret it.

eehh, if what you said above is true, i'll go back to finding the soulslike games to being intolerable and give elden ring a miss.

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Nioh 2 and sekiro are fantastic. If you dont like the genre just stop playing it

love the genre, hate the iteration of it that confuses sloppy gameplay with 'difficulty' and then thinks that 'difficulty' is a game feature.

don't get me wrong, if that's your bag i've got no problem with you liking that style of game and with there being tons of games in that style for you to play, i'm totally fine with soulslike being a huge thing so long as they're marked as such so i don't accidentally waste money buying them.
like uh... god what the hell was the one i bought.... lords of the fallen!
waste of my time and money with that crap sack, which i guess is my fault for buying a game in an actual store based on it 'looking interesting' and not researching it sufficiently to find out it was a souls clone.

[Jastall]

ok thank you, that is the information i was looking for.


yeah not so much for me. i see a big difference in "it's difficult because you need to know what you're doing" and "it's difficult because the design is a pile of bullshit"

a go-to example for me: the valkyries in god of war, or the duels in ghost of shashimi, both strike me as what i'd call "fun difficult" - yes you had to learn the moves, get your timing down, die several times while figuring out the attacks, all of that is fine.
but, contrast that to code vein which i'm playing through (and from what i hear plays exactly like a souls game) and i'm finding 99% of the difficulty being in the fact the attack animations are sluggish and chunky, and the input is finicky and often unresponsive.

difficult by design, i'm OK with.
difficult because stupid just annoys me.


eehh, if what you said above is true, i'll go back to finding the soulslike games to being intolerable and give elden ring a miss.

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love the genre, hate the iteration of it that confuses sloppy gameplay with 'difficulty' and then thinks that 'difficulty' is a game feature.

don't get me wrong, if that's your bag i've got no problem with you liking that style of game and with there being tons of games in that style for you to play, i'm totally fine with soulslike being a huge thing so long as they're marked as such so i don't accidentally waste money buying them.
like uh... god what the hell was the one i bought.... lords of the fallen!
waste of my time and money with that crap sack, which i guess is my fault for buying a game in an actual store based on it 'looking interesting' and not researching it sufficiently to find out it was a souls clone.

Elden Ring combat is Dark Souls combat, they're basically identical, and yes it can be really clunky, unresponsive and slightly bullshit at times. I like Elden Ring a lot despite its combat, not because of it.

Sekiro however is another beast. The combat is very different and far, far smoother. Once you get the parry dance down it's extremely satisfying. Recommend it 100%.

[Malkiah]

Sekiro however is another beast. The combat is very different and far, far smoother. Once you get the parry dance down it's extremely satisfying. Recommend it 100%.

alright i can dig that - if from software made a game with actually snappy and responsive controls, i'd be well into it.
i had completely avoided sekiro from the moment it came out because i assumed it was similar to nioh in terms of combat.

[PACOX]

Ghost of Tsushima - especially because it is part of the same Sony ecosystem. The game did well but I think it would have done a lot better if a lot of people weren't holding out for the PS5 version, which is amazing.

[Jastall]

alright i can dig that - if from software made a game with actually snappy and responsive controls, i'd be well into it.
i had completely avoided sekiro from the moment it came out because i assumed it was similar to nioh in terms of combat.

It's still third-person game like Dark Souls, but you have more movement options, gadgets to use and combat techniques galore. In exchange you have a fixed loadout in terms of weapons, armor and such. It's more action game than RPG but instead of being based around dodges and generally slow attack speed with a stamina bar, you have unlimited stamina and the combat is based around parrying most enemy strikes with precise timing while countering special moves in other ways, for example sweep attacks cannot be blocked or parried but can be jumped over. As I said, once you get the right balance of parrying and striking back it becomes very satisfying.

[Exkrementor]

yeah not so much for me. i see a big difference in "it's difficult because you need to know what you're doing" and "it's difficult because the design is a pile of bullshit"

a go-to example for me: the valkyries in god of war, or the duels in ghost of shashimi, both strike me as what i'd call "fun difficult" - yes you had to learn the moves, get your timing down, die several times while figuring out the attacks, all of that is fine.
but, contrast that to code vein which i'm playing through (and from what i hear plays exactly like a souls game) and i'm finding 99% of the difficulty being in the fact the attack animations are sluggish and chunky, and the input is finicky and often unresponsive.

difficult by design, i'm OK with.
difficult because stupid just annoys me.

Code Veine is a bad game, dont compare it to Dark Souls. The only Souls clone I could remotely recommend is The Surge.

I dont know for what kind of difficulty you are looking for. Dark Souls is difficult if you dont know how the game is played. You have to learn the combat. You cannot just button mash and expect to beat the game. The combat system is very precise and methodical.

[Malkiah]

Code Veine is a bad game, dont compare it to Dark Souls.

it has souls-like combat and a souls-like overall design aesthetic (in terms of combat and mechanics), does it not?
if you google the game, literally every mention of it says "souls-like", is that inaccurate?

I dont know for what kind of difficulty you are looking for.

i'm not, that's the thing - i don't consider "difficulty" to be a game feature that i look out for.
does that make sense? i don't look for or at 'difficulty' in my video games, that isn't what i consider to be on the slate of options that matter.

what i'm looking for is how well it plays, IE are the controls snappy and responsive, or sluggish and inconsistent?
i'm also a big narrative wonk so the games i enjoy the most are ones with a good story, especially if it's effectively woven into or through the gameplay (though with action/combat RPGs that's near impossible to do).

my personal objection to the souls games isn't that they are hard, it's that they are so clunky and awkward it makes the games a tedious nerve-grinding chore to play them.
everyone praises bloodborne to the moon but i could only stomach it for about 5 instances of combat before i gave up because it was pulling teeth for me to interface with the game in any way.

anyways, so yeah i don't care about difficulty, but i definitely care about input responsiveness.

[Wrecktangle]

what i'm looking for is how well it plays, IE are the controls snappy and responsive, or sluggish and inconsistent?
i'm also a big narrative wonk so the games i enjoy the most are ones with a good story, especially if it's effectively woven into or through the gameplay (though with action/combat RPGs that's near impossible to do).

my personal objection to the souls games isn't that they are hard, it's that they are so clunky and awkward it makes the games a tedious nerve-grinding chore to play them.
everyone praises bloodborne to the moon but i could only stomach it for about 5 instances of combat before i gave up because it was pulling teeth for me to interface with the game in any way.

anyways, so yeah i don't care about difficulty, but i definitely care about input responsiveness.

I'm surprised you didn't like Nioh, especially 2 (as it's considerably better than the original IMO). It doesn't have the input concerns that most of the FromSoft games have. That said, have you ever tried Sekiro? I have found that it doesn't have the same issues that the souls/bloodborne does with respect to input responsiveness. If anything Sekiro kind of felt like the gold standard. It also has a lot more focused narrative.

Are you against some more 2D type options like metroidvanias? Obviously you lose some of the narrative aspect in that format, but should still be enjoyable.

[Malkiah]

Are you against some more 2D type options like metroidvanias? Obviously you lose some of the narrative aspect in that format, but should still be enjoyable.

not against, no - but it's not really what i want right now.

you know, you ever just get an itch for a certain style of game?

couple months back before forbidden west came out i replayed zero dawn, then played forbidden west right after it.
and while forbidden west was quite frankly a fair bit of a let-down, i got quite a lot of enjoyment in losing myself in that world for the time i was playing it.

really i just want god of war: ragnarok to hurry up and be out so i can play the entire thing in a 3 day no-sleep binge and then be disappointed that it didn't feel as good as the last game did and then move on with my life to something else, and am looking for more games in that vein to hold me over in the mean time.

seems like sekiro is an option, since a couple of you have mentioned it doesn't have the sludgy controls of other souls-like games.

[Wrecktangle]

not against, no - but it's not really what i want right now.

you know, you ever just get an itch for a certain style of game?

couple months back before forbidden west came out i replayed zero dawn, then played forbidden west right after it.
and while forbidden west was quite frankly a fair bit of a let-down, i got quite a lot of enjoyment in losing myself in that world for the time i was playing it.

really i just want god of war: ragnarok to hurry up and be out so i can play the entire thing in a 3 day no-sleep binge and then be disappointed that it didn't feel as good as the last game did and then move on with my life to something else, and am looking for more games in that vein to hold me over in the mean time.

seems like sekiro is an option, since a couple of you have mentioned it doesn't have the sludgy controls of other souls-like games.

That would be my recommendation then. Bear in mind, it has an incredibly sharp learning curve, but once you get it, it fucking clicks and the game really does dance well in combat. There's a boss early on, that will wall you until you learn the combat mechanics.

I too am looking forward to Ragnarock, I'm hoping we get Mjolnir!

[Ghost of Cow]

really i just want god of war: ragnarok to hurry up and be out so i can play the entire thing in a 3 day no-sleep binge and then be disappointed that it didn't feel as good as the last game did and then move on with my life to something else

Don't ya hate getting older and more jaded and knowing that this is probably the truth of things?

[Fencers]

and here's a general question: are all of the 'souls-like' games as horrendously god-awful in terms of clunky controls and sluggish animations as the ones i've played?
code vein, nioh, whichever dark/demon one i tried to play once - seems like their difficulty was in how horrible the gameplay was, not in the actual encounter design.
everyone and their mother keeps babbling about elden ring but i've been avoiding because i simply cannot stand how those games feel to play, but if they managed to make elden ring playable i might give it a shot.

This is a terrible misunderstanding of games.