@neamtaven: I love the theme as well, but these offshoot Souls games have all had a really similar aesthetic. Almost like it's mandatory that if you want to make something like Souls it has to come with all the series trappings. Vague, cryptic lore, crumbling castles, etc. I wasn't a huge fan of The Surge games, but I gave them props for at least going out of the box considerably with the theme and setting

@boodger: I'm glad for anyone enjoying a game regardless of anyone else thinks about it for sure. I've just really seen the "brutal difficulty" bullet point balloon out so much over the last few years. I'm typically a very visual person, so the samey aesthetics are what I get the most hung up on.

@noodles227: I can definitely see your point with newer waves of gamers. I would figure most would get directed back to the FS games, but as you say, the industry and target markets are huge.

@lasciel: I like these kinds of games as well, but just about all the ones that aren't by FS seem to be so thirsty to be exactly like FS's stuff. It's pretty much it's own genre at this point, so I get the similarities in the mechanics, but I really get hung up personally on the identical art direction and aesthetics. I didn't really care for it too much, but I can give something like The Surge which is ironically the same dev, some props for deviating out of the dark fantasy theme.

I'm so personally over the industry wide sweatin' of FS's nutz. The majority of these copycat games are down to the damn detail too, it's not just the actual mechanics. The bleak dark fantasy settings, the intimidating boss names, etc. Surprised it took so long for a full ape of Bloodborne with the Pinocchio game. I'm sure there's multiple studios working on carbon copies of Elden Ring as we speak. The best part about it all, is that all the shit is rarely more than pale imitations of the FS originals. They're they only ones to do it right, and there's a reason for it. Look at this game here. Based on a soulless, (haha), banal DS rip off from almost a decade ago. Did we really need this to exist?

One of the most overrated games of recent memory

I love the soulsborne stuff, and have completed and got all the trophies for each, but in my opinion, ever since From’s games took off, there have been entirely to many freakin games incorporating the hard as balls difficulty s**t, quite a few of them mimic the souls games formula exactly with the loss/retrieval of your points and checkpoints that respawn enemies. It’s like really? A freakin Star Wars game has to be like Dark Souls? I’m sure it’s a good game, I’m just personally over the tough as nails gameplay gimmick.

Dude loves the word extraordinary.

The first game was criminally underrated in my opinion. I've been playing this all day, and aesthetically it invokes a lot of similar feelings as the original. The heavy feeling of melancholy is still there as well, just not as thick as the first Nier. Can't say much about the story yet.

Fantastic atmosphere and design, and the mix of old school save evrey bullet tactics with the stealth mechanics makes for a really great experience in my opinion... but yeah, some of the insta-kill boss battles are a bit much. Grew up with original Resident Evils, and I like this game a lot.