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A Troubled Relationship with FromSoftware

Date     : 2022-04-12
Entry ID : 16543
Game  ID : 

I have a complicated history with FromSoftware games, starting in 2004 with annoyance with a underwhelming Tenchu-sequel, continuing through not liking any of the Souls games until it finally clicked for me with Bloodborne in 2015. Since then, I went back and played all the Souls games, and enjoyed them immensely.

FromSoftware and Tenchu

The first FromSoftware game I played was Tenchu: Fatal Shadows. The Tenchu games have their own complicated history, with the first two game being developed by Acquire, the excellent Wrath of Heaven and several other sequels of varying quality by K2, and Wii motion-controlled game Tenchu: Shadow Assassins was back in the hands of Acquire.
The sequel to 'Wrath of Heaven' had high expectations, but FromSoftware's Tenchu: Fatal Shadows was a disappointment to me. I didn't like the female-only cast back in 2004, and the game was quite buggy. Reviews were mixed, and ended up at a Metacritic score of 58.
So my initial impression of FromSoftware was a bit negative.

Soul-Curious

My friend showed me Demon's Souls in 2009, and I found it quite fascinating. He went to the ironically named 'Prison of Hope' and I watched as horrible Mindflayers roamed around. The game was mysterious, punishingly difficult, and seemingly very open.

In 2010 after New Years, I was hanging out with my other friend, and I had borrowed Demon's Souls. We didn't like it. We were struggling with the first area in the game, and struggling with learning the controls. I felt that they were frustratingly different from other games. We gave up, and I didn't go back to the game at that time.

When the first Dark Souls came out in 2011, there was a lot of hype around it. My friend again told me to play this, and I borrowed a copy from work to try it out. I played up until the Taurus Demon, but didn't enjoy it enough to keep going.

In 2013 I bought Dark Souls as a downloadable game for the Xbox 360. In my log I wrote:

I bought Dark Souls, I don't really know why. I managed to get a little further in the game, no thanks its obscure and punishing nature.

I do know why now. 5 days earlier, Giant Bomb posted the first video in the 'Load Our Last Souls' series, where Vinny Caravella stumbled his way through the second half of Dark Souls with help from some of his colleagues. The way he struggled and worried, got frustrated, and ending up using all the tricks in the book to get through the game, inspired me to give it another try. It didn't stick, though, and it took me beating a different game to give me the confidence to come back to the first Dark Souls.

Next year, the hype was around Dark Souls II. I was curious enough to request a guided tour from a friend, and I played up until the Last Giant boss. The boss gave me trouble, but after a week, my character DoctorSvinus used all the tricks in the book and defeated the Last Giant. A few weeks later I was playing with a friend to keep my morale up, and I reached 'No Man's Wharf', and later 'Lost Bastille'. I then stopped playing.
Going through this 10 years later, I'm realizing that I probably always stopped playing these games, because I lost hope and didn't think I could do it. When I had friends around, I always gained progress, but when I was playing alone, I fell into frustration and despair.

2015: Beating 3 Souls Games

When I saw the trailers for Bloodborne, I made a decision. The cosmic horror style of this game was right up my alley, the PlayStation 4-powered graphics looked amazing, especially the crazy looking cloth and hair simulation. I decided that I would finish this game, no matter how hard it was.
In March 2015, I went in to the punishing first area in Yharnam. It was the first game that I streamed large parts of to YouTube using the PS4 built-in streaming. Even though I was horribly stuck at Rom, the Vacuous Spider, I didn't stop playing for two months, and April 15th 2015, six years after playing Demon's Souls for the first time, I beat my first Souls-like game.

During my summer vacation that year, after beating Bloodborne, I felt emboldened and reinstalled Dark Souls on my new Xbox 360 S. I started watching the Giant Bomb 'Load Our Last Souls' series again, and played along with Vinny. At the end of the summer vacation, I beat the game. From my log:

It took me 4 years get to a point where I enjoyed Dark Souls, and then two weeks to complete the rest of the game.

At this point, I was getting cocky. I wanted revenge on those games that had been so mean to me throughout the years. I went and ordered the PS4 remaster of DSII Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, and started playing this. I enjoyed the punishing progression in the beginning, but felt uneasy about the progression, especially the inability to grind due to enemies disappearing after a number of respawns. After a week of non-stop playing, I started enjoying the game. At the end of August, I completed my third souls-like game.

When the Bloodborne DLC was announced, I went back in for New Game +, and played up until the DLC came out. I played through that, and at the end of the year, I beat New Game +, and had won all trophies for the game and the DLC. I felt like I had conquered Bloodborne, the game that gave me the confidence to beat two other souls-like games in 2015.

2016: Beating Every Souls Game

Starting out very confident in 2016, I wanted to go back to Dark Souls, this time running in 1080p at 60FPS on Windows (after some patching). I was playing as a Sorcerer for the first time. It didn't go well, and I ended up starting a new warrior-type character. In March, I beat the game, including the fascinating 'Artorias of the Abyss' DLC.

A glutton for punishment, I had also ordered a copy of 'Demon's Souls'. I beat the Phalanx boss and then stopped playing. I had another game on my mind.

I had preordered Dark Souls III, and when it came out in April, I went straight in. I absolutely loved this game, and a couple of times streamed it all day. I struggled with the Abyss Watchers for many hours, and my boss at work approached me and said he had watched the whole thing. Apparently, my many deaths had taught him how to handle the frustrating boss fight, and he had beat them on his first try.

During the summer vacation, I beat DSIII. Later that year, I beat both DLCs. The greatest challenge was the dragon Darkeater Midir. I ended up spending days grinding, and respec'ed my character to a Pestilent Mercury-casting Sorcerer, before I killed the old dragon.

The time of the Souls-inspired games had arrived as well, and I beat Lords of the Fallen during a week in August.

Then I was ready to play Demon's Souls. It retained much of the fascination that I felt when I first saw the game, especially the mysterious 'Tower of Latria' which devolves into pure horror in level 3-2. In December, I beat the game.

At this point, I had beat all the FromSoftware souls-like games, and I started inventing new ways to enjoy them.

2017: Pyromancers, Moon Quest, Fister

At the end of 2016, I created a Pyromancer in DS3 called 'Incineron'. It was very fun to try to play a different type of character, and see how different the game feels.

I kept playing Incineron in DS3, but I also went back and started playing the first Dark Souls with a strict roleplaying concept, where I play the 'Moon Knight' character which will seek the Moonlight Greatsword and complete the game with it. I called the playthrough the 'Moon Quest', which is something I can repeat in the other games, since the Moonlight Greatsword is present in many of them.

In 2018, I came up with a new character for DS3: 'Fister', a character that only uses fists character. It seems incredibly difficult compared to Incineron and the Moon Knight, but fun none the less.

In 2022, 'Fister' came back in Elden Ring. The openness of Elden Ring helps a lot with making weird builds.

Playing a Series in Reverse Order

Playing long-running game series in reverse order can be good for motivation:
- You play the newest iteration and get the best version of the gameplay, usually better graphics and sound
- In successful series, newer games are often tweaked to be easier than earlier games, because they have to appeal to a broader audience, because they are successful
- You will often be able to bring your knowledge back to the earlier version and have a better time trying to figure out the often more obscure earlier iterations
- If you complete it, you will automatically be more invested in the series, and will be curious about earlier versions

Alternatively, forcing yourself to play a series in order can be demotivating
- The first game can be too frustrating a stumbling block, and you risk never completing it and never playing the never games
- If you do work your way through the earliest game and then play the newer games, you might get frustrated with a 'watered down' version (this happened a lot in the Souls community, they decided that DS3 was a worse game than DS, even though that is very debatable IMO, but you understand why they have that feeling, because DS3 is more forgiving)