Soulslike - Discussion, News, Memes

Elden Ring was very good. You still get the interconnected bits in some areas, and some parts of the world connect in unexpected ways.

The main thing I didn't like about elden ring is how most of the stuff is kind of pointless. Like there's a catacomb but the only thing you get from it is some useless ashes and low level upgrade material. It made replays feel weird, because I'd skip most of it.

I'm not sure how to fix that. Maybe have the little side dungeons affect world state somehow (eg: drain poison from the swamp, get rid of invaders, whatever). Or switch over to sekiro style leveling where you only power up by doing certain things. But both of those might make the side stuff too much of a chore.

Hard, hard prefer the interconnectedness of Dark Souls. Elden Ring is vast, but ultimately empty. The open world is mostly just a loading screen between legacy dungeons, outside of the first two hours of "build collecting" that seems to characterize each ER run. Meanwhile, there's very little that's "wasted" in Dark Souls. It's a very tightly designed game that's willing to show you everything it's got, every time. If anything, it's a bit anemic at the end, because FromSoft eventually just needed it out the door. I'll take being a little unfinished over incredibly bloated any day though.

Dark Souls by far. Elden Ring was great but so much of the game was a slog to go through.

So much content just added to pad the world so they could call it an open world. Mindless copy-paste of the same enemies, same dungeons, same assets and same bosses. Would have greatly preferred a smaller but more unique world, more shortcuts and more interconnections.

I did enjoy the map of the Elden Ring DLC though. I don't think I have ever seen such a vertical map in a game before. Just looking down every time and thinking "can I go there?" felt great.

I like DS more, since once you know where the important stuff is in ER, it becomes relatively empty. I prefer the more interconnected metroidvania like design of DS

Dark souls.

Elden ring is a great game, but the open world aspect takes away a very crucial element for me. Its not as difficult. If you get stopped somewhere, you can just go grind out some levels, maybe some gear, and come back when you're in a much better spot. Or just ignore that area completely until you have to do it.

Granted you can do that with dark souls as well, it's more difficult because it's not open world.

Dark souls also feels more cohesive. You have many areas to explore, but they come after and before an area. Its a bit more immersive, and well... interconnected.

Elden Ring. I enjoy open worlds, even if they do get repetitive. Just my personal preference.