My dark souls hot take is that playing without any form of guide offers the most fun and rewarding experience. People get fomo about missing out on dialog, or optional bosses, or weapons, or treasure. But I think that’s part of what makes the game great. For exploration to feel truly rewarding, you must allow the possibility for the player to miss something. The game has plenty of content to see and do even if you don’t discover all the secrets.
That being said, people disagree with that and that’s okay. Some people don’t care for exploring, some people hate the idea of missing out on stuff. If you really want to not miss a thing, a guide will do that for you. Some people play through the game once blind and then go into Ng+ with a guide which is also valid.
Agree. I like it when game developers make their games chock full (?) of content without ever forcing players to experience it. They made the game and after that it’s the players’ responsibility to find their enjoyment in the game.
In this day and age, it’s getting increasingly difficult to go play a game completely blind without looking up any guides, tutorials, what not. Probably because of FOMO too but also because players have a tendency to optimise the fun out of their games, at least somewhat.
Recently started playing Warframe and while I’m taking the advice of a YouTuber to specially not to look up guides and tierlists and experience the game as blindly as possible, I’m just invested enough to want to look up videos on the game. Might be the same thing for soulslikes for other people. Heck, I remember listening to the Paleblood Hunt audiobook on Spotify whilst playing Bloodborne for the first time even though I hadn’t experienced the content talked about in the episodes yet.
I’ve been trying to get to soulslikes for years. One of the thing I’ve noticed is that the guides are basically even more complicated than the Nintendo walkthroughs of years gone by.
Guide: “Oh this boss fight is a toughie. In phase 1, the boss will hurblinate. In phase 2, the boss will skurblinate instead.”
Me: “I’m just getting walloped. How am I supposed to tell a difference? And does it really matter? …Never mind, I’ll just go for it.”
![[DS] Guys, I'm new](https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/9da53105-d437-4100-8d86-59c2e3af1abe.webp){kind=link}
My dark souls hot take is that playing without any form of guide offers the most fun and rewarding experience. People get fomo about missing out on dialog, or optional bosses, or weapons, or treasure. But I think that’s part of what makes the game great. For exploration to feel truly rewarding, you must allow the possibility for the player to miss something. The game has plenty of content to see and do even if you don’t discover all the secrets.
That being said, people disagree with that and that’s okay. Some people don’t care for exploring, some people hate the idea of missing out on stuff. If you really want to not miss a thing, a guide will do that for you. Some people play through the game once blind and then go into Ng+ with a guide which is also valid.
I typically play the first time without a guide, then I go look up what I missed.
Suppressing your fomo/perfectionism and just experiencing something always pays off.
Agree. I like it when game developers make their games chock full (?) of content without ever forcing players to experience it. They made the game and after that it’s the players’ responsibility to find their enjoyment in the game.
In this day and age, it’s getting increasingly difficult to go play a game completely blind without looking up any guides, tutorials, what not. Probably because of FOMO too but also because players have a tendency to optimise the fun out of their games, at least somewhat.
Recently started playing Warframe and while I’m taking the advice of a YouTuber to specially not to look up guides and tierlists and experience the game as blindly as possible, I’m just invested enough to want to look up videos on the game. Might be the same thing for soulslikes for other people. Heck, I remember listening to the Paleblood Hunt audiobook on Spotify whilst playing Bloodborne for the first time even though I hadn’t experienced the content talked about in the episodes yet.
I’ve been trying to get to soulslikes for years. One of the thing I’ve noticed is that the guides are basically even more complicated than the Nintendo walkthroughs of years gone by.
Guide: “Oh this boss fight is a toughie. In phase 1, the boss will hurblinate. In phase 2, the boss will skurblinate instead.”
Me: “I’m just getting walloped. How am I supposed to tell a difference? And does it really matter? …Never mind, I’ll just go for it.”