Before getting into the specific aspects of the latest boss experiment, I want to continue the talk about theory that I started a few articles ago. Furthermore, I haven’t ragged on Soulsbornes for a while, and I’m going into withdrawal, so we might as well start there.
It’s no secret that I’ve always despised the shallow gameplay of the Soulsborne series, comparing them unfavourably to Bop-It, Simon Says, and quicktime events. The “skill” of these games is little more than eventually learning the precise times to press the dodge button, usually achieved after copious consumption of guides. It’s like a version of Guitar Hero where you play on the easiest difficulty, but they don’t show you what notes are incoming. Instead, you have to memorize each song one tedious restart after another until you make it through the game.
The expansion to Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree, was a baby step forwards in terms of depth. Despite that, it was far less appreciated by the Fromsoft Enjoyers. I don’t know exactly what caused them to turn on this particular game, but Elden Ring sits at a 92% positive rate on Steam, while the expansion is just below 70%. That’s a marked drop off, even before we factor in that people who didn’t like Elden Ring at all probably didn’t bother getting the expansion.
Many aspects of Shadow Of The Erdtree are not germane to our discussion, such as the Scabudippity Fragments. Instead, I wanted to focus in on the bosses, which seem to have been received far colder by the community.
23:05
It’s just not fun to watch the boss do this super cool cutscene combo where you’re effectively engaging in a quicktime event to press circle at the right time. And then you get to poke him one time with R1.
…
I’m stuck with bullshit that is either incredibly boring, or cinematic stuff that only works on normal enemies because the bosses just superarmour through it. How the fuck is it that Stellar Blade, a Korean coomer game, at least gave you cool moves that worked against bosses that you could actually stagger them which gave you a reason to use them.
I’ve previously talked about the issues created with exempting bosses from the basic gameplay systems. I understand why games do it, but it tends to lead to extremely shallow gameplay, where the boss does whatever he wants and the player sits there and reacts, usually getting some telegraphed “fuck me” window to punish the boss at pre-planned intervals.
Seriously, all these boss fights are the same. The only thing that distinguishes them from one another is when you’re supposed to press circle. Or sometimes you can jump out of the way. Wow, how revolutionary.
This is slop.
User theDeModcracy echoes Synthetic Man’s sentiments.
10:10
It’s the same crap we saw in the base game, on steroids. Somewhere along the way Fromsoft decided to patch out your turn. Gone is the ebb and flow of combat where you trade equal offense and gambits. Most of the time you’re forced to settle for tiny gaps, sneaking in a single measly attack. That’s if you evade everything preceding it, otherwise that’s now a healing window. Losing damage openings for recovery extends the fight duration, increasing the likelihood you’ll make more mistakes. This creates a loop of getting hit, healing, rinse and repeat.
These reviewers also complain about camera issues, and various tuning problems with specific bosses. I can’t speak to those issues, although considering the developer I’m sure the bosses are janky messes with good pageantry. I’m trying to ignore that and focus on the bigger picture.
28:50
So in the base game there’s a situation where can summon these ghost spirits to help you fight, and it makes the fights way easier. It’s basically a built in difficulty system. I have played the base game many times with many builds. I have played it with summons, I have played it without summoning a single spirit the entire run. I know the ins and outs of this. It’s a lot harder to play the game without the spirits, but it’s doable.
The expansion feels different. I went into it thinking I would try the whole thing without summoning a single spirit again, and it’s just so hard it feels like it’s tuned for you to use the spirits, and I think that’s putting a lot of people off. The bosses are so aggressive and in your face the spirits feel more necessary than they were before.
I guess I don’t have a strong opinion about that. You could say that’s maybe a negative about these bosses, or that could just be a skill issue. As we get more used to fighting these bosses this will seem like less of a thing over time. I’m not really sure at this point.
I belive that the complaints over bosses spamming too many projectiles or requiring spirit summons to beat is soewhat wrongheaded. These changes are Fromsoft’s first baby steps into deeper, more dynamic fights, and are the kind of thing they should have been iterating on fifteen years ago.
Adding spirit summons and projectile spam elevates the bosses from rote memorization tests to being at least somewhat dynamic. For example, the seven projectiles that Rellana spawns over her head are a great idea, as they totally change how you fight against her while they are active. You can no longer mindlessly press the dodge button when she does attacks, because you might screw yourself into getting hit by the projectiles. Instead, you have to manipulate the boss into swinging at you at such time that your dodge avoids both attacks.
A summon dynamically taking aggro also adds another layer to the game. Ideally, you could use positioning or attacks to manipulate her aggro to suit your purposes, such as drawing her attention when your summon is winding up a damaging attack, or dodging towards your summon to distract her and take the pressure off so you can heal. This should be combined with far more projectiles spammed into the arena, to further complicate these decisions.
The issue with Soulsbornes is not that there are attacks which can be avoided with a timed press of the dodge/invulnerability button. The issue is that there’s nothing else going on, so the fight comes purely down to that. As a result, the only way to make it “hard” is through either incredibly finnicky timing windows, or demanding a ton of attempts through cheap bullshit like delayed attacks.
Fromsoft went full retard in this direction, when they should have added more stuff to the fights. More trash mobs, more projectiles, allies, etcetera. Make each individual attack trivial to avoid, but mesh them all together in a dynamicly complicated way. Overlapping tactics and strategies is the core of depth, and boss fights should be mechanically interesting, not just cool looking.
With these ideas of boss manipulation and complicating factors that we turn to a feature I tested, mines. The boss pictured above periodically places mines around the arena. Or rather, he activates them, and they skedaddle to the spot where the player occupied a few seconds ago, then sink in and wait. They can be defeated in a few different ways.
First, while it becomes harder and harder as they grow in numbers, they don’t move, so you can just ignore them, at least in the short term. Second, move into their trigger area, represented by the red circle, then move behind a wall before they explode, either through natural movement or with the help of your teleport. Third, shoot them with your plasma rifle, or cook them off with your grenades. When they take even a minimal amount of damage they’ll explode. Fourth, tank part of the damage. If you trigger them and move even just a small distance away, you’re guaranteed to be hit by only one or two of the shrapnel pieces. Since each only does about five damage, if you have full shields you won’t take any permanent health damage.
All of these techniques have tradeoffs. The more you ignore the mines, the more restricted your movement becomes in the long run. Clearing them by playing footsies burns a teleport, or locks you into a very restricted movement pattern for a short while. Shooting at them or throwing a grenade soaks up damaging resources you need to put into the other enemies. Finally, just tanking the shots gives you health damage, or at least reduces your shielding, while also interrupting its recharging for at least two seconds.
So which tactic is best? It depends. The hallmark of a well designed mechanic is when there are multiple viable solutions. However, those solutions are not equally viable at all times. There are times when it is undeniably the right decision to burn a grenade cooking a few of them off. There are times when it is undeniably the best decision to just ignore them. There are times when playing footsies or semi-tanking the damage are head and shoulders above the other two decisions, and maybe only an elite player would be able to determine which is truly best.
This position is from a blitz game I played a few days ago. An incredibly complicated position with many pieces hanging, with little king safety on either side. I’m winning, yet failed to navigate the complications properly, and ended up losing on time. Still, a great game.
It should be no surprise that chess is a far more prestigious game than any video game we’ve ever created. Partly that’s for historical reasons, but mostly it’s because it’s an actually deep game. There are tons of chess tactics and strategies, and often times there are plenty of them to be found in the same position. Any one particular tactic or positional idea may be easy to find, but navigating the arising complexity from many competing ideas is incredibly challenging, especially under time pressure.
I don’t mean to say that I’m trying to make a game as deep as chess. That would be nice, but this is a satirical game where the final boss is the resuscitated corpse of Mecha-Rabbi Schneerson. What I am trying to do is create something at least somewhat engaging on a deeper level. Something more than Bop-It with better graphics.
Having said that, presentation does matter. That’s why I’ve finally partnered with an artist, and it’s also why I’ve spent time making certain attacks look a lot flashier, even if that has little to no effect on gameplay. An example would be the unaimed projectiles that the boss below releases periodically. Its complicated movement feels good for reasons I can’t entirely articulate.
The same is true for the short teleport towards the player. I implemented this for gameplay testing, and I like how it puts more pressure on the player while also being predictable and exploitable. However, it also just looks cool to have a boss teleporting around the place, and that will only grow with more production, such as shaderwork, and sound effects.
There are a ton of things I’ve tried out, and at this point I’ve almost completed my the first pass through the boss mechanics that I wanted to eventually implement. I’m going to quickly wrap this phase up soon, finish the rough draft of the story, and go from there.
