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There's also a stamina meter, and when you run out of stamina you can no longer run, attack, or defend. When you'e hurt, your health bar goes down and you can use consumables that replenish after death to heal, similar to Estus Flasks (though you can also pick these up from fallen enemies, with your total returning to a base-line when you die.) This will also change based on what type of weapon you use, as there's a pretty big variety of swords, spears, and axes, as well as ranged weapons. Like Dark Souls, you can employ light or heavy attacks (mapped to the Square and Triangle buttons respectively.) Light attacks do less damage and are quicker heavy attacks do more, but are slower. You also lock on to enemies with the right joystick and can flick between multiple foes, though you're better off fighting enemies one at a time. Not comparisons like "which is better" but rather "this is how this works, and how it's similar or different." Okay, let's do this.Ĭombat is similar to Dark Souls in that it's an action-RPG where timing and caution are often rewarded far more than button mashing. Since they share a lot in common, but are also vastly different, I will use comparisons to Dark Souls to keep things grounded. But I'll do my best to explain the basics as I see them. I probably won't until I've played through the entire game when it releases.
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I don't understand how all the systems work yet. I'll be very honest here: This is just a demo and I've only played a few hours. This currency allows you to level up a suite of stats that increase a bunch of other things like health, resistances, stamina and so forth. You go forward and fight, and when you die you come back to life at a shrine not too dissimilar from bonfires in Dark Souls.Īlso like Dark Souls, when you die you lose your Amirita ( which sounds like am I right, shortened to amiright?) and have to go back to your grave marker to get them back before you die, or else lose them. You're a Samurai in a weird, dark and violent world. I won't go into story spoilers because, to be quite honest, I haven't paid much attention to the story. Antiquated as it may have been, King’s Field is where it all really began for the Souls series.(And yes, the protagonist "William" who is wandering war-torn Japan, sort of looks like The Witcher 3's Geralt.) Still, the emphasis on exploration and first person combat stood out especially since consoles didn’t have many games like it. Its difficulty put many people off at the time, further accentuated by the stamina meter which drained with attacks. Released in 1994 for the PlayStation One, King’s Field was a first person RPG that saw players traversing dungeons and killing monsters. Let’s take a look at them here.īefore Dark Souls, there was Demon’s Souls and before that, there was FromSoftware’s King’s Field. The rest is history as they say but it’s interesting to look back at the titles that had Souls-like elements before the term “Souls-like” even became a thing. While somewhat underrated in Japan, Demon’s Souls became a huge hit in the West and FromSoftware would use it as the base for creating Dark Souls.
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It was unlike any other RPG released at the time. And who could forget the multiplayer, whether it was messages left by other players to invading other players’ worlds to fight them. A stamina meter loomed over combat, dictating nearly each and every move death would reset one to the level’s beginning while causing them to lose their “souls”. The dark fantasy setting gave way to a brutally difficult experience, where players could customize their own character extensively.
Tough games like dark souls ps3#
It was available exclusively for the PS3 and offered an altogether different kind of action RPG experience.
Tough games like dark souls series#
In 2009, FromSoftware – better known for the Armored Core series – released Demon’s Souls.
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