I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
Elden Ring can’t stand it
I don’t like that kind of game, and have barely played any of the Elden or Souls games.
But, in addition to the gameplay, for some reason the graphics really are off-putting to me. Even though they look really good, there’s just something off about them. Maybe it’s a kind of uncanny valley thing. I even find the fonts they use to be just slightly wrong. Like, the weight and spacing of the characters is subtly off.
Same. It was so boring. There was so much empty space, and when you got somewhere it was just a copy paste you’d already been through. Then there’s the basic ass story that’s capped off with the dumbest final boss I can think of.
It’s not empty space, it’s called the lands between.
Well it can kiss the lands between my buttcheeks because I want by $40 back!
Git gud.
My complaints with the game weren’t based on the difficulty. Elden Ring was just a lifeless world that used “open world exploration” to pad the playtime. In contrast, I loved Sekiro because it was a tight concise game with solid progression and a sense of exploration without needing to cross vast swaths of nothing in between each area.
Plus I tend to dislike games that use animation locks as an artificial form of difficulty. In Sekiro, you’re consistently the fastest character in the game. The game feels responsive. If you fail to parry an attack, it’s because you as the player failed. But with most FromSoft games, they use slow animations as a way of artificially introducing difficulty.
There’s plenty of fast weapons in the game. The huge range of different playstyles with different builds is a big part of the appeal.
This is an ignorant take. It’s fine if you didn’t like the game but this is just objectively wrong. There’s an enormous amount of information to be found exploring the world, it just isn’t thrown in your face like most games.
Checks “artificial difficulty” off my FromSoft bitching bingo card.
All difficulty in video games is artificial - the only real distinction is “difficulty I like” and “difficulty I don’t like”.
It’s fine if you don’t like Souls combat, but own your own shit and don’t hide behind empty bullshit insults like “artificial difficulty”.
It sounds like it would take a HUGE amount of time regardless of how good someone is, which is why I avoid playing it myself.
Slow animations is a way to make multiplayer manageable. Add latency, and slow animations are barely reactable.
For the first 30 hours, bosses kept dying to summon jellyfish roll roll heavy attack roll roll heavy attack before I got to learn any interesting mechanics. I heard a streamer say that the underground stag enemy was a beautiful fight, but when I got there I kicked its ass and hardly got to see it do anything. If anything, the game is too easy.
Did you end up enjoying Elden Ring later in the playthrough?
I love hearing so many people voice their opinions on Elden Ring’s difficulty. It’s way too hard! Artificial difficulty! Delayed attacks are too hard to dodge! It’s way too easy!
And I agree Elden Ring is both the hardest Fromsoft game and the easiest: the bosses have intricate, difficult movesets with great variety and get even more complex later in the game; on the other hand, you have so many different tools to deal with the challenges of the game; if you explore a little and try out some of the many options the game gives, you can make the game incredibly easy for you.
Did you know that there are two Ancestor Spirit (stag bosses)? The fight can be quite interesting, but they just have too little health. The second one with a more complex moveset should especially have more health since you have to beat Radahn to access it.
I quit before it got fun.
The first time I played through I did it without summons and weapon arts to get a more typical Souls experience and thoroughly enjoyed it.
The second time I played through I cheesed everything with summons and Lion’s Claw and had a blast too.
Elden Ring was utter shit.
It certainly doesn’t fit the criteria the OP is asking for. I noped out of that shit game pretty quickly.