The Soulslike Fatigue Is Real
We can't have Bloodborne, but every game of this genre is following a trend for too long
Don’t get me wrong, I love playing a Soulslike or Soulsborne game, though my enthusiasm has waned a little due to saturation. Overstuffed with one release after another, and some looking like rehashes of ones you’re familiar with.
The industry has a weird way of rewarding certain type of games while overlooking those that deserve the acclaim and better reception. Look, we can’t have Monster Hunter be the only genre staple, I couldn't care less if they’re paying attention to how badly optimized their game was released and only begun taking measures fixing it. We could have had a Death Stranding BT hunting game (Kojima if you’re reading this) or that Wild Hearts that’s re-releasing for the Switch 2.
Just now, we got this Chinese release called Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. This is a cognate of another game called Wu Long: Fallen Dynasty. And irony at its best, they both have serious performance problems. The former basically ruining people’s GPUs after New World getting that publicity first.
Let me guess, timing dodges well, split second parrying time, farming for better weapons, brutal difficulty, predicting enemy attack patterns, and then add a number of unique things to spice it up, provide variety. Not even Prof. Utoniam would be this derivative, they’re not even bothered to try out.
A little while ago, I played First Berserker and while I thought it was fun; everything about it was too familiar. I just played Stellar Blade before it. Heck, I’ll go as far to say, Lies of P has pushed the benchmark for Korean releases. First Berserker was the one game I felt it came too late for the fanfare. Among other reasons.
Most of these games also uses the Unreal Engine 5, which shows people pushing to the ambitions don’t put the time to test and provide QA needed before release. Have you tried playing a Soulslike with bad performance? My 7800 XT can’t run Wukong that well, and now I tell people “no, I did not play the monkey stick beating game in Journey to the West story scenario”.
I don’t think FromSoftware wants to hold the crown or keep it under their fingertips, especially considering how much they’ve shifted the foundations and introduced newer concepts to keep it going strong. They are the progenitors of its existence, but only because they know what they’re doing. Not chasing trends, and I’m kind of fed up because it’s all too familiar right now. Triple A developers making action games embed these designs, but with slightly more variation. People are too comfortable with what’s been set, and that needs to change badly.
Maybe, maybe, it’s me. I can’t even get around to finishing Elden Ring or the DLC I just bought. Everybody is implementing these similar designs, the broad familiarity is making things feel stale for a number of reasons. Enough’s enough.
Wish I am fan of game. Well-done and thank you for sharing.