"Why don't more games have this?!"

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

^^ I think the best part about the Snoman though was a comment he made:

So the coolest part about making this video has been seeing the love for all of the Soulsborne games in the comments. I've gotten equal comments talking about each game and why they love it so much, which is awesome and shows me why the series is so great. Everyone can love different aspects of the series and hold different games as their favorite

You might disagree of course, but instead of leaving it at that you?ll routinely rattle on and on about how x game does y so much better. It is irrelevant seeing as how if x were the be all-end all of what makes a great *correctly designed* game, then stuff like SoulsBorne wouldn?t have developed the fanbase and critical acclaim it has.

Games like DMC, Bayonetta, etc. aren?t even apples to oranges, so I don?t know why you alway bring them up in comparison. As for Monster Hunter I watched some kid play with a bow build that was apparently really good, and to me it looked like a slog. He spent about ten minutes doing the same damn thing while the monster basically just stood there and thrashed its tail occasionally. It may have deep combat but to me that doesn?t automatically equate to an engaging experience if ones really steps back to think about it.

The main point of Hbomberguy's video about Bloodborne is that due to certain factors with game design and how the Souls games condition you to play, quite a few people don't "get" the Souls games right away and Bloodborne has the best "play conditioning" (his coined term) of the series. He brings up the point that even Yahtzee didn't "get" the Souls games right away as his Demon's Soul's review is very negative. Or that his friend hated the Souls games, then loved Bloodborne, and went back to the previous Souls games. When I first played Dark Souls, I went in thinking the game is all about just being hard and the game was mainly about just surviving (from both the community and the game box itself) so I played the game in that mindset and after figuring out how everything works, I was basically like "where's the challenge at?" because Souls are easy games if you just play to not die, play smartly, and exploit a few mechanics (even just strafing breaks the 1st Dark Souls).

Dark Souls does quite a few things wrong; there's a core stat that does nothing for example (how did Dark Souls even leave the conceptual stages with Resistance being useless?), the upgrade system is pretty bad and you can literally break your weapon when upgrading, shielding is OPed in the sense that you can not build your character at all for blocking and still block really well, the riposte is wasted mechanic, etc. It would be like Nioh (is this closest enough for a Souls game to compare?) having half the enemies causing you character to not be able to utilize the ki pulse mechanic because a great percentage of Souls enemies can't be riposted so what's the point in even learning it? And the reward isn't even worth the risk when you can just block and strafe to an enemy's back for an easy backstab. Whereas Nioh has other game mechanics that encourage the player to learn the ki pulse mechanic. Bloodborne's visceral attack is a far better executed from a design standpoint than Souls' riposte; I bet a lot more people were visceral attacking in Bloodborne than riposting in Souls. In any game if there's a something that's just objectively not worth doing, then the player isn't going to do it.

I think anyone that likes Souls combat should give Monster Hunter a try. I'm decently into the game and it hasn't yet perfectly gelled with me but I think it could. The main problem with the game is that there's way too many mechanics on top of mechanics (kinda like how Xenoblade 2 seems from videos), so much stuff could be streamlined. There's a cooking/eating mechanic where you gain health and stamina (and small attack/defense buffs), but why not just give me more base health and stamina if you want me to eat before hunting? In a sense, Shadow of the Colossus is kinda Monster Hunter at the extreme other end of the spectrum where the game is like here's a horse, bow, and sword; go kill 16 colossi and nothing else. Horizon also very much streamlined what Monster Hunter sorta is in a sense.