What is your unpopular video game opinion?

[Fabulously Olivier]

11 hours ago, Integrity said:

stop posting things that i agree with everywhere wtf

 

d2x is lionized for a zeitgeist that can never be re-realized, and outside of that zeitgeist it's an exceptionally moody and atmospheric but not very good game outside of those elements. in its element, in approx. 2003 b.net, it is unapproachable; the time has passed. this cannot be experienced again.

I think the remake was just too low effort and didn't hit a balance of modernizing what needed to be modernized (inventory, gender locking, animations, quality and quantity of loot, etc.) while keeping what needed to be kept (core content, narrative, atmosphere, and RPG systems). Instead, they basically remastered the graphics to something that would still look well below par 10 years ago, and left it at that.

 

That said, I don't even know if I'm willing to apply a "for its time" argument. Sure, it was literally 20 years ago, but fast forward 1 year and we get World of Warcraft. Fast forward 2 years and we get Guild Wars - one of the deepest build systems in an RPG of all time, and it still holds up today.

Edited July 4, 2023 by Fabulously Olivier

[Florete]

I am gradually moving more and more towards digital over physical these days, especially for books. I used to be hardcore physical-only for books, even to the point of not being able to read some things I would have liked to, but I've bought so many physical books over the last ten years I am literally running out of space to store them. And then there are other factors; digital books are cheaper and I don't have to wait for delivery, which COVID made significantly worse.

That doesn't all apply to my games situation, though it is still often easier to get better prices on digital games, PC specifically, and space is still a concern. I also have a brother who does not share my interest in books, but does share my interest in games, so we often split the cost on physical games, making that technically the cheaper option (individually) for a lot of games we both want to play.

On 7/3/2023 at 7:23 PM, RibsChirino said:

Other than that, I have another that seems more common nowadays: Souls games are not difficult, they just HAMMER impatient players who want to button mash and facetank everything, but if you pay attention they reveal their patterns so you can react appropriately.

You're basically saying "Souls games aren't hard, you just have to be good." Which means they are hard, relative to other games and the average skill level.

Edited July 5, 2023 by Florete

[RibsChirino]

21 hours ago, Florete said:

You're basically saying "Souls games aren't hard, you just have to be good." Which means they are hard, relative to other games and the average skill level.

I disagree respectfully because good and patient mean different things. ie. waiting a few seconds for the right opportunity to hit instead of mashing the attack button and getting smacked because of not being patient.

I've seen so called "terrible gamers" beat Souls games (and even 100% them) once they find that the only barrier was their own impatience and incapacity to delay the gratification of pushing buttons for a bit. So in a way these games either teach you how to manage anxiety or you will permafail at them.

Of the Soulsbornekiro (lol) games Sekiro is the one I think has a higher skill requirement because if a player is bad with hand-eye coordination the parry and stuff like Mikiri Counter will probably give said player a lot of trouble.

I still hold they are nowhere near as hard as people say but hey, this is an opinion thread after all and we all have different ones 🙂

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

23 minutes ago, RibsChirino said:

Of the Soulsbornekiro (lol) games Sekiro

I don´t think Sekiro can or should be counted among DS, ER.

After all, you have a mechanical hand. 

And I think Sekiro brute forcing functions better than DS/ER laughs in mortal draw Now that I think about it... Mortal draw was the precursor to Corpse Piler.

 

Currently going through DS Remastered, since you hear so much about the big DS and imma be honest, the only reason I see for it being called diffcult is that it was among the first of it´s kind so people weren´t used on what to look out for - keeping in mind that this appears to be a far less fucky version - only enemy I´ve seen handle sidestrafing was Havel, most enemies can´t comprehend when you stand 1/10 to the left/right of them and parry timings seem real forgiving.

 

On that note, the interconnectivity of DS is a bandaid for bonfirewarping and an inferior one at that. God forbid you forget or don´t know about something. Points for leveling at bonfires tho.

[RibsChirino]

7 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

After all, you have a mechanical hand. 

Not sure what does the mechanical hand have to do with it haha aside from the rhythm or twitch gameplay I think they share a lot of common concepts. However and I have to say for the record, I've only played/rolled credits on 3 Souls games: Bloodborne (first one I played, died 98 times since "New game" to credits), Sekiro (died 313 times) and Demon's Sous (died 176 times).

That's very baby imo, I was sloppy and understimating the challenge for most of the games, dying PLENTY more running back to bosses than in bosses themselves.

For comparison: Ys Origin (died 1885 times for 100%), Ys Felghana (died 2758! times for 100%)

I don't see me dying more than 1000+ times on any of the Souls games for 100% but maybe I will 😛

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Another aspect of difficulty is the repercussions of failure. In Dark Souls you have to play, at minimum, as well as you did before you died to recollect your souls. And in some games you lose max health or rely on a limited item. But I think the most tight, reflexively challenging games I've ever played all checkpoint you every few seconds. You die, fade out, fade back in moments before what killed you and try again infinitely. In Dark Souls the run from Bonfire to Boss was sometimes several minutes. They've toned down the walkback as the entries went on and the boss fights got more and more health to compensate.

Games like Super Meat Boy, Hotline Miami demand near perfection in execution, but only for 5-10 seconds. How does that difficulty compare to a game that demands pretty good execution for 5-10 consecutive minutes? Hard to say. Maybe it comes down to personal mindset. 

Edited July 6, 2023 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Tryhard]

On 7/4/2023 at 5:53 AM, Integrity said:

i'll offer a second perspective: bg1 fucking sucks, it's a terrible game. bg2 has a great narrative and it has all of the context you need built in. just go play bg2 and, hopefully, enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWWOjWN_IHc

 

 

Despite the extreme dryness of BG1, I still like playing it occasionally these days, mostly solo as a sort of breeze-through. I guess I feel kind of guilty if I don't do a full trilogy run if I'm going to play it. Although I now include SoD in that.

as a side note - in many CRPG/D&D games, a lot of people get giddy over the prospect of playing high-level characters or basically demi-gods (about the level of your character in Throne of Bhaal). Unironically this is always where any D&D based games are the most terrible, because combat just turns into who can spam their overpowered abilities first and win instantly with no chance for retaliation. A lot of the time it can just be cast time stop and destroy everything before it gets a chance to move.

as a side, side note: Baldur's Gate 3 is coming out for full release on August 3rd and the max level is going to be 12, something that has been complained about but like the above I think is a correct decision as well. The amount of complaining about Larian getting the rights to do a third game has been unprecedented by people like me who enjoyed the original games, and unfairly, considering the excellence of Original Sin 2.

people unironically complaining about whimsical writing when space hamster man existed in bg1 and 2.

On 7/4/2023 at 4:06 PM, Fabulously Olivier said:

I think the remake was just too low effort and didn't hit a balance of modernizing what needed to be modernized (inventory, gender locking, animations, quality and quantity of loot, etc.) while keeping what needed to be kept (core content, narrative, atmosphere, and RPG systems). Instead, they basically remastered the graphics to something that would still look well below par 10 years ago, and left it at that.

In fairness, I do think that was the intention. You have no idea how much the screaming would be if they touched the admitted archaic-ness of Diablo II. For what it was intending to be I do think it was well put together and I did like Vicarious Visions prior work, but it was always just going to be a nicer looker Diablo II. And even beside that it still sits at a 3.2 user score metacritic because of launch issues, general Blizzard hatred (warranted) and "the characters are too ugly and woke."

Edited July 6, 2023 by Tryhard

[Fabulously Olivier]

1 hour ago, Tryhard said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWWOjWN_IHc

 

 

Despite the extreme dryness of BG1, I still like playing it occasionally these days, mostly solo as a sort of breeze-through. I guess I feel kind of guilty if I don't do a full trilogy run if I'm going to play it. Although I now include SoD in that.

as a side note - in many CRPG/D&D games, a lot of people get giddy over the prospect of playing high-level characters or basically demi-gods (about the level of your character in Throne of Bhaal). Unironically this is always where any D&D based games are the most terrible, because combat just turns into who can spam their overpowered abilities first and win instantly with no chance for retaliation. A lot of the time it can just be cast time stop and destroy everything before it gets a chance to move.

as a side, side note: Baldur's Gate 3 is coming out for full release on August 3rd and the max level is going to be 12, something that has been complained about but like the above I think is a correct decision as well. The amount of complaining about Larian getting the rights to do a third game has been unprecedented by people like me who enjoyed the original games, and unfairly, considering the excellence of Original Sin 2.

people unironically complaining about whimsical writing when space hamster man existed in bg1 and 2.

In fairness, I do think that was the intention. You have no idea how much the screaming would be if they touched the admitted archaic-ness of Diablo II. For what it was intending to be I do think it was well put together and I did like Vicarious Visions prior work, but it was always just going to be a nicer looker Diablo II. And even beside that it still sits at a 3.2 user score metacritic because of launch issues, general Blizzard hatred (warranted) and "the characters are too ugly and woke."

See, the problem with that is that they already had a solution for people who wanted the archaic experience. The game offers toggles for Classic and Expansion, in addition to the Normal/Hardcore, Non-Ladder and Ladder, etc. Why couldn't they just offer Traditional and Modernized experiences in the same toggle. The modernized version offering improved inventory, higher drop rates, sped up xp gains, etc.

 

Then there's things like removing genderlocking which uh... Just do it. Those who want to play the original versions of the characters can just pick the original version of the character.

[RibsChirino]

3 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Games like Super Meat Boy, Hotline Miami demand near perfection in execution, but only for 5-10 seconds. How does that difficulty compare to a game that demands pretty good execution for 5-10 consecutive minutes? Hard to say. Maybe it comes down to personal mindset. 

I'd say both Super Meat Boy and Hotline Miami are way more difficult than any Souls game I've played so far yet they don't waste the player's time, no walks of shame to recover your corpse/souls/exp, no downtime whatsoever.

I do think personal preference or mindset like you said plays a big role, I believe difficulty is subjective as well so some people might find X game harder than others, but my take remains that Souls ain't as hard as people say, or at least those get increasingly punishing for impatient people.

[Integrity]

the souls games aren't as hard as people say, but that's because people play them up as psychotically hard (PREPARE TO DIE) when they're just regular difficult. i found hotline miami to be downright breezy, in comparison. beat it in a weekend, probably died fewer overall times than i did in dark souls 3. the souls reputation is absolutely overblown, but to call them 'not actually hard' is counterjerking too hard in the other direction.

e: i also want to say i disagree with a lot of what you're saying about what is hard - saying 'you just have to do this' or 'you just have to do that' isn't as simple as you're making it out to be. just 'being patient' is not enough to make dark souls easy. easier, sure, there's nothing controversial about that, but just observing attack patterns without a decent helping of mechanical skill is either going to make the game tremendously tedious and unrewarding, or not actually help as you flub the i-frames you know you need to roll through whatever nonsense attack aldrich is pulling out next. just because you can distill it to an easy statement doesn't mean following that statement is easy.

ee: on top of that, 'just do something you're not used to being expected to do' is, uh, difficulty. like that's one of the basic ways that things are hard, is making us do things we're either not anticipating or not used to having to do. there's a lot more to difficulty than just pure mechanical skill, which if you boil dark souls down to just the requisite mechanical skill it's a baby game for babies if you have good reflexes and a mind for i-frames.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Integrity

[RibsChirino]

That's true as well, but I'll die on the hill that once you crack the code of being patient the Souls games reputation gets demystified. It's not going to make you untouchable and you can still fuck up, but the mechanics of it pretty much involve paying attention to telegraphs and knowing when to input the roll/dodge/parry whatever or get that invuln frame down. Some people will grab it in a couple tries, others might struggle, doesn't mean the concept is hard.

20 minutes ago, Integrity said:

ee: on top of that, 'just do something you're not used to being expected to do' is, uh, difficulty. like that's one of the basic ways that things are hard, is making us do things we're either not anticipating or not used to having to do. there's a lot more to difficulty than just pure mechanical skill, which if you boil dark souls down to just the requisite mechanical skill it's a baby game for babies if you have good reflexes and a mind for i-frames.

Oh yeah, this I agree. I know plenty of those types, in my journey as a full time streamer, I've met a lot of people that have babyfied it haha thru 100s of hours of practice and insane reflexes and reaction times.

Now an interesting question: Is there a way to objectively measure difficulty? I think that right there is a bit of a problem and hence we'll never agree but to me Souls games are like in the middle of the spectrum of difficulty. They are not without challenge but I can think of many games I consider way harder ez

Edited July 6, 2023 by RibsChirino

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

17 hours ago, RibsChirino said:

Not sure what does the mechanical hand have to do with it haha aside from the rhythm or twitch gameplay I think they share a lot of common concepts. However and I have to say for the record, I've only played/rolled credits on 3 Souls games: Bloodborne (first one I played, died 98 times since "New game" to credits), Sekiro (died 313 times) and Demon's Sous (died 176 times).

That's very baby imo, I was sloppy and understimating the challenge for most of the games, dying PLENTY more running back to bosses than in bosses themselves.

For comparison: Ys Origin (died 1885 times for 100%), Ys Felghana (died 2758! times for 100%)

I don't see me dying more than 1000+ times on any of the Souls games for 100% but maybe I will 😛

It´s pretty different I´d say judging by the general opinion of players that had played a soulslike and then started Sekiro - there´s plenty of shitty "hesitation is defeat" warnings. Hell I know from myself having trouble going from Code Vein, Lords of the Fallen, Dark Souls 3 dodging to Sekiro parrying to just staying in the enemies face as much as possible.

I think the primary distinction to be made Sekiro/FromsoftSouls is the degree of aggressiveness - Sekiro allows you to keep wailing on the enemy (if you time your deflects and gadget uses) whereas you´ll always have breaks in a Soulslike because you are simply too limited by stamina. I especially notice this now when going through DS, where enemies have like 2 moves per minute and it´s still noticeable when Malenia or Radagon combo you around the arena for a whole stamina bar and then just... stop attacking.

Haven´t played Y so the comparison is lost on me.

[Etrurian emperor]

One unpopular opinion would be that I vastly prefer Kid Icarus' Hades over Medusa. I'm intensely surprised that this is an unpopular opinion but in Smash related discussions I more often see people talk about Medusa rather than Hades. This always struck me as strange because while Medusa has some legacy points she also represents an era in Kid Icarus that mostly lost its relevant. Its safe to say that when people think of Kid Icarus they now think of Uprising, or at least of the Smash version of Pit that stars in it. And on the villain side that era is represented by Hades. Medusa was perfectly fine in Uprising but ends up being hugely overshadowed by Hades in about every aspect.

 

[Fabulously Olivier]

Saying a game has great mod support is almost always a massive turn-off. It usually equates to a game being a boring, broken mess if you don't install and organize dozens of mods or more.

 

Looking at you, Bugthesda.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Fabulously Olivier

[Integrity]

21 hours ago, RibsChirino said:

That's true as well, but I'll die on the hill that once you crack the code of being patient the Souls games reputation gets demystified. It's not going to make you untouchable and you can still fuck up, but the mechanics of it pretty much involve paying attention to telegraphs and knowing when to input the roll/dodge/parry whatever or get that invuln frame down. Some people will grab it in a couple tries, others might struggle, doesn't mean the concept is hard.

the concept is hard. it comes naturally to you, and that's totally valid, but watching for animation tells is not natural for a whole shitload of people. look at the reputation monster hunter has for difficulty - the game is nothing but watching for animation tells and timing rolls, and it's held up, correctly, as a hard game series. i think this is a you thing, not a thing the general populace hasn't figured out somehow.

e: something i'll point out - i've got platinum in all five dark souls games, and i've never been able to reliably land a parry. i cannot reconcile the animation with the enemy animations. it doesn't work in my brain. i've literally done every single thing the games have to offer, but 'paying attention to telegraphs and knowing when to input the parry' has never worked. i have, what, six? seven? hundred hours in the franchise.

ee: relatedly, an unpopular gaming opinion: ds1 gwyn is a fucking garbage fight and a horrible climax to a poor back half of the game

 

21 hours ago, RibsChirino said:

Now an interesting question: Is there a way to objectively measure difficulty?

nope. the best we can get is a general consensus, and there will always be outliers therein. i fucking crush call of duty veteran difficulty campaigns without a second thought, and there's literally a guy i follow on youtube who dies through them as a spectacle sport for his viewers because they're punishing. it's all relative. i and another guy on this forum eat lunatic fire emblems for breakfast, and they're completely unassailable to about 90% of the fandom. you cannot properly assign a True Difficulty to something, outside of saying how Most People find it.

e3: i was a little flippant with this - the problem of difficulty is that we can break it down into elements, but people have different affinities for those. as someone who's done a tear on ys platinums, you've obviously got a solid and enduring handle on animation timings and shit, so things like ys and dark souls that are hard for others will come easy to you. as a strategy kid, raised on the DOS 4x games, there's levels to which i grok positioning and zone control that i literally cannot explain that makes so-called punishing strategy games come easy to me. you can break things down to mechanical vs intellectual difficulties, but you cannot establish an individual Difficulty for games any more than you can establish an individual intelligent quotient. is space marine harder than dawn of war?

Edited July 7, 2023 by Integrity

[RibsChirino]

1 hour ago, Integrity said:

i fucking crush call of duty veteran difficulty campaigns

I succa at FPS hahaha but yeah you have some good points there 🙂

And me platinuming super hard high execution games like the Ys series is mostly due to me being SUPER stubborn, I rather die trying than quit anything I start. Same with Souls, etc...

And next up: Jump King and NecroDancer, those will be the end of me but I'll get those fkers haha

[Fire Emblem Fan]

I'm not sure if this is actually an unpopular opinion or not? But for all the Spyro fans out there, if there are any on this forum, I think that the original PS1 versions have the superior Hunter and the superior Bianca. The way they're portrayed and the way they deliver their lines in the Reignited remasters is...odd, and doesn't feel right.

[Integrity]

see i don't see souls and ys on the same level, being stubborn will get one through anything because most games reward, to some degree, memorization of inputs. this doesn't mean they're hard or not, this just means that, like i wanna be the guy, they reward stubbornness. particularly with your silly deaths post earlier

On 7/5/2023 at 6:42 PM, RibsChirino said:

Not sure what does the mechanical hand have to do with it haha aside from the rhythm or twitch gameplay I think they share a lot of common concepts. However and I have to say for the record, I've only played/rolled credits on 3 Souls games: Bloodborne (first one I played, died 98 times since "New game" to credits), Sekiro (died 313 times) and Demon's Sous (died 176 times).

That's very baby imo, I was sloppy and understimating the challenge for most of the games, dying PLENTY more running back to bosses than in bosses themselves.

For comparison: Ys Origin (died 1885 times for 100%), Ys Felghana (died 2758! times for 100%)

I don't see me dying more than 1000+ times on any of the Souls games for 100% but maybe I will 😛

i haven't died a thousand times across all five souls games with plat on all of them. i haven't died a thousand times across all five souls games, nioh, stranger of paradise, nioh 2, sekiro, and a dozen other brawlers. i haven't died a thousand times in rocket league in 800 hours. dialing things down to a death count is silly. you literally brought up super meat boy - you can die a hundred times on one of the stupid i wanna be the guy tribute levels trivially without ever beating it; i know, i have the christmas achievement where you had to beat the entire i wanna be the guy world in a single session because ed macmillan is a fucking moron and i want to kick his ass so bad.

my point here is that you've got kind of a fundamental misunderstanding of what difficulty is to most people. your own definition is fine, and that's completely okay, but 3000 deaths to complete nightmare felghana isn't hard to most people, it's literally impossible.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Integrity

[Tryhard]

most people simply do not have the patience to die hundreds of times and still want to continue playing, whether that is due to lack of time or temperament

i have always maintained that the only way to lose in souls games is to quit the game, but there is a lot of people who simply become frustrated and have no patience for a difficulty curve, so they will quit the game well before they are able to truly get to grips with it, even though they thereotically could given enough time and effort.

having played over a thousand hours of souls I probably will think the souls game are not as hard as someone who tries to pick up a controller for the first time and has not even played a third person action game before.

i maintain that I would never say "souls games are easy," but the marketing and general hype around the "wow it's so hardcore dudes" Prepare To Die edition has also been a meme for many years. it has scared off people from becoming potential fans with its reputation.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Tryhard

[RibsChirino]

11 hours ago, Integrity said:

3000 deaths to complete nightmare felghana isn't hard to most people, it's literally impossible.

I don't think it's impossible for most, what it's not possible for them is to not rage quit cuz they are not patient and that's fine, in the end this is just video games hahaha

10 hours ago, Tryhard said:

most people simply do not have the patience

That was my whole point. That some things remain difficult even if you put more hours, not sure if I can explain it well with words. At any rate this whole thread is just a thing for fun so I don't need anyone else to agree with me we all have our own takes and difficulty is a subject that is kinda pointless to debate anyway cuz there's no real way to measure anything.

Also I wouldn't say they are easy either (Souls games) but they are, once again, in my humble opinion, FAR from the hardest games and some people seem to consider themselves gods because they beat them haha its kinda funny to watch tbh

[RibsChirino]

Oh and another thing, the "3000 death" thing is not a flex, it's just an example. It is also related to the game design, cuz you can die thousands of times in a game like Meat Boy and it doesn't sting much cuz it's super fast paced and designed for the player to iterate the levels over and over with no downtime. The walking back to the boss in Souls is super annoying and also tests patience (and makes the game artificially longer cuz if it was just a gauntlet with the bosses it'd be over super quickly for a lot of players)

[vanguard333]

For me, Souls games are a great example of the reason why I consider "challenge" and "difficulty" to be two different things when it comes to video games.

For me, "challenge" is how much the game asks me to understand its mechanics, learn, be observant, etc., while "difficulty" is just how mechanically difficult something is; how narrow the window to press the correct button at the correct time is and stuff like that. From what I've seen, Souls games are all difficulty with few real challenges, which I really don't like, as challenge matters far more to me than difficulty. Difficulty without challenge, to me, is just annoying and boring. I will happily play an easy game that still offers interesting challenges; I will not play a difficult game that doesn't offer interesting challenges.

I think, when people say, "Dark Souls isn't actually that hard", often, they're really saying that it isn't very challenging.

 

11 hours ago, Tryhard said:

most people simply do not have the patience to die hundreds of times and still want to continue playing, whether that is due to lack of time or temperament

I did have the patience to die hundreds of times, and I still gave up playing Dark Souls 3 after realizing that all those deaths weren't from failing to realize something, but from not pressing the roll button at the right time.

[Tryhard]

1 hour ago, vanguard333 said:

I did have the patience to die hundreds of times, and I still gave up playing Dark Souls 3 after realizing that all those deaths weren't from failing to realize something, but from not pressing the roll button at the right time.

Souls combat has always been relatively simple despite what people say, the whole roll and r1 spam is the majority of the game if you're playing melee is just how the game is played. If you're not at least tolerating that if not enjoying it, you'll never stick with the games. I would actually say that in depth combat has never been a strong point of the series. The thing From Software do best, better than any of their competitors, is level/map design and enemy placement, atmosphere and enemy designs.

I was actually very much not enjoying the first time I was playing Souls, that being DS1, until at least 2/3 through the game. Somewhat because I had no idea what I was doing. I stuck with it somewhat out of stubbornness of the glowing praise the game received at the time. After that I started to gain an appreciation for the game(s).

Edited July 7, 2023 by Tryhard

[vanguard333]

13 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

Souls combat has always been relatively simple despite what people say, the whole roll and r1 spam is the majority of the game if you're playing melee is just how the game is played. If you're not at least tolerating that if not enjoying it, you'll never stick with the games. I would actually say that in depth combat has never been a strong point of the series. The thing From Software do best, better than any of their competitors, is level/map design and enemy placement, atmosphere and enemy designs.

I was actually very much not enjoying the first time I was playing Souls, that being DS1, until at least 2/3 through the game. Somewhat because I had no idea what I was doing. I stuck with it somewhat out of stubbornness of the glowing praise the game received at the time. After that I started to gain an appreciation for the game(s).

Oh; I don't mind combat that's simple (in the sense of not being complex); I love Zelda games after all. The difference is that Zelda games ask me to think, while Souls games ask me to roll. …So, yeah; I don't like the r1-spam-and-roll gameplay. I probably wouldn't mind it if it was just regular enemies that you beat with r1-and-roll, but it's bosses as well.

I have spoken with a lot of Souls players about my grievances with the series, and one thing I often hear can be summed up as, "Yeah; the later games leaned entirely onto the r1-and-roll; maybe you'd like DS1 or Demon's Souls?"

[Fabulously Olivier]

Okay, here's an unpopular opinion. Souls is just Monster Hunter for people who need to be reassured that they are in fact the leetest of gamers.