Eldest Souls

Eldest Souls is a boss-rush game like Titan Souls, only that you have more combat mechanics available to you and don't die in a single hit. If you do take damage then there are systems in place that let you recover health by playing more aggressively I really enjoyed my first playthrough of the game and my main criticism is that it feels way too short. It could do with another 8 more bosses. The quality of the bossfights is superb though, which is precisely why I want more. They are very challenging but mostly fair in my opinion. Even if some attacks cover a lot of the arena I never felt like it was unavoidable, it mostly becomes a matter of pattern recognition though. Don't expect anything from the story though. You get the feeling like there is more to it than what you get in one of the endings but due to its short length it doesn't amount to anything. Apart from that there are a few minor things that I would like the developers to address: - sometimes when dodging you can get stuck on a boss - no indication that a certain majorly important item is a one-time use only, nor any info what it amounts to before using it - the instant death traps in the overworld are pure bullshit and come out of nowhere. They should only do some fixed % of damage instead so you don't accidentally ruin your no-death run.

For £17 is a bit steep for a short game but definitely worth around £12, at £5 it's a steal. It's a very fun game, not that hard if you take your time, it's only problem is it's very short, though that's it's charm. It feels like the base game got cut short in development and ended up a short boss rush, a good example of this being the grapple hook which is used once then never again. Thankfully the devs took into account complaints from the fans of the game, and added a free DLC update, which adds 3 more masterfully crafted bosses with new mechanics and weapons that further enhance the gameplay style. I can honestly say the game isn't that hard, it's just challenging. If I'd say dark souls is around an 8/10 in difficulty, this would be a 6. Every boss move is heavily telegraphed with plenty of visual indicators, so the problem in difficulty in this game isn't reflexes, it's recognizing the boss patterns and reacting appropriately. The key to this game is keeping up bloodthirst, with the amount of healing they give you in the first playthrough it's possible to ignore 90% of boss mechanics and just keep dpsing. The core play style is to dodge away from the boss' attack, charge in, combo attacks rinse and repeat. It's worth noting perfect dodging which means hitting boss attacks with your i-frames restores stamina faster. Then the different playstyles come into effect which is as close to a difficulty slider that the game needs. There is counter which builds up shields, increasing fault tolerance with counter itself building up so much shield it's essentially a very long i-frame. Then there's windslash most about building up mobility, dealing passive damage then going in for a large dmg spike. Lastly berserk slash which simply increases dmg, increasing the better you play. The DLC added weapons of which three are thematic weapons to three playstyles and one extra hammer, but they can be used in any style and thus add further variation to the playstyles.

I really wanted to enjoy this game. Unfortunately, it's just too hard for me. I enjoyed the first 3-4 bosses, but after that it just became too difficult for someone of my skill level. I'm never going to get the experience most of the game because there's nothing I can do to get past these couple bosses, and that's an enormous bummer. If the author just added some basic difficult settings (slide a slider to decrease boss health or damage by X%) then I'd just use that when I needed it and be able to make the game fit my skill level.

Very enjoyable little game but it's quite short (5 hours on the nose for me). I'd recommend to buy it on sale since I think at full price is a bit steep for a small bossrush-game. Pros: - Bosses are all fair - Varied mechanics - Beautiful artstyle - Skillsystem is fun to play around with Cons: - Just bosses - only ~5 hours playtime (without NG+)