I’ve been playing anything but soulslikes recently. Climbing my way up the ranked ladder in League, played some Darkwood, and recently got obsessed with Pokerogue which has been a lot of fun.

Soulslikes can pose quite a challenge for players with their oftentimes quite brutal difficulty: insane boss patterns that leave no breathing room, high amounts of damage, status damage. Luckily, many bosses allow for strategies that exploit intended as well as unintended weaknesses to make the fights a little more bearable. So following up on @[email protected]’s suggestion, I want to know what your favourite ways to cheese a boss in a Soulslike is.

Cheesing could be a glitch in this case, like glitching out the final boss of the Bloodborne DLC to stop them from attacking or having Gyoubu or a certain hateful spirit jump off a cliff in Sekiro, as well as “intended” cheeses, like chugging consumables and Fable Arts at bosses in Lies of P.

I haven’t done it myself, but I always found it incredibly funny to think about that the Capra Demon from DS1, a wall for many new players, can be killed from outside their fog of wall with stones and dung piles. Or a certain simian boss from Sekiro being very weak to the Mortal Draw to a point where he’s in a constant stagger animation and just dies without any counterplay.

What are your favourite cheeses?

  • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    I might try KBM then, although I do like being able to lean back with the controller. Helps me relax a bit which is kinda needed haha.

    I mean, some things do just make it easier like inventory upgrades and better tools like flashlights and such. But the threats also keep getting more challenging, the nights get tougher and hideouts more open and less defensible. So you never really feel safe. Though I suspect if you get really comfortable with the dodge and melee swing timing you could probably defuse a lot of the danger of most enemies.

    Thank you for a super detailed explanation. Though from the sounds of it it seems like they still haven’t figured out how to make the fights interesting for both melee and ranged then, if most people prefer melee? Which I completely understand - like you say it’s central to the fantasy most people are looking for to be swinging a weapon in the face of a boss.

    That’s probably why we don’t see too many bosses with specific ranged movesets meant to be engaging for archers. Whatever that would look like. It’s a huge design demand for very little reward considering most players want to melee anyway. Better just add some gap closers and make ranged a non-issue.

    There are plenty of games that have both satisfying melee and ranged, but I don’t know if any of them have Souls (or Monster Hunter) style bosses. Maybe I’m forgetting something?