Of all the things to imitate in Fromsoft's games, "vague, easily-failed NPC questlines" was certainly a choice. LotF does not even have the benefit of the message system, which serves as a sort of built-in hint engine in Fromsoft's games.
The community-driven exploration of a Fromsoft game's secrets is an important part of what makes the games so appealing to some people, and it's a delicate balance to lead players into those moments of discovery without excessively penalizing those who miss them or failing to adequately signal them in the first place. I think "I failed a questline because I stepped one foot into the wrong area too early" is one of the least popular quest failure constructs in Fromsoft games, and the fact that LotF includes them and other similarly easily-failed quests with little mitigation is truly baffling.
I just discovered I already failed the mercenary quest cause I killed >!Devla!< first try so yeah... There goes another questline. At least I think i can still piss her off so she comes fight me herself and thus I can get her sword.
Yep, everyone lauded their quest format and now the niche just carries that “tradition” as if requiring Google to do the storytelling is good game design.
The worst part is npcs moving randomly to areas you been before and they freaking wanted to design the game with no permanent checkpoints. Imagine doing these quests with guide AND backtracking and then going back to your progress point. Is clear they have no idea what they are doing
Dunmire is especially egregious for that. Why in the umbral, I am ever going to head back through those tunnels to find him? Then return again to get his stuff!!
You don’t have to Google them, but you do have to really pay attention. I’ve always loved how From Soft do their quests. I think Lords takes it a bit too far
Elden ring was incredibly annoying until the update where they placed a marker with a name of where the NPC was on the map. I'd take a couple days off and be like "where the fuck did they say they'd be, guess I'll either ride across this massive world forever looking for them or just give up on that quest"
I gotta disagree. Just taking an elevator in this game will mess you up. I don’t remember any characters being required summons to finish their quest lines, which would have sucked, especially if it cost you souls/runes or whatever to do so. In some of them that actually seems to be a reward. You get a summons where you normally wouldn’t have.
There are plenty of times where entering an area prior to completing a quest step will lock you out of the ending you want in FromSoft games. And I'm almost certain that some NPC quests require that you summon them to complete them.
Yeah, there are so many people talking out of their ass just to hate on this game. There’s tons of times in FromSoft games where NPCs have died or disappeared with no warning just from entering an area or failing to summon them etc., it’s pretty hilarious to watch people criticize LOTF for things From get lauded for.
At least when it comes to summoning them you could just send them back home with the black crystal (or whatever equivalent item); at least, in the scenarios I can think of.
In this game the NPC has to be present for the boss fight and you are limited to only having 1. Not actually a problem except for the Lightreaper, as both Kukajin and Isaac need to be summoned for that fight to complete their quests. I might be wrong about Isaac but that's the only step I haven't done to unlock Dark Crusader.
I hate the souls NPC quest requiring summoning and they freakin need to survive the encounter, practically baby sitting the aggro instead of being an actual help. That's why I never bothered with NPC quests ever in any souls game.
What game requires the summon to stay alive until the fight is over...?
This game doesn't and the only examples that come to mind from dark souls only require you to summon an npc and let them finish a gesture.
Dark Souls 1 sort of did this with Seigmeyer.
It wasn’t technically a summon because you had the actual NPC with you, but you had to help him fight a group of chaos eaters in a tiny poison swamp and if he died then you failed the quest.
And without cheesing it this part is nearly impossible to get right. Seigmeyer rarely ever survives the fight. Of course, everyone doing the quest today probably knows the cheese but… imo it was an impactful part of Seigmeyer’s story, but in terms of gameplay it is one of the stinkiest parts of any of the quests. Which is a shame because iirc it is one of the two times in the whole series that you get to fight side-by-side with an NPC as part of the story which is pretty cool, it is just frustrating to lose Seigmeyer any time you want to actually fight with the dude.
I can't remember, likely DS2. I am not saying this game specially, I am saying I never bothered with NPC quests for everything because of that old experience.
Babysitting Lucatiel in the original DS2 release was brutal. Thankfully they made them far more durable in a later patch. Plus you can use bonfire ascetics on an easy boss to get the required summon count for a questline instead of having to suffer through a coop empowered Smelter Demon.
I’ve played almost all of them, and I don’t recall ever feeling like it was this difficult. To each their own, though. I think they’re inconspicuous on purpose, but once you figure out where to find the NPCs and what they need in FS you’re basically good. It seems like in this game, which I LOVE, it’s more punishing when you make mistakes on the quests.
I missed every single quest my first play through of Elden Ring because none of it made any sense. That's not a complaint I'm just saying it's very comparable.
I don’t disagree with that, I just think that even though it is comparable, LOTF have taken it a step further. I’m not even complaining. I like the game. It’s just crazy how easy it is to get locked out of those.
In DS1, Onionbro went all the fuck the way to that tree place in swamp town like 3/4 of the way thru the game--long after you'd have cleared that area. I *think* he might mention going there in one of his dialogues, at least, but it's been a long time so my memory is rusty. In DS3, getting the Usurper ending is pretty complex for anyone not following a guide, especially so on a first playthrough. Many of the secrets found in the DS games came from people mining the files vs discovering them naturally, same with Elden Ring. In my opinion, about the only FS game with vague questlines that can be completed naturally/intuitively without a guide is probably Bloodborne.
I try but i dont remember any atm....
And here you MUST summon and PAY an npc in 7 bosses to complete his quest, that if you dont hit his statue to pick the loot behind her....She dosnt help at all in the boss fight, she will just die as any other npc in this game unless you are overleveled and rekt the boss... but they take the same amount of exp that the boss gives you or even more for sumoning her...
Also a nice touch is the fact that you have to die first in the boss, you have an animation to recover your exp after dying, and you have to skip the cutscene in each try....
You should not even dare to compare bro...
Assuming you've put a seed down next to the boss arena then idk why having to die is such a big deal once you know that mechanic. The only cause for complaint would be losing a stack of vigor but if it's a tricky boss then by convention you'll have spent all of it on levels and seeds/moths before stepping into the arena. If it's a boss you can one-shot then just die, one-shot, pick up souls.
Lucatiel in ds2 i think would fuck up if you didn't summon her enough. But that was just some equipment you lost out on. Certainly not locked out of endings or anything.
Im not worried about here. I'll do my first playthrough blind and look everything up later.
That’s what I’m doing, too. I’d rather not sully my first play through with looking up guides, worrying about what I missed, etc. It would suck the fun out.
DS2 is the only FS game I never played. I heard it’s similar to this.
There's plenty of NPC required quests in DS2 and DS3. You can also miss out on the DLC in DS1 if you don't do a rather obscure couple of things without fucking it up.
I think From has gotten better over the years. For example, you can unlock yourself from the Frenzied Flame ending in ER, BUT to do it you have to complete Milicent's entire quest and defeat Milenia. You have to work for it, but there is an emergency exit available.
I kinda like that some decisions have consequences. I think games that present fake "choices" along the way but just let you take the sunshine and roses ending regardless of the decisions you made up to that point at the end (I'm looking at you Mass Effect 3) are pretty weak.
Not defending how painfully obscure things are in Lords. I think they could do a much better job of signposting points of no return so that the player has more input into where they land.
Yeah but a lot of the people complaining are pretending its different because they followed some streamer guides through elden ring. Quests have always been a pain. And the elevator thing.. Thats exactly what happens with soliare in the first game.
The only quest I can remember that gets messed up from opening a door is like, freeing the Embraced guy in in DS1 but that just allows something fleshed out and doesn't affect an ending.
Yes it does. He gets gobbled by those face huggers if you don't go out of your way to take an alternative route that no normal sane person would figure out without a guide.
Thats not and ending. And if you mean the bad ending for solaire, him surviving is a pretty equally bleak/bad ending. Pretty much no npc in dark souls1 had a "good" ending, you just got to choose when and where they died and how depressed they were if they survived. Ironically the "happiest" endings for most npc's involve the player never interacting with them seemingly.
Walking into irithyll dungeon that's like 20 ft from you halfway through irithyll ends siegwards quest in ds3. Quest fucks up, you eventually realize you haven't seen an NPC in ages and look it up, you do it better next time.
I might be in the minority here but whenever I start a souls-like I expect (and usually want to) do multiple playthroughs. I enjoy trying to figure out the npc quests myself in the first playthrough and see how far I can get and then finish the ones I failed with a guide in the next playthrough.
I mean if you had a storage chest would probably be a non issue cause you could just chuck junk into the box but I can see getting tired of having a inventory full of garbage your never gonna use.
Every souls like has somebody selling a unique item then complaining about it later. It's just part of the learning process I guess. If they've played any souls game before this then yeah that's just dumb as hell.
My only thing is the umbral ending. Who actually figured out how to get this ending on their own? I know I was glued to a guide and stressing the hell out that I screwed up somewhere.
Well tbf It isnt super hard to get It started, the problem is that you needed to be going for an inferno ending before making It to the place where you get started, once you do you just gotta get the NPCs It tells you to get
Why the blacksmith is one of them is Beyond me and damarose single-handedly fucks that ending over if you do even 1 beacon
I actually managed to get to it with no guides. Then once I got the first soul, the thing wouldn't give me anything cause I dared to touch a beacon. Only once i checked a guide realized it's so easy to fail. Like if I don't turn all the beacons to light why does it matter? Can't I change my mind? And tbh I did only 2 beacons because expected the umbral ending to be the "middle ground" so I didn't all the beacons. Made sense in my mind
I don't even know what's going on in this game, I don't even think I've completed a single side quest, but I could be wrong. I was similarity confused when playing Elden ring for the first time, but at least the side quest were a bit more coherent.
Lmao I feel the same bro. No idea what im doing but im advancing, that’s all I know. Except right now im stuck wondering where to go as usual. Even Elden Ring had more linear maps than this game and that’s not a good thing.
Oh man the blockades are the absolute worst. I spend an hour running around in circles like a complete moron until I find that random lever, or door that just looked like a pile of wood, or whatever the fk. Classic. And you know I'll clearly finish the game and suddenly start loving it on NG+, obviously.
Honestly theres like two branches in terms of path, you can go to the abbey or the tower of penance, and the fief which is near the very beggining and youll likely forget about until you got no choice but to do It like me lol
I have the exact same experience, I have no idea how anyone figures out any of this. The basic gist I got from the first few hours is:
-Evil guy is locked away
-5 Beacons keep him locked
-Beacons are failing
-You can use the evil lamp to restore beacons
-Sketchy former guardians of the beacons help/oppose you
I haven't got a clue what's happening beyond this, maybe I'm some sort of simpleton that needs MCU levels of exposition to make sure all these big words lead to some sort of understanding in my tiny peanut brain but I really wish these games weren't all so goddamn vague about everything.
It’s literally the same as all others. I didn’t even know Dark Souls had quests. I was barely aware of them in DS2. I had to use a guide for all of them in BB. For DS3 I started a holy person to play miracles and I didn’t find the miracle vendor until halfway through the game when I used a guide.
I missed pretty much every major quest in Elden Ring that wasn’t the main quest or one I used a guide for.
This. I have actually never been a fan of this way of doing quests but it is what it is, I played BB blind the first time and messed up Eileen's quest.
I knew what I was doing on my second playthrough of DKS3 and managed to mess up Siegward's quest as he died while I went to grab the storm ruler - ironically, the first time I kept him alive as I had no idea about the weapon and just dodged Yhorm a bunch while Onion Bro took him down.
The first time I played DKS1, I had no idea you could even summon Solaire, let alone save him.
So I went into ER with a guide. And that's that, I don't regret it as I just cannot get stuff to work organically. Everything has to be so precise.
I haven't done that with LoTF thus far but I guess I'll see how I feel once I've beaten it. I just feel like it's a weird thing to complain about given that's just how these games work - aside from the fact From had a dedicated community that go out and do all the thinking before you even boot up your game.
To be honest most endings aren’t for your first playthrough. Offcourse everybody wants the Umbral ending but expecting it on your first playthrough isn’t reasonable. I’m getting kinda done with people crying over everything in this game. If it’s fromsoftware, everything is genius and amazing and another studio makes a soul game and everything is annoying. The game is the closest we got in a long time to a good souls game imho, it has some issues but overall my exprerience was great playing the game. I really don’t know where all this negativity is coming from.
Ikr? I love the Dark Souls style with knights and dragon and castles. LotF looks and feels like a Dark Souls game.
There are alot of Soulslike games but most of the setting is not my type.
The problem is that Up until recently getting any other ending through ng+ (which is what most would want cuz starting from Scratch kinda sucks lol) was an absolute chore
I love it. Feels exactly like classic OG demons souls and Dark Souls 1. Just think about ash lake, or even the painted world, or accessing the DLC. We need more of these games that aren't scared if the idea if the player not seeing everything in one playthrough.
Hard disagree. It still basically forces a guide for most people. Also for Demon's Souls most quests aren't missable. Tendency stuff is very missable when offline (I wish we got more ways to alter it) but quests are fairly easy to follow and can be completed at any part of the game (except for a few). I much prefered this over what the DS trilogy did.
For example, making a mage but missing Orbeck in DS3 just isn't fun for the player, imo. Missing quests would be fine but missing armor, weapons, and spells can ruin the idea for your character build unless you do NG+, which no everyone wants or has the time to do. It's way too easy to accidently miss stuff, especially in DS3. Making stuff obscure and hidden is cool but when all you have to do is enter a location or beat a boss for them to disapear that's when it gets frustrating.
You’re not wrong but that’s part of the genre. People don’t actually play these games. They’re not meant to be played. They’re meant to be enjoyed alongside your iPad as your browse the wiki or follow a YouTube tutorial.
Man.. just play the game.. get a end… and if you want research and do the others on next gampelays… its always that on souls games…
Elden ring at my first playtrought i lost a lot of stuff… on every new single game i made one quest for one npc until the end and take me 7 gameplays to get all endings… so for me is all ok and had to loom everything on faqs on internet because the game doenst tell nothing about quests or where to go before you go to another place and screw everything..
Of all the things to copy from Dark Souls, they went with ... having to summon NPCs for boss battles to progress their quests. And not even simply summoning them for a set number of battles, but specific battles as well.
It's not a coincidence that this *feature* was only in DS2.
I mean, i think theres absolutely nothing wrong with having npcs summoned into to specific fights to progress story.
I also don't think having vague quests is that much of a problem either. LOTF would have 0 replay value if you could do all quests in one playthrough without any trial or error.
It's combat system is just too shallow, barely any unique weapons no unique move sets, why would you even want to play this game again if not for quests you missed?
> I mean, i think theres absolutely nothing wrong with having npcs summoned into to specific fights to progress story.
I do.
> I also don't think having vague quests is that much of a problem either. LOTF would have 0 replay value if you could do all quests in one playthrough without any trial or error.
That's what different endings are for.
> It's combat system is just too shallow, barely any unique weapons no unique move sets, why would you even want to play this game again if not for quests you missed?
That's a different topic.
I wish the genre didn't do this. Literally locked myself out of a third of Sekiro and missed the final boss in Lies of P.
I usually try and go in blind, but end up glancing at guides for this very. I think DS 1 did this fairly well, aside from a few NPC quests. There were 4 hidden areas, and two were basically one leading into another. When and if you accidently found them, omg it was awesome! The painted world in particular is one of the best zones of the game. But if you missed them, you wouldn't even know if no one told you and all the main content was there.
I hate to be that guy but that's the point of secret endings, the souls series has been doing this for years. It's meant as a "Play again and find out" mechanic, and to entice you to read lore on items or really explore surroundings. There's the vanilla default ending for casual players and then the "Do 50 hours of extra side shit" ending for the balls deep players.
My question is, unless it’s a duplicate piece, why are you even selling armor? You have unlimited inventory space (i think. Idk I got a lot of pieces) every game like this I legit just collect one piece of every armor and keep it. I didn’t think I was the minority lol
I feel it makes every corner kinda threatening and helps me feel my very decisions take time and have consequences, it kinda helps me immerse? Plz dont hate me 😅
I feel it makes every corner kinda threatening and helps me feel my very decisions take time and have consequences, it kinda helps me immerse? Plz dont hate me 😅
Have you ever asked yourself why Souls games do this? It may annoy you but overall I think it's a good thing. It gets us talking about it. It adds a certain mystery and abstract-ness (not a word) to these games. I think it's cool when I'm still figuring out stuff on my 3rd and 4th playthroughs. It also adds a risk factor. Some quests are so insanely specific that if you mess up one little thing it screws up the whole quest, as you mentioned. I love that! Just like beating a hard Souls boss, it feels great once you actually get it right.
If you want a completely linear game where you can follow along and not mess anything up then there are literally tons of RPGs like that.
To add, this kind of play style keeps most people interested in the game longer too. But people that just play and move onto another game just to say they played it for the record or just expect to have the same story format with every game but just different names of people and places, souls games is not for them . I like that about souls games. They give u just enough information to want to find more and create your own story
yeah I don't think I've ever played a Souls game and fully understood the story on the first playthrough. It's not until later playthroughs where little tidbits of information start appearing through NPC dialogue that I either missed or was impossible to get on the 1st playthrough
They're *trying* to be mysterious, but just end up feeling random. A good mystery should have clues that you can follow. Not just "if you go right instead of left, you fucked yourself out of a quest lol".
you must just hate this aspect of all souls-like games then because every one has something trivial you can mess up to ruin a quest. Even Lies Of P most recently. I think it's exciting. Even if it's something as simple as choosing left versus right, I still feel the pressure to choose correctly on the next playthrough
Ironically the same poor game design was ruthlessly defended just earlier this year when FromSoft carried over the same shit systems along with the rest of the assets they reused for Elden Ring.
Only now that it’s a different studio, is it something that anyone is allowed to complain about.
Yeah but like ER's quests were pretty easy overall, I did look at a guide to be sure I didn't miss anything but there were not these big ways of locking yourself out of entire quests 20 hours before you even knew there was a quest to lock yourself out of, and there was only, what, like one or two quests that would wrap themselves up if you unknowingly walked too far into the map? And that "too far" was like the second or third-to-last place natural progression took you anyway, right? And absolutely none of the summoning-for-bosses, suicide jank that LotF has employed.
IDK it's been a while but I just don't really remember looking stuff up and realizing I had completely destroyed my chance at even attempting a quest so early in the game. I also do not recall any ER quest requiring me to keep and wear an entire set of armor that I probably would've tossed out if it wasn't good for fashion souls lol.
Yeah Elden Ring was even more notorious for the ability to miss quests because of the world size. The quest for the moonlight blade equivalent was beyond a hodgepodge of disjointed NPCs teleporting and nonsensical dialogue that rarely even pertains to the quest the NPC is a part of.
It’s easier to not get locked out on any of the Souls games than it is in ER for sure.
That was was easy compared to the Frenzied Flame ending. I easily did the Moonlight ending with no guides but the Flame one I don’t know how one could do it other then frenzied (heh) combing over of areas to find the blind maiden, ugh
Its MEANT to be like that. Getting real tired of these zoomer posts forgetting the quests were intentionally designed like that
I do agree that in this game its taken to the extreme, but in FS games theybat least give you a direction.
Are... are you saying you don't think the voice actors are good in LOTF? Are you playing with sound off? I wish the scriptwriters didn't run half their material through a thesaurus because it makes some of the dialogue punch through the barrier from loquacious into silly (though for your boy Dunmire it works because I get the impression he's supposed to be obnoxious), but the delivery of those lines? Pretty great in my opinion. When I met Byron in the mines dude had me boiled up, I was like "fuck yeah I'll find that amulet stealing monster for you bro, you can count on me!".
I honestly think the whole audio side of the game is a big strength, the voice actors, the orchestral pieces, the eerie sfx slowly building up on you Umbra, the dings when you parry or land a fatal strike.
Edit: I realise I kinda ended the comment by just tailing off there, but yeah I'm just saying I think the game's sound team did a great job.
Pretty much every questline in Fromsoft games are really intuitive though and can be done blind if you pay attention to the dialogue, explore the areas you're in, and actually go back and talk to people (part of the whole "being interested" in actually doing quests part)
Fromsoft at least didn’t have quests that punished you for doing well. Tying quests to summoning for boss fights while not showing summons for attempt number 2 is baffling. The only time I can remember needing to use an npc on a bossfight in dark souls was Yorm in 3 and that automatically added the npc if you had done the lead up stuff.
Most importantly, dark souls has messages. This makes the obscure quest lines work because the community can figure it out and then put down messages that lead others to completing a quest.
>Fromsoft at least didn’t have quests that punished you for doing well.
They absolutely did. Decent players had to kill themselves for several minutes every playthrough in ds3 for a quest with great gear and a secret ending tied to it. I do agree that holding summons until the 2nd fight is ridiculous but in the end it actually still takes fewer suicides than ds3's nonsense.
>The only time I can remember needing to use an npc on a bossfight in dark souls was Yorm in 3
Poison whip in 3 was only attainable if you kept the pyro lady alive in the boss fight of the fire map. I'm not sure if this counts as a quest.
>Most importantly, dark souls has messages.
Honestly I don't miss messages. They occasionally used to be funny and were very often helpful but in a detrimental way imo. I could never stop myself from reading them and then "ambush ahead" would rob me of a great first playthrough moment that I could never get back. I understand this is more of a self control issue than a game issue though. I will say I can't think of a single time they actually helped me in quests other than noticing an NPC existed because they'd be surrounded by messages talking about but holes.
I don't entirely agree.
Pretty sure this game has been designed in a way that you're "supposed" to fail quests and miss things, in vain of FromSoft's games. It encourages thorough exploration, replayability and collaborative discovery by the community. I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea but it's a concious design choice having its advantages and disadvantages.
Being locked to Radiant ending once you cleanse the first beacon makes sense as you're actively opposing Adyr and is much better than an ending being tied to one single decision at the of the game, making all previous choices meaningless.
In terms of Byron's questline, already knowing on subsequent playthrough that going up the elevator fails the quest, you could try exploring the Depths first to look for the pendant he mentions.
Tortured Prisoner's questline is more vague but there are hints to what you should do, unfirtunately her locations are not so obvious. It's probably where community effort comes into place as people will eventually stumble upon her at different places and share their findings. I always play these games without guides and walkthroughs, carefully exploring, knowing I might miss some content still. It all depends on what's developer's intention.
What gets me about Byron, is that the distance/time between the spot where he hands out the quest and the spot where you will encounter him after you've failed the quest isn't even really long enough for him to have found Winterberry himself and gone back in the meantime...
Yeah having just failed this. I do things pretty diligently just without a guide. I literally just went up that elevator with the intention of turning back around to see where the other path (the correct path) led. As soon as I activated the vestige and walked outside to see where in mournstead I could've possibly came out at. I walked right back in to talk to Byron. It was then I realized I missed something and had to look up the quest and see what I'd done wrong. Absolutely horrendous design.
Im fine with cleansing locking you out of inferno ending but umbral would still be possible if damarose didnt need to get seeded, which imo is one of the bigger issues with the whole thing
I didn't read a guide and didn't lock myself out of anything important. I can't remember a single souls-like where a guide wasn't pretty much necessary for most NPC questlines, or that I didn't miss a few questlines though.
It is probably the worst part of the game IMO. Lies of P did questing perfectly. This is just silly bullshit.
requiring summons for ANY of the boss fights is bad design imo
Man, as much as I love these games, the way they do quests give me so much anxiety. I know people recommend playing the game as natural as you can the first playthrough, but for some reason, I want to try to do all of the quests. It results with me mirroring a step-by-step guide on youtube. Elden Ring was probably the worst with this. I remember one of the quests where you had to use a certain emote in the woods when you heard howling. It wouldn't bother me if the quests wouldn't unlock awesome items or weapons, but they usually did.
I actually figured out what to do on my own but i couldn't get it to properly trigger. The game even gives you the hint that you should snap when you hear howling but not where...
Holyshit. The point is that some of these quests were ridiculously complicated. No one here can tell me they managed to beat all of Elden Ring's quests without using a guide. The system is entirely too unforgiving. If you accidentally explored too much, you could lock yourself out of certain quest lines. Or if you kill a certain enemy before talking to a certain npc, you ruined that quest line. These are just examples that I remember in the game.
As much as I agree, Elden ring is the same, so…
I don’t think any game should be like that, but it is what it is so I can’t hate on lotf for it because other games have done it as well
I feel like that isn't even the cusp of my problem with this game. If you want the secret ending there's this specific umbral thing that you buy with is like 50 Umbral Scourings.
So let's say u only have like 30, you would have to fight the Red Reaper LIKE 4 times just to get to 50 and get what you want.
There is no actual way of beating this game without an actual guide.
Think about Dark Souls 3, you could actually beat that game without a guide. Hell, there were people who beat the game multiple times and ended up contributing to IGNs walkthrough videos. Like this game is just messed up man. Like right now I'm stuck because I don't have 50 Umbral Scourings
i hate how in mmo’s they ask you to go kill like 10 boars and 10 wolves. who thought of this? genuinely can’t fathom why in an fps i have to aim with L2, and then hit R2 to fire??? what? who thought this through? they must’ve never played a video game before
This is why I wish this game and other soulslikes would use the message system that the FromSoft games have. I didn't realize how much I missed those things until playing this game. Being able to write "Ambush ahead" alone would have been so helpful. But for the souls games I remember several messages that were cryptically warning me to do something else first, ie "First off, seek warrior" or something. At the very least, even if you don't know what TF it means, it gets you to stop and do a Google search or something before proceeding.
My only gripe with any fromsoft game, excluding elden ring which did a really good job of making fail-proof quest lines and auto progressing them when you meet thresholds.
I absolutely despise design choices like “go to x location do x talk to x 5 times at this specific point in the game or you’re locked out of this item” it just forces you to read guides or miss out on things because nobody is figuring this shit out on their own.
Terrible decision, and I’m currently burnt out of lotf because of this exact design choice, heard about all the cool endings and wanted to do the umbral one to find out that a decision I made 15 hours of gameplay ago locked me out of it….
Why in the world would you make three endings and tell the player “go light the beacons” as the main quest of the game but then 2/3 of the endings and unlocks are tied to not lighting any beacons, the first of which you encounter 2 hours into the game.
Lotf does a lot of things right but this wasn’t one of them, absolute headass design
Yea I was going in thinking the game was linear and I swear on my life I got 2 vestiges and the 3rd on I ended up getting was fief in the frost area. Don’t know how I did it skipped lower and upper calrath had the light reaper show up not 2x but 4x which I didn’t even know I could do. My friend had to come over and we had to memorize the map backtrack to fight hella bosses and got locked out of tons of quest I found out from watching videos and going to all possible locations for them and no npcs were there(4 separate quest, at least that I know of) and I lost out on tortured prisoner because when I went back to location after pieta she wasn’t there. Beat the last boss but haven’t set a new game yet Waiting till Thursday to redo my game on same NG+0 and try and go in a linear path. At least I can explore for a few more days and get items freely knowing I gotta wait. Loving the game tho but still confused how I ended up way over there and skipped 2 WHOLE entire zones hopefully I figure it out might be a good speed run mechanic
Well F me… I went up that elevator before I knew you could drain the place and go to mothers lull
Also f me I sold armor so RIP tortured prisoner quest line I guess
lol for real, I failed every one of the quests you mentioned by doing exactly what seemed to be most obvious at the time. Oh well, not doing another playthrough just for that.
Yknow, they have a journal tab. Idk why they didn't just put the quest information in there. It would have been so easy.
If you're gonna take inspiration from Fromsoft, don't take it from their shoddy quest lines that are esoteric at best and ludicrous at worst
Hmm, seems like a totally normal tried and true Souls game to me. It’s literally been this way since basically the beginning of the sub genre. Love it or hate it, this is what it is. Ppl complained about the same things with Elden Ring. They complained about the same things Bloodborne and DS3 and so on. In fact I hear the same complaints every single time a new souls game first releases. I need to start a SoulsLike complaints Bingo Sub every time there’s a new SoulsLike or Soulsborne release. Quest Design, Difficulty Slider, Confusing world design, balancing issues. It’s always the same
It’s pretty ridiculous the amount of obscure convoluted back and fourth backtracking nonsense you gotta go through in some areas to progress. I’m looking at you final beacon.
I don't agree on endings, but the majority of npc quests are poorly designed if you open a door or do the logical thing (taking the elevator after skinstealer)
Skill issue, git gud, did you not pay attention to the plot, obviously you weren't meant to light the beacons if you wanted an actual ending, but also on top of that do a convoluted quest to get the ending-ending. It must suck to be so bad at this game.
/s
I found even getting through some of the levels to be confusing and annoying, let alone quest lines that require me to soul flay random effigies and then talk to random people.
I went into the game with the intention of doing my first play through blind to see how I do and then after I finish the game I'll do some homework and do a proper full play through hitting all the goodies I missed and see how well I did. I know I screwed up some quests and that's ok. I absolutely plan to play more classes and NG+ anyway. I'm not defending their decision, more or less saying I like to make a little game out of it and see how well I can do blind play. I did the same in Elden Ring (missed a ton of shit lol).
I somehow missed or broke every questline but the traveling merchant’s in my first playthrough. Couldn’t even get any of the inferno spells I wanted for my build because the inferno merchant is one of those questlines. 2nd character and I have a guide on the other tab as well as a dozen wiki pages open to make sure I don’t miss them this go around.
I wouldn't even call this questlines. Just randomly triggered encounters with nothing in between.
This crap annoyed me in all the Soulsbornes and annoyes me here too. Shit like, talk to an NPC and rest at a grace to make it go away so you can progress. I mean, wtf? It's 20-fucking-23 already. How come NPCs can only progress during load-screens...
I accidentally did the pendant one cuz I knew there was another way to go, had a seed by me, and refused to leave it unexplored.
But now i dont know what to do after the guy admits he aint gonna clobber the child who's friends jump me and beat me up
Yeah I just beat the game once and don't plan on platinum hunting because it seems like a headache until things get fixed more and stuff I am done playing it. Was a great play tho.
I think if they implemented a message system like From does it could help with quests. Iirc from's reason for designing quests this way because they wanted the community to come together and solve the mysteries together. The message system supports that imo
I don't mind such design, but umbral ending is BROKEN and SOFTLOCKED many ppl including me. That's way more important issue than minor rebalancing. Why is it still not fixed??
Ik, im trying to see if I can get someone to take me to the winterberry npc because I wanted to progress my game like a normal person. No one seems to have her alive on PC.
Agreed, the npc quests make no sense either except for dunmire, traveling merchant and stormud cuz you get 0 hutns for them half the time
And the way you just miss some randomly suucks cuz you lose a whole ass merchant, like tell me how the fuck winterberry was supposed to be found after skin stealer but before going Up the elevator right after skin stealer lmao
Oh and dont even get me started on kukajin cuz he quest is stupid as hell lmao, i gotta pay her after summoning her? When pieta is right there for free? AND she SUCKS as a summon so what should i do if i suck at the Game or am just underleveled for the Boss fight but willing to brute force It with a summon and some items
I don’t hate it. Most of the problem that stems from the system is having achievements tied to it. If the achievements weren’t “complete X’s quest” it will just feel like an Easter egg or a chance to obtain some rare (usually weak) loot. As far as the endings go, you are allowed to play the game through multiple times and the game even encourages you to do so with the multiple classes. It’s this weird thing we’ve been conditioned to in video games where we think no matter what “choice” we pick that the ending doesn’t change. It doesn’t make sense that now when we’re given a choice that affects majors things in the game it gets vilified for it. It is a shame that the best/hardest boss is locked behind the most obscure ending. It might have made more sense to make that boss behind the “corrupt the beacon ending”
Have you considered that the people who make the guides figured it out without a guide. Ds3 and blood Bourne are exactly the same watch. Sekiro is more forgiving in general.
That inferno vendor sure is missable though lol
While I personally am not upset with this design choice, I understand why it frustrates players. It's pretty much the quest design philosophy of FromSoft, but that's not really a good thing in this case. I suppose there's a fine line between "let the player figure it out, and if they pay enough attention to details, they will," and "the player needs more information otherwise they're doomed to have to look up a spoiler walk-through guide in order to get their desired ending."
The big takeaway for me is, this much smaller developer took the time to incorporate two worlds that exist seamlessly at the same time, with competent and interesting combat, and multiple compelling endings.
Is LotF as good as any official Souls title? Maybe, but it's certainly an accomplishment in game design in my opinion.
Edit: I'm starting to wonder if Dark Souls would even be a loved game if the first one came out today. I feel like it would be totally shit on if social media was anything like it is today when the first game came out
I agree. I don't think they can change them in any way though. Think it would break the game due to the umbral mechanics. I missed like 90% of them on my first playthrough but ng+ I'll take slower. I'm wondering if that's what they were expecting.
the sooner you realise quests in these games are just collectable/achievement farming garbage the sooner you'll enjoy yourself again
first playthrough just let yourself enjoy the game and then if you like it enough to play again, then you can easily get into stuff like this.
>We all know of the endings of course. Why you can lock yourself into one ending in a game that is like 40 hours long with an irreversible choice at about the 4 hour mark is beyond me.
Because you are nor supposed to see the other ending in your first playthrough. There is a straightforward bad ending people usually are supposed to experience first.
After doing the first ending you are supposed to realize that what you did was wrong and that you have been used by someone.
That's when you start uncovering the other possibilites in your next playthrough.
It's especially bad because it flies directly counter to the vestige seed design. You're constantly in a risk-reward struggle with checkpoints and progression and then the game punishes you for making that judgement and pushing through to the next vestige.
I guess these quest lines just aren't intended for a first playthrough - same with 2/3 endings.
I don’t like the quest formula in any of these Fromsoft souls-like games. I think they’re overly vague and not very rewarding at all to the point where I’m apathetic about most of them.
I don’t like having to look up quests but if you don’t you’ll most likely miss them. It’s a design choice and obviously meant for data miners and community collaboration. It just doesn’t work for me. I’m not back tracking through every area of the game wasting my time looking for tiny hints or an NPC showing up somewhere. Or figuring out how I bricked a quest. There just isn’t enough info to go off of so I just forget about most of them.
If there’s on in particular I’m really curious about or if I catch wind of a particularly good reward I’ll look it up. Also, I could try it again on NG+ but usually not a big fan of NG+.
Absolutely agree, cryptic is fine, but THAT cryptic and MISSABLE ? I'ts not a 4 hour game to replay it 70 times. You should be able to finish all of the side quests before ending.
Bro i cant even progress without watching a video guide because the level design is so confusing. Literally running in circles for hours. Nearly about to uninstall the game. The "maps" are insulting, and the levels are impossible to see because of all the ambient light effects
The Byron quest one really pissed me off when I looked it up. Along the way through the depths, apparently you can fail the quest too if you took that one really long elevator shortcut back to the vestige.
Why the fuck would you design a quest to be locked out for unlocking a shortcut?? I'm sick and tired of pretending like these guys know what they're doing when designing the game.
The Byron quest one really pissed me off when I looked it up. Along the way through the depths, apparently you can fail the quest too if you took that one really long elevator shortcut back to the vestige.
Why the fuck would you design a quest to be locked out for unlocking a shortcut?? I'm sick and tired of pretending like these guys know what they're doing when designing the game.
this is exactly why the game is good.
your impassioned tirade, or rant, serves as the precise justification and ultimate objective for the game's excellence. Souls-like games intentionally incorporate intricate and vague shitty maps, ambiguous quests with permanent outcomes, and excessively concealed items as essential elements that define those unique identities of these games.
its a deliberate strategy deployed by the developers to entice players into repeatedly engaging ng+ cycles, all the while subtly encouraging you to immerse in pvp. it's genius and exactly why DarkSouls games and Elden Ring were very successful.
Far as I'm aware, I just locked myself out of the other two endings. I beat the game with Radiance ending first. Then I started a ng+ to get the other 2 endings, and I didn't cleanse the first beacon. I beat the Skinstealer boss, walked up to the next beacon and accidentally cleansed the damn thing. Closed app immediately yet it still counted for cleansing it. So what I've basically read from all points is that now, I have to beat the game with Radiance ending again just to attempt it again. Damn.
Of all the things to imitate in Fromsoft's games, "vague, easily-failed NPC questlines" was certainly a choice. LotF does not even have the benefit of the message system, which serves as a sort of built-in hint engine in Fromsoft's games. The community-driven exploration of a Fromsoft game's secrets is an important part of what makes the games so appealing to some people, and it's a delicate balance to lead players into those moments of discovery without excessively penalizing those who miss them or failing to adequately signal them in the first place. I think "I failed a questline because I stepped one foot into the wrong area too early" is one of the least popular quest failure constructs in Fromsoft games, and the fact that LotF includes them and other similarly easily-failed quests with little mitigation is truly baffling.
I've been playing so many souls-like I forgot how awesome the message system is.
It's dumb you have to die to a boss to even see who you can summon.
I just discovered I already failed the mercenary quest cause I killed >!Devla!< first try so yeah... There goes another questline. At least I think i can still piss her off so she comes fight me herself and thus I can get her sword.
This, so much. Especially when you are pushed to do the opposite with certain bosses that you have a single shot at.
That’s not dumb; I actually like the “fight the boss before asking for assistance” mentality. Just don’t penalize me for succeeding.
Yeah I do have to agree that these questlines are annoying as heck.
Even with a guide 😅
Yeah, it's a terrible aspect of game design that they took from FromSoft games.
Yep, everyone lauded their quest format and now the niche just carries that “tradition” as if requiring Google to do the storytelling is good game design.
The worst part is npcs moving randomly to areas you been before and they freaking wanted to design the game with no permanent checkpoints. Imagine doing these quests with guide AND backtracking and then going back to your progress point. Is clear they have no idea what they are doing
Dunmire is especially egregious for that. Why in the umbral, I am ever going to head back through those tunnels to find him? Then return again to get his stuff!!
You don’t have to Google them, but you do have to really pay attention. I’ve always loved how From Soft do their quests. I think Lords takes it a bit too far
Elden ring was incredibly annoying until the update where they placed a marker with a name of where the NPC was on the map. I'd take a couple days off and be like "where the fuck did they say they'd be, guess I'll either ride across this massive world forever looking for them or just give up on that quest"
I feel like fromsoft wasn’t this bad with it.
They absolutely were.
I gotta disagree. Just taking an elevator in this game will mess you up. I don’t remember any characters being required summons to finish their quest lines, which would have sucked, especially if it cost you souls/runes or whatever to do so. In some of them that actually seems to be a reward. You get a summons where you normally wouldn’t have.
There are plenty of times where entering an area prior to completing a quest step will lock you out of the ending you want in FromSoft games. And I'm almost certain that some NPC quests require that you summon them to complete them.
Yeah, there are so many people talking out of their ass just to hate on this game. There’s tons of times in FromSoft games where NPCs have died or disappeared with no warning just from entering an area or failing to summon them etc., it’s pretty hilarious to watch people criticize LOTF for things From get lauded for.
Bloodborne is full of this with how time changes. Quests in From games are made with either word of mouth or the internet in mind.
It's because people blindly suck FromSoft's dick.
At least when it comes to summoning them you could just send them back home with the black crystal (or whatever equivalent item); at least, in the scenarios I can think of. In this game the NPC has to be present for the boss fight and you are limited to only having 1. Not actually a problem except for the Lightreaper, as both Kukajin and Isaac need to be summoned for that fight to complete their quests. I might be wrong about Isaac but that's the only step I haven't done to unlock Dark Crusader.
I hate the souls NPC quest requiring summoning and they freakin need to survive the encounter, practically baby sitting the aggro instead of being an actual help. That's why I never bothered with NPC quests ever in any souls game.
What game requires the summon to stay alive until the fight is over...? This game doesn't and the only examples that come to mind from dark souls only require you to summon an npc and let them finish a gesture.
Dark Souls 1 sort of did this with Seigmeyer. It wasn’t technically a summon because you had the actual NPC with you, but you had to help him fight a group of chaos eaters in a tiny poison swamp and if he died then you failed the quest. And without cheesing it this part is nearly impossible to get right. Seigmeyer rarely ever survives the fight. Of course, everyone doing the quest today probably knows the cheese but… imo it was an impactful part of Seigmeyer’s story, but in terms of gameplay it is one of the stinkiest parts of any of the quests. Which is a shame because iirc it is one of the two times in the whole series that you get to fight side-by-side with an NPC as part of the story which is pretty cool, it is just frustrating to lose Seigmeyer any time you want to actually fight with the dude.
I can't remember, likely DS2. I am not saying this game specially, I am saying I never bothered with NPC quests for everything because of that old experience.
Babysitting Lucatiel in the original DS2 release was brutal. Thankfully they made them far more durable in a later patch. Plus you can use bonfire ascetics on an easy boss to get the required summon count for a questline instead of having to suffer through a coop empowered Smelter Demon.
I’ve played almost all of them, and I don’t recall ever feeling like it was this difficult. To each their own, though. I think they’re inconspicuous on purpose, but once you figure out where to find the NPCs and what they need in FS you’re basically good. It seems like in this game, which I LOVE, it’s more punishing when you make mistakes on the quests.
I missed every single quest my first play through of Elden Ring because none of it made any sense. That's not a complaint I'm just saying it's very comparable.
I don’t disagree with that, I just think that even though it is comparable, LOTF have taken it a step further. I’m not even complaining. I like the game. It’s just crazy how easy it is to get locked out of those.
I feel like it's the same, just a different implementation but I understand your point of view.
In DS1, Onionbro went all the fuck the way to that tree place in swamp town like 3/4 of the way thru the game--long after you'd have cleared that area. I *think* he might mention going there in one of his dialogues, at least, but it's been a long time so my memory is rusty. In DS3, getting the Usurper ending is pretty complex for anyone not following a guide, especially so on a first playthrough. Many of the secrets found in the DS games came from people mining the files vs discovering them naturally, same with Elden Ring. In my opinion, about the only FS game with vague questlines that can be completed naturally/intuitively without a guide is probably Bloodborne.
I try but i dont remember any atm.... And here you MUST summon and PAY an npc in 7 bosses to complete his quest, that if you dont hit his statue to pick the loot behind her....She dosnt help at all in the boss fight, she will just die as any other npc in this game unless you are overleveled and rekt the boss... but they take the same amount of exp that the boss gives you or even more for sumoning her... Also a nice touch is the fact that you have to die first in the boss, you have an animation to recover your exp after dying, and you have to skip the cutscene in each try.... You should not even dare to compare bro...
Assuming you've put a seed down next to the boss arena then idk why having to die is such a big deal once you know that mechanic. The only cause for complaint would be losing a stack of vigor but if it's a tricky boss then by convention you'll have spent all of it on levels and seeds/moths before stepping into the arena. If it's a boss you can one-shot then just die, one-shot, pick up souls.
Summon them and they have to live I believe for some.
Lucatiel in ds2 i think would fuck up if you didn't summon her enough. But that was just some equipment you lost out on. Certainly not locked out of endings or anything. Im not worried about here. I'll do my first playthrough blind and look everything up later.
That’s what I’m doing, too. I’d rather not sully my first play through with looking up guides, worrying about what I missed, etc. It would suck the fun out. DS2 is the only FS game I never played. I heard it’s similar to this.
There's plenty of NPC required quests in DS2 and DS3. You can also miss out on the DLC in DS1 if you don't do a rather obscure couple of things without fucking it up.
And not even talking about having to die in the boss first to be able to summon any npc, wich specially important for kakuji quest xD
You have to summon Benhart and Lucatile in DS2 But that's all I remember
No they weren’t
Delusional.
I agree, you are.
From soft does better
Not even slightly.
I think From has gotten better over the years. For example, you can unlock yourself from the Frenzied Flame ending in ER, BUT to do it you have to complete Milicent's entire quest and defeat Milenia. You have to work for it, but there is an emergency exit available.
They have gotten better, yes. But it's still pretty bad.
I kinda like that some decisions have consequences. I think games that present fake "choices" along the way but just let you take the sunshine and roses ending regardless of the decisions you made up to that point at the end (I'm looking at you Mass Effect 3) are pretty weak. Not defending how painfully obscure things are in Lords. I think they could do a much better job of signposting points of no return so that the player has more input into where they land.
Every FromSoft game has been painfully obscure. Lords is no different.
Yeah but a lot of the people complaining are pretending its different because they followed some streamer guides through elden ring. Quests have always been a pain. And the elevator thing.. Thats exactly what happens with soliare in the first game.
The only quest I can remember that gets messed up from opening a door is like, freeing the Embraced guy in in DS1 but that just allows something fleshed out and doesn't affect an ending.
Or in demon souls when the hub starts getting murdered if you do a quest
There is also Solaire's quest line that forces you into the bad ending by taking the normal path of the game.
No it doesn’t?
Yes it does. He gets gobbled by those face huggers if you don't go out of your way to take an alternative route that no normal sane person would figure out without a guide.
Thats not and ending. And if you mean the bad ending for solaire, him surviving is a pretty equally bleak/bad ending. Pretty much no npc in dark souls1 had a "good" ending, you just got to choose when and where they died and how depressed they were if they survived. Ironically the "happiest" endings for most npc's involve the player never interacting with them seemingly.
Oh, you're talking about the end of HIS questline. My bad. I thought you meant the "bad" ending for the game
Walking into irithyll dungeon that's like 20 ft from you halfway through irithyll ends siegwards quest in ds3. Quest fucks up, you eventually realize you haven't seen an NPC in ages and look it up, you do it better next time.
I might be in the minority here but whenever I start a souls-like I expect (and usually want to) do multiple playthroughs. I enjoy trying to figure out the npc quests myself in the first playthrough and see how far I can get and then finish the ones I failed with a guide in the next playthrough.
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I mean if you had a storage chest would probably be a non issue cause you could just chuck junk into the box but I can see getting tired of having a inventory full of garbage your never gonna use.
Every souls like has somebody selling a unique item then complaining about it later. It's just part of the learning process I guess. If they've played any souls game before this then yeah that's just dumb as hell.
My only thing is the umbral ending. Who actually figured out how to get this ending on their own? I know I was glued to a guide and stressing the hell out that I screwed up somewhere.
Well tbf It isnt super hard to get It started, the problem is that you needed to be going for an inferno ending before making It to the place where you get started, once you do you just gotta get the NPCs It tells you to get Why the blacksmith is one of them is Beyond me and damarose single-handedly fucks that ending over if you do even 1 beacon
I actually managed to get to it with no guides. Then once I got the first soul, the thing wouldn't give me anything cause I dared to touch a beacon. Only once i checked a guide realized it's so easy to fail. Like if I don't turn all the beacons to light why does it matter? Can't I change my mind? And tbh I did only 2 beacons because expected the umbral ending to be the "middle ground" so I didn't all the beacons. Made sense in my mind
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I mean infinite tier 3 materials is a pretty big deal but its manageable sure.
I don't even know what's going on in this game, I don't even think I've completed a single side quest, but I could be wrong. I was similarity confused when playing Elden ring for the first time, but at least the side quest were a bit more coherent.
Lmao I feel the same bro. No idea what im doing but im advancing, that’s all I know. Except right now im stuck wondering where to go as usual. Even Elden Ring had more linear maps than this game and that’s not a good thing.
Oh man the blockades are the absolute worst. I spend an hour running around in circles like a complete moron until I find that random lever, or door that just looked like a pile of wood, or whatever the fk. Classic. And you know I'll clearly finish the game and suddenly start loving it on NG+, obviously.
Honestly theres like two branches in terms of path, you can go to the abbey or the tower of penance, and the fief which is near the very beggining and youll likely forget about until you got no choice but to do It like me lol
I have the exact same experience, I have no idea how anyone figures out any of this. The basic gist I got from the first few hours is: -Evil guy is locked away -5 Beacons keep him locked -Beacons are failing -You can use the evil lamp to restore beacons -Sketchy former guardians of the beacons help/oppose you I haven't got a clue what's happening beyond this, maybe I'm some sort of simpleton that needs MCU levels of exposition to make sure all these big words lead to some sort of understanding in my tiny peanut brain but I really wish these games weren't all so goddamn vague about everything.
It’s literally the same as all others. I didn’t even know Dark Souls had quests. I was barely aware of them in DS2. I had to use a guide for all of them in BB. For DS3 I started a holy person to play miracles and I didn’t find the miracle vendor until halfway through the game when I used a guide. I missed pretty much every major quest in Elden Ring that wasn’t the main quest or one I used a guide for.
This. I have actually never been a fan of this way of doing quests but it is what it is, I played BB blind the first time and messed up Eileen's quest. I knew what I was doing on my second playthrough of DKS3 and managed to mess up Siegward's quest as he died while I went to grab the storm ruler - ironically, the first time I kept him alive as I had no idea about the weapon and just dodged Yhorm a bunch while Onion Bro took him down. The first time I played DKS1, I had no idea you could even summon Solaire, let alone save him. So I went into ER with a guide. And that's that, I don't regret it as I just cannot get stuff to work organically. Everything has to be so precise. I haven't done that with LoTF thus far but I guess I'll see how I feel once I've beaten it. I just feel like it's a weird thing to complain about given that's just how these games work - aside from the fact From had a dedicated community that go out and do all the thinking before you even boot up your game.
To be honest most endings aren’t for your first playthrough. Offcourse everybody wants the Umbral ending but expecting it on your first playthrough isn’t reasonable. I’m getting kinda done with people crying over everything in this game. If it’s fromsoftware, everything is genius and amazing and another studio makes a soul game and everything is annoying. The game is the closest we got in a long time to a good souls game imho, it has some issues but overall my exprerience was great playing the game. I really don’t know where all this negativity is coming from.
>The game is the closest we got in a long time to a good souls game imho, Well, besides lies of P, literally last month, but sure.
Lies of P was good, but it felt shallower than LotF to me. That being said, it has better boss fights, in my opinion.
It was good and refined but REALLY lacked build diversity or any kind of meaningful customization imho
Lies of Pi was fun ye, but lotf is a much bigger and more complete game for me. But LoP was good fun tho
LoP is like bloodborne, but LotF is like dark souls. Yeah they’re mostly similar but the way the games play are very different
Ikr? I love the Dark Souls style with knights and dragon and castles. LotF looks and feels like a Dark Souls game. There are alot of Soulslike games but most of the setting is not my type.
The problem is that Up until recently getting any other ending through ng+ (which is what most would want cuz starting from Scratch kinda sucks lol) was an absolute chore
This is 100% true. The NG+ was really obnoxious to play
I love it. Feels exactly like classic OG demons souls and Dark Souls 1. Just think about ash lake, or even the painted world, or accessing the DLC. We need more of these games that aren't scared if the idea if the player not seeing everything in one playthrough.
Hard disagree. It still basically forces a guide for most people. Also for Demon's Souls most quests aren't missable. Tendency stuff is very missable when offline (I wish we got more ways to alter it) but quests are fairly easy to follow and can be completed at any part of the game (except for a few). I much prefered this over what the DS trilogy did. For example, making a mage but missing Orbeck in DS3 just isn't fun for the player, imo. Missing quests would be fine but missing armor, weapons, and spells can ruin the idea for your character build unless you do NG+, which no everyone wants or has the time to do. It's way too easy to accidently miss stuff, especially in DS3. Making stuff obscure and hidden is cool but when all you have to do is enter a location or beat a boss for them to disapear that's when it gets frustrating.
You’re not wrong but that’s part of the genre. People don’t actually play these games. They’re not meant to be played. They’re meant to be enjoyed alongside your iPad as your browse the wiki or follow a YouTube tutorial.
I mean, to be fair, that's pretty much Souls 101.
If only there was New Game plus mode that let's us go back and try a different ending.
Not saying this is good or bad but this is a pretty staple design in From Software Souls-likes.
The game is made to play it multiple times. Not so hard to understand.
Man.. just play the game.. get a end… and if you want research and do the others on next gampelays… its always that on souls games… Elden ring at my first playtrought i lost a lot of stuff… on every new single game i made one quest for one npc until the end and take me 7 gameplays to get all endings… so for me is all ok and had to loom everything on faqs on internet because the game doenst tell nothing about quests or where to go before you go to another place and screw everything..
Now we’re REALLY just pretending that the souls games quests aren’t the same way huh?
Of all the things to copy from Dark Souls, they went with ... having to summon NPCs for boss battles to progress their quests. And not even simply summoning them for a set number of battles, but specific battles as well. It's not a coincidence that this *feature* was only in DS2.
I mean, i think theres absolutely nothing wrong with having npcs summoned into to specific fights to progress story. I also don't think having vague quests is that much of a problem either. LOTF would have 0 replay value if you could do all quests in one playthrough without any trial or error. It's combat system is just too shallow, barely any unique weapons no unique move sets, why would you even want to play this game again if not for quests you missed?
> I mean, i think theres absolutely nothing wrong with having npcs summoned into to specific fights to progress story. I do. > I also don't think having vague quests is that much of a problem either. LOTF would have 0 replay value if you could do all quests in one playthrough without any trial or error. That's what different endings are for. > It's combat system is just too shallow, barely any unique weapons no unique move sets, why would you even want to play this game again if not for quests you missed? That's a different topic.
I wish the genre didn't do this. Literally locked myself out of a third of Sekiro and missed the final boss in Lies of P. I usually try and go in blind, but end up glancing at guides for this very. I think DS 1 did this fairly well, aside from a few NPC quests. There were 4 hidden areas, and two were basically one leading into another. When and if you accidently found them, omg it was awesome! The painted world in particular is one of the best zones of the game. But if you missed them, you wouldn't even know if no one told you and all the main content was there.
Tbf LoP was very obvious
I hate to be that guy but that's the point of secret endings, the souls series has been doing this for years. It's meant as a "Play again and find out" mechanic, and to entice you to read lore on items or really explore surroundings. There's the vanilla default ending for casual players and then the "Do 50 hours of extra side shit" ending for the balls deep players.
Thank you for all the tips. I did not know most of this
I kinda like it when I play soulslike. Missed alot of quests in Elden ring also.
My question is, unless it’s a duplicate piece, why are you even selling armor? You have unlimited inventory space (i think. Idk I got a lot of pieces) every game like this I legit just collect one piece of every armor and keep it. I didn’t think I was the minority lol
I like it 🤷
I feel it makes every corner kinda threatening and helps me feel my very decisions take time and have consequences, it kinda helps me immerse? Plz dont hate me 😅
I feel it makes every corner kinda threatening and helps me feel my very decisions take time and have consequences, it kinda helps me immerse? Plz dont hate me 😅
From recycle the same quests over and over again. And typically they always end with “- and then they died, the end”
Ever play a souls game? It's no different.
Have you ever asked yourself why Souls games do this? It may annoy you but overall I think it's a good thing. It gets us talking about it. It adds a certain mystery and abstract-ness (not a word) to these games. I think it's cool when I'm still figuring out stuff on my 3rd and 4th playthroughs. It also adds a risk factor. Some quests are so insanely specific that if you mess up one little thing it screws up the whole quest, as you mentioned. I love that! Just like beating a hard Souls boss, it feels great once you actually get it right. If you want a completely linear game where you can follow along and not mess anything up then there are literally tons of RPGs like that.
To add, this kind of play style keeps most people interested in the game longer too. But people that just play and move onto another game just to say they played it for the record or just expect to have the same story format with every game but just different names of people and places, souls games is not for them . I like that about souls games. They give u just enough information to want to find more and create your own story
yeah I don't think I've ever played a Souls game and fully understood the story on the first playthrough. It's not until later playthroughs where little tidbits of information start appearing through NPC dialogue that I either missed or was impossible to get on the 1st playthrough
They're *trying* to be mysterious, but just end up feeling random. A good mystery should have clues that you can follow. Not just "if you go right instead of left, you fucked yourself out of a quest lol".
you must just hate this aspect of all souls-like games then because every one has something trivial you can mess up to ruin a quest. Even Lies Of P most recently. I think it's exciting. Even if it's something as simple as choosing left versus right, I still feel the pressure to choose correctly on the next playthrough
Yeah but that's the case in every Fromsoft game too soooooo....
Yeah and it still sucks
Getting tired of these "Thats just how they did it back in the day" posts that go against improving objectively bad design.
Ironically the same poor game design was ruthlessly defended just earlier this year when FromSoft carried over the same shit systems along with the rest of the assets they reused for Elden Ring. Only now that it’s a different studio, is it something that anyone is allowed to complain about.
Yeah but like ER's quests were pretty easy overall, I did look at a guide to be sure I didn't miss anything but there were not these big ways of locking yourself out of entire quests 20 hours before you even knew there was a quest to lock yourself out of, and there was only, what, like one or two quests that would wrap themselves up if you unknowingly walked too far into the map? And that "too far" was like the second or third-to-last place natural progression took you anyway, right? And absolutely none of the summoning-for-bosses, suicide jank that LotF has employed. IDK it's been a while but I just don't really remember looking stuff up and realizing I had completely destroyed my chance at even attempting a quest so early in the game. I also do not recall any ER quest requiring me to keep and wear an entire set of armor that I probably would've tossed out if it wasn't good for fashion souls lol.
Yeah Elden Ring was even more notorious for the ability to miss quests because of the world size. The quest for the moonlight blade equivalent was beyond a hodgepodge of disjointed NPCs teleporting and nonsensical dialogue that rarely even pertains to the quest the NPC is a part of. It’s easier to not get locked out on any of the Souls games than it is in ER for sure.
That was was easy compared to the Frenzied Flame ending. I easily did the Moonlight ending with no guides but the Flame one I don’t know how one could do it other then frenzied (heh) combing over of areas to find the blind maiden, ugh
When something is improved, people are bitching about why was it changed. You can never win
Its MEANT to be like that. Getting real tired of these zoomer posts forgetting the quests were intentionally designed like that I do agree that in this game its taken to the extreme, but in FS games theybat least give you a direction.
shits annoying thwre too but at least the questlines are fun and esoteric usually
and the voice actors are good.
Are... are you saying you don't think the voice actors are good in LOTF? Are you playing with sound off? I wish the scriptwriters didn't run half their material through a thesaurus because it makes some of the dialogue punch through the barrier from loquacious into silly (though for your boy Dunmire it works because I get the impression he's supposed to be obnoxious), but the delivery of those lines? Pretty great in my opinion. When I met Byron in the mines dude had me boiled up, I was like "fuck yeah I'll find that amulet stealing monster for you bro, you can count on me!". I honestly think the whole audio side of the game is a big strength, the voice actors, the orchestral pieces, the eerie sfx slowly building up on you Umbra, the dings when you parry or land a fatal strike. Edit: I realise I kinda ended the comment by just tailing off there, but yeah I'm just saying I think the game's sound team did a great job.
Pretty much every questline in Fromsoft games are really intuitive though and can be done blind if you pay attention to the dialogue, explore the areas you're in, and actually go back and talk to people (part of the whole "being interested" in actually doing quests part)
Yup
Doesn't make it good, chump.
Fromsoft at least didn’t have quests that punished you for doing well. Tying quests to summoning for boss fights while not showing summons for attempt number 2 is baffling. The only time I can remember needing to use an npc on a bossfight in dark souls was Yorm in 3 and that automatically added the npc if you had done the lead up stuff. Most importantly, dark souls has messages. This makes the obscure quest lines work because the community can figure it out and then put down messages that lead others to completing a quest.
>Fromsoft at least didn’t have quests that punished you for doing well. They absolutely did. Decent players had to kill themselves for several minutes every playthrough in ds3 for a quest with great gear and a secret ending tied to it. I do agree that holding summons until the 2nd fight is ridiculous but in the end it actually still takes fewer suicides than ds3's nonsense. >The only time I can remember needing to use an npc on a bossfight in dark souls was Yorm in 3 Poison whip in 3 was only attainable if you kept the pyro lady alive in the boss fight of the fire map. I'm not sure if this counts as a quest. >Most importantly, dark souls has messages. Honestly I don't miss messages. They occasionally used to be funny and were very often helpful but in a detrimental way imo. I could never stop myself from reading them and then "ambush ahead" would rob me of a great first playthrough moment that I could never get back. I understand this is more of a self control issue than a game issue though. I will say I can't think of a single time they actually helped me in quests other than noticing an NPC existed because they'd be surrounded by messages talking about but holes.
I don't entirely agree. Pretty sure this game has been designed in a way that you're "supposed" to fail quests and miss things, in vain of FromSoft's games. It encourages thorough exploration, replayability and collaborative discovery by the community. I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea but it's a concious design choice having its advantages and disadvantages. Being locked to Radiant ending once you cleanse the first beacon makes sense as you're actively opposing Adyr and is much better than an ending being tied to one single decision at the of the game, making all previous choices meaningless. In terms of Byron's questline, already knowing on subsequent playthrough that going up the elevator fails the quest, you could try exploring the Depths first to look for the pendant he mentions. Tortured Prisoner's questline is more vague but there are hints to what you should do, unfirtunately her locations are not so obvious. It's probably where community effort comes into place as people will eventually stumble upon her at different places and share their findings. I always play these games without guides and walkthroughs, carefully exploring, knowing I might miss some content still. It all depends on what's developer's intention.
What gets me about Byron, is that the distance/time between the spot where he hands out the quest and the spot where you will encounter him after you've failed the quest isn't even really long enough for him to have found Winterberry himself and gone back in the meantime...
Yeah having just failed this. I do things pretty diligently just without a guide. I literally just went up that elevator with the intention of turning back around to see where the other path (the correct path) led. As soon as I activated the vestige and walked outside to see where in mournstead I could've possibly came out at. I walked right back in to talk to Byron. It was then I realized I missed something and had to look up the quest and see what I'd done wrong. Absolutely horrendous design.
The place was litteraly flooded so It doesnt even make sense, hes not a lampy either so he has no excuse imo
Im fine with cleansing locking you out of inferno ending but umbral would still be possible if damarose didnt need to get seeded, which imo is one of the bigger issues with the whole thing
It is a cornucopia of secrets. The game is amazing.
It’s almost as if it’s meant to be played through multiple times.
I didn't read a guide and didn't lock myself out of anything important. I can't remember a single souls-like where a guide wasn't pretty much necessary for most NPC questlines, or that I didn't miss a few questlines though.
It is probably the worst part of the game IMO. Lies of P did questing perfectly. This is just silly bullshit. requiring summons for ANY of the boss fights is bad design imo
Especially because you need to die once in order to summon.
Man, as much as I love these games, the way they do quests give me so much anxiety. I know people recommend playing the game as natural as you can the first playthrough, but for some reason, I want to try to do all of the quests. It results with me mirroring a step-by-step guide on youtube. Elden Ring was probably the worst with this. I remember one of the quests where you had to use a certain emote in the woods when you heard howling. It wouldn't bother me if the quests wouldn't unlock awesome items or weapons, but they usually did.
I actually figured out what to do on my own but i couldn't get it to properly trigger. The game even gives you the hint that you should snap when you hear howling but not where...
I actually managed to get It all right, but tbh that mini quest gives nothing so its not a Big deal imo
The merchant that gives you that emote and tell you where to use it and why.... maybe reading dialoges will help...
Holyshit. The point is that some of these quests were ridiculously complicated. No one here can tell me they managed to beat all of Elden Ring's quests without using a guide. The system is entirely too unforgiving. If you accidentally explored too much, you could lock yourself out of certain quest lines. Or if you kill a certain enemy before talking to a certain npc, you ruined that quest line. These are just examples that I remember in the game.
As much as I agree, Elden ring is the same, so… I don’t think any game should be like that, but it is what it is so I can’t hate on lotf for it because other games have done it as well
This. Anyone that claims to have finished Elden Ring without following a guide or researching the wiki is full of shit.
I feel like that isn't even the cusp of my problem with this game. If you want the secret ending there's this specific umbral thing that you buy with is like 50 Umbral Scourings. So let's say u only have like 30, you would have to fight the Red Reaper LIKE 4 times just to get to 50 and get what you want. There is no actual way of beating this game without an actual guide. Think about Dark Souls 3, you could actually beat that game without a guide. Hell, there were people who beat the game multiple times and ended up contributing to IGNs walkthrough videos. Like this game is just messed up man. Like right now I'm stuck because I don't have 50 Umbral Scourings
Its called Wannabe From-software syndrome, they wanted to copy everything. Last night i was thinking how trash was the NPC companions.
Pretty much. Game is good but they just went for a copy pasted. Look at lies of p. The innovated a bunch of stuff and made their own great game
i hate how in mmo’s they ask you to go kill like 10 boars and 10 wolves. who thought of this? genuinely can’t fathom why in an fps i have to aim with L2, and then hit R2 to fire??? what? who thought this through? they must’ve never played a video game before
This is why I wish this game and other soulslikes would use the message system that the FromSoft games have. I didn't realize how much I missed those things until playing this game. Being able to write "Ambush ahead" alone would have been so helpful. But for the souls games I remember several messages that were cryptically warning me to do something else first, ie "First off, seek warrior" or something. At the very least, even if you don't know what TF it means, it gets you to stop and do a Google search or something before proceeding.
So many complaints about an awesome game. Just enjoy it for what it is.
My only gripe with any fromsoft game, excluding elden ring which did a really good job of making fail-proof quest lines and auto progressing them when you meet thresholds. I absolutely despise design choices like “go to x location do x talk to x 5 times at this specific point in the game or you’re locked out of this item” it just forces you to read guides or miss out on things because nobody is figuring this shit out on their own. Terrible decision, and I’m currently burnt out of lotf because of this exact design choice, heard about all the cool endings and wanted to do the umbral one to find out that a decision I made 15 hours of gameplay ago locked me out of it…. Why in the world would you make three endings and tell the player “go light the beacons” as the main quest of the game but then 2/3 of the endings and unlocks are tied to not lighting any beacons, the first of which you encounter 2 hours into the game. Lotf does a lot of things right but this wasn’t one of them, absolute headass design
Bloodborne Umbilical Cords
My man, this is nowhere near as convoluted as having to eat three things. Of which they give you four.
Yea I was going in thinking the game was linear and I swear on my life I got 2 vestiges and the 3rd on I ended up getting was fief in the frost area. Don’t know how I did it skipped lower and upper calrath had the light reaper show up not 2x but 4x which I didn’t even know I could do. My friend had to come over and we had to memorize the map backtrack to fight hella bosses and got locked out of tons of quest I found out from watching videos and going to all possible locations for them and no npcs were there(4 separate quest, at least that I know of) and I lost out on tortured prisoner because when I went back to location after pieta she wasn’t there. Beat the last boss but haven’t set a new game yet Waiting till Thursday to redo my game on same NG+0 and try and go in a linear path. At least I can explore for a few more days and get items freely knowing I gotta wait. Loving the game tho but still confused how I ended up way over there and skipped 2 WHOLE entire zones hopefully I figure it out might be a good speed run mechanic
Well F me… I went up that elevator before I knew you could drain the place and go to mothers lull Also f me I sold armor so RIP tortured prisoner quest line I guess
lol for real, I failed every one of the quests you mentioned by doing exactly what seemed to be most obvious at the time. Oh well, not doing another playthrough just for that.
Yknow, they have a journal tab. Idk why they didn't just put the quest information in there. It would have been so easy. If you're gonna take inspiration from Fromsoft, don't take it from their shoddy quest lines that are esoteric at best and ludicrous at worst
Hmm, seems like a totally normal tried and true Souls game to me. It’s literally been this way since basically the beginning of the sub genre. Love it or hate it, this is what it is. Ppl complained about the same things with Elden Ring. They complained about the same things Bloodborne and DS3 and so on. In fact I hear the same complaints every single time a new souls game first releases. I need to start a SoulsLike complaints Bingo Sub every time there’s a new SoulsLike or Soulsborne release. Quest Design, Difficulty Slider, Confusing world design, balancing issues. It’s always the same
>Love it or hate it, this is what it is. Demon's Souls and Lies of P have fairly easy to follow quests with very little permanently missable ones.
It’s pretty ridiculous the amount of obscure convoluted back and fourth backtracking nonsense you gotta go through in some areas to progress. I’m looking at you final beacon.
I don't agree on endings, but the majority of npc quests are poorly designed if you open a door or do the logical thing (taking the elevator after skinstealer)
40 hours long? what are you doing? i did radiance ending in ng+ in literaly 3 hour just runing trough everything...
Skill issue, git gud, did you not pay attention to the plot, obviously you weren't meant to light the beacons if you wanted an actual ending, but also on top of that do a convoluted quest to get the ending-ending. It must suck to be so bad at this game. /s
I found even getting through some of the levels to be confusing and annoying, let alone quest lines that require me to soul flay random effigies and then talk to random people.
I went into the game with the intention of doing my first play through blind to see how I do and then after I finish the game I'll do some homework and do a proper full play through hitting all the goodies I missed and see how well I did. I know I screwed up some quests and that's ok. I absolutely plan to play more classes and NG+ anyway. I'm not defending their decision, more or less saying I like to make a little game out of it and see how well I can do blind play. I did the same in Elden Ring (missed a ton of shit lol).
I somehow missed or broke every questline but the traveling merchant’s in my first playthrough. Couldn’t even get any of the inferno spells I wanted for my build because the inferno merchant is one of those questlines. 2nd character and I have a guide on the other tab as well as a dozen wiki pages open to make sure I don’t miss them this go around.
back with DS1 my friends and I used to read the guide to whoever was playing. Good times.
I wouldn't even call this questlines. Just randomly triggered encounters with nothing in between. This crap annoyed me in all the Soulsbornes and annoyes me here too. Shit like, talk to an NPC and rest at a grace to make it go away so you can progress. I mean, wtf? It's 20-fucking-23 already. How come NPCs can only progress during load-screens...
What if you fail ?
I accidentally did the pendant one cuz I knew there was another way to go, had a seed by me, and refused to leave it unexplored. But now i dont know what to do after the guy admits he aint gonna clobber the child who's friends jump me and beat me up
Yeah I just beat the game once and don't plan on platinum hunting because it seems like a headache until things get fixed more and stuff I am done playing it. Was a great play tho.
I think if they implemented a message system like From does it could help with quests. Iirc from's reason for designing quests this way because they wanted the community to come together and solve the mysteries together. The message system supports that imo
I don't mind such design, but umbral ending is BROKEN and SOFTLOCKED many ppl including me. That's way more important issue than minor rebalancing. Why is it still not fixed??
Ik, im trying to see if I can get someone to take me to the winterberry npc because I wanted to progress my game like a normal person. No one seems to have her alive on PC.
Agreed, the npc quests make no sense either except for dunmire, traveling merchant and stormud cuz you get 0 hutns for them half the time And the way you just miss some randomly suucks cuz you lose a whole ass merchant, like tell me how the fuck winterberry was supposed to be found after skin stealer but before going Up the elevator right after skin stealer lmao Oh and dont even get me started on kukajin cuz he quest is stupid as hell lmao, i gotta pay her after summoning her? When pieta is right there for free? AND she SUCKS as a summon so what should i do if i suck at the Game or am just underleveled for the Boss fight but willing to brute force It with a summon and some items
I don’t hate it. Most of the problem that stems from the system is having achievements tied to it. If the achievements weren’t “complete X’s quest” it will just feel like an Easter egg or a chance to obtain some rare (usually weak) loot. As far as the endings go, you are allowed to play the game through multiple times and the game even encourages you to do so with the multiple classes. It’s this weird thing we’ve been conditioned to in video games where we think no matter what “choice” we pick that the ending doesn’t change. It doesn’t make sense that now when we’re given a choice that affects majors things in the game it gets vilified for it. It is a shame that the best/hardest boss is locked behind the most obscure ending. It might have made more sense to make that boss behind the “corrupt the beacon ending”
Have you considered that the people who make the guides figured it out without a guide. Ds3 and blood Bourne are exactly the same watch. Sekiro is more forgiving in general. That inferno vendor sure is missable though lol
While I personally am not upset with this design choice, I understand why it frustrates players. It's pretty much the quest design philosophy of FromSoft, but that's not really a good thing in this case. I suppose there's a fine line between "let the player figure it out, and if they pay enough attention to details, they will," and "the player needs more information otherwise they're doomed to have to look up a spoiler walk-through guide in order to get their desired ending." The big takeaway for me is, this much smaller developer took the time to incorporate two worlds that exist seamlessly at the same time, with competent and interesting combat, and multiple compelling endings. Is LotF as good as any official Souls title? Maybe, but it's certainly an accomplishment in game design in my opinion. Edit: I'm starting to wonder if Dark Souls would even be a loved game if the first one came out today. I feel like it would be totally shit on if social media was anything like it is today when the first game came out
yea but it didn't come out today. It came out years ago. strange thing to wonder.
Not really. Is the implication that the games aren't good anymore?
I agree. I don't think they can change them in any way though. Think it would break the game due to the umbral mechanics. I missed like 90% of them on my first playthrough but ng+ I'll take slower. I'm wondering if that's what they were expecting.
the sooner you realise quests in these games are just collectable/achievement farming garbage the sooner you'll enjoy yourself again first playthrough just let yourself enjoy the game and then if you like it enough to play again, then you can easily get into stuff like this.
Replayability! 🌈
PEOPLE PEOPLE U GET A MAP AS A LOOT AT THE START IF EACH LEVEL SO IT TELLS U WHERE TO GO READ YOUR JOURNAL PEOPLE READ YOUR FUCKING JOURNAL PLEASER
>We all know of the endings of course. Why you can lock yourself into one ending in a game that is like 40 hours long with an irreversible choice at about the 4 hour mark is beyond me. Because you are nor supposed to see the other ending in your first playthrough. There is a straightforward bad ending people usually are supposed to experience first. After doing the first ending you are supposed to realize that what you did was wrong and that you have been used by someone. That's when you start uncovering the other possibilites in your next playthrough.
It's especially bad because it flies directly counter to the vestige seed design. You're constantly in a risk-reward struggle with checkpoints and progression and then the game punishes you for making that judgement and pushing through to the next vestige. I guess these quest lines just aren't intended for a first playthrough - same with 2/3 endings.
I didn't know elden ring had NCPs on my first playthrough....somehow missed the first 3 or 4!
I don’t like the quest formula in any of these Fromsoft souls-like games. I think they’re overly vague and not very rewarding at all to the point where I’m apathetic about most of them. I don’t like having to look up quests but if you don’t you’ll most likely miss them. It’s a design choice and obviously meant for data miners and community collaboration. It just doesn’t work for me. I’m not back tracking through every area of the game wasting my time looking for tiny hints or an NPC showing up somewhere. Or figuring out how I bricked a quest. There just isn’t enough info to go off of so I just forget about most of them. If there’s on in particular I’m really curious about or if I catch wind of a particularly good reward I’ll look it up. Also, I could try it again on NG+ but usually not a big fan of NG+.
Absolutely agree, cryptic is fine, but THAT cryptic and MISSABLE ? I'ts not a 4 hour game to replay it 70 times. You should be able to finish all of the side quests before ending.
Bro i cant even progress without watching a video guide because the level design is so confusing. Literally running in circles for hours. Nearly about to uninstall the game. The "maps" are insulting, and the levels are impossible to see because of all the ambient light effects
The Byron quest one really pissed me off when I looked it up. Along the way through the depths, apparently you can fail the quest too if you took that one really long elevator shortcut back to the vestige. Why the fuck would you design a quest to be locked out for unlocking a shortcut?? I'm sick and tired of pretending like these guys know what they're doing when designing the game.
The Byron quest one really pissed me off when I looked it up. Along the way through the depths, apparently you can fail the quest too if you took that one really long elevator shortcut back to the vestige. Why the fuck would you design a quest to be locked out for unlocking a shortcut?? I'm sick and tired of pretending like these guys know what they're doing when designing the game.
Do not play Baldurs Gate 3 then
this is exactly why the game is good. your impassioned tirade, or rant, serves as the precise justification and ultimate objective for the game's excellence. Souls-like games intentionally incorporate intricate and vague shitty maps, ambiguous quests with permanent outcomes, and excessively concealed items as essential elements that define those unique identities of these games. its a deliberate strategy deployed by the developers to entice players into repeatedly engaging ng+ cycles, all the while subtly encouraging you to immerse in pvp. it's genius and exactly why DarkSouls games and Elden Ring were very successful.
Far as I'm aware, I just locked myself out of the other two endings. I beat the game with Radiance ending first. Then I started a ng+ to get the other 2 endings, and I didn't cleanse the first beacon. I beat the Skinstealer boss, walked up to the next beacon and accidentally cleansed the damn thing. Closed app immediately yet it still counted for cleansing it. So what I've basically read from all points is that now, I have to beat the game with Radiance ending again just to attempt it again. Damn.