DieselBrain

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Dickgirl who enjoys drawing toxic dykes, monsters, and fat fuckable tits.


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I FUCKING LOVE soulslikes, but its interesting reading around online and watching videos on them and realizing over time that what I like about soulslikes (particularly their boss design) seems to generally go against the grain of what various posters and content makers feel about them. like;

  • I fucking love multi phase bosses. I dont fucking care how "played out" folks think it is, its always fucking cool when a boss goes super saiyan, or goes fucking feral midway through the fight i LIVE for it.
  • This includes multi-health bar boss fights! Oh i empty your first bar and now another one shows up? oh a THIRD one? fuck yes, I adore an endurance challenge and i love how it encourages me to get CLEAN at fighting the first phase of any boss with one. I also think multi-bar style boss phases have an additional mechanical use in that, you cannot OVERSHOOT the phase transition. Like, in bloodborne, Father Gascoigne's phase should transition around half his health, but really aggressive play (or lucky RNG on the bosses's AI) can make it so he pops wolf with closer to 1/3 or even LESS of his bar left so that more difficult phase sticks around for a shorter amount of time (which is cool! that style of phase change encourages overshooting the health trigger for that exact reason!). Meanwhile a boss phase transition that only triggers once youve depleted the first bar fully? It means no matter how strong you get, even if you somehow build a one-shot build, the boss gets another shot at you. Being forced to experience that phase 2 at full health creates a whole different kind of eb and flow to the fight and priorities.
  • I like ganks! theyre stressful, theyre chaotic, and there's so many ways to design them! The Black Rabbit Brotherhood (1 and 2) in Lies of P are honestly one of my favorite gank fights! I like being forced to figure out a crowd control gameplan! And a 2(or more) v 1 is just the ultimate fucking underdog scenario in a genre of games all about being an underdog!
  • I like gimmick bosses! Fighting some cool knight[tm] with a deep moveset is super fun and all but a good gimmick boss is so good for the flavor of a game. Whether its for raw visual spectacle, or maybe the devs wanted to explore a niche mechanic to its fullest extent (which can also be great for tutorializing things for players!). It can be fun to see a game that's meant for dodging and pressing R1 be forced into another mold for a fight. Maybe you have to be stealthy in a game with no actual stealth mechanics! Maybe you have to do platforming in a game with no/limited jumping! Maybe it's just an oldschool puzzle boss! Maybe the dev gives you a super special weapon that only does the-cool-thing in this boss room! idk but i can vibe with developers throwing in wild cards like this.
  • fuck it, i love re-used content. Second boss in the game gets re-used in the late game with some new tricks? Fuck yes. Optional content where i can fight literally the same boss with a later build to show how far ive progressed? fuck yes. Some basic enemy gets its health bar and poise pumped up so now you have to actually engage with its moveset? fuck yes. I'm here for it. I love to see developers use every part of the buffalo and if the original boss was fun? fuck it, yeah ill enjoy fighting it again later with new toys and tricks up my sleeve. As long as there's still a good number of original bosses, im fine with devs re-using stuff to stretch their budget a lil farther.

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in reply to @DieselBrain's post:

Hard agree with all this, I've been thinking a lot about all of this lately as I work through the connection between Soulslikes and character action games like Devil May Cry, as I absolutely approach the former like the latter. There's a point of proficiency you can reach in the best fights in these games where you can subconsciously feel the SSS Ranking on the side of the screen and the bass kicking in as you're using every tool in the box, hitting all the notes and adding your own flourishes for the hell of it. Sekiro is Metal Gear Rising, you could absolutely put some sick lyric track drops in the final phase of those fights.

100%, and the way some folks talk about what they dislike in soulslike boss design makes me feel like we're playing completely different games. A big one ive started hearing lately is "I dont WANT to have to memorize a bosses moveset/parry timing! I should be able to visually intuit the correct timing on my first try!" and im like ???????????????????
internalizing the bosses's moveset/ AI quirks so i can effectively avoid/parry everything is like, part of the fun?????????? Outside of certain gimmick bosses, i dont WANT to beat a boss on my first try, especially if im going in blind like???? I want to be challenged and problem solve my way out if it?????????????

I want that invisible SSS ranking dammnit!

There’s a lot of people in like, soulslike reddits n shit who think the multi-phase bosses in Elden ring and Lies of P are “exhausting” and “over done” and I couldn’t disagree with them more