Eldest Souls in the test: not even for dark souls

One should not assess a book after his cover, but in some games, the whole content can already be read on the name. Because who believed at Eldest Souls is a buckling action role-playing game with a gloomy postapokalyptic fantasy setting, in which a chosen hero starts to counteract fallen gods and to die thousand deaths, which is old, and take care of Reward a biscuit. The nerve food will be you need.

Table of contents

1. 1 once a boss without everything and extra sharp
2. 2 control from hell
3. 3lern curve? Concrete wall.

Once boss without everything and extra sharp

Eldest Souls is an isometric boss-rush game in which it explores a decayed citadel with a powerful obsidian blade, to put nine evil, hatched creatures and leader, so that the underjoined humanity can breathe again. The story assembled from Souls-Like offset pieces is quickly explained and the short exploration trips between the ten bosses are hardly worth mentioning, accordingly, the game does not torch long and throws you after the introsquenquence directly in the first fight. In a classic, timing-based duel you learn the basics of the combat system, with which the game stands out some of his genre colleagues.

Your only weapon, the obsidian blade, you can either swing normally or recharge it for a storm attack. The peculiarity: If you meet the enemy with the storm attack, the sword begins to burn, and heals for every landed hit - until the bloodrausch display has emptied again. In addition, it causes significantly more damage in the bloodstream, which is urgently needed in the tough bosses.

Control from hell

The first boss is one of the few classic duels in Eldest Souls. In most other struggles, it is important to understand any special mechanics. Source: PC Games This means in plain text that you should open every attack on the opponents in this way to exploit the tiny breaks that offer you enemies between your merciless attacks. Unfortunately, it makes it all the more annoying that the somewhat lazy, too imprecise control of the game leaves your own attacks often go into the void. If you then again with downed pants in front of the boss, only helps a homelanded abandonment. Here comes a quite clever mechanism to carry: By default, because of your extremely narrow endurance strip, you may only dodge three to four times, but you take directly through the opposing attack at the last moment, your endurance regeneration will be speeded up for a short time. Eledest Souls rewards perfect evasive maneuvers - and it also challenges it.

Learning curve? Concrete wall.

His irrelevant story explains the game shortly at the beginning. Thereafter, the usual cryptic environmental storytelling mesh is announced. Source: PC Games Because after the second boss at the latest, the game demands everything you can learn in the short time before that. With only ten enemies, the squad is quite thin, but the monsters are always varied and always tract you with new mechanics that you have to internalize at each enemy through countless deaths. A single boss suddenly shares in two no less dangerous halves, you will be bombarded with ball patterns in Shoot em-Up Manier, slowly frozen from ice attacks and suddenly accumulated, carnivorous plants.

What makes this plant here? What the yellow bar means? Why the boss suddenly braced? We also like to know. Source: PC Games The principle of learning by dying works at Eldest Souls but only conditionally, because often enough, the special mechanics of the bosses act simply opaque and placed to make the degree of difficulty artificially upgraded. Lightning fast attacks overlap with surface damage, which makes parts of the tiny arenas to the death zone, get bosses without any reasonable reason buffs that allow you to strike even faster and harder, and the isometric perspective will also be hidden from the gutting part by the level inventory. The golden rule hard, but fair unfortunately disregards Eldest Souls occasionally, and you would have to bring a belonging degree of frustration resistance even for Souls-Like circumstances, to achieve the second half of the game.

Between the battles, you explore the small game world, listen to the monologues of some NPCs, completed Simple Hol-and-Bring-Quest and is looking for a desperate for upgrades for your skills. After all, thanks to the chic pixel style you get so many atmospheric panorama to face and the music in the boss fight fits well with the gloomy atmosphere. In addition, the game gives you a flexible skill system to the hand with which you can change between attack, evasive and counter focus at any time. Although focusing on maximum damage usually proves to be the best strategy, you have some options to choose with, with which you can run back and again against the concrete wall!

My opinion

Vonstefan Wilhelm editor stefan.wilhelm@computec.de

The motivating game principle will be buried under half-yarn mechanics and frustration.

My goodness, which was a torment of this game! Now one could think that agony would actually be the selling point in this genre, but even as a passive player, I had quite little fun with Eldest Souls. I did not mind, in many attempts to learn the attack patterns of the bosses, especially if this is the only game content. But when these attack patterns then are so often impactable, chaotic, placed and annoying, they quickly felt the desire to let me shatter again and again. With such an extreme degree of difficulty, the control would have to be more compelled, I would like to hang less often on the opponent and the storm attack I should constantly use is likely to feel more precise. For example, a title remains, away from the comfortable skill system and the actually successful game principle, with which only those will be happy, who played everything else in the Souls Like Genre.

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Eldest Souls in Test: Not even for Dark Souls fans Interesting (1) [Source: PC Games]

By Stefan Wilhelm editor 26.09.2021 at 11:00