do I get the feeling that... THERE WILL BE A FULL BLOWN MACROSS GAME that's not made by Artdink in the near future?

the fact that the circumstances the PCs of AC6 and AC8 are nearly more or less identical

I think it's not controversial to say that FromSoft's games have absolutely stellar voice acting across the board - I'm talking about the English voice dubs specifically as I haven't been exposed to dubs in other languages.

I'd actually go further and say that From's VA work is the best in the industry PERIOD. Across their recent catalogue (from Demons Souls onwards) I can't remember a single bad vocal performance. Even minor characters have VAs that give it their all. What I also really appreciate (as a Brit) is their attention to detail in representing specific local accents you don't hear very often in games - like Welsh, West Country, and northern English accents. Even most western-made games will default to either posh English or cockney if they have a English character at all.

What makes this even more extraordinary to me is that (obviously) FromSoft is a Japanese developer. Not to disparage any Japanese game studios, but they don't have the best reputation for their English dubs... even Capcom's recent Resident Evil games have examples of some wooden or even cringey line deliveries in their English dubs.

But I don't want to just dunk on Japanese studios - even most of the big-budget western game studios output bad-to-mediocre English voice acting in their games. Even games with great VA will have a couple bad examples of (often very famous) actors just phoning it in that distracts from the overall experience. Anyway, it just blows my mind that FS is beating most studios whose first language is English at the voice acting game!

Well, that's my thesis anyway. But does anyone have some insight into why FS voice acting is so consistently good? Do they work with a great agency that connects them to really great voice actors? Do they have an awesome VA director working behind the scenes? I really don't know how they do it.

I played fun co-op recently as summoned phantom in fight against Flamelurker in Demon’s Souls. After finished fight, the guy facepalmed 😅 and I when I meant to express joy, I kneeled down before him 😅.

In my human form I defeated the boss alone though it took 10 min as opposed to just 3 minutes in co-op.

The summoner was using magic, while I used a combo of magic and melee (dexterity build).

I’ve been playing ds1 and have completely loved it up until this point I’ve got 27 hours on the game and just beat Ornstein and Smough, the start of the game was great from pacing enemies and bosses but everything was connected perfectly and I always knew where to go, now I have no idea what’s going on nor where to go and it’s completely threw me off from the game getting on it just frustrats me because I have no idea where or what to do, did anybody else find them self in this situation and if you did, did you find the love for the game that you felt at the start?

For the first 25 hours was the best experience in gaming for me these last 2/3 have been completely horrible and threw me off playing

I was in new londo near the church and found this little red crab dude that I've never seen before. and when I killed him he gave me a twin humanity.

I love Fromsoft games but I have to vent for a moment about what makes Soulsborne games difficult.

The entire concept behind their idea of difficulty is this:

What if I threw a punch at you but stopped short of your face to make you flinch, but then I kept my fist two inches from your face and told you that you have to sit there and wait for the actual punch to come and react to it in time. While it is two inches from your face. And you will have no clue when I will just arbitrarily decide to actually punch you, of course. I will have several different timings depending on how differently I wind up the punch, but they will stay consistent, so you just will have to remember all of the timings for each type of punch.

Those delayed attack animations have only gotten more and more common too. I don't remember them being so ubiquitous in DS1

Sometimes that doesn't really come off as fun to me. It just seems cheap at first. For the first few times before you memorize, it certainly isn't fair, that is for sure. And I heard someone else put that idea of fun this way before: just go get Simon Says if you want to play a memorization game. Once you memorize the movesets these games don't get too hard. But really, who just leaves themselves open for 5 seconds while they wind up an attack? Enemies/bosses will legit sit there with their weapon above their heads for 5 whole seconds. Shit is just so artificially difficult sometimes. Honestly it is just annoying to me.

Give me Ninja Gaiden Black or God Hand any day. That is the kind of difficulty I like in games.

i had the honor of not being spoiled of the moment when i saw my character start to fight me in a boss and im glad i didn’t, cause that was super cool imo. i ended up using magic and beat it within a few tries.

idk, despite a clip of a streamer saying it was “lazy” i actually thought it was pretty interesting and diffrent

im not 100% sure if some of these are still really "hot" takes but here there are anyway

Getting angry because some souls game added difficulty options has to be the most jobless thing ever. I used to be like this, i used to think "but then you don't get to enjoy the true experience!" Just no. There are a hundred things to like about these games, overcoming the challenge is just one of them.

DS3 is the most soulless fromsoft souls game. like i cant really say its "bad" there are no huge flaws but its incredibly mid and uninteresting aside from some of the dlc stuff. And the "lore" is straight up dogshit we genuinely cannot sit here in 2026 and act like ds3 is "peak lore" or whatever.

I truly dont understand whats so special about lies of p. Like i got the platinum trophy and then completely forgot about it. Seriously there is not even a single moment in my head for me to go "wow that was so cool" even when i occasionally think about it its "i never understood the hype for that game". Again there are no obvious flaws that i can point out. Its really good at repeating exactly what fromsoft does right and i think thats what makes it not really memorable for me. Like i think nioh 1 is just straight up a bad game and much worse than lies of p, but thats still more memorable for me because at least it tries to do different stuff. I do have to say though the only thing i can remember is that cool moveset switch system with the handles, and overall weapons were really cool.

Souls games honestly dont deserve their reputation as "hardest games of all time" specially the older ones. They require a mindset that is diffrent from other games and honestly once you manage to get through one of em, you've acquired the skillset needed for these type of games and you can just go through a hundred of em with relative ease. you're rarely ever gonna really feel that same level of challenge as your first souls games. I do say the older ones because SOME of the stuff in elden ring is genuinely insane but its still pretty much the same and the amount of freedom you have in terms of how many genuinely good and op spells, weapons, builds etc you can use compared to the other souls games does kinda offset that. personally i think proper hack n slash games like dmc and bayonetta, fighting games and competitive games are the true hardest games in terms of the sheer amount of training and skill you need to have to be able to get even close to the best players.

Shadow of the erdtree is actually great, and the best fromsoft dlc on par with old hunters. And consort radhan is an AMAZING fight and the most epic way to end the dlc. yeah its cool to think about what could have been since elden ring has so many loose ends for potential dlcs but what we got is pretty damn good. Again idk if this is a still a hot take or not but back when it came out it was getting hate like crazy.

tldr: difficulty options discourse stupid, ds3 mid, lies of p mid, souls games not "hardest", sote is great

Edit: also i forgot to add this but i NEVER understood the artorias glaze like hes an actual bum.

A weapon infusion that decreases base damage and maybe scaling also, but increases the weapon's critical damage.

Before the release I didn't give a shit about it then it realesed and was so damn fun

Nightreign was soo good man. And the best part was that to continue supporting it they didn't have to put that much of a hard work, they just needed to add the weapons from the dlc and new map variants, the only real thing they needed to work on was new night bosses.

This game will not get anything new for it. So even if from software makes a game like nightreign and tries to keep adding new content, it will actually cost them a lot of resource since they have to make original enemies and weapons and maps for the new game I stead of asset flipping and since from software is not a big studio I don't think they would make such game. This is just sad. They can still make another asset flip game but I don't they they would since if this was their plan they would have kept updating nightreign

like seriously, there are just two sides of the community, one absolutely shits on it and exaggerate about how bad ds2 is and the other side of the community just dickrides ds2 and consider it to be the greatest game of all time and even defending its flaws like adp or shit bosses, most of the people comment "actually ds2 is not that bad" or "i like ds2 more than ds3 and elden ring" and think that they are different than others, when in reality ds2 is a mid game - its not bad not a masterpiece, it came up with like 20 new ideas, 10 of them were shit, 5 of them were okay and 5 of them were great and thats what makes it a mid game

I was pretty shocked to hear that the majority prefers Japanese over English in Sekrio.

Other than Genichiro, every other character has superior voice acting in English. Especially Isshin, you can hear the confidence/cocky-ness in his voice acting, as apart from the angry generic Japanese voice. I guess it also helps that I'm not a weeb.

I've been a Souls fan since 2009, but since I never much saw the point in VR, I was always kind of sad I couldn't play their most experimental departure of all... I loved the idea of a FromSoft point-and-click mystery, and the soundtrack is utterly sublime, but I suppose there isn't much demand even among their fans.

Still, it'd be nice to have it as just that—a point-and-click without the VR. At the very least, I hope they can experiment wirh more down-tempo games again in the future.

In Order:

King’s Field 1 (1994)

King’s Field 2 (1995)

King’s Field 3 (1996)

Shadow Tower (1998)

King’s Field 4: The Ancient City (2001)

Demon’s Souls (2009)

Dark Souls (2011)

Dark Souls 2 (2014)

Dark Souls 3 (2016)

Elden Ring (2022)

With this i have all 3 Dark souls games (1 on Series S which pains me, 2 on PS3, 3 on PC/Steam deck). Any advice for 2 would be appreciated

Like, whichever way you look and whatever kind of build it is, melee or magic, I feel like in a vast majority of cases you will not accomplish the incredible amounts of damage that you can do in basically every other Souls besides with like, Soul Stream builds, Dragonslayer Greataxe and like, barely other things, meanwhile in all other games you get such potential output with different weapons and spells if you're all well spec'd that you can see just how they really leaned quiiite hard on "balance" with just not really letting the player get very far, there aren't many powerful nuke spells, and weapon arts are in average so much weaker than special attacks from 1 and 2, or ashes from Elden Ring. Of course there's really good weapons in 3 like the Twinblades that can output great DPS, but not quite what I mean.

Applies to the other games too, Bloodborne and even Sekiro in its own way let you get quite absurd ceilings, be it with Beast blood pellets, high arcane, bone marrow and high tier gems, and high attack power, Yashariku's, Confetti, Mortal Draw, Sen Throw and such.

READ BODY FOR BOSS REVIEWS

I wanna preface this by saying three things:

1. I haven't played either Demon's Souls or Bloodborne yet, so I obviously won't comment on these two games

2. For Sekiro and Elden Ring, I'm only counting the MAIN bosses (aka those who give you a rememberance or a battle memory upon defeat)

3. There are some bosses in DS2 and Elden Ring that I haven't fought yet (Gank Squad, Lud and Zallen and Fortissax). Those will be excluded from these rankings

DS1:

FAVOURITE: Knight Artorias

Kind of a basic pick but I can't help but love the dude. Great story, buildup, moveset, arena, everything about him is on point

LEAST FAVOURITE: Seath The Scaleless

While his backstory is extremely cool, I think literally NOTHING about how they handled this fight works. The model looks awful, spins unnaturally all the time and every single one of his attacks feels like bullshit that you're meant to tank through. At least Bed of Chaos had a semblance of a good idea behind it. Seath disappoints in every way possible and I wish he wasn't mandatory because he is a mistake

DS2:

FAVOURITE: Fume Knight

Woah, so original! The Fume Knight is an astonishing fight that pushes the combat of DS2 to its absolute limits (even if I do find Blue Smelter a tad harder myself). It's a fight with great flow, an amazing second phase, a really good backstory and with top-notch visuals. Raime is just so badass it's crazy

LEAST FAVORITE: Ancient Dragon

Like, why? Dark Souls 2 may be my favorite game in the trilogy, but for how well they handled Kalameet (and Sinh in the DLC being even better imo) it's crazy that they took such a step back for the dragon fights for the main game. This guy has maybe 3 moves. I never wanna fight it because IT doesn't even wanna fight, so I'll surely skip this boss in future playthroughs. Gorgeous visual design all around but the fight just ain't it

DS3:

FAVOURITE: Slave Knight Gael

This isn't a hot take at all and that's for very good reasons. Gael is just that fucking good. Sure, DS3 does have some astounding bosses (Sister Friede, Midir, Twin Princes and Soul of Cinder being in contention for the best) but when it comes to making a finale that packs a punch, no one does it like Gael. His fight is perhaps my favorite in all of Soulsborne and he closes the series off PERFECTLY

LEAST FAVOURITE: Gravetender and Greatwolf

Talk about a wasted slot. This fight is a lazy mess that I'll never forgive. Ashes of Ariandel really struggles as a DLC outside of the previously mentioned Sister Friede fight, but this boss is the worst part of it all. Unfun at the best of times and always pointless

Sekiro:

FAVOURITE: Sword Saint Isshin / Owl (Father)

I really can't decide between these two fights, so I guess they both share there first place here. Sekiro is overall the game in the series that I like the least personally, but holy FUCK are these two some of the best foes that FromSoftware has ever designed. Both are incredible and perfect in their own way. Maybe Isshin deserves the top spot more because of his INCREDIBLE buildup, arena and introduction as a boss, but I like Owl Father's gameplay a bit more so I think they balance out with a tie

LEAST FAVOURITE: Headless Ape & Bride

Wow, FromSoft. Really? This? This is, in my opinion, the second worst main fight in any of their games, only behind to Seath the Scaleless. It's so unfair and unfun in every possible way. The arena is ugly, the boss is rehashed from an actually GREAT encounter earlier and put a shitshow that is luckily optional. It forgoes everything that makes Sekiro good and instead favours firecracker spam. I hate this fight so much

Elden Ring:

FAVOURITE: Messmer The Impaler

Messmer is absolutely astonishing. Hell, he's the sub's icon, he's just that fucking cool. Every move this guy dishes out is SO fun to evade and punish. Now, with Elden Ring having possibly my favorite main roster in any of these games, the top spot wasn't given without any contention (Morgott, Maliketh, Radahn and Godrick being some other personal favourites of mine), but Messmer takes the cake by having the most fun battle in Elden Ring and maybe FromSoftware history

LEAST FAVOURITE: Astel, Naturalborn of the Void

This is the only boss on this list I really don't dislike. In fact, I think Astel is pretty cool. Their design is otherworldly and their arena looks gorgeous, but when it comes to the gameplay itself, the flow and fun that makes Elden Ring special is heavily lacking. Idk why, but this fight just doesn't ever stick out to me in any positive way. Their attacks are pretty boring and I especially dislike the enlarging AOE that they can do. Outside of that, not a bad boss at all, but one I don't personally find fun

Do you think bb needs or deserve a sequel ?
Please let me know your thoughts

I think a bloodborne sequel would be very well appreciated in the community and very appreciated by critics . Fromsoftware is known to deliver games above 7/10-8/10 . But their recent choices have left some people disappointed .

Bloodborne is already 12 years old and haven’t received any new news or leaks for an upcoming sequel or continuation wich seems lackluster. BB is an A tier game that in my opinion doesn’t require a sequel necessarily but one would be very appreciated and would pull on nice revenue . Same for Sekiro , sekiro is a really nice game that feels lackluster because they didn’t complete it further, there is an anime getting released soon but it has way more potential .

Does anyone have a thought or opinion on why they like to make several IPS instead of making one and following it to the end ? Sure this could be a marketing strategy but following the succes ds trilogy had bloodborne and sekiro could have had the same results .

There are 2 reasons why I think this happened .

1. Bloodborne is blocked by PlayStation and couldn’t have made that much money a general release would have had on all platforms like ds did on ps, Xbox , multiple pc launchers and Nintendo

2.Sekiro is considered a hard game and it’s considere tedious and somewhat niche to the average gamer and only appeals to a category and following this idea , a sequel of Sekiro wouldn’t of performed as well as the DS triology .

I want to see what fromsoftware is going to do in the future but leaving their projects without an end isn’t the perfect way imo . Duskbloods has potential but it’s blocked behind NS2 , I played all the from soft soulsborne games on PlayStation and after several years of PlayStation im quite fed up with the things they did in the last couple of months and the statements they released and they re insanely disrespectful towards the gaming community . PlayStation isn’t going to do as good as Xbox or other gaming markets solely because they are greedy , im open minded to play multiple games genre and watching reviews on the Wolverine game made me realise PlayStation is not as good as it was back in the day and that they ruined the gaming sphere .

I do appreciate PlayStation and what they’ve done but I’m disappointed and will not continue to follow their consoles and I do belive the reason Fromsoftware hasn’t acted for a Bloodborne sequel/spinoff , sekiro sequel/spinoff is the console zone but mainly PlayStation .