Bummer. I don't like Steamforged games, in general.
Same.
I backed Dark Souls on the everything tier. My friend also backed it, but just the base game. We played it at his house, and I hated it. It felt like the focus was on some meta game about bonfire refreshing and effing around in the menus. Even the Bloodborne game mistakenly focuses on the repeated death concepts, but the Dark Souls game is managing an item lottery. It just sucks, and I didn't like the minis or the barren maps.
What these board games don't seem to grasp is that the video games are more about engaging and tactical combat than the minutia of dying and restarting. You do that in every video game and it's hardly the most interesting thing about Souls games.
For the tabletop experience, set up your characters at the beginning of the game, and then get in there and fight some mother fucking monsters. If you die, you're done. You failed that attempt. Sure, when you play the videogame, you can play endlessly, returning back to the dungeons and trying again and again. I'm actually seen people argue that the board games need to have that to feel like souls games. Are you kidding me? I'll have 8 hour play sessions involving multiple attempts across different areas. But come on, that's not the distilled experience. The central experience in going into an area, summoning a pal or two, getting invaded, fighting monsters, and trying to survive all the way to a boss. That takes about an hour or less. For a board game experience, that's all it needs to be. One solid attempt at a run to a boss through a dungeon. Focus on the exciting push your luck combat.
Anyway, Steamforged games... eeh. They just announced a couple new Dark Souls core boxes, with updated rules based on community input, and I'm tempted but eh.. I have my doubts.
Their Resident Evil games have been a bit sloppy too, though I think those are more fun than Dark Souls, despite being overly long and broken down into uninteresting little campaign missions. I feel like making a campaign game is an excuse to not design a tight, replayable and variable game.
Rather than suffering through dozens of boring campaign missions, I'd rather have a Resident Evil game that asked you to explore a modular mansion, find a number of objects that could help you complete puzzles that stand in your way of an exit, all the while trying to survive an ever increasing assault by enemies randomized at the beginning of the game.. and end it with a mystery boss fight. That's a game to me. You could play it again with a new board, new enemies, new goals showing up, and a new boss. That's the kind of replayability I desire. Campaign games are more like one and done scripted experiences. Eh.
So I'm troubled that Elden Ring went to Steamforged. Guh.
Well, I can always hold out for a CMON Demon's Souls. I was really hoping their Bloodborne game would be a dice chucking dungeon crawler, but it's more of a puzzley thing with ZERO dice. Monkey's Paw. Still, I think the game is of a higher quality experience than Steamforged Games' Dark Souls.
