Healing is a staple of any soulslike. From the very beginning, Demon’s Souls introduced healing items to the genre to fight off the dangers of the world. The healing items were consumable, however, forcing the player to either get good enough to use fewer healing items or find spots to farm the various levels of healing items to have a stash.
Dark Souls ditched the types of consumable grass and instead introduced the Estus Flask - the healing item that comes with several healing charges which auto-refill when you rest at a bonfire or die.
Apart from Bloodborne, which had Blood Vials (controversial), Estus Flasks or similar have become a mainstay of the genre. But which of these are better for the game and which do you prefer?
Estus Flasks come with limited charges, but they refill automatically, so you don’t have to farm healing items and can just focus on the boss fight that’s giving you trouble. Consumable healing usually comes in larger quantities (20 Blood Vials plus a couple extra if you use specific runes), so you have more healing at your disposal in a boss fight, hence you can be more aggressive and reckless, but you run the risk of running out of healing at some point, so you might have to farm them at some point.
Thoughts?
I like the Estus system—it gives you a lot more room to experiment and have fun with the game. Getting more consumable heals just feels like grocery shopping.
No Soulslikes for me this weekend, I am still on the Withering Rooms kick I’ve been on for the last two weeks or so. I finished my first playthrough today, got an ending I think might be canon (considering the upcoming sequel) and then immediately went into NG+. There is an extra ending exclusive to NG+, and I’m curious to see what that payoff is like. So far the NG+ experience has been pretty remixed, so it feels somewhat fresh. Also feels snappier - certain puzzles and story beats seem removed in NG+ so it might play a lot faster. There are also some new and pretty cool mechanics introduced.
Overall I can’t say enough good things about this game. The world building, the exploration, the story, the art direction, the vibes, the mechanics… It’s such a good and unique game.
Great to hear you liked it so much!, I have it lined up for when I finish these current playthroughs.
I hope you’ll like it as much as I have! I promise you’ll get used to the clunky combat eventually, and everything else in the game is just top tier. For a solo dev game it’s just so impressive and I’ve loved every second of it. So many neat little things, such a cool setting and story, so many little game design elements that are just perfectly thought out…
I haven’t looked at sales but I hope it sold well so that the upcoming sequel can have even higher budget. I know it is going to move from 2.5D to full 3D environments, but I am just so curious to see what this dev could do with an AA budget.
A solo dev project, holy shit! And a sequel planned? that’s really awesome to hear :)
prefer the estus system, I don’t really want to spend time farming for blood echos so I can buy more vials lol
I kinda like both? The real advantage of Bloodborne’s system is that you can find more Blood Vials in the world. This massively helps in area traversal, since you can just keep going. Out of heals? Just kill that troll or big werewolf and you can keep going. It creates a nice risk-reward strategy. The problem is just that in Bloodborne you can generally run out of Blood Vials. I wish it worked like in DS1, so that when you visit the Hunter’s Dream, your vials always refill to at least 10 (maybe upgradable with Insight?).
Still no Soulslikes for me this weekend… Lots of train travel. I play a bit of Pokémon Heartgold on my phone, now there is a game where healing is no problem for the player.
@v4ld1z@lemmy.zip also no Soulslikes for you this weekend? Are you still stuck on Slay the Spire 2? (That game does look quite fun.)
I like Dark Souls 2’s mixed system the most (I’m one of the 5 weirdos who actually enjoys that game the most out of the Souls trilogy). You start off with a very limited Estus count but can supplement it with consumable Lifegems and healing miracles (makes especially those feel so much more valuable). I liked DS2’s approach to consumables the most in general, they were powerful and pretty useful for all kinds of builds but never necessary, it added that extra RPG element to the game of using consumables to help you overcome some of the harder moments while still letting you win through sheer skill if you choose.
the grass system was something I enjoyed a lot in DeS. expensive yes, but I liked being able to heal different amounts and it puts some good pressure on performance when you run out of the good stuff and you gotta make do with whatever you have. The game is not super hard so I never felt the need to farm, otherwise it would probably be terrible.
Consumable heals are a tiny annoyance in bloodborne when staring a new run, but not significant, if I could edit the game I would change other stuff first, like weapon durability or fast travel, etc.
Estus is maybe too comfy in DS 1/ 3 but really appreciated in Elden Ring and others of similar difficulty
I’ll be playing more Enotria, I didn’t progress much this week. Only to the 4th major boss I think. This area is probably my favourite so far.
Also restarted DS3, I was planning to rush it but I wanna keep progressing some character quests so I’ll have to do a bunch of side stuff again
So I’ll be bouncing between the two.
I like the OG, and enjoy the hacks that let the charge beam gather health in Super Metroid
The Surge has the best healing system IMO. First off, it’s got options. You can heal a medium chunk at once, or a bigger amount over a period of time. You can even swap out the healing utility for a different utility altogether or use both healing tools at once. Next, you get X charges every rest/reset, but you can also gain more by attacking something and building up energy.
But altogether, all of them are light years ahead of LOOSE WALL MEAT like in NES and SNES classics.
