I am now through Stormveil Castle and have explored some of the Liurnia of The Lakes area, completing a couple of the side dungeons there, as well. Stormveil was hands-down one of my favorite areas in a video game in recent memory. Towering in scale, challenging, and well-designed, I had a blast running through it. Both the boss at the beginning and the final boss were engaging and pulse-pounding encounters. The final boss had a great souls-like curve of me getting completely owned the first couple of times, with a nice curve up to victory as I mastered his various move set for each phase. When I finally got him down, it was that rush of elation I only get from these games.
By the way, I am playing my entire first playthrough with no co-op and no spirit summons. I will certainly go back and do some co-op on stuff I have already cleared solo as I go along, though.
The spirit summons is a brilliant addition, btw. I have no use for them, but wow, what an idea to give more casual gamers a leg up in difficult encounters - not everyone wants to be punished by a game the way I do! A set of various summonable helpers with different abilities and attributes that are completely optional. Seems like someone would have thought of this sooner, instead of leaning into mechanics like a difficulty slider...e
The spirit summons is a brilliant addition, btw. I have no use for them, but wow, what an idea to give more casual gamers a leg up in difficult encounters - not everyone wants to be punished by a game the way I do! A set of various summonable helpers with different abilities and attributes that are completely optional. Seems like someone would have thought of this sooner, instead of leaning into mechanics like a difficulty slider...e
Personally, I feel the first time the world obviously turns too big and relatively become more intense, become more overwhelming compared to previous games (even though most areas were optional in itself), so using what available option is really stress-reducing apart from torrent/horse. I usually call another player(s) to speed up some bosses but usually prefer solo exploring/progressing. There are also many mini-bosses like in every dungeon/cave, every corner in the map, so the feeling to not necessarily challenge oneself every time, the available option really really help. So I think that was a successful move from the dev team.
Market-wise, it's very win-win solution as the chance their demographic become wider (12 million copy so far, as I recalled). Without ignoring their past core players, but also a warm welcome for the new ones.
But coop helping other players is always fun, either exploring or progressing, beating boss, gank up invader (not really biggie on invasion) successful or not. I think that was the point where my hours of play skyrocketed because they made it so accessible in this game.
Awesome game, and I can already see another massive castle in the distance, this time with elegant spires and smooth lines, as opposed to the brutalist fortress I just escaped.
__________________
"Фильм призван вызвать духовную волну, а не взращивать идолопоклонников."