Some of the talk about Khazan has made me wonder if I might actually be good at video games.

[Talloran]

Boss name spoilers, you've been warned.

I'll keep this part short: Yes, I have played plenty of games with a reputation of being challenging, and I've done some very basic "challenge runs" of some of them. I put that in quotes because I think I've only ever attempted a level 1 run once, and didn't finish it. I'm a fan of tough roguelikes and soulslikes in general.

But I've never done anything crazy like a no-damage run in any game, and frankly I doubt I ever could. I tend to struggle against the same bosses and levels that most people seem to, hit the same roadblocks, and Khazan was no exception. Viper gave me 28 stab wounds. Maluca turned my health bar purple. Rangkus set me on fire in a drive by shooting. Bellerian taught me how Elden Ring bosses must feel when I use spirit summons. So on, so forth.

But... But five hours? On Viper? An entire day to beat Trokka? Calling bosses health sponges? Am I taking crazy pills? I know the steam forums are full of bait, but I see this stuff on Reddit too.

Like... I am the personification of the meme "Damn, I got greedy". I mash buttons like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ape even after I've memorized the moveset of a boss, no matter what, because button mashing gives me dopamine even if it gets me killed. I understand this and do it anyway, because I'm simple like that, and have no self control or discipline. I can dodge adequately, but often can't parry to save my life because my brain is square shaped and the prospect of not dodging confuses me. All of this and more, and I still cruised through this game on normal mode. My biggest roadblock was Elamein, because I'm not smart enough to understand that her shield is good at protecting her.

So... What the heck are y'all doing? Are you okay? You literally just have to dodge and deflect--you can do either based off of your mood--then hit the boss. You can hit them a lot, they tend to let you do long combos on them for free, because the game wants you to feel cool. There are abilities that let you do anime-as-heck combo chains easily for this exact purpose.

Genuinely, I'm struggling to envision what it might look like on your screen. Are you just standing there and getting hit? Do you only use light attacks? Are you waiting for permission from the boss to win? This game has "Berserker" in the title, was that not enough of a hint to play aggressive?

So either I'm better than I thought, or I'm still average and most people genuinely kinda suck. With all the complaining I've been seeing I honestly don't know which it is, and I'm not sure the boost to my ego is worth losing even more of my faith in humanity if its the former.

[SHOU-GA71]

People get enjoyment out of different things. I'm still trekking through the game and just put down Remnant of Elamein last night. I've gotten really good at comboing bosses down to the point that I was able to keep Skalpel stunned until his resurrection with very few breaks.

That said, I was hard stuck on Bellerian for like 4 hours probably. I never thought the fight was "unfair" or too difficult or anything. Every death was my own fault, and I could have interacted with the boss mechanics more aggressively. Stun her before she deploys bubble, keep her from summoning the Reaper, etc.

But I did think she wasn't fun. I don't have a good time chasing bosses across the map, especially when she can just teleport to the other end instantly. I think punishing a lack of aggression with a bubble is an unfun design choice. It's not really about being good or bad, but what people are willing to interpret as fun.

[Croxio]

I just spent 4 hours on Trokka, and as much as I spent several times in its final phase, the transition with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ missile filters me a lot.... Clearly getting stuck too much is not going to do any good, so for bosses like her or VIPER, just spend enough time to gain 1 or 2 levels then do something else. By fighting a boss every day, you will eventually succeed.

Being at level 102 I am more afraid of reaching the max level which according to the forum is 150 before reaching the final boss than just giving up because I am bad.

[Rafterman]

3% of us have even beaten the final boss, so if you've beaten him, calling yourself "average" is kinda ridiculous, don't you think?

Also, as someone who beat Viper relatively quickly, and thought Trokka was easy, the bosses are 100% health sponges, and later game it gets exhausting fighting them. The "true" ending boss is actually a stupid long fight, like we are playing monster hunter or some ♥♥♥♥.

It's funny because as soon as I finished Khazan I had an urge to go back and replay Nioh, and it's has even faster combat, is even more difficult, and has really good boss fights, but they never drag on like Khazan boss fights do. It's why I've beaten the Nioh games probably 40 times and will most likely never replay Khazan. This is my favorite genre, I love difficult games, but Khazan isn't just difficult, it gets tedious and tiresome about halfway through.

[Zerixar]

I think the main thing is that there are always a small number of very loud reactionary/narcissistic people who refuse to learn how to play a game or are genuinely bad, and when they encounter any difficulty or adversity they immediately project that it is the games fault because the problem couldn't possibly be them. it couldn't be they just haven't learned how this game works yet, it couldn't be that they need to try something different, it couldn't be that maybe the game's just not for them, no, the world must bend to cater to their FEELINGS in that very moment so they don't feel bad or inadequate anymore. Colloquially we call these people scrubs.

These types always come out of the woodwork to piss all over the forums of any challenging game crying that any speedbump they hit must be nerfed rather than overcome. it is best to ignore or make fun of them.

All that to say, you sound like a normal gamer, who plays the game as it is intended and is capable of learning and enjoying a challenge. maybe you're good, maybe you're just average, but the point is you're normal.

[Mordred]

Trokka is the only true "unfair" boss if you use a GS, with infinite stamina and way too much hp for a mage boss, she is so annoying to deal with, not a great boss imo. I was stuck for like 2 hours, had to change my set and use consumables to defeat her.

[Zerixar]

Originally posted by Mordred:

Trokka is the only true "unfair" boss if you use a GS, with infinite stamina and way too much hp for a mage boss, she is so annoying to deal with, not a great boss imo. I was stuck for like 2 hours, had to change my set and use consumables to defeat her.

hard disagree. you can chain stagger the crap out of her with gs basically any time you touch her if you know what you're doing.

[moo]

Nah, most of them complain after a few fails then get their *** together and beat the crap out of the boss. It's normal. Some on the other hand are just silly kids disappointed that the game didn't come with 100% completion, and refuse to learn/acknowledge they need to learn. So far I had issues only with two bosses - Yetuga, because I was learning the game mechanics and learning to "feel" the combat (and unlearning some stuff from soulslikes in general, like you're right, berserker in the title says a hell lot about how you're supposed to play XD), and then Hismar that absolutely kicked my pretty ass until I memorized his attacks to the point I brink guarded nearly every combo he threw at me. Why Hismar was tougher? Because of the camera. Trokka? Fun fight. Bellerian? Fun fight. Skalpel? Fun fight. Maluca? Love this dude. I still am about to face Reese and Ozma and I don't expect them to be easy of course. But I got the feel for magic spammers in this game so I'm good, and if I spend next two days fighting them tis alright. And I'm not a challenger runner, I'm not even good, I tend to spam at times, I forget to heal lol, this kind of stuff. And I'm an old hag that doesn't take stuff seriously, even if I spit curses and stuff on whoever was responsible for camera in Hismar's fight
People are too serious with games. And they want a lot but not everyone is going to be next Ongbal (I like watching this dude, just to remind myself how average I am and how good I feel about it).

[Talloran]

Originally posted by s̷h̷a̷d̷o̷w̷:

People are too serious with games. And they want a lot but not everyone is going to be next Ongbal (I like watching this dude, just to remind myself how average I am and how good I feel about it).

Ongbal mentioned, praise be

[vXViper]

you might be good, but it's also about people don't get what they doing wrong, and to acctually use ingame mechanics in alot of games, They thinking they can just bruteforce they way thru like all the other games that they played before and let them slip thru without really learning.

That's what I feel about all off this, you seen in this forum for so long now, Lack of dmg complains , bosses got so much hp etc etc. And all it's telling me is that they have not done what's needed to get some dmg output besides whats needed to just scrape by on the normal enemies.

Then we got issues like stamina, people getting hit way to much before their stamina management has gone down the drain sins if they even played Dark souls one, like if you compare elden ring that gives you sooo much stamina reg it's not even funny.

And ofc my last thing I want do add is skill issue ofc. sine fights requires dodge mastery some brink guard mastery. some boss fights might be better to do both. And just like in Sekiro were we had people screaming about issues so does this because they can't time a button press correctly, or ofc they don't plan ahead and just mash buttons in hope it works (brute force yet again)

In my mind it takes a certen personality for these games and often people lack that quality.

[vXViper]

Originally posted by Zerixar:

Originally posted by Mordred:

Trokka is the only true "unfair" boss if you use a GS, with infinite stamina and way too much hp for a mage boss, she is so annoying to deal with, not a great boss imo. I was stuck for like 2 hours, had to change my set and use consumables to defeat her.

hard disagree. you can chain stagger the crap out of her with gs basically any time you touch her if you know what you're doing.

people don't know how to use their weapons most of the time ^^ I seen people using GS for example and still using normal swift slashes with it half way in to the game :P having skills put in to other weapons and still have no clue how to counterattack. Those are some of the guys or girls comming in to the forum yelling too hard!

[Phishfood]

For me the difficulty was because I was using greatsword and refused to upgrade vitality and endurance until I was level 90, they both stayed at 10 the whole time until I had 60 in strength and 30 in proficiency.

I'm trying a new run on spear now where I'm evenly distributing between vitality, endurance and proficiency. Feels much easier.

[Doctor Gitgud]

You're nothing special, the community just has skill issues.

[Cartesian Duelist]

Originally posted by vXViper:

And ofc my last thing I want do add is skill issue ofc. sine fights requires dodge mastery some brink guard mastery. some boss fights might be better to do both.

This is the part I'm having the most trouble getting used to. I played Lies of P where the goal is to pretty much block everything. Then DS3 and Elden Ring where you just dodge everything. Learning the attack patterns then figuring out what to block and what to dodge is a bit of a pain. Plus I was a way into the game before I even noticed the stat scaling for each weapon...

[Apple.Seed]

I beat the game but, I think Ozma Health or something needs to be nerfed that is way to ridiculous.

[Persona Au Gratin]

Originally posted by Rafterman:

It's funny because as soon as I finished Khazan I had an urge to go back and replay Nioh, and it's has even faster combat, is even more difficult, and has really good boss fights, but they never drag on like Khazan boss fights do. It's why I've beaten the Nioh games probably 40 times and will most likely never replay Khazan. This is my favorite genre, I love difficult games, but Khazan isn't just difficult, it gets tedious and tiresome about halfway through.

Yeah, I don't see myself replaying this. I've been split between this game and Monster Hunter Wilds and Xenoblade X, so I've been taking my time among that and life... and frankly, it's just boring (at points) for bad reasons. But sometimes it's really FUN. There are some decent fights, but most of the them are the same and they demand a very high level of the same single skill set, which is route memorization.

But the problem with people making accusations of "narcissism" is it's clear they don't really understand how this genre has other variations or things you can emphasize. Obtuse off rhythms with what are effectively jukes means that while I've done extremely well just playing off my instincts, the game is trying to command my attention to do something I think it just doesn't make very compelling.

"Narcissism", I hate to break it to a lot of your losers, but it takes nothing special to play a video game. To play it well and get recognition is something I think people are conflating and to that end, I'd just say you can post your receipts, but I'd also say that those are always edited. There's nothing honest about that representation, and while I do think there's a sense of work and pride that can go into that... the lack of any sense of awareness about what people experience, where the skill demand is... just that people should uncritically consume, it means that despite trying to present yourself as some bastion of taste or something, you're actually losers.

There are some really good fights in Khazan, but I think that it's really tedious in terms of the reused assets, which is a quality it gets from Nioh, not necessarily from Souls games that reused assets over the course of iterations. You can tell this if you have played Nioh.

I'll also say comparing it to Sekiro is really funny, because while people get frustrated, their frustration was not for the kind of reasons you see here. There will always be misunderstandings, but "Skill Issue" is a thought terminating cliche and it's the perfect thing for stupid people.

I think that's my big problem with Khazan, it courts that type of player lovingly. You guys are an embarrassment who think "not all game for everyone" is something a designer should aspire to, or that games can't possibly fail at being fun or interesting.

So that being said, yeah I agree I'm probably gonna play something else. But here's the wild thing, I don't think Khazan is bad lmfao. It's just not the greatest thing I've ever played.