In Dark Souls, the thing is, you start with nothing, neither in terms of equipment nor experience.
In many cases, you learn things online, things like how a consumable talisman puts mimics to sleep, allowing you to steal their contents without having to fight them; and the controls—when DS1 first came out on Steam, it was a very poorly done port of the Windows Live version. It had Xbox controls, and you couldn’t change them; you had to find the controls online to play with a keyboard.
After that, subsequent playthroughs are easier. At first, the game is intimidating; everything is difficult because you don’t know anything, you don’t know how to do anything at all. Hell, even moving is difficult, and you die and die and die. You memorize, memorize, memorize, and then your second playthrough is the complete opposite. What took you three torturous hours in your first playthrough takes you less than one in the second, while you outmaneuver enemies, blow everything up, clear areas of enemies, and kill bosses in fewer than three tries, some on the first try, all while eating cereal with milk.
It feels almost magical how the game, despite always being the same, has changed because without realizing it, you’ve improved.
And yes, there are things that bosses are more or less resistant to. Ornstein is resistant to lightning and immune to poison, the demons are resistant to fire, and almost everything is weak to lightning.
And there are things that are difficult because they’re literally a “fuck you” in gameplay, or as we Souls players call them, the Capra demon. He’s a guy who, by the time you have to face him, is incredibly strong, hits hard, attacks quickly, his swords are enormous so he has a long reach, the room where they fight is tiny, and he has two very fast dogs that, if you don’t avoid them or kill them quickly, will leave you at his mercy. And since he’s from the beginning, you don’t yet know what to do; there’s a somewhat safe corner where you can easily kill the dogs. Like I said, he’s a “fuck you” in the form of an enemy every time. Everyone hates him because of how unfair he is, whether they’re a novice or a veteran, and while he does get easier the more you play, he never stops being unfair.
I hate the concept of the meta, and I’ve never liked build order, but unfortunately, there’s always going to be an optimal way to do things in everything in life, and that’s especially noticeable in RTS games. It means that whether you use it or not, others will.
Even so, Retold allows you to be more creative and think outside the box, at least compared to other titles, both within and outside the series. The specialist units in Retold 2 are unforgiving, and everything in that game demands a more rigid approach. In fact, I’ve heard that some people are so rigid that they’ll report you for using anti-meta strategies, not because they’re overpowered, but simply because they’re different. In Retold, you can consider things like, “The Hydra is superior to Nemea, but Nemea stuns in an area, and Aphrodite’s buffs are fantastic.”
I don’t play multiplayer, so I might be talking nonsense, but I think it allows you to explore different ways of playing with the same god, Odin for example. The minor gods at his disposal can maximize cavalry, or berserkers to a lesser extent (I think this is worth considering, given that Odin has a unique upgrade for them). And although he doesn’t have anything for berserkers in the Third Age, you can always choose Niord to boost cavalry, or Skadi, who doesn’t synergize with anything from Odin, but since she gives you frost giants, she’s never a bad choice.
Age 3 seems more complicated to me, because while the specialist units in Retold only have multipliers against certain enemies, their equivalents in Ao3 (that is, all of them) not only have multipliers, but enemies designed to kill also have penalties against them. For example, falconets not only easily kill infantry, but if infantry reaches them, they also reduce the damage dealt to cannons.
Retold, as I said, allows you to be creative and diversify. I saw this in a video; it’s what I mentioned earlier about slingers. I tried it, and it works. With Ra and Ser, they can go after Ptah and Sekhmet. Electrum bullets grant divine damage—not much, but they do—and increase damage against everything, especially archers. Conversely, the Sun Sling gives slingers a multiplier against infantry. They aren’t as good at killing infantry as they are at killing archers, but it certainly works very well.
When I was little, it was difficult for me too, but later I understood how certain things worked.
Greeks: Their basic soldiers function with rock-paper-scissors logic. Specialist soldiers are designed to counter what they themselves are: infantry anti-infantry, cavalry anti-cavalry, archers… ranged anti-ranged.
Egyptians: If they’re on foot, they’re a specialist unit.
Norse Huscarls kill archers, axe throwers: Axe to your face!
Atlanteans: Specialist units don’t exist; it’s a myth created by parents to make you waste resources.
And there’s always the reliable one: If a guy is on foot and hits you with a pointed stick, he’s good at killing people who ride animals (except Valkyries).
I think it’s not too difficult for me to understand (the build order is a different story) because I’ve read a lot, both in-game and on the wiki. The game has the information, but it’s complicated for beginners or casual players who just want to play and have fun (although, let’s be honest, RTS games tend to be more undemanding, both technically and mechanically). I suppose that’s why many people who really like RTS games but don’t delve into them, or who only do so in their favorite titles, ironically see it as a casual game. You see the typical guy in a video saying that whoever has the most monsters wins, while claiming that human units are just filler or dispensable. Good luck trying to make sure an opponent with more than 5 hours of experience doesn’t notice, especially if they’re playing with Atlanteans or Japanese.
In fact, a few months ago there was a discussion here about how mythical units aren’t meta, since heroes kill them very easily and they’re generally very good, and curiously, professional players don’t use monsters.
Anyway, in my opinion, the game is much better if you study it, if you look at the unit stats and see what each symbol means, if they have a bonus against something, if they’re resistant to a type of damage, etc.; that’s why I say it’s not difficult, but demanding.
However, while Dark Souls is designed this way, for example, its creator (Miyasaki) made the lore appear in pieces and open to interpretation because, as a child, he read books in English without knowing the language… so he interpreted what he could with the little he understood. That’s why all his games are like this: you find an object with a description in a location, and it’s like being an archaeologist, theorizing whether it has anything to do with the place where it’s described or not, relating it to people or objects that speak to the same lore. Some make it clear that they come from distant lands.
On the other hand, Retold doesn’t have to be cryptic. On the contrary, RTS games are competitive by their very nature, so they have to make everything clear. That’s why I think that, even though it removes some “mystique,” we have the campaigns and the compendium for the lore.
That’s why I think they should explain things like the specialist units in a scenario; I’ve always thought that one way to do it would be through a tutorial campaign, like William Wallace’s in Age of Empires II (and Chewbacca’s in Galactic Battlegrounds); in this case, with Arkantos when he was young. I can think of things like having to destroy three different armies in a scenario, each composed solely of infantry, ranged troops, and cavalry, respectively, and the best way to defeat them being to use hypaspists, prodromoi, and peltasts as needed.
That, or individual, non-immersive scenarios where they artificially but effectively explain what each element does.
In any case, they’ve done quite a bit to explain the game. It’s still not enough, but it’s more than its predecessors. The hersirs always generated favor just by existing, but it wasn’t until Retold that they decided the game should explain them to you.
I’m more of the opinion that everything should be well explained; knowledge is power.
And I can truly understand that memorization is a problem for many.
For example, my sister is in university, she’s a mother, and she does all the housework. My brother-in-law works; he would do the same when he was working from home, but now he works in an office. So, my sister is too busy right now to learn details about a game (however interesting it might be) when she’s already busy studying and taking care of my niece.
For my part, I don’t have a job. I earn money by investing, I receive part of an inheritance from my grandmother, and I’ll soon be receiving a disability pension, so I have all the time in the world to read articles online, like the wiki for this game, and put what I read into practice. My own disability also helps, since I have ADHD (not a disability) which causes hyperfocus, and autism/Asperger’s (which is a disability) which also causes hyperfocus…
So I have a knack for certain things, largely due to my tendency towards obsession. However, don’t ask me about math; I’m so terrible at it that I even have dyscalculia. That’s why The World: Warhammer Fantasy is so difficult for me. I love that game, and I adore Warhammer Fantasy (more than 40k). I have over 1400 hours between the three, but I’m really bad at them. Retold, on the other hand, is where I think theory put into practice matters a lot, without so many factors and statistics. I find it easier to understand (I’ll soon surpass 1250 hours).
P.S.: It doesn’t help my sister with her daily life because we live in different states, they’re far apart and don’t even border each other, although, well, at least I can support her financially.
After talking about my life with strangers, what I want to say is that I can understand that many can’t or don’t want to delve deeper into this game, either because not everyone is obsessive-compulsive like me, or because they have adult responsibilities, much more pressing things to focus their energy and attention on.
What helps me, being a very visual person, is linking concepts with the units: Coyote Warriors are specialists against archers, Eagle Warriors too = Furries with two axes and Chicken Men kill archers.
With the Huscarls, it’s easy to remember that they kill archers. Why? Because they’re the only ones who go on foot with swords, or also, they’re the only blond ones who go on foot. A blond Nordic with a sword = a crazy guy who runs like Sonic and kills archers.
I also suppose it’s more natural for me because I started playing this game when I was about 12 years old. I’ll be 33 next month. It’s not like I’ve played every day of my life; I actually went about 7 years without playing, but let’s just say I have it ingrained in me.
My friend, the rest of the saga has more civilizations, although well, I can let it slide because in 1 and 2 all the units are the same except for the unique ones. The European civilizations in 3 are almost always the same but with slight differences depending on the nation, and I’m not going to get into 4 because I’ve never played it.
But I’ve played Dawn of War (it’s Warhammer, and I really like Warhammer), and that game has 9 factions.
For me, Retold doesn’t have many factions; it only has more than other games that only have 3 or 4. It would be a lot if it managed to have 12 or more. I hope it does someday.
On the other hand, although this is unrelated to the topic (because what I’ve said so far is clearly connected and it’s absolutely necessary to know about my sister for this discussion), I think many RTS players struggle to grasp new things, and that’s why they have trouble adapting to this title. I’ve often heard the complaint that they don’t understand how to gain favor, the mythic units, or how the Norse infantry builds buildings.
I may have been playing this game for a long time, but there are people who seem to lack the ability to adapt.
For example; Once, out of curiosity, I watched some StarCraft videos. I wanted something like what we’ve been talking about, “this unit is this and does that.” I couldn’t find anything like that, but something the guy in the video said caught my attention: “I don’t know how Protosses work; I only play Terran.”
I opened his channel and saw that he only played StarCraft. The channel was over 10 years old, and it seemed like he uploaded two or three videos a week.
Logic tells me his statement shouldn’t be possible. How can you spend over 10 years doing an activity—not just a game, but an activity several times a week—and it turns out you only know how to do a third of it? I mean, it’s not just that he never played the other factions (there are only three), technically wasting two-thirds of the money he spent, it’s that he didn’t even learn how to counter the other factions, even through practice, because he claimed he didn’t know how they worked. I mean, after fighting Protoss and Zerg so much, I suppose he’d at least know what they’d use, what things they’d use to counter you, but no.
And this week I finished a self-imposed challenge: playing with all the gods in Retold. I selected them all, played with one, unchecked it, played with another, unchecked it.
If I lost, I tried again (I’m not good at playing with Fuxi and Demeter against Zeus).
I often wonder if this game, RTS games, games in general, or things in general are really complicated, or if it’s just that people are unable to adapt, either because they can’t or because they don’t want to.
That reminds me of people who ask AIs to do absolutely everything. It’s not just that they ask Chat GPT whether to choose chicken or fish; there are people who ask, “Chat GPT, what do I like more, chicken or fish?”
Regarding the content of Age of Mythology, its appeal has always been the campaigns. It certainly always had multiplayer, but the biggest draw is the story, like in Warcraft.
Regarding the new RTS games, well, it would be redundant to repeat what we’ve already discussed, so I’ll just say no. Aside from the gameplay, it seems like everyone making current RTS games wants to be Starcraft or Warcraft, not just mechanically, but you see unit X or Y and you say, “this is a marine, this is a footman.”
Like what happened with Stargate or Battle Aces (the latter, by the way, didn’t get released), the gameplay without building or resource gathering, relying entirely on training time, micromanagement, and a Starcraft-style aesthetic, didn’t quite win over players. They’ve already announced they’re working on a new title, which is exactly the same thing but with a medieval fantasy aesthetic—in other words, Warcraft.
Now that I think about it, Battle Aces seems to have wanted to copy tactical RTS games like Dawn of War 2, which have their audience, but their popularity was in the 2000s. However, Battle Aces oversimplified the formula, and people didn’t end up liking it. Something too complicated and abstract is difficult for people to understand, but if it’s as deep as a puddle, it won’t attract an audience either.
I see this as a problem because several RTS studios that ultimately failed promoted themselves as “made by the creators of Starcraft,” and it was true, they were studios run by former Blizzard employees who worked on Starcraft. But they didn’t use it as a mark of quality, saying “we made this game excellent, we have the talent to make another one,” but rather as a Starcraft mark of quality, saying “we’ll make sure to make a Starcraft game, but legally different.”
It’s one of three things: they can’t let go of their past glories, they lack creativity, or they cling to what they think will bring them profit.
What do I know? Since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to see an RTS with Western gameplay like Age of Empires, Dawn of War, or Battle for Middle-earth, but in an anime style (or consider animals (not furries) intelligent animals with weapons, like seagulls with machine guns on their wings and elephants with cannons on their backs (I was in elementary school when I had that idea). But every new studio that wants to “innovate” does so with a Starcraft bootleg, and the most daring even try to make a Warcraft bootleg.
I’m not saying my idea of an anime RTS is good, and that there haven’t been attempts at other artistic styles (like Iron Harvest or that game about the second world war but with mice, although none were successful, they grabbed onto the trope of the second world war and copied Company of Heroes), but at least it’s more original than making a new Starcraft.
The issue of the public and microtransactions is complicated.
A good example is Age of Empires III.
The game was free-to-play, with rotating factions. If you wanted them all, you had to pay. Look at the achievement percentages, and you see that many players have the achievements for the base factions, but nobody has, for example, the one for training six soldados with México. It’s as if they didn’t even buy the DLC. Because it’s like that with all the paid factions; people don’t have the achievements you get by playing with those factions.
People say they don’t know how to play with the Mexicans or the Ethiopians, and I wonder, “You don’t know how to use them because you don’t understand them, or because you haven’t tried them because you don’t own them?” (Although, in their defense, the Mexicans in that game are a crazy/desmadre, just like the real ones).
In other words, perhaps they stopped updating it and releasing DLC because, although it was still more popular than Retold, it wasn’t generating revenue.
However, it’s also possible that it was due to fear of controversy; that game already had issues with Microsoft executives before its release.
In other words, perhaps they stopped updating and releasing DLC because, although it was still more popular than Retold, it wasn’t generating revenue.
Although there’s also the possibility that it was due to fear of controversy; that game already had issues with Microsoft executives before its release.
Regarding microtransactions, people will never accept that an RTS, a competitive and sports game, is pay-to-win, and it’s technically complicated to create skins, since at most they could be for heroes, like in Age of Empires III, with its own set of problems.
I mean, in MOBAs it’s perfectly viable, but try making skins for Retold. What do you make a skin for? Heroes, units, buildings? Because if they made a skin for each civilization, just one, they’d already be doubling the file size in gigabytes for each one.
In Age of Empires 2, it can work, and it did work, by creating unique sprites for buildings, but they’re 2D models (even so, I’m one of those who want each civilization to have a unique appearance, like in Galactic Battlegrounds).
And look, it’s possible, but imagine if they released 5 skins for all the Greek units; that would quintuple their file size.
In Age of Empires 3, they applied it with heroes (in many cases, recycling campaign hero models) to allow for role-playing, but here they add, I don’t know, priest skins with solar-game auras, hersirs with frost clouds visible across the entire map, murmillos with bright green auras that leave vegetation in their wake, and the PC crashes because there were like 50 of these guys, and the processor couldn’t handle so many effects and glitter on screen.
Look, I’m not saying it can’t be done; Retold is very well optimized, but a skin for 50 is not the same, because, as I said, who are you going to put it on in this RTS?
That’s for skins. The other option would be portraits and various trinkets, which I wouldn’t mind at all. I’d like a portrait of Sobek and Hathor together, or Theia as a K-pop singer (the idea is stupid, but she had a K-pop idol face in the beta). Hel Catrina, Hades Halloween, Cronos New Year, and Odin Claus are also absurd. That said, I’m not saying they’re joke portraits; they certainly took things from pop culture, but they did them great. It could be something like Theia Divine Diva or something like that.
Anyway, for now, I think it’s still difficult for RTS games to make money apart from direct sales.
I said this before, and they actually confiscated it a couple of times—merchandise.
They made a board game out of the original Mythology game, and currently there are Zeus and Minotaur plushies for sale (but they’re stopping next month).
When I say I’d like them to make collectible figures, I mean it—like McDonald’s, Kinder Eggs, Nendoroids, Funko Pops (even though I hate them), and Youtooz figures, since they’re the ones who sell the plushies.
Of course, this would be better if the game were popular with the general public, since it’s not even popular within the AoE fandom itself.
And certainly, things could be done to popularize RTS games. I don’t know what, but it can be done, as I said. People were saying that turn-based RPGs were dead, that people want action and speed.
Kasuga Ichiban arrived with his golden bat emblazoned with his name, his ratty hair, and a confident smile. Behind him are Joker from Persona 5, the protagonist of Metaphor whose name I don’t know, and the cast of Baldur’s Gate 3 and its GOTY.
Something can be done so that RTS games, and hopefully Arkantos and the like, are next.
