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One of the more interesting things in the Souls game recently is probably the large-scale mod "Throne of the Ancients" for "Dark Souls 3" crowdfunded by several technical experts in the player community. Trying out the demo is enough to keep veteran players "suffering" for hours. Many PC version players can’t wait to play it.
"Ancient Throne" is called a real "soul" amusement park. Similar to many other well-known large-scale mods in the community, such as "Daughter of Ashes", these mod authors do not just change certain appearances or functions, but use existing elements in the game to reorganize them in their own way. The plot can be regarded as a comprehensive large-scale fan creation.
It's just that the mod "Ancient Throne" has made the scale of this reorganization quite extreme. In the past, modders mostly "stitched" elements within a single work, but "Ancient Throne" almost "stitched" all the existing Soul Games produced by fromsoftware. The Fire Sacrifice adopts the teleportation mechanism of "Demon's Souls". The five salary thrones have been turned into five keystone teleportation points, and the corresponding reliefs with plot significance have also been redesigned. The map of the entire mod is also divided into five major areas and several levels in each major area like "Demon's Souls". The difficulty increases as you go deeper into the area.
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mod. The performance of the protagonist is basically the same as that of Ashes in "Dark Souls 3". There is still no knee. It just adds the defensive counterattack and preparation of elixirs in "Elden Ring", as well as the use of perfect Blocking can keep the shield from breaking even when the green bar bottoms out. The enemies are more diverse. You can see the swordsman who has learned the "Guyingzhong" kicking skills, you can also see the tower knight (giant) who can "angel beam" and flash, and the "first bishop Lawrence" who looks like a corrupt object... and at the same time. An enemy, especially a boss or an elite monster, often combines the attack modules of at least two original monsters to highlight a "most familiar stranger", or... "killing familiarity". Because of the stitching between character performance and modules, many past combat experiences are not applicable.
In order to match this hodgepodge of mechanisms, modders not only re-wrote the story, but also specially produced corresponding art materials. Each monster has a new appearance design and modeling, and many new weapons and Armor. The workload alone is staggering. Some NPCs still retain their original appearance, but their dialogues and dubbing have also been reworked and given different functions.
In any case, as a free mod produced through crowdfunding, the production team of "Ancient Throne" can be said to be full of love, full of sincerity, and large-scale management... People are looking forward to the effect of the official version.
is a free mod, so I don’t think there is any need to evaluate it in terms of gameplay. However, this mod has already been tested and demoed once, and it seems very sincere and down-to-earth. It is obvious that we want to improve the balance through player feedback. Balance has never been the strong point of mods. After all, their audience is often old players who are willing to ask for trouble. This does not mean that the harder the better, but in short it will not be too friendly to players.
The current criticism of "The Ancient Throne" is mainly due to the character performance based on "Dark Souls 3" facing some bosses that stitch together the actions of "Elden's Circle" and "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice" It seems very stretched. It’s miserable enough to fight against the adoptive father who is twice as tall as he is and swings a knife constantly with a green bar; at least the initial green bar of the protagonist of “Elden’s Circle” is equivalent to the green bars of other games, but the mod But they didn't use it... let alone some bosses that flew around and threw AOE all over the screen, highlighting the torture.
In fact, it is not just the character performance, the numerical value is also a bit torture.
I can only say that it is difficult to avoid this phenomenon in any "sewn" work, but mods receive less harsh criticism and scrutiny, and they are more free. This is not possible with commercial works.I once complained about the first version of "Pinocchio's Lies", which mentioned that it was "like a mod", referring to the boss in "Throne of the Ancients" who wore the skin of his adoptive father. But in general, starting from the original "Elden Ring" to later imitators, the "soul" genre and the "soul" genre seem to be on the road of continuous improvement. More complex movements and more light-pollution special effects seem inevitable. How to balance the protagonist's performance with more challenging opponents, or simply provide a "wheelchair" for players to choose the difficulty through outfitting, each manufacturer is still exploring. The next "soul"-like commercial work that I am personally looking forward to is "enotria", which is set in Italian drama. I hope it can present a new experience to a certain extent.