So this just came out, catching me at least by surprise: an attempt by someone to copy the Souls formula.
There's no character creation (you play as bald angryman), and it's got characters and cutscenes, but a lot of Souls' weighty, dangerous-feeling combat.
Here's a video showing it off a bit:
I couldn't resist picking it up, and have had a cracking good time so far. It's not as polished as Souls (crashes a decent amount for me), but it's got a lot more fancy graphics, that's good right?
Some tips:
- turn off the nvidia physx whatchamacallit in the advanced settings, it only serves to cause lag and adds nothing.
- to deal with shield dudes, use a charging shield bash, there's no effective guard-break like in Souls that I could find
- there's an extra potion flask (estus shard/bottle) in the tutorial area
- the 'shelter' miracle in the cleric tree actually also does a heal over time, mostly obviating the need to use your healing potions outside of emergencies. Playing paladin makes the game rather easy so far.
Anyway, it's serving very well to scratch my Souls itch until Bloodborne comes out and I can borrow someone's PS4.