Nioh 3 Review (So Far) - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

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Kinda Funny Gamescast: Nioh 3 Review (So Far)

Date: February 4, 2026
Host: Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Panel: Andy Cortez, Mike (SnowBikeMike)
Special Segment: "Mini Shit List" – Discussing IGN’s Best Soulslike Games List

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Overview

This episode centers on an in-depth “review so far” of Nioh 3, the latest installment in Team Ninja’s action RPG series. Andy Cortez, having spent over 40 hours with the game, leads the analysis with Blessing and Mike contributing as lighter participants (1-2 hours in). The crew breaks down the game’s new open-world structure, dual combat system, gameplay loop, art direction, and its place in the broader Team Ninja legacy.

The discussion then pivots to a "Mini Shit List" segment, where the team reacts to IGN's newly published top 10 Soulslike games, debating inclusions, omissions, and what defines the best in the subgenre.

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Nioh 3 Review – Key Discussion Points

Personal Histories with Team Ninja (03:53-06:36)

• Andy admits a rocky history with Team Ninja games, usually finding their titles middling or “sauceless” outside of combat.
  • "I feel like they make the same fucking game every two years, every year and a half." (07:11, Andy Cortez)
• Blessing shares a similar skepticism but notes enduring love among hardcore fans for Nioh 1 and 2.

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First Impressions and Progress (04:38-04:50)

• Andy: 42+ hours played, not yet finished, estimates a minimum of 10 more to go.
  • “There’s no end in sight." (03:47, Mike)
• Mike: Struggled with early bosses, played ~2 hours—frustrated but intrigued.
• Blessing: About an hour in; states he'll be influenced by Andy's thoughts to continue.

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What’s New in Nioh 3 (07:57-09:00)

• Open Field Structure: Unlike previous linear "level-based" entries, Nioh 3 uses a connected open field.
  • "The other Nioh games are just their level based. They're linear in nature… this was a big sort of change." (07:58, Andy Cortez)

First Score

• Andy: Would give it a 7/10 so far; "good but not great." (09:33, Andy Cortez)

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Combat Analysis (13:05-17:27)

Dual Styles: Samurai & Ninja

• Samurai: Heavy weapons, slower approach, stamina management using the “kai” mechanic.
• Ninja: Faster, light weapons, leaves a “specter” clone on swapping which distracts enemies.
• Dynamic Swapping: Players swap between forms, especially to counter “red” telegraphed boss attacks, acting as a punishing parry.
  • "When that attack finally comes down, they're shining red. You—for me it's the Y button—I swap over to ninja form. Bam, massive sort of shot." (16:04)

Boss Fights

• Positive: Excellent mechanically, satisfying to learn and beat.
• Negative: "Sauceless"—lacking memorable intros or set piece transitions, unlike other Soulslikes.

Defining "Sauce"

• Andy: "I just want my dude to be sick as hell. I want my bosses to have a cool intro… hit me with some amazing visuals, do a crescendo with the music. I just never feel that in Team Ninja games." (17:29)

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Open World Structure & Game Loop (18:51-21:25)

• Compared to Sonic Frontiers—large open zones, not a seamless open world.
• Map Design: Icon-heavy ("Ubisoftification"), but Andy found the “extras” compelling: side bosses, blight-clearing, enemy encampments.
  • "There's just a lot of side bosses to take on… a lot of areas to clear of the blight, the rot scourge." (20:22, Andy Cortez)

Overwhelming Systems

• Loot Explosion: Tons of gear after each fight—compared to Destiny’s over-complexity and loot bloat.
  • "It feels like when I hop into Destiny after three years of not playing… The amount of systems, the amount of just bullshit they're throwing at you." (21:17, Andy Cortez)
• Menus: Deep, sometimes convoluted. Important tip: regularly use the “make an offering” menu to convert junk into Amrita (XP).
  • (See 'Game Tip' segment: 23:02-26:33)

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Visuals & Art Direction (47:00-50:39)

• Positives: Cutscenes and character models (especially in the robust character creator) look solid.
• Negatives: In-game environments and lighting often look dated/ugly—a persistent Team Ninja issue.
  • “I think this game can still look insanely ugly at times … what are we doing here?” (46:39, Andy Cortez)
• Wish List: Andy wants Team Ninja to invest in art direction, perhaps pivot to a more stylized aesthetic rather than pursue "semi-realism" on a short development cycle.

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Game Depth & Customization (35:41-39:03)

• Samurai and ninja forms each offer about 6-8 weapons and dedicated skill trees.
• Deep customization—every weapon, skill, and combo can be tailored to player preference.
  • "It's by far the most deep that a combat system that I've seen can do. It's really, really impressive." (38:06, Andy Cortez)

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Co-Op & Multiplayer (38:29-39:09)

• Full campaign co-op reportedly works well, with both players getting rewards and experiences.
• The team has yet to test together but expresses interest in playing co-op.

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Boss Fights, Difficulty & Endgame Loop (41:41-50:57)

• Variety in enemies; late-game still introduces new types.
• Bosses are generally easier than harder Soulslikes, with clear telegraphs.
• Only one boss stands out as frustrating due to poor visual telegraphing.
• Lack of truly memorable bosses/development “sauce” keeps them from greatness.

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Final Andy Review Highlights (52:00-53:01)

• Combat: "Awesome. And that's what it has going for it."
• Presentation: Let down by story, acting, and visuals.
• Replay Value: Would not spend as long with this if not for review purposes.
• Score: Holds steady at 7/10, possibly higher for hardcore Team Ninja fans.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “I feel like they make the same fucking game every two years, every year and a half.” (07:11, Andy Cortez)
• "If you're here for the combat and that's all you want, then you're gonna have an amazing time. If you want anything more than that… It's very much still sauceless in that department." (09:33, Andy Cortez)
• “Boss fights are fun as hell… they're fun to fight and figure out. I think the longest I took on a boss was maybe an hour... every other boss was around, you know, first try or five tries.” (43:53, Andy Cortez)
• “I want the sauce. I want... If you're gonna continue to go for realism, then work extra hard at making the realism look good.” (50:00, Andy Cortez)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Andy’s Playtime & Expectations: 03:28-04:38
• Team Ninja History Recap / “Sauceless” Discussion: 05:29-07:57
• Open Field Change: 07:57-09:00
• Combat Deep Dive & Dual Forms: 13:05-17:27
• What is 'Sauce'?: 17:14-18:50
• Open World Structure & Comparison: 18:51-21:25
• Loot & Systems Overwhelm: 21:17-23:02
• Game Tip - Managing Loot for Amrita: 23:02-26:33
• Customization / Skill Trees: 35:41-39:03
• Co-op System: 38:29-39:09
• Boss Fight Design: 41:41-44:24
• Visuals & Art Critique: 47:00-50:39
• Final Review Thoughts: 52:00-53:01

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Segment II: IGN’s Top 10 Best Soulslike Games – Mini Shit List

(53:10-End)

Segment Theme

The hosts break down IGN’s Top 10 Soulslike Games (excluding FromSoftware titles), guessing entries, debating what defines a soulslike, and reacting live to the rankings.

• Games Discussed (Partial List):
  • Lies of P
  • Nioh 2
  • Remnant II
  • Lords of the Fallen
  • Wu Long: Fallen Dynasty
  • Black Myth: Wukong
  • First Berserker: Kazan
  • Blasphemous 2 (honorable mention)
  • Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
  • The Surge

Notable Quotes:

• “I feel like Lies of P absolutely shits on every single other game on this list.” (69:43, Blessing)
• “Remnant 2… is an all-timer… It’s got all those like fun mechanics because it’s meant to be multiplayer.” (67:09, Andy Cortez)
• “If that’s not number one, you’re messing up.” (71:21, Andy Cortez on Lies of P)

Reflections on the List

• The cast agrees Lies of P is the definitive Soulslike outside FromSoft.
• Noted absence of 2D games (like Hollow Knight/Silksong) strikes them as odd.
• General consensus: The IGN list provides a solid starting point for newcomers, but panelists could quibble over a few positions and omissions.

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Summary

Nioh 3 is described as a technically strong but artistically unambitious evolution for Team Ninja, making a substantial change with its open field structure while retaining deep, satisfying, highly customizable combat. However, it fails to deliver a compelling narrative or visual “sauce” that elevates it above “good” to “great” for the cast. Loot and menu bloat, uneven art direction, and lack of truly iconic bosses remain consistent Team Ninja frustrations for Andy Cortez, though gameplay fans will find depth and challenge.

The episode closes with a lively, insightful debate on the state of Soulslikes, reflecting both the changing landscape and how Nioh 3 fits within the genre’s current standards.

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For More

Right after the Gamescast, the crew hosts a "Gamescast Plays" livestream with Andy and Blessing diving into co-op Nioh 3 gameplay and taking questions from the community.

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“That is Andy's review of Nioh 3.”
— Blessing Adeoye Jr. (53:01)

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Transcript

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[Andy Cortez]

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[Andy Cortez]

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[Sponsor Representative]

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[Mike]

If you want to get our shows ad free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com commerce slash.

[Andy Cortez]

Kind of funny.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kind of Funny Games cast. That's toxic behavior.

[Mike]

I hate toxic boyfriend behavior.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

What's the word I'm looking for? What's it called when you. Narcissism. That's narcissistic.

[Mike]

2026 is the year of toxic relationship, Mike. All right? Because right now, just with the previous years.

[Andy Cortez]

What about all the other.

[Mike]

I'm bringing it out this year.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

2026.

[Mike]

Roger's laughing, having a good ass time out there and I'm jealous I'm not there. Andy on Thursday nights plays awesome fun games with his friends in his valorant league. I'm not there.

[Andy Cortez]

He hears Roger laugh outside and he goes. I hate when he laughs because I'm not there with him.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

And you think this is the year he's getting better?

[Andy Cortez]

He's getting better. He's improving, you know, at least he's acknowledging it. You know what I mean?

[Mike]

But this year, this year, these two, they're going to hear it.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

They're going to hear it.

[Andy Cortez]

He's getting better though. They're going to hear it.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Thursday night.

[Mike]

Let me coach.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Wednesday, February 4, 2026, I'm on your host blessing Adioa Jr. Alongside the master of hype Snow.

[Andy Cortez]

Mike.

[Mike]

Mike, let's. What up, big dog?

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

How's it going?

[Mike]

Good to see you. Of course to everybody maybe watching late. We had a really great kind of funny games Daily where we talked about Overwatch.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah.

[Mike]

And the big announcements coming out and it was great to see you get so pumped up and hyped for Overwatch.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Dude, I can't wait to play with you. I saw people in Chad mention that they were surprised that I was that into Overwatch or they don't see me as like competitive shooter person which to be fair, I'm not on stream playing competitive shooters as much as you guys are. But Overwatch was my game. 2016.

[Mike]

He likes over.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I love Overwatch. One of my favorite games of all time. I put it up. I put it up there and so very, very excited for those changes. I love probably enough to bring me back in a big way. So next week, next week.

[Mike]

Put it on the calendar. We'll play next week. Maybe, maybe Andy will invite us to his Thursday night games.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Speaking of Andy, right over there. That's the nitro. Andy Cortez.

[Andy Cortez]

Valorant has five people on a team.

[Mike]

We got to find out how to get seven involved. Mike and BL guys want to get.

[Andy Cortez]

All right, we'll talk to Riot. We'll talk to Riot to get you in, check your emails. Maybe you have an invite somewhere.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Of course this episode is not about Overwatch. Right here we're talking about the one and only Neo3. Of course if you're watching live you can be a part of the show by super chatting in over on YouTube.com kind of funny games. Do you have question 4 Indy Cortez who has played Neo 3, I heard he 100% completed and got the platinum, isn't that right?

[Andy Cortez]

And I, I talked to Mitchell Saltzman and I asked him how long did it take you to beat Neil? And he said around 40 hours. I'm at 42 and just based on judging where how much I gotta go,

[Mike]

there's no end in sight.

[Andy Cortez]

I have about like at least minimum, 10 more hours. Minimum. This is, this is a big ass game.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I'm very excited to talk to you then because I, I didn't expect you to put in 42 hours into this game just because of. I feel like our relationship with Team Ninja is a little bit of a rocky one. We'll get into it in a second but I don't think either of us were necessarily super excited for Neo3 as much as so many other Neo fans are out there because of course there's many of you. But I'm really excited to hear that you played 42 hours because there's me a lot to talk about there. Remember we couldn't do this without our producers over on patreon.com kind of funny. So thank you to Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney the Psalmist. Twining for now. Let's begin with topic of the show. Neo 3. The review embargo is up. Andy has played 42 hours of it. Mike, you have played.

[Mike]

I've played about two. I got my ass whooped last night on the first boss. Immediately got frustrated, turned it off.

[Andy Cortez]

He got real uptight.

[Mike]

I'm good.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I. I booted up. Play like an hour. Just get like a little bit of taste. See if there's anything different there, you know, see if it feels different, whatever. But really, I wanted to hear what Andy Cortez had to say about it, because you're going to be really the determining factor on whether or not I pick up and play even more. Nioh 3. For those who don't know Nio, of course, that's a series of action games. According to the Steam description, it reads, this is the third game in the Dark Samurai action RPG series Neo. You will need to use both samurai and ninja combat styles. I think that's new in your battles against formidable yokai as you explore a thrilling open field, which I believe that's new as well. Andy, 42 hours deep into Neo 3, what are your thoughts?

[Andy Cortez]

There are so many thoughts. There are so many things to talk about in this game. As you know, not the best relationship with team ninja games.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And I'm usually in the minority. Right.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

We document our history wo long fallen dynasty.

[Andy Cortez]

I gave it three out of five, and I was like. And we both were like, combat's awesome. Yeah. And it's just sauceless everywhere.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

That's funny. I think that was all three of us.

[Mike]

Yes, it was. It was.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I think all of us were like, it's okay. Stranger Paradise, Final Fantasy Origins. I really like that game, but I feel like I like it. It's like one of those things of, am I laughing with you or am I laughing at you?

[Andy Cortez]

Right, right, right.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

A lot of times I'm laughing at the game, even though I have fun playing the game. But also it's like. It's like junk food to me.

[Andy Cortez]

If you end up beating Stranger of Paradise, it ghost. It gets really, really, really hype.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yes.

[Andy Cortez]

Like, that's one thing that I loved about Change of Paradise. That's probably my favorite of the teen ninja games. We talk about Rise of the Ronin, a game that I kind of quickly dropped off of. And same. I played around eight hours. So I won't say quickly, but it, you know, I was close to the 10 hour mark and just was not having a whole lot of fun with it.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Ninja Garden 4 I really dug, I thought was really good.

[Andy Cortez]

I thought it was just very mid. Like, I just feel like it was very, very sauceless. And as much as I still enjoy the combat, it's just, you know, you may as well just give me a game where I'm fighting bosses and, and just take away everything else, because that's kind of what I'm getting anyway.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

But then like Neo 1 and 2 are really the ones where it's like I played a little bit of both.

[Andy Cortez]

Those are the big ones, but those

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

are the ones that people love, right? Those are ones where it's like, okay, if you're gonna play a team ninja game, you should probably play Neo 1 and 2. And somehow like, I don't know if you've ever even picked up Neil's one or two.

[Andy Cortez]

Nope. I keep on getting asked to play him and it's, you know, and I get more and more discouraged as I keep on going with, with teen ninja games to hop back into it where it's like, I don't think you want me to play your favorite game. You know, I don't think this game that you love, you want me to play it and see me disappointed by it. Because I usually am pretty disappointed by team ninja games because I don't know, man, I feel like they've just looked the same for a long time. As I booted up this game, I said, bless. I feel like they make the same fucking game every two years, every year and a half. With Neo3, it's hard for me to talk about it in a comparative way because I didn't play one or two. So I'm sure there have been a bunch of new additions and new things and improvements. And again, this whole open field concept I know is brand new.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yes.

[Andy Cortez]

I've just called it Open World when I was playing it because I was like, oh shit, I didn't. Were the other Neo games like this? And I looked back and it's like, oh no. The other Neo games are just their level based. They are, they're linear in nature and structure. And so this is, this was a big sort of change for that. Neo3 is a game that I'm enjoying and I'm liking more than a lot of the other team ninja games. I don't know if it's just coming around at the right time. I don't know if I went back to Rise of the Ronin and If I would feel a lot better about that, maybe because I had already played like Ghost of Tsushima and I'm like, oh man, you just. You're lacking any coolness in the stuff outside of the combat. But Neo 3, if I were to give it a score right now, I'd give it a 7 out of 10. I think it's a good game. Okay. I think that the combat is excellent. And if you're here for the combat and that's all you want, then you're gonna have an amazing time. If you want anything more than that, if you want a gripping storyline with amazing character line deliveries and character interactions and betrayals and heartbreak, I think it's very much still sauceless in that department. It just lets me down left and right. I am skit. I'm 40 hours in or around the 30 hour mark. I just started skipping cutscenes. I'm just like, I. You're not. You don't make me care enough to want to watch these. The combat is still excellent though. The game can look really nice in some parts and for the most part it still looks like a remastered game that, you know, that was a 360 game that they remastered and ported over to the new generations. It still looks like an old game. And I. And I'm of two minds of that because yes, I want your game to look better because your. Your games have always just kind of looked to the same and it's passable. It's not bad in any way. It's just. It's always kind of looked this way. Right. And I would love to see some improvements visually in the future now. They are putting out a lot of games at a high clip. They have a. They have a quick cadence with these releases. So it's like, well, they're putting out games and they're putting out stuff that people like. So, you know, are we kind of in the Pokemon territory of don't. You know, it may be broke to me, but I don't think it's broke to a lot of other people. I think people are still enjoying these games and love them as they come out and they sell well enough. And hey, they're. They're releasing a lot of video games. I think that the open world structure is very, very addicting. I found myself enjoying it quite a bit, fighting a lot of weird monsters out there. It. This is going to be the second Pokemon comparison of this stream so far, of this gamescast so far. But in the same way that when I'm playing Pokemon Z a And I look at, oh, I haven't 100% of that sort of wild zone. I'm getting the same feelings here. It's like, oh, there's a couple of things I missed on the map. Let me go back. And I think a lot of that is why, why I haven't beat the game. Because I have been doing a lot of extra stuff. I've been really enjoying my time with it. I am super stoked to kind of go further into detail on the certain aspects of the game with whatever questions you all have for me.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Like, I mean, what you guys, I see you typing down notes. Yeah.

[Mike]

A lot right now, which is pretty exciting to hear on Andy, of course it's sitting currently at an 86 on open critic and Metacritic right now, so higher than I thought it was going to be.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

A lot of. A lot of nines out there. Ian, of course, the homie Mitchell Saltzman.

[Andy Cortez]

Right.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Where outside of Andy Cortez. Mitchell Saltzman is one of my action game, like, he's one of my north stars. If Mitchell likes a thing, I can trust his word because, you know, if

[Andy Cortez]

he beats a game in 40 hours, you know it's going to take you about six. Exactly. Because he is one of the best

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

action gamers that I know in my life and also one of the best fighting gamers.

[Andy Cortez]

He's probably the best action gamer that I know where anytime I've I'm talking to them now I'm selling this boss. I'm about an hour and a half in. He's like, oh, yeah, it was kind of a tough one. Yeah. How long does it take you? You know, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, like, okay. Yeah. You're really, really good at video games

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

and you know, just know that you said you say all that, right? I beat him in Tekken sometimes.

[Mike]

Okay, okay. If we're getting after him really quick on the low key.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

What's up?

[Mike]

Andy's still my goat. You know what I mean? And he's still my goat. My goat.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

That's crazy. And you better not laugh in the other room.

[Andy Cortez]

This guy all of still turn on me so quick.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Wait, didn't even ask your question.

[Mike]

I was highlighting that, but yes. Where did Mitchell put his score at?

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Mitchell put his scores at a 9 out of 10.

[Mike]

Nice.

[Andy Cortez]

Wow. Okay.

[Mike]

That's very.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Also, I believe gave Neo2 a 9 out of 10 as well. Again, like, the Neil series, I would say in action games is fairly beloved all things considered.

[Andy Cortez]

Right.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

A lot of people flock to it.

[Mike]

Well, since Andy talked about it, I do Want to highlight it? The combat.

[Andy Cortez]

Right.

[Mike]

This is an action rpg. We talk about the combat being at the forefront. You brought up the dual types, the ninja and samurai. Right. And when you jump in, you quickly get introduced to it. I want to dive into the combat a little bit more with it. What makes it unique? What is the difference between the two? Is it a. I'm just dodge rolling and pairing all the time or what's kind of the gameplay look like?

[Andy Cortez]

So the, the gameplay between the Samurai and the ninja is basically, I have larger, heavier weapons and then I have a kind of quicker approach. And you're constantly kind of swapping between both of those in combat. Although I generally lean towards the heavier approach with the heavier weapons. And the way that the, the way that the two gameplay styles kind of merge is really fun and interesting and I think super creative. When this first mechanic is introduced, I'm like, all right. Well they. It kind of feels like I was very negative towards it at first because it felt like, man, we're in Madden 25 and we got to add a new feature because we just don't know what to do anymore. Like, we have to differentiate these somehow.

[Mike]

Can we talk about what those are? Right, so like on the samurai side, as you attack, you start to build up this kai around you.

[Andy Cortez]

Like white. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Mike]

So you start, you start building up white dust around you and then it wants you to. Right bumper to kind of collect it at the end of the combo that's

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

in the previous Neo games as well.

[Mike]

Yes. That will build that up and then you kind of do a super attack.

[Andy Cortez]

Right. So essentially it's your stamina. So if you take two big swings with your gigantic axe, it's going to take probably about two thirds of your. Your stamina bar away. But if you wait for the right time, you could hit the. For me, it's the X button because I went with souls controls. And if you hit the X button, then it refills that bar and gives you your stamina back.

[Mike]

That's why I was always. Stamina.

[Andy Cortez]

That's why you're dying.

[Mike]

Cuz I was missing, I was missing that. And then you switch to the other side, which I thought was really cool, where you kind of do your Wombo combo. You hit the RB and you leave kind of a, A shadow figure as you fall back.

[Andy Cortez]

Right.

[Mike]

And get out of the way.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. So that you're. You kind of in the ninja form. You leave a ghost kind of mirror version of yourself and it's just like a little specter that floats out there and it doesn't last very long, but it lasts long enough to make the. Usually the enemy will try to attack the fake version of you because you are attacking, attacking and then you. For me it's the X button. And then I will, you know, leave that ghost in front of him, go behind and the enemy's gonna continue to attack what he thinks is, you know, this sort of fake version of myself. And then I start attacking from behind or whatever. Now the, the. The really big mechanic is the, the big parry. You know, there's a lot of telegraphed moves and a lot of souls fights. Whenever you talk about something like Stellar Blade or First Berserker Kazan, when you see the enemies glowing red, that means that I can't do this normal Perry. I have to do a, you know, you know, special thing or whatever. Or, or if they're showing this color, that means they're going to go for a grab, meaning I can't parry the grab. I'm. I have to get the hell out of the way. So whenever the enemy sort of shines this sort of red attack that's coming at you, it's at that moment you want to hit the button that swaps to your other form.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yes.

[Andy Cortez]

And that's the big parry that is the most punishing version of them all. So when they flash that red attack and it may be super, super quick sometimes, sometimes it's very highly telegraphed and takes a while and you get that hesi. The hesitation move can be really nasty at times, but when that attack finally comes down, they're shining red. You. For me, it's the Y button. I swap over to ninja form. Bam. Massive sort of shot, you know, knocks them to their knees going for that critical attack or whatever. And that is all super satisfying. I saw a question in the chat asking how are the boss fights? Awesome. Amazing. They just don't have like, you know that the sick ass intro cutscene or the grandiose nature that we've seen a lot of other character action games or Souls likes sort of hit us with where you're kind of, you know, even in something like Night. I say even in Night Rain. Like I shouldn't expect that from Elden Ring. But when we played Night Rain and the bosses hit that second phase and it. Visuals take over the screen and it's like whoa, this is insane. There's like none of that. I just don't feel that from these games. And I think a lot of that comes to we gotta get this game out. Come on.

[Mike]

And that's when we get to the sauce. That's the sauce part of it. Like, you know, I have another question. Like, can we define sauce and the sauce list? Yeah, because I used it a lot. But like, what is that in these action games? That is the special ingredients, the X factor.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Mike]

That take these games from good to great.

[Andy Cortez]

You walk in, you've been adventuring, you're having a tough night. You know, you've been getting your ass whipped. But you, you finally, you walk up to a door, boom, black screen. It's like, oh, a cutscene's going to start. And you see like little footsteps walking and say hello. Seems you've been, you invited yourself in. And it cuts to your character and your character's like, I don't need an invitation. And then the F. And it's like, I just want my dude to be sick as hell. I want my bosses to have a cool intro. I want in the middle of the stuff, you know, with the fake out, second face thing, do something sick as hell. Hit me with the cutscene, hit me with some amazing visuals. Do you know crescendo with the music? I just never feel that in, in Team Ninja games. I just feel like they are always. Except for Stranger of Paradise. That's like the only real one that I could say hit me with a lot of those like, whoa, sort of sick ass moments. And that's the sauce, you know, that's the, that's going the extra mile. That's the extra effort. That's the stuff that probably adds, I don't know, an extra 8 to 12 months of development time. And I just feel like Team Ninja is at a point where they, they have their rhythm, they know what they're doing. They know that they could put out some awesome boss fights in a quick, at a quick clip. And let's get these games out every year and a half to two years so we could continue to stay in business because that's what it's about nowadays.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I want to hear about open world.

[Andy Cortez]

Right.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

That's one of the big shifts that they've made in Neo 3 compared to the last two games. You know, you talked about playing a little bit of Rise of the Ronin and that not hitting for you? How does it work here? Does this open world feel interesting to explore? How's the gameplay loop in it? Like, I want to hear your breakdown on that.

[Andy Cortez]

So the open world is definitely not as open as Rise of the Ronin. I understand why they go with open field because this does feel like a lot of like open zones just connected together. Like it isn't.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

When I say more like Sonic Frontiers.

[Andy Cortez]

Yes, exactly. That's a great comparison.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Thank you.

[Andy Cortez]

It's more of like when I think of Rise of the Ronin, I compare to that. To more of Ghost of Sushima, where you will have the large empty sort of, you know, field and you might get kind of, sir, I need some help or whatever. It's not really that. It's just a gigantic ass level that is always full of action. There are always going to be bonfires. I. There are always going to be enemies around every corner. And you open up that map and it is for better or for worse, it is an icon vomiting all over your screen. You have icons all over the place. And it's like there's a lot of.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

For me to do the Ubisoftification.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Now it kind of worked for me this time.

[Mike]

I was gonna say you. You were on a positive note on this, which I took down in the notes. Like, what is this extra stuff?

[Andy Cortez]

What.

[Mike]

What makes this good as opposed to the Ubisoftification of all these open worlds?

[Andy Cortez]

Well, there's just a lot of side bosses to take on. And I think that's another amazing thing that that Team Ninja has done here where there's going to be a lot of main bosses that are story specific that you will only experience in the story. But then there's a lot of cool moments where you talk to an NPC and they tell you to investigate this area and you might see them there and they're like, hey, I'm going to tag along. And then you might fight an awesome boss. There's a lot of little. There are a lot of areas to clear of the blight, the. The rot. The rot scourge. There's a lot of like, areas to clear out of that. And there's also enemy encampments to clear out. There was a lot of just things on the map that you want to do so you can get it checked off. And then you get just like a barrage of item stone at you. This game, this is.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Here's talk about this. Here's why I'm always a team ninja thing.

[Andy Cortez]

Here's why I'm getting real. I'm going to get real, like derogatory in nature. Children say the word because it's like dog. When you hop into this game, it feels like when I hop into Destiny after three years of not playing.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

The amount of systems, the amount of just bullshit they're throwing at you constantly, it is almost overwhelming. There are so many things that you can easily miss if maybe if you don't know Neo, maybe the other Neo's games had this sort of stuff. But man, it is just beat a boss. Blue. 17 blue items, 14 white items. And. And it's just like H. I have. Why is my inventory so full gear slop?

[Mike]

It is.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

It is gear.

[Mike]

Menu after menu, tile after tile, item after item.

[Andy Cortez]

Messy.

[Mike]

As you are slowing my action down here for me to stop. Read through everything to understand. What the hell is this? Do I really need this? Okay, let me read this item clearly. This item I'm never going to use in like two hours from now. What is the point of this? It always felt like I was. Here I go. I'm turning on the engine. Slow it down. I got to read all this stuff now. I got to figure it out now.

[Andy Cortez]

One thing I would recommend because there are so many missable things. Bear, can you hit the song?

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Oh, the missable thing song.

[Mike]

Because it's a gamescast game tip.

[Andy Cortez]

If you need help, don't feel ashamed. It's a gamescast game tip.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

We're gonna help you out with the. What's funny? I asked for that like months ago. We need a gamescast game tips segment. I forgot that you said that you put something together Games. I'm happy you finally busted it out.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, the GamesCat maybe I would have put 44 hours into this game. Welcome everybody to the GamesCast Game Tip segment where I just tried to help out new gamers who are new to the to the game and they're like hey, what should I know? Because a very, very easy missable thing in this game is the ability to break down items to get your souls in this game. It's Amrita A M R I T A. That's like that's what helps you level up. And I didn't really look find this menu. I'm sure I glanced at it multiple times. I just didn't really. There's just a lot of shit in this game. If I open the start menu I am hit with. If I hit a bonfire rather I see battle scroll. Choose the mission you wish to undertake which is I can replay old mission replay. That's awesome.

[Mike]

That's cool.

[Andy Cortez]

Great to grind like that. Great to get more and add to your inventory.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Nice.

[Andy Cortez]

And. And also just kind of maybe you want to redo a boss and see if you could do it with this weapon or whatever the hell underneath that co op. I unfortunately didn't get to test out any co op underneath that preparations place. And Organize items. So I read, place and organize items. And that just. I don't know. That just seems like I'm going into my inventory. Skill management. Activate a skill blessing. Your name is in here. Oh. Receive or enhance blessings according to merit level up. Use Amrita to improve stats. Change guardian spirit. Change the current guardian spirit. Manage soul cores. Set enhanced soul cores or strengthening guardian spirits. That's. And then there's about 16 menus within those menus. Right. So that's just like. That's just what you're hit with when you get to a bonfire. So about 20 something hours in, I go do my. I'm just like kind of looking through the menus and I go to. I go to preparations and I see make an offering boons and manage equipment sets. And I just didn't really quite look at this menu hard enough because then I went to make an offering. And in make an offering, you can. You can either sell all of your to people to get gold or whatever, or like me, you could just donate all these items to charity. I had about 6, 000.

[Mike]

It's like my mom, she loves donating.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yes.

[Mike]

She's going through the house just donating trash. Like, good for you.

[Andy Cortez]

And that's exactly what I was doing here.

[Mike]

Do you think?

[Andy Cortez]

That's exactly what I was doing here, Mike. I was donating trash. I had the most amount of hats and socks and swords and kunai and kusarigamas. Everything I had. I had so many items that, like, the game takes a while to be like, man, you're selling a lot.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And because of all the. I sold, I was able to level up about seven times or something. Nice. But that is an item, that is a menu you're not going to want to forget because it's very, very easy. Amongst all of the other just, you know, word vomit, word salad in the menus. It's easy to miss that. And I'd recommend you be smarter than me and don't miss that. So you could sell a bunch of. Because every I. Every enemy you kill, every boss you kill, you're gonna get minimum four things that are minimum four items. You're probably. You might get nine whenever you beat a boss. And there's just a lot of shit to kind of absorb.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And it's. It can be really, really tough.

[Mike]

That's a great, helpful tip. Can we play the song?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Play the outro.

[Mike]

Yeah. Great job.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Wow.

[Andy Cortez]

Thank you.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

That's fantastic. Barrett, do you know what Amrita is? Because it pops up in Persona as well. Oh, as a concept and did you hear, do you know, did you know what Amrita was before?

[Andy Cortez]

No, I still don't know. To me it's just souls.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I was doing a lot of googling as you were talking as you're doing the tips. Because I'm like it doesn't apply to me. Let me go, let me look up with Amrita is because they have Amrita drops and Soma drops in Persona that have to do with sp, which is kind of like your mana in that game. Wikipedia says Amrita is a Sanskrit word that means immortality. It is a central concept within Indian religions and is often referred to in an ancient Indian text as an elixir. It then goes on, but it's the idea of like an immortality.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, neat. Okay.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

It's a fun fact for you guys.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Not game related. Yeah, there you go. It's a game fun fact for you. Speaking of fun things about Gamescast, it was fun ads, let me tell you about patreon.com kind of funny and YouTube.com kind of funny games where you can go and get the kind of funny membership which allows you to get shows ad free. Speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors.

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[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

My favorite feature is that you could find a solution that works but then afterwards you can hit solution and see the way that they were trying to teach you to do it. That's really cool.

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[Mike]

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[Andy Cortez]

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[Andy Cortez]

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[Mike]

Hey.

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[Andy Cortez]

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[Andy Cortez]

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[Andy Cortez]

Breathe.

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[Andy Cortez]

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[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

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[Andy Cortez]

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[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

We're back and we're going to talk more about Neo3. But also, I meant to tease this at the beginning of the show. I also want to do a mini shit list because earlier this week IGN put up a top 10 list of top 10 best souls likes games. And I figured Souls likes games. Souls like games. And I figured it'd be fun to do that at the end of this episode. This is fun.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, neat.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Dive into that list. But for now, let's keep on talking about Neo3. Andy, is there anything you want to touch on that you haven't touched on

[Mike]

really quick circling back to the open world? Because that's where we were at, right?

[Andy Cortez]

Right.

[Mike]

So you talk about all this extra stuff, talk about enemy encampments, right? When you clear that out, is it cleared for good? Is that become a fast travel spot? Do we see people come back and like restart their lives? What does that kind of look like?

[Andy Cortez]

That the area will clear out but it doesn't get, you know, you're not seeing people come back to their, you know, the farmers and all that sort of stuff that happens in usual games. It's just. It's just cleared out and it's just XP for you pretty much without spoilers.

[Mike]

How many open areas are there in this game? You talked about, like, they're large. It's not open world, but it's a large open area. Are there multiple. Is there just one? What does that look like?

[Andy Cortez]

I don't want to get into spoilers, okay. But the main spot is very, very large and it'll take a lot of exploration to find everything. And there are also some Metroidvania ish elements where it's just, you know, I'm not saying you're going to be looping back constantly, but there are a couple of things you'll notice early on and go, what is this little thing on the ground? Why can't I. Is it something that is a bug? Is this a glitch? And you might unlock something really early on and you're like, oh shit, that's what all those are for. Cool. I can use that thing now to. Oh, it propels me up or whatever. And so there's a lot of kind of things in the world that will do that. But it does become. I think it was very easy to manage, however, the open world. I wasn't super overwhelmed like I usually can be with open world stuff. The. The knowing what to look for, knowing the stuff that I want. Knowing that I want to be super strong for some of these boss fights. I do feel like it may lean towards the easier side of. Of, you know, some of these souls games that maybe that's just a lot of years of playing stuff with Perry's. Mike had asked, why don't I have a Perry in this game? Why is it only that Y button when you transform, but a lot of weapons in their skill tree? Because every weapon has a skill tree that adds on to your movesets. And there will be a lot of the weapons will have something that you can upgrade to that gives you the. The deflect. And it is one of the best deflect sounds. Yeah, like I would put it up there with Sekiro. It's a good like, like what it is. It has a sharp, good feeling hit whenever you get that. So you know, all right, that wasn't just a shitty block. That was a good parry that I nailed and it feels really, really awesome to do that. But yeah, every. The Samurai and the the samurai and the ninja forms each have, I want to say, eight weapons each.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

And so unique to them or shared a little bit unique to them.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. So there's a lot of different stuff that you can use and there are some future unlockable ones as well. But when it comes to the weapons. Yeah. Like essentially whenever you want to upgrade, you can upgrade just your samurai path. You go into samurai skill tree of abilities and things. There's a ninja path skill tree of a bunch of upgrades. And then on the left side of either of those are. These are only the samurai weapons, there's about six. And then if you go to the right side, ninjas is about six weapons as well for ninjas. And they are. They're all different, but I'm sure there's a lot of similarities. Were I to have experimented with all these weapons, there's just a lot of shit. And not every weapon goes towards your. What you're leveling up. Right. So that's another thing that's kind of easy to miss because whenever you look at a weapon, it'll show you near the very, very bottom what it scales with. And it doesn't tell you, like STR for strength or, you know, AGI for agility. Yeah. It is a little icon and it's kind of hard to remember because this game's strength doesn't really mean strength. And this get, like, it's very, very odd. It's. It doesn't work the way you would assume. Souls games work okay. Normally, but that is another sort of thing to kind of keep an eye out for where you can't just be willy nilly trying out every weapon you can, but you won't be as strong with the ones that aren't according to what you've been leveling up.

[Mike]

Can I make sense? Stay as one of the other. Like. So when you first get the tutorial, they teach you the Perry. It switches forms.

[Andy Cortez]

Right, Right.

[Mike]

Which I thought was novel. I find I like samurai better. That's where I want to be.

[Andy Cortez]

Right.

[Mike]

Do I have to always switch? Did you find. Could I just play through this as samurai or is it like. No, you gotta switch.

[Andy Cortez]

Well, you only have to switch for those red attacks.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

Or you could just avoid them and run away or whatever, depending on how quick the attack is. I feel. I think at the start of this journey, I was very much like you, where I'm like, well, I don't really want to be messing with this, the ninja stuff a whole lot. I just, I like the way the samurai plays I. That's more my speed. And I unlocked the defect pretty early and I had that thing sort of default and I was like, this is where I want to be. But then I started seeing more of the benefits. And then I would get a couple of weapons. Like I have Wolverine claws for my ninja. Yeah. And the way that each weapon lets you not only level up and unlock new abilities where it's like, oh, I just got a new thing where if I hit right bumper after a heavy attack, now it chains into something else and it does some new ability. And that shit is super impressive and really deep. And then on top of that, if you're unlocking a bunch of things, this game has another. Yet another menu that lets you go into every weapon that you own. And if you have three abil. Three different moves for your kusarigama, if you unlocked three different like moves, it'll. You could go deepened and say, all right, let me. Let me customize what my character does when I hit right trigger after a right bumper attack. So if your character has three different things that. That they can do when you hit heavy after a light attack or a quick attack or whatever, you can customize and then change what that ability does. Now it is so deep with like, it's by far the most deep that a combat system that I've seen can do. It's really, really impressive. Very much along the. Along the lines of Ninja Gaiden 4. We can get a little bit too crazy and too customizable. But I think there's so much of what you hear about online is like the freedom of expression. You can make your character do some awesome in this game and it feels really good and it's super satisfying.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I like an action game. Nerds action game.

[Mike]

You know what I mean?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

That's how I kind of viewed.

[Mike]

That's good.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Like, that's how I view Neil. That's how I also view Ninja Garden 4 to some extent. Where it's like, if you really like character action, here's one that will give you that is going to take that and try to do interesting novel as Mike would say things with it.

[Mike]

Did I say that? I saw someone said that.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah, you said no.

[Andy Cortez]

I said no. I'm on a good word.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah, Mike's spitting right now. It's a good word.

[Mike]

Right now.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I want to bring in a super chat from Gen Z FC who writes in and says I'm in a delay, so forgive me if this has been answered, but did you try co op in the 03 seems cool based on what I've read. Any interest in the boys doing a playthrough together?

[Andy Cortez]

Unfortunately not. I didn't try. I. We just couldn't quite coordinate and when I was. I was mainly playing when Bless is already at work and then when it was night time I was like, well, I'm. I'm playing the Witcher. I'm playing ranked over watch.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah, I'm in Oakland

[Mike]

right now. It's so co op, meaning two players most likely playing through the whole thing. That would be cool.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I imagine. So we'll test it out.

[Mike]

I'd like to test that. Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I almost hit a Mitchell Sauceman to try it out as well.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

But I figured he was probably way further ahead of me. I sent through to Assets Barrett an image of how much further you can start to sort of customize because again these. These menus do get quite deep and actually I won't send you this one because of spoilers, but the other one is good to. To check out.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

To bring up a. A Reddit post asking this is from the Neo Reddit from Blind Man Sokolov who says can somebody explain how co op works for Neo3? Informal Mechanic 77 Replies with this so if this is wrong, it's not my fault. This is Informal Mechanic 77 on Reddit. All right, get their ass. They reply. They do have a lot of upvotes. They do say you can basically do everything together in co op. Judging from the alpha, it works similarly to Neo 2 in the open field, I was able to explore and do everything with my friend. Also, when you enter someone else's co op game, you also get pretty much the same rewards. You can also farm Samurai Lock and Ninja Locks that way too. So.

[Mike]

Okay, cool.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

This is.

[Andy Cortez]

Sorry, this image you sent is the one I can show. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So this is what I was talking about how how customizable you can get with everything where it shows you every weapon up top and then it shows you every. Well, I guess I. That's the keyboard mouse form because I just took the screenshot right now. So it's not controller, but it would be if you hold right bumper. It does. You could do this but then if you click that thing you might have three other options for holding right bumper and then if you go into what happens when I hit right light attack after a charged heavy, you can go into that menu and you might have four different moves that are that kind of work there and it depends on which one you like. I have a crazy move that basically whenever I hit my deflect. I like grab them with my ax. I like hit him with the ax. And it goes into a quick kind of cutscene that throws them on the ground. And I could basically do that all of the time against certain enemy types. Super helpful. It's this game. This kind of feels like an amalgamation of all of their learnings over the years of how can we make this even more fun and customizable without like cheapening it in a way.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Oh yeah.

[Mike]

So we really quick. So we talked about the depth. We've gone over the combat.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Right.

[Mike]

We've talked about this open area. Let's circle back to the bosses really quick because you said the bosses were great. They're just missing some of the extra sauce. But like, it is fun, right? You play in this yokai world where you can get kind of creative, weird and wacky with it. Boss fights. Let's talk about it.

[Andy Cortez]

Boss fights are. Are fun as hell. Again, when it comes to the open field bosses. There's. There are. There's a lot of different variety in this game for sure. Like I'm 40 hours in and I just came across a new enemy type that I hadn't seen yet. I was like, oh, wow. We're still kind of introducing new and maybe that's just because I thought I was closer to the end, but it seems like I probably have another 10 hours. The. The boss bosses and their patterns are super fun and not too difficult. I think this is maybe one of the easier games when it comes to, you know. You know when you kind of hit a boss in Elden Ring or even something like. Like Liza P. And you're like, I can't even imagine trying to defend any of that. Like, yeah, my. I can't even start to be able to think how one would try to defend that millennia, much less how somebody would no hit this boss. Like how the. You know.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And then. And then you start to kind of download a bit more. I feel like a lot of the bosses very, very highly telegraphed and very, very awesome to fight. There was one that kind of sucked because it was in a snowy type of vibe and there's a lot of snow on the screen and it's kind of purposeful to kind of hinder your vision. But every once in a while when the enemy does a grab attack, a lot of other games have their grab attack highlighted by a really bright color. I think of seller Blade being purple and that's like their kind of. I think theirs is purple. But a lot of games will Normally just do a different color to say, here comes the grab. You're not going to be able to deflect this or parry it. You got to get out of the way. You can't dodge it either. Just run, run, run. And with this boss fight, as snow is kind of covering the screen, it would hit you with the. With the grab, but the grab for this one is like kind of a dark aura around whatever limb it's going to grab you with. And then there's like some sparkly stuff. And it all just meshed so perfectly with the snow that I never knew when I was going to get grabbed. And that sucks. I was like, this is really like, you've nailed every other telegraphing of moves. This is. This one's really, really bad, though. And we should maybe rethink this one or maybe tune down the snow or make the grab a different color.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I don't know.

[Andy Cortez]

But that's like the only issue I had with it. I feel like they all are super fun to fight and figure out. I think the longest I took on a boss was maybe an hour. And that's saying something because normally in Hard Souls games it's like, hey, two hours, not bad. But this one, I probably took the longest an hour. And every other boss was around, you know, first try or five tries or something like that, you know. Yeah. Very, very doable, especially with the amount of stuff you could do in the world to make yourself really, really powerful.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I got a phone for you, Mike. Street Shadow 20 record says fun fact, you don't have to swap for the red attacks. There is a setting to only swap to hard press. So Mike, you could stay in the same. Right?

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, and get the Perry off. Okay.

[Mike]

And that's which.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, okay.

[Mike]

Yeah, I'll check that out. Co Op definitely has me interested in this because I think the open world, it very. It gives. When you reach a certain point, you see the first open zone, right? It gives Elden ring where you walk out and you go, oh, wow. Like, look at all this terrain. Oh, look at that giant monster walking over there. And of course, what did I do? Just like an Elden ring ran directly to right. I was like, of course. I have to go test my luck and see what this thing is, challenge myself.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

This is what I want. This is what I want. I'm down to try my pitch to Team Ninja. All right, hear me out. Think about this. Neo Night Rain. Oh, Neo Rain.

[Andy Cortez]

Wow.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I mean, I. I think there's something there as far as what the gameplay sound like, because I'd play this with you guys. If we're running around in a run and there's a storm that's coming in and we got to collect items, I love that I play that with you guys.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, man. Can you imagine the. You open up a box in Neo Night rain, there's about 40,000 items.

[Mike]

It becomes Borderlands.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I. I said that as a joke, but also I'm kind of serious because, yeah. Way the gear system works in this game, it almost does feel like so much of it, it kind of lends itself toward like, passive play of like, oh, yeah, pick this thing, switch this up. All right, cool. Keep going.

[Mike]

You've done a good job of like, avoiding spoilers, so kudos to you, Andy.

[Andy Cortez]

But it's also like the. The. The second 20 hours that I played, like, I couldn't tell you anything that's happening because I'm just like, you're. You haven't made me care.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

The acting isn't great. The presentation isn't awesome. The cutscenes look nice because their cutscenes always kind of look nice. And then when we get back into gameplay, I put through a screenshot into the gamescast Slack channel and it was a very sarcastic screenshot that I was very sad that nobody responded to. But it. I think this game can still look insanely ugly at times. Like, and it's shocking. It's just like, what are we doing here? So I'm putting it in task. Yeah. Is this one that I can show? Yes, yes, yes. This is like super early. And it's just like, what is this, man?

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I. It was one of those.

[Andy Cortez]

I wanted to respond to you when you sent that in and I was like, I couldn't tell if you were serious or joking. And I was like, damn, is Andy losing it a little bit off his game? And I. Team Music can hit you with moments like these a lot in their games.

[Mike]

Well, it's just a lot going on. It's all kind of flying together and I have no idea what's going on. Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And it's okay. And my issue with it is the art direction of it. And that's kind of what it comes down to. And I said this during Ninja Gaiden 4. The continuous need to strive for semi realism. I wouldn't say realism quite, but it's like they're going for a semi realistic look. The characters character art looks good when it's like in the character creator or in cutscenes. You see the pores on their faces, you see the good looking eyeballs the characters have always looked nice. Character creator in this game. Amazing as usual because it's the same one we've used the past several games, which is always great. Where it's like, there's a ton of hairstyles there. You can lengthen the hair, you can make the hair curly, you can add bangs to certain parts. It's awesome.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

It might be the best, like a Japanese made video game is at creating a black character and different races of characters. Because yeah, I go, I went into that character creator. I made a character that looks so good where I was like, oh my God, yeah, I want to look like this.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. The character creators have also been. I've always been great and they were awesome in, you know, for the last several games they've put out. They're always very, very good. But I wish that they would try for. And I said this on the. On the Ninja Gaiden four reviews. Well, I want them to just like go for a sifu type of look. Go for something more stylized to where you don't have to worry about not having the most cutting, bleeding edge visuals because you can't achieve that when you're not putting enough work into the design of it all. And that's why you end up with screenshots like that where it's like, fuck, this looks awful, man.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

The deal developers that shake hands with the first Berserker developers and be like, yo.

[Andy Cortez]

Yes.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Like, give us your. Like, let's trade secrets.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

You know, I mean, how do we make our games look as good as your game? Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And whenever I bring up on making fun of Mike's favorite category of games, the simulator games.

[Mike]

Yes.

[Andy Cortez]

Where I'm like, can I get a fucking cast shadow somewhere? Can you just put a light source that cast a shadow anywhere in this world? And a lot of that has to do, you know, whenever. I think it's very, very popular right now to kind of shit on ray tracing and like ray traced and occlusion and shadows and I think it's like the worst fucking takes possible. But it's people being like. When I look at something like Neo, it's like, you could use that. Because a lot of the stuff that is being lit up in certain areas would not be getting light if you like, the right techniques were being used. And a lot of that, I think has to do with the sort of Pokemon side of things where it's. It seems like they want these games to come out a lot faster so that money can be made so they can keep on putting this out. But it's like, for me, obviously, I'm in the minority. This game's doing great on Open Critic and Metacritic, but for me, I'm like, they're going to keep on putting out seven out of tens. Yeah. And I want them to develop a game for four years so that I could get that 7.5. Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

This is. This is how you get into Andy's heart. You know what I mean? Like, sure, they're killing it in, like, general reviews, but this right here is Andy's review. This is Andy's review Team Ninja. And so I respect that.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I want the sauce. I want.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

If you're.

[Andy Cortez]

If you're gonna continue to go for realism, then work extra hard at making the realism look good. And if you aren't able to achieve that, then let's pivot to some other art style. Let's. Let's do something else because you've been doing this for quite some time and we are several iterations deep. And that's the only thing that hasn't really improved since wo long Fallen dynasty in 2022 or whatever year that was. Like, they keep on finding amazing ways to iterate on gameplay. And I know gameplay is king, but, like, I wouldn't spend this long in this game if I wasn't reviewing it.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Sure.

[Andy Cortez]

You know, really quick.

[Mike]

Just to circle back. I was asking. You've done a great job avoiding spoilers. You always talk about boss fights and memorable boss fights. Are there a bunch of them here? Are there boss fights in this game that you're going to stick with where you'll talk with me and blessing years from now going, do you remember that one?

[Andy Cortez]

They're awesome. Don't get me wrong. But what gives you the memorability is all of you know those. The special songs, those big special moments, and there's nothing like that so far. I'm 40 hours in, but that sounds like I'm on them. But they're still great boss fights. They're fun as hell to learn, they're fun to play. They. They all just kind of mix together because not one of them hasn't really stood up above all of them and said, like, whoa, hey, these are a bunch of kind of fun boss fights. But that one really stood out. I haven't really experienced that yet, but it kind of takes a lot to do that because we've had a lot of amazing experiences. But I can point to 20 bosses in silksong that did that. I can point to of the 10 bosses in Night Rain, I can point to eight of them. That did that for me there, you know, it's just like, Yeah. I wish more care and love was put into the presentation aspect of it because that adds to the. That sort of epic feeling of here, here I am. Let's do this, you know.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Oh, yeah. Well, seven out of ten I. I view as like the Gordon Ramsay of action games a little bit because, like,

[Andy Cortez]

I feel like you.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Your taste is so elevated because, like, you've been in it.

[Mike]

He's got it. He's got a refined.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Such a refined.

[Mike]

I'm out here eating Taco Bell and he's never drove past the Taco Bell Cantina a thousand times.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I know coming off the Ninja Gaiden, four of you, what the comms are gonna be like, because people love Team Ninja. I love Team Ninja. I'm sure Andy loves Team Ninja as well.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Well, there's so much you want to do. Want them to do more.

[Andy Cortez]

I think the Ninja Gaiden thing was more of like, I'm not the character action guy. Sure. Okay. Where, you know, I'm not the D, the Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, like combos, all sorts of stuff. And I understand why people love those games, but I put the bosses, I put the enemies to easy difficulty because I was like, you're just. I'm just. I'm not dying. I'm just taking too long to fight you all and I'm bored and so. But the combat in this game is awesome. And that's what it has going for it, and that's what people will keep on coming back for. Just give me a little bit more, man. Just put a little bit more effort in the other stuff. That makes a truly, like, great of all time, you know, that's what I want.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

That is andy's review of Neo 3 to close out this episode. We have about 10 minutes left. I want to do a quick little mini shit list. Let's see.

[Mike]

Let's.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I promised it during the middle. I, like, still do it. IGN.com the other day posted their list of the top 10 best souls like games. This was written by Tim Brinkoft. Oh, Tim Gettys. No, Tim Brinkoff wrote this. I want to know. I assume this isn't going to have any from software games. So that being the case.

[Mike]

Oh, really?

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I mean, I assume so.

[Mike]

They're souls. Like, let's read the thing.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Okay. The legacy of fromsoftware games from Software Soul series isn't just defined by the amazing games that it's made up of. But Also the sub genre that's been given life thanks to its very existence. The souls like.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, this is exciting.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

It's a complicated thing though. Every fan of these games knows that the defining the term souls like is about as easy as beating Millennia without summons or cheese threats. I'm going to pause there. We got to find a new tough boss. You know what I mean? I feel like Millennia is getting. It gets all the references when you want to reference who's the red ant

[Andy Cortez]

lady in Silksong, Andy, Catalina, Amrita, something like that. You know who I'm talking about? In my head, she is the millennium of that game. And so maybe it's the boss that Blessing has still yet to fight and beat.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Fight and beat or no, you beat.

[Andy Cortez]

You fought him. You just haven't beat him.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Oh, you're talking about Shadow the Erdtree. Oh, Radon.

[Andy Cortez]

He is get us in there. We gotta make that a Patreon goal of like Andy and Mike help out. Bless. I don't know how much will help.

[Mike]

We're gonna make him. Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Every now and then I boot up Elden Ring Night range or not Night Elden Ring just to give it one more shot every. Every few months.

[Andy Cortez]

We're going to get it.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Really what I need to do, I need to hand you the controller so you can clear out the area with the big hands. Because if I get. If I went into that area and upgraded my character there and collected things, got up, got up, I would probably be strong enough, but I just refuse to go into that area. They go on to say here, Sekiro

[Andy Cortez]

final boss is harder than Millennia. I wouldn't know. It took me 12 tries easy.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Well, yeah, I was overpowered for Millennia, so yeah, it took me longer to beat the sec final boss.

[Andy Cortez]

No, Millennia is definitely like way too hard for me though.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

For me, the. The reference would actually be the bloodborne dlc. Have you ever. Did you ever do the bloodborne dlc? The old blood?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, dude.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

The final boss to that orphan of cause. Yeah, that was like my first.

[Andy Cortez]

He was awesome.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

That was like my first tough, tough boss fight where I was like, yo, what are we doing here? What are we doing here?

[Andy Cortez]

He's so good.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

From softer. His influence on the industry has been so profound that slithers. That slit slithers of its DNA can be found everywhere from Zelda, Breath of the Wild and Death stranding to death cells in 2018's God of War. At this point, what game featuring towering bosses or encouraged exploration doesn't seem at least a little Souls like, to keep our rankings somewhat coherent, we're bowling the essence of Souls Likes down to a number of key building blocks. To be eligible for this list, a game must have punishing consequences for death, a currency gained by defeating enemies that is integral to character progression and and can be lost upon death. Deliberate combat typically tied to a stamina meter or similar resource, and checkpoints that reset the world.

[Andy Cortez]

Nice.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Okay, yeah, I'm not seeing them say anything about Fromsoft games being eligible or ineligible. Oh, wait, wait, wait. This is a list of the best Souls Likes, not the best Souls games. And yes, we're including Sekiro, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring under that banner too.

[Mike]

Oh, okay, so FromSoft games.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

FromSoft games aren't included here.

[Mike]

I got some fun ones just to throw out beforehand. Make you smile.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Okay, I'll start off with the one that I think the Surge. Well, no, I have the Surge.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay.

[Mike]

I have the Surge up. That's my, that's my funny haha 1.

[Andy Cortez]

People like that one, though.

[Mike]

I know people like that one, but I don't think we'll be on the list.

[Andy Cortez]

The Surge one, I think it will, I think, right? I think the Surge two will be on.

[Mike]

It kind of was like one of the first souls, like games out there, right?

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

You gotta put the Surge on a thermometer, like 20, 27. We play the search, we play the Surgeon.

[Mike]

You have Eliza P. Which of course will be on there.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Liza P. Might be number one.

[Mike]

This is my one. That is the dark horse that Mike and Andy know well. Remnant from the Ashes. Put that on the list, baby. Dude, put it on the list.

[Andy Cortez]

That's a game that I, I, I keep on wanting us to play with Greg because he loves a third person shooter. This may be a little bit too punishing.

[Mike]

A little punishment.

[Andy Cortez]

It's got some of the most creative bosses you'll ever fight. If Liza B. Is the one on this list, I'm quitting this job. Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

What else would even be number one if not Liza P?

[Mike]

Can I tell you a secret?

[Andy Cortez]

Neo 2.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

One of the NEOs.

[Mike]

I think it's number two. Neo. Yeah, those are the competitions there.

[Andy Cortez]

When was this made?

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

A couple days ago.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

This was February 2nd.

[Mike]

Oh, Hollow Knight.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. I was gonna bring up. Are we only thinking 3D? Yeah, you're right. You're right.

[Mike]

Hollow Knight Nine.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Soul Song. Silksong could be number two.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Stellar Blade.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I mean.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Resets the world. Stamina, I would say.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Seller Blade comes in at number 10. I think that's lower on the list. But it's on the list.

[Andy Cortez]

All right. I like that.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Any other ones before you jump in there?

[Andy Cortez]

Rise of the Ronin. No. Where does.

[Mike]

Where does Black Myth fall on this?

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, black category will be number six.

[Mike]

Does that. Is that fit the criteria for this?

[Andy Cortez]

Okay. I think Black Myth is number six.

[Mike]

Lords of the Fallen.

[Andy Cortez]

Lords of the Fallen with the most recent update maybe on the list, but it wasn't very highly regarded when it first came out. I certainly didn't like it when it first came out. And also the CEOs is a piece

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

of about code vein.

[Andy Cortez]

No, Code Vein will not be. But if I had in my way.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

If. If they. If they hit me up, I didn't. Ring. Ring, Ring. Yes. IGN and they said what game should we include in our top 10 souls likes? Wuchang Fallen Feathers should be there. Wow. Because I think so. I would play Wuchang Fallen Feathers a million times over. Neo 3. Wow. A million times. Wow. Oh, yeah. Best level design Since Dark Souls 1. Wow.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

With every statement that gets straight the

[Andy Cortez]

more and more wild. Wow. Top five game of all time.

[Mike]

Oh, how about Another Crab's Treasure?

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, love for that. I love Another treasure.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I love for that one, but I feel like there's more.

[Andy Cortez]

Like that game went places.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Blasphemous.

[Mike]

Or like those 2D, they're pretty badass too.

[Andy Cortez]

Dude. Blasphemous 2 should absolutely be in there.

[Mike]

Why do I. What? Why do you. When you say Fallen Feathers, I think of the other game that's still two come out that you're jazzed up for. You got nine years to live. You're trying to figure it out. Then they do the cool move.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Phantom Blade zero.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, Phantom Blade Zero?

[Mike]

Is that what it's called?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

See, they do the cool leg thing.

[Mike]

Yeah. Phantom Blade zero to me is Fallen Feathers.

[Andy Cortez]

That's the name. I w. Feathers. That. That game is the one that I looked forward to playing the least because I did not like playing it at gdc and it was like my surprise of the year. That game is awesome. The boss fights are awesome.

[Mike]

Falling Feathers.

[Andy Cortez]

Wu Chong Falling Feathers.

[Mike]

Okay, good to know. I'm put down my list. Okay.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

So right now we have written down lies of P. Hollow Knight, Silk Song, Neo 2, remnant from the Ashes, Black Myth, Wukong Stellar Blade, Wu Shang, Fallen Feathers, Blasphemous two and Lord Lords of the Fallen.

[Mike]

Looks like we made the list.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

That's. Well, that's nine games. You can still add one more remnant

[Mike]

from the ashes too.

[Andy Cortez]

Silksong. Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I got Silksong.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I mean, I could have had add Hollow Knight as well.

[Mike]

This is Hollow Berserker. Oh, this.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Oh, the Surge. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Andy Cortez]

First Berserker will be on there.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

See, I feel like I'm going crazy because I feel like there's way better ones than some of the ones we have, because First Berserker I think is good, but, like, I don't know if I'll see.

[Mike]

Well, it's gonna be the best. When you get to that 5 to 10 window, I think we're gonna get those games, we're like, that was good.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Mike]

You know what I mean?

[Andy Cortez]

Okay, I. I might be biased, but one of the Star wars games. Oh, yeah, that's a great. Oh, do we put completely blanked on that?

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I guess God of War wouldn't count for some of these things, right? For, like, XP and stuff. But the Star wars might be top five.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Star Wars Jedi Fallen. Mike, have you played the Star wars ones?

[Mike]

I've only played little bits of them. I was turned off by the map, so I didn't know. How terrible for both souls. Like, it gets. I was just thinking it was. Yeah. More Star wars, but, yeah, I think Survivor. That's good to know. I might try it.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

See, I feel like we're missing the ones like Jedi. Like, are there other games. Action games that are souls likes, but they're not that hard. You know what I mean? So we don't really think of them as souls likes, but. Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Thinking about, like, losing XP when you die and, like, all this stuff.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm trying to think. Retrieving your. Yeah, I don't know.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

All right, we're ready to run it.

[Mike]

Let's do it.

[Andy Cortez]

Run it.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

All right, coming in at number 10, we got Star Wars Jedi survival save from Barrett right there, Paul.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Gameplay wise, fucking awesome. Definitely a step above the first one.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

So many chassis. Mortal Shell. That's a good call.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, yeah. Well, I don't. If Mortal Shell is above something like First Berserker, then I'd probably disagree with that.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

In the little bit that I played Immortal, so I never beat it, but I know it has some hardcore fans.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I feel you. Number nine. We got Lords of the Fall.

[Andy Cortez]

Ah, there it is. Yeah.

[Mike]

Lords of the Fallen.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. This game again, I. I hate it when it first came out, and then they put out kind of a 2.0 that revamped a lot of stuff, and a lot of the fan base is like, finally, this game is good. But this game super sucked when it first launched.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And the CEO, just the worst human. Like just one of those awful humans. Yeah.

[Mike]

Really.

[Andy Cortez]

He's the one that was like talking with asthma gold. Like this should be too, like, hey guys, should we put type A and type B body into our games instead of male and like, should we change it back to male and female? It's like that's not what was wrong with your game. Your game sucked. You could like put the most non woke stuff in your game and it still would have sucked, you know.

[Mike]

Damn.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Coming in at number eight, we got wuxong falling.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, there it is.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Okay, we might have nailed a lot of it.

[Andy Cortez]

Now there it is.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Coming in at number seven, we got the sir.

[Andy Cortez]

Ah.

[Mike]

Oh yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

There's a lot of love for the surge at ign. I remember like this coming out and a few folks there now really with it. Now the question is because I could have sworn Everybody liked the surge 2 way more so I wonder if the search 2 is still on this list

[Mike]

with the surge on a possible maybe like a. A book club situation. We all play it for a month, we talk about it.

[Andy Cortez]

Mike. I bought the Surge 1 and 2 like two years ago because I was like, one day I'm going to do this because everybody keeps on talking about it and it's still in my Steam library. I still haven't touched Red box.

[Mike]

Did a bunch.

[Andy Cortez]

Really?

[Mike]

Yeah. Is that the red box?

[Andy Cortez]

I love Redbox.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Next up, number six. We got wo long fallen. Oh, Wo fallen.

[Andy Cortez]

Totally forgot to mention that.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah, well, I didn't.

[Mike]

We all played.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah, the one we all played, I bought it, but I was like, there's no be on the list though.

[Mike]

Interesting.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay. I mean the boss fights are still awesome.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Dude, what was his name? Lubu.

[Andy Cortez]

Lubu. Lubu. I haven't fought anybody in Neo 3 that gave me as much trouble as Lubu. Like not even.

[Mike]

Oh, okay.

[Andy Cortez]

Lubu was like permanent damage for like my, my health, my mental health, you

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

know, Lubu, it's, it's. I think it's what. What's extra tough for us is that we're often reviewing these games. And so like when you hit a boss like Lubu and it's like, brother, the embargo is in five days.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

And this guy is taking my progress. Like now I'm mad man. Lubu coming in at number five. Even though that was a fun one. Black myth.

[Mike]

Oh, damn.

[Andy Cortez]

I was one off. I said six.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Nice. Coming in at number four, we got the first berserker Kazan Nice.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, it is.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Okay, maybe I guess I underrate this game. Maybe I gotta go back.

[Andy Cortez]

The game is awesome. I did get a little bit tired of it because stuff did.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I had a busy time.

[Andy Cortez]

I tried going for the. The glass cannon approach where I was like, I'm gonna put it lets you respect quite often. So I was like, I'm gonna put everything into offense. And I was doing like two more pixels of damage on it. And it's like that's not what this game is about, Andy. This game is about deflecting. Get that posture meter down, then going for the attacks.

[Mike]

Did you beat this game?

[Andy Cortez]

This game had. I was like two bosses away from beating it. I just kind of like got tired of it. But this game, when we talk about those memorable wow sort of boss fights, this game has a lot really.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

This game is really.

[Mike]

78 on Metacritic, 81 on Open Critic.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, this is a. That's a good ass game right there.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Coming in. Number.

[Andy Cortez]

Not enough. Ben Star though. So low.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Exactly.

[Andy Cortez]

He's barely in it. Dude.

[Mike]

No.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Before we do our top three, what are the top three you guys think?

[Mike]

I mean, I'm looking for Remnant from the Ashes. I think that game deserves to be a top three contender here. It did something special in the shooter genre. Meeting Dark Souls, like I think they blended it really well.

[Andy Cortez]

I will say this. So far, the lack of 2D games makes me wonder if there will be any 2D games. Yeah. Because I would put Blasphemous 2 over all of these games. And so that makes me wonder will there ever be a Hollow Knight or a Silk Song in this? I don't think so.

[Mike]

Now hit him with it because you

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

know it lies of P. Yeah. Silk Song. Blasphemous.

[Mike]

No Liza P. Silksong Neo we haven't seen. And it feels like those three are the big dogs. I'd like to see Remnant in there. If we were going non2d. I think that's where Remnant slides in there. But I. I mean guarantee Liza P. And a Neo here.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

If we're not doing 2D then yeah, it gets weird. Yeah. Liza P. I could see Stellar Blade sneaking in there if we're not doing 2D. But maybe. Does Stellar Blade not meet the criteria?

[Andy Cortez]

Maybe I don't chat pointed out already that like Wukong by the definition IGN gave does not fit their criteria for a souls. Like so. Oh, we're playing fast and loose.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Black Myth. Wukong wasn't a. You weren't collecting souls and banking them, were you? Or what Am I thinking of what? How didn't it live up to the criteria? Chat. Yeah, let us know. Anyway, let's move on to number three, I guess.

[Andy Cortez]

Celebrate. You don't lose stuff when you die.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

God, all these action games are now molding together in my head.

[Mike]

We always talk about it.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

It's a lot of them. At number three, we got remnant two.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, nice.

[Mike]

Yeah, dude. Okay then. Yeah. Probably no 2D in here because you think they go Neo into Eliza P.

[Andy Cortez]

Dude, I'm telling you, like, I think my biggest regret was letting us fall off of this game. This game is like an all timer. It was Nick.

[Mike]

Yeah. Thank you.

[Andy Cortez]

This game is legitimately an all timer. I'm not exaggerating. This isn't like something that you should be like, oh, it's another one of those action games that Andy likes that's probably like, it's not Elden Ring, so I'm not gonna play it.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Remnant 2, if you are into third person shooters, it is so creative with what it does in boss fights. It like there are truly some amazing stuff happening. It's like, damn, that is some smart design. I love Remnant too.

[Mike]

I wish I went back and punishing. Dude, it has that soul's taste to it where you're like, one more try. We had that. Like, my shot was on. I missed a couple opportunities. We'll beat that. It's so much.

[Andy Cortez]

It's got all those like fun mechanics because it's meant to be multiplayer. So like, you know, the boss is like, you know, damaging you. And then it like puts out the flying things.

[Mike]

You're like, shoot the fucking things in the sky.

[Andy Cortez]

And then, you know, like, it has those awesome dodging moments of, you know,

[Mike]

dodge that big wave.

[Andy Cortez]

But then, you know, it's awesome. This game rocks, man.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Coming in at number two, we got Neo2.

[Mike]

Oh yeah, we know. We know how this is playing.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh yeah, right.

[Mike]

We call.

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, come on.

[Mike]

So no. 2.

[Andy Cortez]

Dude, that lies.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

No TD.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

And number one up, we got. Oh, we got honorable mention Hollow Knight.

[Mike]

Well, hey, okay, okay.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

They say Wanda, I believe inspired by dark souls in many ways. Hollow Knight doesn't really play like other games on this list. In practice it shares similar storytelling style. I don't really believe in this.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. I. Every button input has meaning in its. In its gameplay. Oh, there's no stamina. Oh, yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Okay. But again that. Sure.

[Andy Cortez]

But also again, to point out, followed up on the Wukong thing, enemies didn't reset and you didn't lose things on death in Wukong.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah, well, at least we know our number one.

[Andy Cortez]

Liza P. Liza Pizzle.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Come on, it's got to be Liza.

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, it's not even close. It's not even a contest.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

One thing I will say about Neo3, just to go back really quick. Neo3 knows that your time is precious and it's made of gigantic game, obviously, but there's so much quality of life and just fast travel anywhere and everywhere. Who gives a fuck? We don't care. Like, you found that little spot, you know, go ahead, go to it. We're not gonna level gate this in any way. They make things really, really easy for the player so that you're busy playing the game and not getting frustrated by some of the systems.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

This is what I'll say. Because I'm looking through this list and either I, I, maybe it's the list or maybe it's just my personal taste or whatever I feel like, and this isn't judging remnant 2 because I didn't play much remnant 2, lies of P. I feel like absolutely shits on every single other game on this list.

[Mike]

I think we always bring up lies like the Chasm top tier.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Like if right now, if I read this list, I'm going, okay, from software S tier. They're on a tier of their own. Liza. P is like right, right under that. And then everything else is like multiple tiers below.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I would probably agree with that. Yeah. Like if we were to include, if we were to include Hollow Knight and Silksong into the list and it changes. But with that, like I, I know how much people love Neo2. I know I haven't played it. I think I know how it plays.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Based on the other five team ninja games I've played. And yeah, I feel like Lies of P just does everything you want a Souls like game to do. I think Lies of P is better than Demon Souls. I think the gameplay is better than Dark Souls. I don't think the whole game is better than Dark Souls. But like, if you're talking just right controls in your hand, what do you want to be doing? Pairing attacks at the right time to bust that weapon down. All the upgrades. It's just the most complete souls.

[Mike]

Like, can I say something in this?

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Say something.

[Mike]

I haven't been on many shit lists. I've been on a couple with Bless, but I've never given this. This list is the. Oh, I'm giving this a positive thumbs up.

[Andy Cortez]

Nice.

[Mike]

I think if you had a friend to ask you, Hey, I want to know more about action RPG's I want a souls like game. You could give them this list, especially with that honorable mention and be like, that's a solid 10 to 11 games that your friend could pick and choose from. Yeah, I like this list.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

Wu Chong, Fallen Feathers. Not high enough. But I still really, really like that list.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

P being number one. It's like, if that's not number one, you're messing up.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah. I mean, they got it right with Liza P. Number one. The not having any 2D games kind of throws me off because it didn't sound like from the criteria that that's not something that they were considering. And then, yeah, this is one that. Where I would almost had to like go away and come back to it to be able to judge.

[Andy Cortez]

Really.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Because I'm like, I feel like there's more and better souls likes out there. But maybe not. Maybe. Maybe this is it. Maybe you pick one up.

[Mike]

I think that up on one of your streams one day. We always talk about making these lists, but it would be fun to like. Yeah. When we bring our own list.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I think you nailed. No, I. I think. I think in my mind I was like, there's probably some we're missing. But no, like, yeah, they. That list is very, very valid.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Maybe I just like Stellar Blade more than other people.

[Andy Cortez]

No, I love. I love. Yeah.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I'm surprised to not see here, but it's not. It's not even like, that was an egregious one. But I look at these games, I'm

[Andy Cortez]

like, all right, I don't think you lost stuff as it dropped. I think the boss fights in seller Blade are certainly better than some of the boss fights in other games there. And it had. It had sauce and style for days.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Yeah. Well, that is it for this episode of kind of Funny Games Cast. Hope you enjoyed Andy's Neo3 review and our review of IGN's top 10 best souls like games. Of course this is not it for this day of content because right after this we're doing a games cast plays where me and Andy are going to sit down and play through some of Neo3. I think I'm gonna get on the sticks, which should be fun. We're gonna pick up from where I left off on my save, which is very, very early in the game. So come through, hang out, have a good time. And then after that, even more content. A stream. No, because the gamecast plays instant stream.

[Andy Cortez]

That's the last time that we want

[Mike]

to encourage you to stick around. If you love Games Daily and games Cast, you Want a little more editorial vibe to this. You want to ask questions to an expert who has played a bunch of hours in it. You want to see Blessing learn and grow with all of you. Great opportunity for games, cast plays. We've also had other ones previous weeks that have been really, really good with Animal Crossing 2. Karen has been one of them. So please, Karen, check it out.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm so glad I did the Karen one, because that turned me on and I'm like, three.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

What are you guys saying right now?

[Andy Cortez]

Karen.

[Mike]

Karen.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Karen.

[Andy Cortez]

Karen.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Karen.

[Mike]

Karn.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Karen.

[Mike]

Karen.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

I feel like you guys were saying Karen. They were.

[Andy Cortez]

I was never. They were. No, no, no.

[Mike]

Yeah, I said Karen. Yes, I'm saying Karen.

[Andy Cortez]

And then you bounce off of that, Andy.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

And also, I also said Karen.

[Mike]

No, I've been saying I'm the one who cried. I'm gonna play it back for you

[Andy Cortez]

when we leave and you're gonna be like, oh, I'm a idiot.

[Mike]

Give it to me. Say it.

[Andy Cortez]

Karen. Karen.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Karen.

[Andy Cortez]

Karen.

[Mike]

Karen.

[Andy Cortez]

Karen.

[Mike]

Karen.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Okay, you said it, right. You got it. You got there. You finally got there.

[Mike]

Karen.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Karen.

[Mike]

Karen.

[Andy Cortez]

Karen.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Karen.

[Mike]

Karen.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Karen.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Karen.

[Mike]

Karen.

[Andy Cortez]

Yes.

[Mike]

Yeah, he got it now.

[Andy Cortez]

Karen. Karen.

[Mike]

According to Greg, Gamescast plays is a new thing we're doing with the afternoon streams once a week, showing you a brand new game that you need to know about with an expert who has played it to answer your questions, to highlight it, please check it out. It is something. A big new initiative for us on the streaming side of things we'd love for you to check out.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.

[Andy Cortez]

Karen.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

Karen.

[Andy Cortez]

Karen.

[Blessing Adioa Jr.]

There's a world where legends race across city skylines. Romance blossoms in glittering ballrooms. And there's magic around every corner. It's a world known to many as Great Britain. You've seen the action on screen. Now visit the real star of the show. Visit Great Britain. To discover more, go to tripadvisor.com Great Britain.