Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Nioh 3 Review (So Far) - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

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Go to boot.dev and use the code Kind of Funny to get 25% off your entire first year on the annual plan. If you want to get our shows ad-free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash Kind of Funny. Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kind of Funny Gamescast. I hate it.

That's toxic behavior. I hate it. I hate it. What's the word I'm looking for? What's it called when you, narcissism? That's narcissistic behavior. 2026 is the year of toxic relationship, Mike, all right? Because right now, just for the previous years.

What about all the other years? It's this year. I'm bringing it out this year. Rogers laughing having a good ass time out there, and I'm jealous I'm not there. But Andy on Thursday nights plays awesome fun games with his friends and his Valerate League. I'm not there. He hears Roger laugh outside and he goes, I hate when he laughs because I'm not there with him. And you think this is the year he's getting better.

He's getting better. No. I'm improving. You know, at least he's acknowledging it. You know what I mean? But this year. this year, these two, they're going to hear it. They're going to hear it. He's getting better, though.

They're going to hear it. Thursday, next. Let me coach. Wednesday, February 4th, 2026. I'm on your host, blessing, Adioia Jr. alongside the Master of Hype, Snow Mike Mike. Well, what a big dog. How's going? 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 and the big announcements coming there, and it was great to see you get so pumped up and hyped for Overwatch. I can't wait to play with you. I saw people in Chad mentioned that they were surprised that I was that into Orverwatcher. They don't see me as like a competitive shooter person, which to be fair, I'm not on stream playing competitive shooters. You guys are. But Overwatch was my game with the year 2016.

He likes Overwatch. I love Overwatch. One of my favorite games is all the time. I put it up. I put it up there. And so very, very excited for those changes. I love to be. Probably enough to bring me back in a big way.

Next week. We'll put it on the calendar. We'll play next week. Maybe Andy will invite us to his Thursday night games. Speaking of Andy right over there. That's the night shrival. Andy Cortez. It has five people on a team.

We've got to find out how to get seven involved. Mike and Blas want to get it. All right. We'll talk to Wright. We'll talk to Wright to get you in. Check your emails. Maybe you have an invite somewhere. 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 slash kind of funny games. You have question for Andy Cortez, who has played Neo3. I heard you 100% complete it and got the platinum. Isn't that right, Andy? I talked to Mitchell Saltzman and I asked him how long did it take you to beat Neo?

And he said around 40 hours. I'm at 42 and just based on judging how much I got to go I have about like minimum 10 more hours. Minimum. This is a big ass game. I'm very excited to talk to you then

because 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 this will be a lot to talk about there. Remember, we couldn't do this without our producers over on patreon.com slash kind of funny.

So thank you to Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney the song, Twining. For now, let's begin with topic of the show. Tats, Tos, Tos. Mio 3. The review embargo is up. Andy has played 42 hours of it. Mike, you have played. I've played about two.

I got my ass whooped last night on the first boss. Immediately got frustrated, turned it off. He's got real tight. I'm good. I booted up played 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 or 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'd pick up and play even more Neo 3. For those who don't know, Neo, 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 Neo3. What are your thoughts? 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. Yeah. And I'm usually in the minority. Right. We document our history. Will Long Fallen Dynasty. 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. That's funny. I think that was all three of us. Yes, it was. Yeah.

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?

Right, right, right. 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. If you end up beating Stranger of Paradise it goes, it gets really, really hype. Yes. Like that's one thing that I loved about Shager of Paradise.

That's probably my favorite of the team injure games. We talk about Rise of the Ronan, a game that I kind of quickly dropped off of and I played around eight hours. so I won't say quickly, but I was close to the 10-hour mark and just was not having a whole lot of fun with it. Ninja Gaunt 4, I really dug. I thought it was really good.

I thought it was just very mid. 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 just take away everything else because that's kind of what I'm getting anyway. But then, like, Neo 1 and 2 are really the ones where it's like, I played a little bit of,

of both. Those are the big ones. But those are the ones that people love, right? Those are ones where it's like, okay, if you're going to play a team ninja game, you should probably play Nio one and two. And somehow, like, I don't know if you've ever even picked up Nios one or two. Nope, nope. I keep on getting asked to play them and it's, you know, and I get more and more discourage 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 Neo 3 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 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, they're level base. 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 Rode and if I would feel a lot better about that, maybe because I, I had, I had already played like Gosesushima, and I'm like, oh, man, you're lacking any coolness in the stuff outside of the combat. But Neo3, 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 going to have an amazing time. If you want anything more than that, if you want a gripping storyline with a 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'm 40 hours in, or around the 30 hour mark, I just started skipping cutscenes.

I'm just like, 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, like a remastered game 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 games have always just kind of looked at 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're putting out a lot of games at a high clip. 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 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. This is going to be the second Pokemon comparison of this stream so far, of this games guy so far. But in the same way that when I'm playing Pokemon Z-E-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 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. Mike, I mean, what you guys? I see you type it down notes. Yeah, I'm typing in 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 at. A lot of nines out there. Of course, the homie Mitchell Saltzman, right?

Where outside of Andy Cortez, Mitchell Saltsman is one of my action game. Like, he's one of my North Stars. If Mitchell likes a thing, I can trust his word. If he beats a game in 40 hours, you know it's going to take you about 60. Exactly. Because he is one of the best action gamers that I know in my life.

He also one of the best fighting gamers. He's probably the best action gamer that I know. Where any time I'm talking to him, man, I'm selling this boss. I'm about an hour and a half in. He's like, oh, yeah, I was kind of Tufflin. How long is it taking?

You know, 20 minutes, 15 minutes. Like, okay, yeah, you're really, really good at video games. And, you know, just note that you said, you see all that, right? I mean, beat him in Tekken sometimes. Damn. You know what I'm? Okay, okay. If we're getting after him really quick,

on the low key? What's up? Andy's still my goat. You know what I mean? Andy's still my goat. That's crazy. Andy better not laughing the other room. This guy. He'll turn on me.

He'll turn on you so quick. Wait, didn't even ask your question? I was highlighting that. But yes, when did Mitchell put his score at? Mitchell put his score at a 9 out of 10. Nice. Wow. Okay. That's very positive.

Also, I believe, gave Neo 2 a 9 out of 10 as well. Again, like the Neo series, I would say in action games, it's fairly beloved, all things considered, right? A lot of people flock to it. Well, since Andy talked about it, I do want to highlight the combat, right? 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? So 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 features we just don't know what to do anymore like we have to differentiate these somehow 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? Like white, yeah, yeah, Chi, yeah, key. 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 there. And that's in the previous Neo games as well. Yes, that will build that up. And then you kind of do a super attack. 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 Sol's controls. And if you hit the X button, then it refills that bar and gives you your stamina back immediately. That's why I was always stamina. That's why you're dying. Because I was missing. Yeah.

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

Get out of the way. 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 going to 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 really big mechanic is 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 Preserker Kazan, when you see the enemies glow and red, that means that I can't do this normal parry. I have to do a, you know, special thing or whatever.

Or if they're showing this color, that means they're going to go. go for a grab, meaning I can't parry the grab. I'm going to, 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. Yes. 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 hezzy. The hesitation move can be really now. nasty at times. But when that attack finally comes down, they're shining red. For me, it's the wide button. I swap over to Ninja Form. Bam, massive sort of shot, you know, knocks into their knees, going for that critical attack or whatever.

And that shit 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 Soulslikes sort of hit us with where you're kind of, you know, even in something like night rain, I say even in Night Rain, like I shouldn't expect that from Eldon Ring.

But when we played Night Rain and the bosses hit that second phase and it fucking 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 got to get this game out. Come on. And that's where we get to the sauce. That's the sauce part of it.

Like, you know, I have another question of like, can we define something? sauce and the sauceless part of it. Because you used it a lot, but like, what is that in these action games? That is the special ingredients, the X factor that take these games from good to great. You walk in, you've been adventuring, you're having a tough night. You know, you've been getting your ass with, but you

finally, you walk up to a door, boom, black screen. It's like, oh shit, a cutscene's going to start. And you see like little footsteps walking, t'ku, to coo. And say, hello. Seems you've been fucking, you invited yourself in and it cuts to your character and your character's like, I don't need an invitation.

And then the fuck, 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 phase thing. Do something sick as hell.

Hit me with the cut scene. Hit me with some amazing visuals. Do, you know, crescendo with the music. I just never feel that in Team Ninja games. I just feel like they were always, except for a 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 uh eight 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. I want to hear about open world. That's one of the big shifts that they've made in Neo3 compared

to the last two games. You know, you talked about playing a little bit of Rise of the Ronen 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 a breakdown on that. So the open world is definitely not as open as Rise of the Reruner. And 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 okay. When I say it's more like Sonic Frontiers.

Yes, exactly. It's a great comparison. Thank you. It's more of like when I think of Rise of the Ronan, I compared to that to more of Gosesu Shuma where you will have the large empty sort of you know, field and you might get kind of CERC, I need some help or whatever. It's not really that. It's just a gigantic

tick-ass level that is always full of action. There are always going to be bonfires. 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 fucking vomiting all over your screen. You have icons all over the place, and it's like, there's a lot of shit for me to do. The Ubisoftification of you.

Yeah. Now, it kind of worked for me this time around. say you are on a positive note on this, which I took down on the notes. Like, what is this extra stuff? What makes this good as opposed to the Ubisoftification of all these open worlds? Well, there's just a lot of side bosses to take on. And I think that's another amazing thing 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 MPC 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 scourge, scourge. There's a lot of areas to clear out of that. And then there's also enemy encampments to clear out. There's 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

Oh, this is, here's we gotta talk about this. Here's why I'm going to get, this is always a team ninja thing. Here's why I'm getting real, I'm going to get real like derogatory in nature. Uh-oh. Cover your 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. Yeah. 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. 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, fucking blue, the 17 blue items, 14 white items. And it's just like, oh, why is my inventory so full?

Gear slop. It is menu after menu, tile after tile, item after item after item. It's messy as shit. 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. I got to figure it out. Now one thing I would recommend because there are so many

missable things. Bear, can you hit the song? The Missible Things song? Because it's a games cast, Game Tip. If you need help, don't feel ashamed. You team. What's funny, I asked for that like months ago.

Yeah. We need a Gamescast game tips segment. I forgot that you said that you put something together. Games cap. I'm happy you finally busted it out. Yeah. The Games cap, maybe I would have put 44 hours into this game. Oh.

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 opened 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 missions. That's awesome. That's cool. Great to grind. I like that. Great to get more shit and add to your inventory. Nice.

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 me. items. So I replace 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. 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 strengthen guardian spirits. 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 to 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 shit to people to get gold or whatever, or like me, you could just donate all these items to charity. I had about 6,000 fucking...

It's like my mom. She loves donating to now. She's going through the house. She's donating trash. Like, good for you, Mom. And that's exactly what I was doing here. Do you think. That's exactly what I was doing here, Mike.

I was donating trash. I had the most amount of hats and fucking socks and swords and Kunai and Husatigama, everything I had so many items that like the game takes a while to be like you're selling a lot.

And because of all the shit I sold, I was able to level up about seven times or something. 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 shit because every enemy you kill, every boss you kill, you're going to get minimum four things that are minimum four items.

You might get nine whenever you beat a boss and there's just a lot of shit to kind of absorb. And it could be really, really tough. That's a great helpful tip. Can we play a song one with a pop? Yeah, yeah, play the outro. Yeah. Game chair.

It starts there. I'm going to help you up with the game. Great job. Wow. Thank you. That's fantastic. Barry, do you know what Amrita is? Because it pops up in persona as well. Oh.

Is the concept. Did you hear, do you know, did you know what Amrita was before? No. I still don't know. To me, it's just souls. I was doing a lot of Googling as you were talking. As you're doing the tips, because I'm like, yeah, it doesn't apply to me. Let me go.

Let me look up with Amrita is because they have Amrita drops and so much drops in persona that have to do with SP, which is kind of like your mana in that game. Wikipedia says, Emrita 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. Oh, neat. Okay.

It's a fun fact for you guys. Yeah. Not game related, but kind of game. Yeah, there you go. It's a game cast fun fact for you. Speaking of fun things about gamescast, you want to. was fun ads. Let me tell you about patreon.com slash kind of funny and YouTube.com slash kind of funny games where you can go and get the kind of funny membership, which allows you

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to get 25% off your entire first year on the annual plan. That's boot.dev code kind of funny to get 25% off your entire first year of the annual plan. 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 a fun. Oh, neat. I'm back 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?

Really quick. I'm circling back to the open world because that's where we were at. Right, right. So you're talking 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?

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 cleared out and it's just XP for you pretty much. Without spoilers, 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? I don't want to get into spoilers. 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's just, is this a bug? Is this a glitch? And then you might unlock something really. 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 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 he transform?

But a lot of weapons in their skill tree, because every weapon has a skill tree that adds onto your movesets. And there will be, a lot of the weapons will have something that you can upgrade to that gives you the deflect. And it is one of the best deflect sounds ever. Like, I would put it up there with Sekiro. It's a good, like, 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 Perry 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 Okay And so Unique to them or shared a little bit

Unique to them Okay 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, there's about six weapons as well for ninjas. And they are, they're all different, but I'm sure there's a lot of similarities where I two have experimented with all these weapons. There's just a lot of shit. And not every weapon goes towards what you're leveling up, right? So that's another thing that's kind of easy to make.

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 game, like, it's very, very odd. 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. Can I stay as one of the other? So when you first get the tutorial, they teach you the Perry, it switches forms. Right. Right, which I thought was novel. I find I like samurai better. That's where I want to be.

Right. Do I have to always switch? Did you find, could I just play through this as samurai? Or is it like, no, you got to switch? Well, you only have to switch for those red attacks. Okay. Or you could just avoid him 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 the ninja stuff a whole lot. I just, I like the way the samurai plays. That's more my speed. And I unlocked the deflect pretty early. And I had that thing sort of defle. 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 Clause 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 yet another menu that lets you go into every weapon that you own. And if you have three different moves for your kusatigama, if you unlock three different, like, moves, you could go deep in and say,

all right, 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 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 lines of Ninja Guide and 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 shit in this game. And it feels really good and it's super satisfying. I like an action game nerds action game. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's how I kind of viewed. That's how I view, that's how I view Ninja Guy and Ford 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. Did I say that? Yeah, you said no. I said that. I was like, I don't really, yeah. I'm on a good word, though. Mike's been right now. It's a good word right now.

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 O3? Seems cool based on what I've read. Any interest in the boys doing a play-through together? Unfortunately not. I didn't try. We just couldn't quite coordinate.

And when I was mainly playing when Bless was already at work. And then when it was nighttime, I was like, well, I'm playing The Witcher. I'm playing the Wich or I'm playing ranked over a lot. I'm in Oakland. Yeah. Bless the notebook. Yeah, yeah. I'm in the Oakland right now.

So co-op, meaning two players most likely, playing through the whole thing. That would be cool. I imagine so. We'll test it out. I'd like to test that. Yeah. I almost hit up Mitchell Sossman to try it out as well.

Yeah. 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 menus do get quite deep. And actually, I won't send you this one, because of spoilers, but the other one is good to check out. Okay.

To bring up a Reddit post asking, this is from the Neo Reddit from Blind Man Sokola, 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. Reddit. This is Informal Mechanics 77 on Reddit, all right? Get their ass. They reply, they do have a lot of uploads.

They do say you can basically do everything together in co-op. Judging from the alpha, it works similarly to Neo2. 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. Okay.

Cool. Sorry, this image you sent is the one I can show. Yes, yeah. Yeah, so this is what I was talking about, how customizable you can get with everything, where it shows you every weapon up top, and then it shows you every

Well, I guess 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, 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 light attack after a charged heavy,

you can go into that menu. And you might have four different moves 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 grabbed him with my axe. I like,

ding, hit him with the axe. 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 game, it 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. Oh yeah. So we really quick.

So we talked about the depth. We've gone over the combat, right? 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 Yo-Kai world where you can get kind of creative,

weird and wacky with it. Boss fights, let's talk about it. Boss fights 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 you shit 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 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 elven ring or even something like lysopin and you're like i can't even imagine trying to defend any of that like yeah i can't even start to be able to think how one would try to defend that malamia much less how somebody would no hit this boss like how the fuck you know yeah and then and then you start to kind of download it 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 Cellar Blade being purple, and that's like they're kind of, I think there's this 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 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 mesh so perfectly with the snow that I never knew when I was going to get grabbed.

And that fucking sucked. 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. I don't know. 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 is 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 I got a phone note for you Mike Street Shadow 20 right thing 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 type Oh and get the parry off okay

and that switch yeah okay yeah I'll check that out Co-op definitely has me interested in this because I think the open world it gives when you reach a certain point you see the first open zone right it gives Eldon 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 Eldon Ring ran directly towards it right of course I have to go test my luck and see what this thing is challenge myself 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. Wow. I mean, I think there's something there as far as what game plays. Because I'd play this with you guys.

If we're running around and a run and there's a storm that's coming in and we got to collect items. I love that game. I play that with you guys. Oh, man. Can you imagine the, you open up a box in Neo Night Rain. There's about 40,000 items. It becomes borderland.

I just, honestly, I said that as a joke, but also I'm kind of serious. Because, yeah, with the 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. It is. Pick this thing, switch this up. All right, cool, keep going. You've done a good job of, like, avoiding spoilers. So, kudos to you, Andy. But it's also, like, the, the second 20 hours that I played, like, I couldn't tell you anything that's happening.

Because I'm just like, you haven't made me care. Yeah. 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 I think this game can still look insanely fucking ugly at times and it's shocking it's just like what are we doing here

so I'm putting it into 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? It was one of those 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?

Like, I. And I, Team Music can hit you with moments like these a lot in their games. Well, it's just a lot going on. It's all kind of blurring together and I have no idea what's going on. Yeah. And it's, 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 Guide and 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 shit ton of hairstyles. You can lengthen the hair.

You can make the hair curly. You can add bangs to certain parts. It's awesome. It might be the best, like a Japanese made video game is at creating a black character in different races of characters. Because, yeah, I went into that character creator. I made a character that looks so good where I was like, oh, my God. I want to look like this.

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 Ninja Guide in 4 review as well, I want them to just like go for a seafood 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 the deal developers to shake hands with the first berser developers and be like yo yes like give us your like like let's trade secrets yeah you know what I mean how do you make our games look as good as your game yeah and whenever I bring up on

making fun of Mike's favorite category games a simulator games 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 kind of shit on ray tracing and like ray trace and inclusion in 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 this stuff that is being lit up in certain areas would not be getting light if 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 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. And I want them to develop a game for four years so that I could get that

seven point five. Yeah, 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. This is what Andy was in Team Ninja. And so I respect that.

Yeah, I want the sauce. I want, if you're, if you're going to continue to go to, for realism, then work extra hard in 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 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 Wollong Fallen Dynasty in 2022 or whatever year that was.

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. Sure. You know. Really quick, just to circle back,

I was asking, you've done 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? Well, you'll talk with me and blessing years from now going, do you remember that one?

They're awesome. Don't get me wrong. But what gives you the memorability is all, you know, those big special moments. And there's nothing like that so far. I'm 40 hours in. But that sounds like I'm shitting on it.

But they're still great boss fights. They're fun as hell to learn. They're fun to play. They all just kind of mixed together because not, one of them hasn't really stood above all 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 Silk Song 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, I wish more care and love was put into the presentation aspect of it, because that adds to that sort of epic feeling of here I am, let's do this shit, you know? Oh, yeah. Well, 7 out of 10. I view it as like the Gordon Ramsey of action games a little bit.

because like I feel like your taste is so elevated because like you've been in it. He's got a refined path. He's got such a refined pot. I'm out here eating Taco Bell. And he's never drove past the Taco Bell canteen a thousand times. I know coming off the Ninja Guidein four of you what the comments are going to be like

because people love Team Ninja. I love Team Ninja. I'm sure Andy loves Team Ninja as well. Yeah. Well, I love just so much you want to do, want them to do more. I think the Ninja Guidant thing was more of like I'm not the character action guy.

Sure. Okay. Where, you know, I'm not 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 not dying. I'm just taking too long to fight you on. I'm not bored. And so, but the combat in this game is awesome. And that's what it has going for. And that's what people will keep on coming back for. Just give me a little bit more, man. Like, 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. That is Andy's review of Neo3. To close out this episode, we have about 10 minutes left. I want to do a quick little mini shit list. Let's tear it up. I promised it during the middle of the episode.

I like that. I still do it. IGN.com the other day posted their list of the top 10 best souls like games. This was written by Tim Brinkhoff. Oh, Tim Gettys. No, Tim Brinkhoff wrote this. I want to know. I assume this isn't going to have any

From Software games. So, that being the case. Oh, really? I mean, I assume so. There's Souls Like. Let's read the thing. Okay, okay, okay. The legacy of From Software Games, from Software's Soul series isn't just defined by the amazing games that it's made up of, but also the subgenre that's been given life thanks to his very existence, the Souls Like. Oh, this is exciting. It's a complicated thing, though. Every fan of these games knows that

defining the term Souls Like is about as easy as beating Millennia without summons or cheese strats. I'm gonna pause there we gotta 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 lady and uh Silk Song Andy Catalina um Amrita something like that

you know who I'm talking about yeah in my head she is the millennia of that game and so maybe it's the boss that Blessing has still yet

the fucking fight and beat Fight and beat Or uh no you beat you fought him You just haven't beat him Oh you're talking about

at home Shadow the Earth Tree. Oh, fucking Redawn. Consort Redawn. He is. Get us in there. Fuck. We got to make that a Patreon goal of like Andy and Mike help out bless me.

I don't know how much will help. Every now we're going to make him stronger. Every down then I boot up Eldon Ring Night Range just to give it one more shot. Every few months. We're going to get in there. We're going to get it. 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 upgrade.

my character there and collected things. I would probably be strong enough, but I just refused to go into that area. They go on to say here. Securo final boss is hard of the millennia. I wouldn't know it took me 12 tries. Fucking easy. Well, yeah, I was overpowered for millennia.

So yeah, it took me longer to be the seconderof final bomb. No, millennia is definitely like way too hard for me. Though for me, the reference would actually be the Blood-Born DLC. Did you ever do the Blood-Born DLD?C.? The old blood thing? Dude, the final boss to that, orphan of cause?

Yeah. That was like my first. He was awesome. That was like my first tough, tough boss fight where I was like, yo, what are we doing here? What are we doing here? He's so good. From software's influence on the industry has been so profound that slithers of its DNA can be found everywhere from Zelda, Breath of the Wild and Death Stranding to Dead Cells'in to Dead Cells'in' To death, shaltz. To this point, what game featuring towering bosses or encouraged exploration doesn't seem at least a little Soulslike? To keep our rankings somewhat coherent, we're bowling the essence of Soulslikes 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 can be lost upon death. Deliberate combat typically tied to a statement meter or similar resource

and checkpoints that reset the world. Nice. Okay. Yeah. I'm not seeing them say anything about from soft games being eligible or ineligible. Oh wait, wait, wait, wait. This is a list of the best souls likes, not the best Souls games.

And yes, we're including Sekiro, Bloodbord, and Eldon Ring under that banner too. Oh, okay. From soft games. So, like that. From soft games aren't included here. I got some fun ones just to throw out before him, make you smile.

Yeah. Okay, I'll start off with the one that I think. The surge? Well, no. I have the surge. That's my funny, ha-ha one. People like that one, though. I know people like that one.

But I don't think we'll be on the list. The surge one and two. I think it will be on the list. It kind of was like one of the first. Souls-like games out there. You got to put the surge on a thermometer. Like 2027, we play the search. We play the search.

You have Eliza P, which of course will be on there. Liza P might be number one. This is my one that is the dark horse that Mike and Andy know well. Remnant from the Ash. Put that on the list, baby. Put it on the list. That's a game that I keep on wanting us to play with Greg

because he loves the third-person shooter. This may be a little bit too punishing. It's got some of the most creative bosses you'll ever fight. If Liza P is it won on this list, I'm quitting this job. Yeah, what else would even be number one, if not Liza P? Can I tell you a secret? Neo 2. One of the Nio's.

I think it's Liza P. Nio, yeah, those are the competitions there. Liza P. 1. When was this made? A couple days ago. Okay. This was February 2nd. Oh, Hollow Night?

Yeah, I was going to bring up, are we only thinking 3D? Yeah, you're right, you're right. Hollow Night. Nine Souls. Silk Song. All right. Silk Song could be number two. Yeah.

Stellar Blade? I mean Resets the world, stamina I would say Seller Blade comes in in number 10 I think that's lower on the list

but it's on the list All right I like that Any other ones Before you jump in there Rise of the Ronan No Where does

What does Black Myth fall on this Oh black myth will be Number 6 Does that Is that fit the criteria For this? I think Black Myth

is number six Um Lords of the Fallen Lords of the Fallen 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 CEO's just a piece of shit Who about Code Vane? No, Code Vain will not be on the list But if I had it in my way Okay If they if they hit me up I'd get ring ring ring

Yes IGN And they said What game should we include in our top 10 T souls likes Wuchong Fallen Feathers Should be there Because I think so I would play Wuchong Fallen Feathers a million times over Neo3.

Wow. A million times. Wow. Oh, yeah. Best level design since Dark Souls 1. Wow. With every statement that gets straight to fuck up. More wild.

Wow. Top five game of all time. No, I'm kidding. Just keep on going to. Oh, how about another crab's treasure? Oh, yeah. I love a other crab's treasure. And you love for that one.

But I feel like there's more. That game went places. Blasphemous or like those 2D. Oh, blasphemous. They're pretty badass too. Dude, Blasphemish 2 should absolutely be in there. 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. And then they do the cool move. Phenombleed zero? Oh, Phantom Blade Zero. Is that what it's called? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

They do the cool leg thing. Yeah, Phantom Blade Zero to me is Fallen Feathers. That's the name I. Yeah, Wuchang Fallen Feathers. 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. Fallen Feathers. Okay, good enough. I'm put that in my list. Okay. So right now we have written down Liza P. Hollow Night Silk Song, Neo 2, Remnant from the Ashes, Black Myth, WooCon,

Stellar Blade, Wushong Fallen Feathers, Blastomous Two, and Lords of the Fallen. Looks like we made the list. Well, that's nine names. You can still add one more. Rebant from the ashes, too. Silk Song? Yeah, I got Silk Song.

Okay. I mean, I could add a Hollow Knight as well. It's Hollenite. You didn't put the search? Berser. Oh, the search. First berserker. Preserker probably

Yeah. Absolutely. First Preserker will be on there. See, I feel like I'm going crazy because I feel like there's way better better ones than some of the ones we have. Because First Preserker,

I think is good. But like, I don't know if I'll say, well, it's going to be one of the best. When you get to that five to ten window, I think we're going to get those games and be like, that was good.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Okay. I might be biased, but one of the Star Wars games. Oh, shit. Yeah, that's a great. Oh, do we put a complete length on that.

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. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Star Wars Jedi fallen. Mike, have you played the Star Wars ones?

Oh, Survivor. I've only played little bits of them. I was turned off by the map. So I didn't know how deep into the souls-like it gets. I was just thinking, yeah, more Star Wars. But yeah, that's cool. That's good to know. I might try it.

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-Lakes. But yeah, thinking about, like, losing XP when you die and like all this stuff. Yeah, I'm trying to think.

Retrieving your shit. Yeah, I don't know. Okay. All right. Let's run it. Let's do it. All right. Coming in number 10, we got Star Wars Jedi Survivor. Nailed it.

It's the last bit of safe from Barrett right there. Great call. Yeah, gameplay-wise, fucking awesome, definitely a step above the, the first one. Who, so many in Chats is Mortal Shell. That's a good call. Oh, yeah. Well, I don't. If Mortal Shell is above something like First Preserker, then I'd probably

I disagree with that. Okay. In the little bit that I played a mortal show, I never beat it. But I know it has some hardcore fans. I feel you. Number nine, we got Lords of the Fall. Ah, there it is. Yeah.

Lord's of the Fall. Yeah, this game, again, I hated 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. Yeah. And the CEO, just the worst human. Like, just one of those awful humans.

Yeah. He's the one that was like talking with that. Asman 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, or 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? Damn.

Coming in at number eight, we got Wushong Falling. Yeah, there it is. Okay, we might have nailed a lot of this. There it is. Coming in at number seven, we got the search. Ah. Oh, shit. We got to play the search.

There's a lot of love for the surge at IGN. I remember like this coming out and a few folks there. Now, really fucking with it. Now the question is, because I could have sworn everybody liked the surge two way more. So I wonder if the search two is still on this list. With the surge on a possible,

maybe like a book club situation. We all play it for a month. We talk about it. Mike, I bought the surge one and two 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 it. Red boxed in a bunch. Really? Red box. Yeah, it's that the red box. I love red box. Next up, number six, we got Wollong Fallen. Oh, Wollong Fallen Dynasty.

Totally forgot to mention that. Well, I didn't. Is that the one we all played? That was the one we all played. I thought it, but I was like, there's no way he's going to be on the list, though. Interesting. Okay. I mean, the boss fights are still awesome.

Dude, what was his name? Lubu? Lou boo. I haven't fought anybody in Neo3 that gave me as much trouble as Lubu. Like, not even. Oh, okay. Lubu was like permanent damage for

like my health Yeah Mental health you know Lubu It's I think it's what's 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 Yeah And this guy is fucking tanking my progress Like now I'm mad Man fuck Lubu Coming into number five

Even though that was a fun one Blackmith Woo-Dong Oh damn I was one off I said six Nice coming in at number four we got the first

Berser Kazan. Nice. Yeah it is okay. I guess I underrate this game. Maybe I got to go back to it. The game is awesome. I did get a little bit tired of it because stuff did I tried going for the the glass cannon approach where I was like I'm going to put it lets you respect quite often so I'm going to 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 Annie. This game is about deflecting get that positive. posture meter down, then going for the attacks. Did you two beat this game? 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 of. This game is really.

78 on Metacritic, 81 on Open Critic. Yeah, that's a good ass game right there. Coming in a number. Not enough Ben Star, though. That's why the ratings is solo. Exactly. He's barely in it, dude. No, shit.

Before we do our top three, what are the top? there you guys think. 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. 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 two over all of these games. And so that makes me wonder, will there ever be a Hall-O-Night or a Silk song in this? I don't think so now. Hit them with it. you know it. Liza P. Silk Song Blasemus. No, Liza P. Silk Song, Neo.

We haven't seen the Neo yet. And it feels like those three are the big dogs. I'd like to see Remnant in there. If we were going non-2D, I think that's where Remnant slides in there. But I mean, guaranteed Liza P and a Neo here. If we're not doing 2D, then, yeah, it gets weird. Yeah, Liza P. I could see Stellar Blades sneaking in there if we're not doing 2D.

But maybe does Stellar Blade not meet the criteria, maybe? I don't know. Chat pointed out already that like Wukong by the definition IGN gave does not fit their criteria for a soul's like. Oh. We're playing fast and loose. Okay. Yeah. Black, Black, Blue Kong 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 celebrate you don't lose stuff when you die. God, all these action games are now molding together in my head.

We always talk about it. It's a lot of them. And number three, we got Remnant 2. Oh, nice. Yeah, dude. Okay. Then, yeah, probably no 2D in here. Because you think they go Neo and into Eliza P?

Dude, I'm telling you, like, I think my biggest regret was letting us fall off of this game. But we know who it was. This game is like an all fucking timer. It was Nick. Yeah, goddamn Nick. You know who it was. 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 Ellen the Ring, so I'm not going to play it. Yeah, yeah. It is so creative of 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. I wish I went back. And it's fun and punishing. 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 of opportunities. We'll beat that. It's so much fun. It's got all those 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. You're like, shoot the fucking things in the sky and then, you know, like,

it has those awesome dodging moments of, you know, dodge that big wave. But then, you know, it's awesome. This game rocks, man. Coming into number two, we got, Neo2. Oh. Yeah. We know, we know how this is playing. Oh, yeah. We call me. Come on. So no 2D. That lies apisole. And number one, we got, oh, we got honorable mention.

Oh, Hollow Knight. What, hey. Okay. They say Wanda, I believe, inspired by Dark Souls in many ways. Hollow Night doesn't really play like other games on this list in practice.

It shares similar storytelling style. I don't really believe in this. Yeah, I, every button input has meaning in its, in its gameplay. Oh, there's no stamina. Oh. Yeah, okay.

I'll buy that, sure. 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. Yeah. Well, at least we know our number one. Liza P. Liza Pizzle. Come on.

It's got to be Liza Pizzle. I mean, it's not even close. It's not even a contest. Yeah. One thing I will say about Neo3 just to go back

really quick, Neo3 knows that your time is precious and it's made a 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 going to 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. This is what I'll say, because I'm looking through this list. And either, 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 put much Remnant 2. Liza P. I feel like absolutely shits. on every single other game on this list. I think we always bring up Liza P. Like the Caz-N... Right now, if I read this list, I'm going, okay, fucking 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. Yeah, I would probably agree with that, yeah. Like, if we were to include... If we were to include the Holo Night and Silk Song into the list and it changes. But with that, like, I know how much

people love Neo too. I know I haven't played it. I think I know how it plays based on the other five team ninja games I've played. And yeah, I feel like Liza P just does everything you want a Souls like game to do. I think Liza 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 Darks, but like if you're talking just control is in your hand, what do you want to be doing? Paring attacks at the right. right time to bust that weapon down, all the upgrades. It's just the most complete soulslike. Can I say something to end this?

Say something. I haven't been on many shit lists. I've been on a couple with less, but I've never given this. This list is the shit. Oh. I'm giving this a positive thumbs up. I think if you had a friend to ask you, hey, I want to know more about action RPGs. I want a Soulslike 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. Okay. Wucheng Falun Fah is not high enough, but I still really, really like that list.

Yeah. Because Liza P being number one, it's like if that's not number one, you're messing up. 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 we're out almost had to like go away and come back to it to be able to judge, really. Because I'm like, I feel like there's more and better. or souls likes out there, but maybe not. Maybe this is it. If you cook one up,

I think that's it. On one of your streams one day. We always talked about making these lists, but it would be fun to like, yeah, when we bring our own lists. I think you nailed. No, I think, I think in my mind,

I was like, there's probably somewhere missing, but no, like, yeah, that list is very, very valid. Maybe I'd just like Stellar Blade more than other people. No, I love, I love that game. Yeah.

I'm surprised to not see here, but it's not even like that was an egregious one, but I look at, these games. I'm like, right. I don't think you lost stuff as it dropped. I think the boss fights that's Cellar Blade are certainly better than some of the boss fights in other games there. And it had sauce and style for days. Yeah. Well, that is it for this episode of Kind of Funny Gamescast. 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 Gamescast plays where me and Andy are going to sit down and play through. some of Neo3. I think I'm going to get on the sticks, which should be fun. We're going to 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 game can't plays is the stream. That's the last time. We want 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 play. 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. I'm so glad I did the Karen one because that turned me on and I'm like three hours.

What are you guys saying right now? Karen. Karen. Karen. Karen. Karen. Karen. I feel you guys were saying Karen.

They were. I was never. They were. No. No. I just said Karen. Yeah, you see. I said Karen.

Yes. I'm saying Karen. And then you bounce off of that, Andy. And also said Karen. I also said Karen. No, bullshit. I've been saying, I'm the one who cropped in Greg. I'm going to play it back for you when we leave and you're going to be like, oh, I'm a fucking idiot.

I corrected Greg. Give it to me. Say it to me. Karen. Karen. Karen. Karen. Karen.

Karen. Karen. Karen. Karen. You said it right. You got it. You got there. You got there.

Karen. Karen. Karen. Cairn. Cairn. Yeah. Cairn. Yeah.

Cairn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now. Okay. He got it now.

Yeah. I quote to Greg. Games cast plays is a new thing we're doing with the afternoon streams. Once a week show you a brand new game that you need to know about with an expert who is played at to answer your questions to highlight it. Please check it out. It's something, a big new initiative for us on the streaming side of things we'd love for you to check out. Until next time. It's been our pleasure to serve you.

Karen. Karen.