DARK SOULS (I AND II)!

I'm a huge fan of the series. It was love on first sight when a friend of mine borrowed me Demon's Souls way back.

Even though I always go to a wrong direction in the beginning and end up wasting first few days bashing my head to a stone wall.

In DS1 I somehow completely missed those stairs that lead to undead burg and thought catacombs was the place to be. I also somehow missed the concept of necromancers being responsible of the immortality of those skeletons. So I spent eternity kicking skeletons down to the pit, thinking there's no other way to get rid of them. Then when i slowly made my way to lower levels, all those skeletons waited me there making the area seem ridiculously difficult. I also didn't kill those necromancers at any point because i lacked any ranged weaponry and there was always few skellies with bows next to them, so i ran past them. Then I met a titanite demon down there, i fell down a trapdoor only to meet one of those dark knights and i also got to meet skeletons wheels. This broke me and I had to check FAQ online whether there was something i missed...

Oh yea, and since i got no Souls from those immortal skeletons, there was no way for me to level up except killing those crazed undead that give you like 3 souls per kill. In my desperate attempt, i slaughtered all the NPCs i could find just to get few more levels and so ease my hellish battle down at the catacombs.

Good times... :)

The only experience I have with this series is Demon's Souls. I hated it. I felt like it lacked atmosphere (little music, very sparse sound effects which sounded very bland and generic) and I felt like the difficulty was really artificial. From what I experienced, it was all "OH SHIT, THAT GUY CAME OUT OF NOWHERE AND ONE SHOTTED ME!" instead of "Man, can I beat that guy ahead? He's doing <insert attack type here>, so maybe I can exploit that by using <insert player move here> and avoiding him when he does that other attack?"

The atmosphere is what did it for me most, though. I need some kind of music playing at least some of the time and I need nice sound effects. I think that's why I dropped Dragon's Dogma as well. It was a well designed game, but it sucked balls in terms of atmosphere. Plus I had to be two inches from my TV to be able to read a fucking thing since the font size couldn't have been higher than 6 or 7 for some ridiculous reason. I guess Capcom thinks everyone owns a five hundred inch television.

I can't really remember, it's been several years since I played it. I just remember that it didn't really feel all that immersive to me. I was playing it on a friend's PS3 and I have no clue where he was at, so I don't know what location I was playing. I remember a big castle with a lot of drops and annoying enemies that were 100% hidden behind corners and objects.

And when I said artificial difficulty, I am referring to things that happen which you cannot possibly foresee on your first attempt that will kill you. I know that in this day and age people just gobble this kind of difficulty up for some bizarre reason, but I don't like it. I like losing to something I have to overcome and can visibly see ahead of me, not to an enemy I couldn't see that suddenly sprang out of nowhere and one shotted me, know what I mean? All the power to the people who like it and I'm not saying this is a bad series, it's just really not my cup of tea. I LOVE hard games, just not of this variety I guess. Give me 7th Saga, Actraiser, Einhander or even old school Mega Man and I'll be all over any of them in a heartbeat.

I don't play these games for the same reason I don't play "hard type" Mario hacks and such where things appear on the screen at the last second and kill you. It just feels like a cheap way to make a game feel legitimately hard. The difficulty may be less gimmicky in the two Dark Souls games, but in Demon's Souls? Man oh man...

Yeah the game teaches you to be wary at the start, there's only one or two enemies in 1-1 that ambush you. Starting at 1-4 is kind of where you were under-equipped knowledge-wise (1-4 is actually the last level most people play).

The greatest skill in this game isn't roll timings, stamina management, hit when they're in recovery or even RPG knowledge, but rather just being wary. If you just walk and look around with the camera and keep your shield up, literally nothing will catch you by surprise or "one shot you" I've watched streams where some guy at taurus demon was like "HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THE LADDER WAS THERE" answer: move the fucking camera. Just because YOU didn't see something the first time doesn't mean its "bad design" or "un-intuitive", thankfully the game doesn't bow down to your personal complaints.

Souls is actually forgiving because it DOES give you one shot "i win" buttons (magic, anything upgraded, firebombs, upgradeable healing items, summoning, recovery rings, etc.) and I tend to think people just exaggerate their experiences too "that thing one shotted me even though it was really 40% of my health and I wasn't blocking and wasn't wearing armor" The comparison to Mario hacks is unfair. because there's only one specific path of choices to beat those.

Having said that there are flaws with the games (later half of dark souls being rushed HELLO IZALITH, bed of chaos, demon's souls difficulty spiking only in the middle, dark souls 2 having the worst level design between the other 2, magic being really overpowered and boring, ragdolls killing my immersion even if its fun to ninja flip a corpse off a cliff, the final bosses always being jokes (demon's had a point to it but the others...), online pvp being garbage, online summoning messing up boss ai and making things too easy, bamco marketing, the entire souls community).

author=UPRC
And when I said artificial difficulty, I am referring to things that happen which you cannot possibly foresee on your first attempt that will kill you. I know that in this day and age people just gobble this kind of difficulty up for some bizarre reason, but I don't like it.

this day and age. gobble this up. i think the wording here says a lot

'rather than have reasonable self doubt and examine my own behavior for errors, i will immediately conclude that everyone around me is sheep' ~ ff fangame creator

You can evade most deaths just by being super cautious.

What UPRC is describing sounds like boletarian palace, which is the first area of Demon's Souls. There are a lot of goons hiding behind corners just waiting to jump at you, but they all can be countered simply by walking to a new place with your shield up, taking a good look of your surrounding before rushing anywhere.

Patience is pretty much the most important thing you can have with these games. You can beat even the most frustrating bosses just by waiting for the right moment to attack.


There is one moment in boletarian palace that i consider somewhat cheap and probably causes deaths on the first time for most players. There is this bridge that you must cross, once you do so, you get attacked by a dragon that comes out of nowhere burning everything on it's path.

Now the game does warn you however. At the beginning of the stage you see the same dragon, at the start of the bridge you see charred smoking corpses and once on the bridge you actually hear wing flaps before the attack.

The thing that pisses me off about the dragons is that they're environmental hazards and not really dynamic enough to be real dragons. I know from software isn't really known for their high budgets and making the most realistic of action games but idk, I guess I kind of wish the bigger monsters were different to interact with. I like that if you ever see a big baddie you can hit it from almost anywhere and there's rarely dumb stuff like: this thing is invincible look for the GLOW GREEN FUCK ME HERE LIGHT and repeat a joke pattern 3 times. If it ever happens it's usually optional or dragon god boringness.

Though from what I played of Dragon's Dogma it's really good for that kind of stuff where fighting a big enemy doesnt just = bigger hitboxes but actually shit that you can climb on or watch destroy buildings (compare hydra in dark souls to dd hydra).

I finally got around to playing Dark Souls for the last two weeks and I made it to bright and sunny Lando and it's just been disappointing. There's a few improvements over Demon Souls that I like, like the flasks where I farmed cresent moon grass in DeS at the start (then hit critical mass of half moon grass about a third in) and fewer items to juggle at the bottom, replacing the arbitrary(?) stat symbols, and being able to see status buildup and that it is actually relevant about 5-10% of the time. Also thank god stuff like tendencies and item burden were tossed completely. More levels of fat roll is interesting instead of 'perfect' to 'garbage'. I like the presence of the poise stat but I haven't really experimented with it, I haven't gotten any poise armor barring the gargoyle helmet until Lando and the dark iron set. Not having a BiS ring first thing in the game is nice too.


Now if I had one big issue with DeS, it would be the camera mixed with the targeting system. It was obnoxious in DeS and it feels worse in DS. Maybe it's my memory but I feel like I get in a lot more situations where I'm against a wall with somebody against me and the camera is trying to position itself between me and the wall and I can't see jack shit. Or the targeting system locks on to somebody not even in my FoV and screws up my entire orientation (my second death in Undeadburg was due to this: I was on the bridge after the bonfire trying to lock on to the bait dude and I locked onto one of the firebomb throwers above me. The orientation change while I was walking forward caused me to walk right off the bridge). Or losing lock on due to distance, either moving or knockback. I enjoyed DeS in spite of it but playing another game with it might be too much for me.


Actually the worst part is pvp. I've only reversed hollow twice and both times within 10-15 minutes I'd get invaded and killed. The first started as a joker with two shields, swapped to shield+fist, and when near death used a spell that baked the room we were fighting in with lava that twoshot me and I had no luck interrupting the second casting. The second was at the top of Serpent Fortress. I was changing my gear to fire resist due to the bomb throwing giant killing me twice prior. Got invaded, I decide to buckle up, and the dude hits me with a sickle/shotel with my shield up, causes me to flinch, lose ~40% of my health, and he wraps up with two more hits and I die. Super fun. On that note what happens if I d/c during an invasion? If I can't do anything about it I might as well suicide and save myself the time if I unhollow to kindle a bonfire and that was retarded in DeS (although that was for WT and not pvp).

Only 120 shots? That should last you about an hour.