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[SeriousConcentrate]

Unreasonably difficult is kind of the status quo for dark souls

Bull-fucking-shit. Dark Souls 1 is completely fair; if you think it's difficult then that is on you for being a scrub. Dark Souls 2 is a little less fair regarding enemy placements, but the gameplay and mechanics are much tighter and give you the tools you need to even the playing field (for example, get a shield with spell parry and try it out in Shrine of Amana. You might be pleasantly surprised). Bloodborne is all about being fast on your feet and trading hits when necessary to regain your HP; I think I've proven with my Maria fight video I know how to play Bloodborne.

Dark Souls 3, though. Dark Souls 3 is all about inflating enemy HP so they're damage sponges, replacing the AI with button-reading, removing every single advancement Dark Souls 2 made on the basic formula, and placing you in blatantly unfair, unfun situations just because it's a meme that these games are the hardest ever. Now, I've heard the most recent patch does fix some things (rebalancing Sharp and Heavy infusion so there are more builds than just Quality w/ Refined weaponry for example) but based on my initial four playthroughs pre-Ashes of Ariandel (which I haven't played and I don't currently plan to spend more money on this fucking game) DS3 is a disgrace to the series.

And before anyone says 'it must be good, you did four playthroughs lol' there are four endings. I got the first two in the same week I got it downloaded, the third one a month later, and the last one in I think September when I forced myself to give the game one last shot and see the last ending. It was as bad and boring as I remembered it.

[Draignean]

Unreasonably difficult is kind of the status quo for dark souls

Bull-fucking-shit. Dark Souls 1 is completely fair; if you think it's difficult then that is on you for being a scrub. Dark Souls 2 is a little less fair regarding enemy placements, but the gameplay and mechanics are much tighter and give you the tools you need to even the playing field (for example, get a shield with spell parry and try it out in Shrine of Amana. You might be pleasantly surprised). Bloodborne is all about being fast on your feet and trading hits when necessary to regain your HP; I think I've proven with my Maria fight video I know how to play Bloodborne.

Dark Souls 3, though. Dark Souls 3 is all about inflating enemy HP so they're damage sponges, replacing the AI with button-reading, removing every single advancement Dark Souls 2 made on the basic formula, and placing you in blatantly unfair, unfun situations just because it's a meme that these games are the hardest ever. Now, I've heard the most recent patch does fix some things (rebalancing Sharp and Heavy infusion so there are more builds than just Quality w/ Refined weaponry for example) but based on my initial four playthroughs pre-Ashes of Ariandel (which I haven't played and I don't currently plan to spend more money on this fucking game) DS3 is a disgrace to the series.

And before anyone says 'it must be good, you did four playthroughs lol' there are four endings. I got the first two in the same week I got it downloaded, the third one a month later, and the last one in I think September when I forced myself to give the game one last shot and see the last ending. It was as bad and boring as I remembered it.

Easy, SC, I love the series, but if you're used to playing anything else, DS I is a hammerblow to the face. I came to DS I after finishing bloody Oblivion. That was a rude 'fecking awakening. Amazing, different, a breath of fresh air, but you can't deny it earned its fame. Unreasonable was poor choice of words, but it sure as hell how it feels on round one.

Let me separate, there's the teeth slamming difficulty of DS I, your first fight against Capra Demon before you learn the trick of using the ladder, or fucking railgun archers in Londo. That has indeed caused me to look at the screen with dead eyes and assure myself that I really am not going homicidal because of a video game. Hell, the first black knight you can find in DS I is early enough that it's generally a better idea to just bugger off and tackle him later than try and push through him.

I wouldn't call that many situations in DS III blatantly unfair*, not until you get into the DLC, (There I'll break out the word 'unreasonable' in real earnest. The bosses were fun, not much else was that great, and the arena is still a mess of imbalances) but I'll certainly agree that it feels a lot more simplistic and... flat? I remember more... variety in DS II's melee combat than in III. I don't know.


Eh, I'm too close at the moment. I'll take back my 'Unreasonable' comment, largely because I am getting frustrated with DS III, and because it makes me sound like a hypocrite earlier in this thread when I called Dark Souls combat fair, but I can understand his feelings. Any game in this DS series is a bit of an adjustment, one that can be rather punishing.

*Maybe arch-dragon peak where you're trying to get to the altar.

[SOLDIER First]

I, uh, I've actually already been to the Cathedral on another character. This is just my new Sorcerer we're talking here. And the Cathedral Knights are also bullshit but at least you can backstab them.

I didn't meant to start a big thing ;-;

[SeriousConcentrate]

>Sorcerer

Found your problem SenBow. Sorcerers don't get viable until you have about 60 INT and all the best magic boosting gear available. My second character was a wizard and after powering all the way through Yhorm I just said 'fuck this', respec'd some of that INT into Faith, and ran with a Chaos Lothric Sword for the rest of the game. And don't worry, I've said my piece. This isn't Minecraft or a Bethesda game we're talking about here, so there's little danger of a seventeen page derail.

[SOLDIER First]

;-;

[George_Chickens]

Not so much in games, but rather in the modding scene: "realism" or "history" are often codewords for anti-fun. Good mods exist in these genres, but they are few and far between.

I've seen so many badly implemented realism mods that try to add 'more realistic' damage, health or firing rates in a game that just was not designed to accommodate them in any way, leading to the core gamplay becoming completely unbalanced and at times, even non-functional and glitched. The one exception I can think of is ACE for ArmA.

History mods are often extremely railroaded and change the core gameplay to only accommodate for what 'historically' happened, rather than allowing the player to change it based on their skill.

[AzyWng]

Mark of the Ninja's a pretty good example of not letting realism get in the way of gameplay - in world 2, the levels take place during a thunderstorm, and the player must take care not to be revealed when lighting strikes.

The thunder comes before the lighting, rather than after.

The special edition notes claim the developers have not received a single comment about this physical impossibility.

[Shadowlord]

Dark souls is not my idea of a fun game

[SOLDIER First]

In all honesty it is fun, if you take the time to adapt to new situations and enemies. And for the most part the games aren't all totally difficult, just u forgiving when you make mistakes.

[itisnotlogical]

This idea is still in its infancy, but it's starting to annoy me when people say that games can only tell a good story if they are tedious and un-fun. What made me think about this most recently is this Gamasutra article which, at least to me, argues that mechanical engagement and narrative engagement are inherently opposed to one another.

In general, if something's boring or frustrating me, I don't look elsewhere within that experience for engagement. I turn it off and do something more worth my time. Resident Evil was not scarier because the character controlled like a tank with a stick up its ass, and I'm sick of hearing that defense. Reducing the player's ability is legit, but hobbling them in some nonsensical way that has nothing to do with the narrative is just bad, bad design. As much as I despise Slender/Amnesia clones, I have to give them credit for advancing the genre beyond this weird notion that "worse is better" when it comes to the mechanics of a horror game.

Same with adventure games: ignoring the fact that most point-and-clicks had lame stories anyway, making a dull and frustrating game with a good story will just make me decide that the story isn't worth it, rather than encouraging me to power through a bad game for a payoff that might not come.

[Shadowlord]

Indigo prophecy was peak "terrible mechanics get in the way of the story." I don't even know what the story was because of the stupid double Simon mechanic which the game was built around.

[SeriousConcentrate]

Even if you had beaten Indigo Prophecy, you still wouldn't know what the story was.

[Jacob/Lee]

Unreasonably difficult is kind of the status quo for dark souls

Bull-fucking-shit. Dark Souls 1 is completely fair; if you think it's difficult then that is on you for being a scrub. Dark Souls 2 is a little less fair regarding enemy placements, but the gameplay and mechanics are much tighter and give you the tools you need to even the playing field (for example, get a shield with spell parry and try it out in Shrine of Amana. You might be pleasantly surprised). Bloodborne is all about being fast on your feet and trading hits when necessary to regain your HP; I think I've proven with my Maria fight video I know how to play Bloodborne.

Dark Souls 3, though. Dark Souls 3 is all about inflating enemy HP so they're damage sponges, replacing the AI with button-reading, removing every single advancement Dark Souls 2 made on the basic formula, and placing you in blatantly unfair, unfun situations just because it's a meme that these games are the hardest ever. Now, I've heard the most recent patch does fix some things (rebalancing Sharp and Heavy infusion so there are more builds than just Quality w/ Refined weaponry for example) but based on my initial four playthroughs pre-Ashes of Ariandel (which I haven't played and I don't currently plan to spend more money on this fucking game) DS3 is a disgrace to the series.

And before anyone says 'it must be good, you did four playthroughs lol' there are four endings. I got the first two in the same week I got it downloaded, the third one a month later, and the last one in I think September when I forced myself to give the game one last shot and see the last ending. It was as bad and boring as I remembered it.

Easy, SC, I love the series, but if you're used to playing anything else, DS I is a hammerblow to the face. I came to DS I after finishing bloody Oblivion. That was a rude 'fecking awakening. Amazing, different, a breath of fresh air, but you can't deny it earned its fame. Unreasonable was poor choice of words, but it sure as hell how it feels on round one.

Let me separate, there's the teeth slamming difficulty of DS I, your first fight against Capra Demon before you learn the trick of using the ladder, or fucking railgun archers in Londo. That has indeed caused me to look at the screen with dead eyes and assure myself that I really am not going homicidal because of a video game. Hell, the first black knight you can find in DS I is early enough that it's generally a better idea to just bugger off and tackle him later than try and push through him.

I wouldn't call that many situations in DS III blatantly unfair*, not until you get into the DLC, (There I'll break out the word 'unreasonable' in real earnest. The bosses were fun, not much else was that great, and the arena is still a mess of imbalances) but I'll certainly agree that it feels a lot more simplistic and... flat? I remember more... variety in DS II's melee combat than in III. I don't know.


Eh, I'm too close at the moment. I'll take back my 'Unreasonable' comment, largely because I am getting frustrated with DS III, and because it makes me sound like a hypocrite earlier in this thread when I called Dark Souls combat fair, but I can understand his feelings. Any game in this DS series is a bit of an adjustment, one that can be rather punishing.

*Maybe arch-dragon peak where you're trying to get to the altar.

At first I thought DSIII had a lot of bullshit in it, probably because it was my first game in the series and I used a spear, which is pretty good for PvP but borderline suicidal when you're doing the kind of riot control necessary to play PvE. Souls 3 really gets easier when you have a weapon that has a swing attack and a high-guard shield.

I don't remember it happening much in the base game, but the Ringed City loves the "random enemy appears from off the wall/underground/a sharp corner and stabs you/grapples you/checks you off a cliff" gambit, the sort of which are incredibly annoying but not fatal unless you're already nearly dead. After a while it should really be second nature to step through a door and immediately dodge roll back out of it before the random Johnny tries to make an iron deposit in your skull. This is evidence for why the boss battles are the best - no smoke and mirrors here, just a battle. Barring the

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Nameless King, whose biggest threat for half the fight is the camera controls.

One of the few places I'd say the base game seriously stacked the odds against you without good reason was that part of the swamp with like six basilisks in it. That area was ridiculous, particularly when the constant rolling to avoid the curse clouds attracted the attention of more basilisks.

[Neonivek]

Indigo prophecy was peak "terrible mechanics get in the way of the story." I don't even know what the story was because of the stupid double Simon mechanic which the game was built around.

It helps that the story is terrible.

Well ok sort of... Indigo prophecy was supposed to be a three game trilogy... but word from higher up went "No! do it in one" while they basically finished the game.

In fact you can pinpoint the exact moment the original game was supposed to end. Everything before that point was excellent (The start of Indigo Prophecy was great, almost genius)

THEN AGAIN Quantic Dream has always kind of dropped the ball near the end. They just can't seem to make a story that doesn't become stupid.

[SeriousConcentrate]

Spoiler: Sounds ridiculous but is actually the plot of IP. (click to show/hide)

For those who haven't played it, Indigo Prophecy is the story of an underground network of bums fighting the embodiment of the internet and ancient Mayan gods, with the player being someone roped into a human sacrifice to those gods (not him, someone else) and then killed off later (he actually does die) but still walking around (because of being exposed to radiation in the womb) and boning claustrophobic police officers afterward in unnecessary scenes as the world freezes because some child with Ultimate Knowledge was born and everyone is trying to find her. The game ends when she (the Indigo Child) whispers the secret of Ultimate Knowledge in the zombie's ear and dies, then that's basically it.

So yeah, Neo's right, Quantic Dream can't tell a good story to save their lives.