Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[majikero]

You're in bay12 so your concept of "difficult" is not the normal standard.

[Sordid]

Yeah, it's not hard at all. In terms of simply winning fights, all it takes is patience and enough discipline to avoid button mashing and over-committing. As long as you stick to the attack pattern, you're golden. And then there's the fact that it's literally impossible to lose the game as a whole. There's no fail condition as far as I can tell. It doesn't matter how many times you die, you just respawn and try again. And yeah, you lose your souls and humanity, but you can do a corpse run. And even if you don't make it, getting souls and humanity back is easy by just farming the endlessly respawning monsters. It's a question of patience more than anything.

[nenjin]

Yeah, it's not hard at all. In terms of simply winning fights, all it takes is patience and enough discipline to avoid button mashing and over-committing. As long as you stick to the attack pattern, you're golden. And then there's the fact that it's literally impossible to lose the game as a whole. There's no fail condition as far as I can tell. It doesn't matter how many times you die, you just respawn and try again. And yeah, you lose your souls and humanity, but you can do a corpse run. And even if you don't make it, getting souls and humanity back is easy by just farming the endlessly respawning monsters. It's a question of patience more than anything.

Is there any game where there's a fail condition, outside of games with perma death and save deletion?  In 95% of games, you just reload your save. Dark Souls simply takes the annoyance of having to reload a save by restarting you at the last Bonfire.

The challenge to me in DS is that your choice of build has a large impact on how fights go. As a heavy fighter, some fights you can just tank and spank, avoiding the moves you know will end you. As a mage or ranged fighter, sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's way harder. And that's before you factor in how you upgraded your weapons or what armor and stuff you've chosen to invest in at the time.

For example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Those 3 rat/wolf things in the Darkroot Garden? I had to cheese those things, I couldn't beat them in a straight up fight as a heavy fighter. I had to exploit the max range of their attack and hide behind trees when they did their rolling charge. They'd bash into a tree, stand there while I wailed on them, then they'd retreat to the center of the glade again until I lured them to rush again.

Out of curiousity, was there a point to those guys other than decent souls? I feel like I missed something on them because they were REALLY hard but there seemed to be no pay off after I killed them.

[majikero]

Those things are cats, just so you know.

[Alkhemia]

I just ran past them since they there for no reason

[Jelle]

To all you claiming the

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

dark lord of humanity

ending is the good one, you've obviously not seen the artorius dlc plot! 't will make you think twice wich side is most noble.

In the end I don't think it's really a be good vs bad ending, more like continuing the cycle or breaking it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

To all you claiming the

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

dark lord of humanity

ending is the good one, you've obviously not seen the artorius dlc plot! 't will make you think twice wich side is most noble.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It doesn't, really. Dark is Humanity's element, after all. The Age of Fire endured for the sake of the Gods, but they're (probably) all dead by the end of Dark Souls anyway. Plus, the spread of the Abyss was halted when Manus was killed. The only threat it poses to Humanity now is the Darkwraiths and their attempts to reunite the Dark Soul.

[Sordid]

Is there any game where there's a fail condition, outside of games with perma death and save deletion?  In 95% of games, you just reload your save. Dark Souls simply takes the annoyance of having to reload a save by restarting you at the last Bonfire.

The annoyance of having to reload a save = having to fight the monster that killed you again.
The annoyance of restarting at a bonfire = having to fight through an entire section of respawned monsters to even get to the monster that killed you, and possibly having to waste several hours farming to get your souls and humanity back if you fail.
On the whole I'd say the DS system adds annoyance rather than removes it. The absolute best annoyance-mitigating system I've seen in any game was the time rewind thing in Prince of Persia. I wish more games had that.

Out of curiousity, was there a point to those guys other than decent souls? I feel like I missed something on them because they were REALLY hard but there seemed to be no pay off after I killed them.

I think the point is the same as with most difficult encounters in this game, which is to dick you over. As for cheesing it, isn't that how you're supposed to do it? The bridge dragon is completely impossible without exploiting the faulty hitbox of its top-down fire attack, for example. It seems to me the boss and miniboss fights in this game are all about figuring out how to cheese them.

[Parsely]

It seems to me the boss and miniboss fights in this game are all about figuring out how to cheese them.

Then you're doing it wrong. ._.

[nenjin]

The absolute best annoyance-mitigating system I've seen in any game was the time rewind thing in Prince of Persia. I wish more games had that.

Eh, I disagree. There's a point at which not ENOUGH gap between failure and attempt becomes bad as well. (Kind of like dying on the first guy in a level in Hotline Miami, you start zerging until, kind of like repeating a word enough until it becomes senseless, the attempt itself loses meaning.)

That said, I do get frustrated dying and having to go back through an entire area full of enemies that are already tough, when I die in DS. But I'd still take that over a system that basically allowed you to zerg rush your way to success. There's a distinct difference between a victory you had to sweat for and learn to achieve than a victory you earned by just repeatedly throwing yourself at a challenge until you get lucky. I eventually disliked PoP exactly because it was like "OPPP, you missed that jump by a fraction of an inch. Just keep doing it, because sands."

[Facekillz058]

It seems to me the boss and miniboss fights in this game are all about figuring out how to cheese them.

Then you're doing it wrong. ._.

I haven't had to 'cheese' anything up until this point.
I have avoided things,
but never cheesed them.

[Sordid]

The absolute best annoyance-mitigating system I've seen in any game was the time rewind thing in Prince of Persia. I wish more games had that.

Eh, I disagree. There's a point at which not ENOUGH gap between failure and attempt becomes bad as well. (Kind of like dying on the first guy in a level in Hotline Miami, you start zerging until, kind of like repeating a word enough until it becomes senseless, the attempt itself loses meaning.)

That's precisely why you only had a limited number of rewinds. Screw up too much and you have to restart the level completely (or whatever, I don't even remember).

That said, I do get frustrated dying and having to go back through an entire area full of enemies that are already tough, when I die in DS. But I'd still take that over a system that basically allowed you to zerg rush your way to success. There's a distinct difference between a victory you had to sweat for and learn to achieve than a victory you earned by just repeatedly throwing yourself at a challenge until you get lucky. I eventually disliked PoP exactly because it was like "OPPP, you missed that jump by a fraction of an inch. Just keep doing it, because sands."

But that's exactly how DS feels to me. Can't beat something? Welp, just go back a bit, farm some souls and titanite shards, level yourself up, upgrade your weapon, and suddenly the challenge is a lot easier. If you can't progress, you just repeat stuff until you are able to progress. Or you just bang your head against the challenge, doesn't matter. Only you have to repeat a larger section than you would if you could just restart the one fight that killed you.

It seems to me the boss and miniboss fights in this game are all about figuring out how to cheese them.

Then you're doing it wrong. ._.

I haven't had to 'cheese' anything up until this point.
I have avoided things,
but never cheesed them.

I'd really love to see how it's possible to kill the bridge dragon without cheesing it.

[Facekillz058]

It seems to me the boss and miniboss fights in this game are all about figuring out how to cheese them.

Then you're doing it wrong. ._.

I haven't had to 'cheese' anything up until this point.
I have avoided things,
but never cheesed them.

I'd really love to see how it's possible to kill the bridge dragon without cheesing it.
[/quote]

Not sure about the definition of 'cheesing it' but this guy did it with a Drake Sword

And I killed it a little while back with the Gravelord Sword.

[Sordid]

Well firstly, getting the Drake Sword by shooting the dragon's tail from below the bridge is in and of itself cheesing. And secondly, that's exactly what I was referring to as cheesing. See where he stands when the dragon does its top-down fire breath attack? Clearly that spot should also be covered in flames, the fact that it isn't is undoubtedly unintentional.

[Squanto]

I'd really love to see how it's possible to kill the bridge dragon without cheesing it.

1.  That's an optional fight.  I never even triggered the drake arriving on the save of the game I beat.
2.  Any moderately powerful (+6 - +10) weapon should take it out fairly quickly.  It's 5 hits with the bare minimum stats to weild a Black Knight Halberd 2-handed (so 23 str 18 dex I think, I forget if it was upgraded yet in the video, but it may have been +2), so you are only looking at about 7 - 10 hits with any +10 weapon (or +5 divine weapon), both of which are available 1 boss past Taurus Demon.
3.  Unless going sunbro, you gain about nothing from actually unlocking that bonfire.  The Burg fire is just barely further away, needing you to kill just 5 simple enemies to get exactly where you would have been.

I would also like to politely disagree with your post as a whole.  Although it may feel like cheesing and trying again at first in Dark Souls, you are also likely taking a lot of information in while fighting about the enemy's AI (if they turtle, how to provoke them, etc.), their various attacks and timings, and other useful things even if you don't realize it.  But, after a few times you should notice that you are dodging/parrying enemies much more easily, provoking turtle spearmen, and doing all that fun stuff much more successfully.  DS is not about cheesing, it's about taking your time and learning your enemies in order to overcome them.  That time may involve dying if you are unlucky, but it's usually as simple as keeping the fight down to one person at a time and learning how to fight that person.  Once you learn it for yourself (watching videos on Youtube can help, but you won't truly know parry timings until you DO parry a few times), the game becomes much simpler.