So first of all, you're talking to b-cell, who never has any reason for the things he says. In fact, this is a relatively mild and unremarkable claim coming from him.Dunc2j said:
I get where you are coming from and can see how my statement could be seen as contradictory. However there is a big difference between claiming to not share the same level of love of something (point of the thread) and claiming something to be overrated which implies everyone else is wrong and you are right. Especially with no arguments being made to support your claim.TheVampwizimp said:
I find pretty much all Rockstar games to be below average games. That doesn't mean I think everyone else is wrong either. I really HATE Dan Houser's writing in any game that isn't GTA: Vice City. The writing is extremely bad IMO and it seems to have this air of importance to it (pretension) while constantly smacking you in the face with how important it thinks it is like how John Marston (or really any character in RDR) starts talking politics with characters they literally just met. Dan Houser is worse than even Kojima in the aspect of telling over showing. Both GTAV reviews on the Escapist, Zero Punctuation and Tito's review, comment on the writing BTW.Dunc2j said:
I?d grant you those are some fair, quickdraw criticisms, sentiments I might have largely shared with you before I started my current (and first) playthrough of Dark Souls; in 2013 I spent about 4 hours beating my head against the wall of the first mini-boss and quit the game for 3 years because of all the reasons you listed. But for reasons, I popped it back in last October, and after spending +70 hours in Lordran, and with the help of this community and wikis, I can tell you that Dark Souls is genuinely an onion, to borrows Shrek?s analogy; it has layers upon layers and is a LOT deeper than a single, simply endgame-focused playthrough will ever reveal. If one takes Dark Souls as a purely a mechanical exercise, i.e.: press enough of the right buttons at the right times to make enough things die to see the end credits, then yes, it is easily dismissed as a repetitive test of patience that would probably prove painfully short to first-time player skilled enough to manage straight through without dying much (see world record, 100% runs clocking in at just over an hour,) but that same person just missed 90% of the game and basically all of the rich lore that makes the game what it truly can be. Dark Souls is that attractive person eyeballing you from the end of the bar that you think is out of your league, and if you take the chance, risk humiliation and talk to them, you find out they?re just as interested in you, plus they?re rich, single and a recovering nymphomaniac fresh off the wagon.Silentpony said:
I guess what I don't like is its the perfect storm of unreasonable, without any indication what went wrong. Like you find a monster. It kills you. Why did you die? Did it get a lucky strike it? Were the controls lagging and you just need to try again? Is it too high level? Does it need a new weapon? Is it immune to X? Do you need a ring? A bow? The Axe of JibberyJoo combined with the Smithed Bronze Ring? Does it have a weakness in its butt, of its chin? Is it really just a peaceful creature, lashing out in anger when all it needs is a hug?! Spend the next 9 hours in trial and error gameplay to find out! Afterwards you'll be rewarded with...a second monster.Xprimentyl said:
The Souls games aren't nearly that obtuse and convoluted as you're saying. I'm not a big fan of the series (the games are OK to fine) so I'm not at all trying to say these are some masterpieces you don't get and must love or anything like that. The games are really very simple. You don't need some weapon or ring or whatever to beat any boss. Sure the right things can make the fight easier, but the fight isn't that hard to begin with. There's a dragon in Dark Souls that's rather weak but can curse you, which straight up kills you. That happens the 1st time, and you know to equip all your best curse resistant gear you have, that's sorta standard RPG logic. For the most part, you face bosses just like other enemies and block/dodge their attacks and then attack yourself, that's it, that's literally the secret. To know if you're doing enough damage through your stats and weapon to face a boss evenly or fairly, you just go by how effectively you're killing normal enemies in the dungeon on your way to the boss. The number of hits it takes to kill enemies should remain the same throughout the game so if it takes 3 hits to kill the standard enemy in the game's starting area (Undead Burg), it should take 3 hits to kill the standard enemy in the next dungeon and even the last dungeon (if you properly leveled yourself and your weapon). Same logic with regards on where to go. The beginning of Dark Souls is a perfect example as if you go anywhere but the right way you'll face enemies that will take way too long to kill, thus you should instantly know that's not the way to go and again, that's really just standard RPG logic. Do games really need to put the enemy's level floating above them to realize you're not supposed to fight said enemy? There's definitely some things that are convoluted for no reason like the weapon upgrade system where you can actually ruin your weapon if you don't know what you're doing. I feel Bloodborne is the best of the series just because it really removes or streamlines just about everything wrong with Dark Souls. It shouldn't be much of an issue to play through any Souls game without using a Wiki of any kind to be honest. The most you really may need to look up for your first time playing is exactly what each stat does and how weapons work (what determines a weapon's damage and how to upgrade them). One thing that is different from your standard RPG is that you sorta pick your weapon to use pretty much throughout the game and upgrade it vs getting new better weapons and discarding the old ones.Silentpony said:
As Phoenixmgs mentioned in the post directly after your last one, there is no "right" way or singular weapon or item you'll ever "need;" it's the lesson I had to learn early on in my playthrough. While enemies and bosses may have certain immunities, NONE of them have a singular weakness meaning they're susceptible to some degree to everything else, so any player patient enough to experiment can and will find a way to overcome every obstacle. Basically, everything works, there are just some things that might work better, and it's not unreasonable to expect a player to learn that a fire demon is immune to fire attacks within one or two tries before trying something else and improving from there.Silentpony said:
The wikis function more as guides to the lore and how the details of the world interconnect. You can still play it however you choose, but should you truly become lost, the community is there as a resource, something the game was designed to encourage, i.e.: messages left in game by other players online can guide you to hidden items or warn you of dangers ahead. Or, should you so choose, you can ignore the messages and wikis and with enough exploring, you'll find yourself... somewhere. (*Shrugs* should have checked the wiki!Silentpony said:
)Again, as Phoenixmgs said, the game really is easy once you understand how it works, and I'm saying this as someone who still struggles and is still learning. The enemies aren't obnoxiously hard once you understand that unlike a lot of RPGs that have us trained to think we outgrow threats and can eventually tank damage, Dark Souls teaches us the best lesson is to NOT take damage at all. Yeah, initial enemies can 2-shot you, seems unreasonably hard, until you realize that a good shield negates most-to-all of the incoming damage and provides you a window to deal your own damage which, with the right, upgraded weapon that scales with your stats and you're comfortable using can 1-shot a lot of enemies, take huge chunks from bosses' health and really turns the tables in the players' favor.Silentpony said:
Xprimentyl said:As Phoenixmgs mentioned in the post directly after your last one, there is no "right" way or singular weapon or item you'll ever "need;" it's the lesson I had to learn early on in my playthrough. While enemies and bosses may have certain immunities, NONE of them have a singular weakness meaning they're susceptible to some degree to everything else, so any player patient enough to experiment can and will find a way to overcome every obstacle. Basically, everything works, there are just some things that might work better, and it's not unreasonable to expect a player to learn that a fire demon is immune to fire attacks within one or two tries before trying something else and improving from there.Silentpony said:
Another thing I didn't know or expect going in was that unlike most RPGs where 100 hours into them, you can have dozens of the same weapon or armor pieces, on rare exception, the most significant, non-consumable items in Dark Souls are unique, i.e.: there's only one Zweihander, so when you encounter the unique (one might read that as the "best") stuff like this, you know immediately whether it fits your build or not, so it takes a fair amount of the guess work or trial-and-error out. Yeah, that Dragon Greatsword I found 50 hours into the game has a lot of big numbers associated with it, but I'm shredding bosses with my +15 Uchigatana which I've been using since 50 minutes into the game. It's a true RPG in that the world is basically static, but who you choose to be, where you choose to go and how you choose to get there within it is what makes the experience.
The wikis function more as guides to the lore and how the details of the world interconnect. You can still play it however you choose, but should you truly become lost, the community is there as a resource, something the game was designed to encourage, i.e.: messages left in game by other players online can guide you to hidden items or warn you of dangers ahead. Or, should you so choose, you can ignore the messages and wikis and with enough exploring, you'll find yourself... somewhere. (*Shrugs* should have checked the wiki!Silentpony said:
Again, as Phoenixmgs said, the game really is easy once you understand how it works, and I'm saying this as someone who still struggles and is still learning. The enemies aren't obnoxiously hard once you understand that unlike a lot of RPGs that have us trained to think we outgrow threats and can eventually tank damage, Dark Souls teaches us the best lesson is to NOT take damage at all. Yeah, initial enemies can 2-shot you, seems unreasonably hard, until you realize that a good shield negates most-to-all of the incoming damage and provides you a window to deal your own damage which, with the right, upgraded weapon that scales with your stats and you're comfortable using can 1-shot a lot of enemies, take huge chunks from bosses' health and really turns the tables in the players' favor.Silentpony said:
But in the end, Dark Souls isn't for everyone, and I'm not trying to sway your opinion; this is after all a thread about "games that everyone loves, but you don't," but as a recent Dark Souls convert, I hate to see anyone missing out on it for the same, unfairly-weighted first impressions biases that caused me to put off playing it for years, much to my regret. If a linear, overtly progressive journey is your bag, Dark Souls will not be that, but as a deep RPG whose pieces can be put together in nearly any way a player sees fit, I don't think you can get much better.
Yes, this. I discussed this, in topic about it, but still think DS "difficulty" is one of most hyperbolic claims I've ever heard of, gaming related.Phoenixmgs said:
Totally agree. People literally describe Dark Souls as the hardest game ever. Did they not play any game before last-gen? Hell, I'll contend games like Uncharted and the Tomb Raider reboot are much harder if they just had checkpoints as far apart as Dark Souls. The Dark Souls community took "git gud" from the MGO community (an actual really hard game) when they should've just coined the phrase "git careful".Athennesi said:
