I never died in Dark Souls.

[JagermanXcell]

Also since you had to press two buttons at once to run. It was going to be highly unlikely for me to accidentally discover it.

lol Two buttons to run. How silly.

The Anor Londo Silver Knight archers are unfair.

Wrong again. There are a multitude of ways to get past them, I'll list a few:
-Poison Arrows, since their poison resistance is lower then your patience.
-Stacking poise so you don't get launched by their shots when hit.
-Parrying them.
-Killing the one on the left to make the one on the right easier.
-Spam them OP Spells and Pyromancy.
And much much more. And take it from me, the archers are literally childs play when you realize that their AI isn't very bright.
Also Miyazaki designed that part himself for the purpose of pissing people off/teach players to use new tactics through punishment. Although he's a bit of a psychopath for it, it worked.

You want unfair? Bed of Chaos. Thats bad design and cheap deaths, even the devs were sorry for that damn boss...

Dark Souls isn't hard. Its challenging and if its your kinda game, its very fun. Now stop acting like you deserve a medal for beating it and enjoy your stay in Lordran.
(Show boat when you beat the game at slvl 1, maybe add some dual wielding, and the calamity ring and then we'll talk)

 

[shrekfan246]

Also since you had to press two buttons at once to run. It was going to be highly unlikely for me to accidentally discover it.

lol Two buttons to run. How silly.

That wasn't part of my post, that was something I quoted.

The Anor Londo Silver Knight archers are unfair.

Wrong again. There are a multitude of ways to get past them, I'll list a few:
-Poison Arrows, since their poison resistance is lower then your patience.
-Stacking poise so you don't get launched by their shots when hit.
-Parrying them.
-Killing the one on the left to make the one on the right easier.
-Spam them OP Spells and Pyromancy.
And much much more. And take it from me, the archers are literally childs play when you realize that their AI isn't very bright.
Also Miyazaki designed that part himself for the purpose of pissing people off/teach players to use new tactics through punishment. Although he's a bit of a psychopath for it, it worked.

Okay. But for a person playing and reaching that part for the very first time, they're not going to know any of that unless they specifically looked it up ahead of time. And if they don't know what to expect and how to properly counter or prepare for it, the Anor Londo Silver Knights are one of the very few sections of Dark Souls I'd legitimately classify as unfair, because there's nothing quite up to the same par before that point of the game, even accounting Blighttown.

Dark Souls isn't hard. Its challenging and if its your kinda game, its very fun. Now stop acting like you deserve a medal for beating it and enjoy your stay in Lordran.
(Show boat when you beat the game at slvl 1, maybe add some dual wielding, and the calamity ring and then we'll talk)

I can't tell if this is still supposed to be aimed at me or finally addressing the OP, because I had a grand little line that said:

And it's not a hard game. It's a game that doesn't care about you.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Okay. But for a person playing and reaching that part for the very first time, they're not going to know any of that unless they specifically looked it up ahead of time. And if they don't know what to expect and how to properly counter or prepare for it, the Anor Londo Silver Knights are one of the very few sections of Dark Souls I'd legitimately classify as unfair, because there's nothing quite up to the same par before that point of the game, even accounting Blighttown.

I wouldn't class them as unfair. They're as manageable as any other encounter. They're wielding bows, so your first thought(if you're not a ranged character) is to get close to them. You can roll under the arrows(they're slow enough that even a mid-roll will never get hit, with proper timing), or you can block them. The ledge that the knights are standing on is the only place you can possibly be hit, if you keep moving. When you get close to them, they pull out a shield and draw their sword, which signals that you'd better start blocking or learn to parry them fast. Which is also not so quick that you haven't any reaction time.

The archers go out of their way to give you the hardest time possible, but if you were good enough to make it through Sen's Fortress and take down the Iron Golem, you should be skilled enough to figure out how to make it past the archers. With a little observation, you can find your opening and rush them so fast they don't know which way is up.

 

[PrimitiveJudge]

Okay. But for a person playing and reaching that part for the very first time, they're not going to know any of that unless they specifically looked it up ahead of time. And if they don't know what to expect and how to properly counter or prepare for it, the Anor Londo Silver Knights are one of the very few sections of Dark Souls I'd legitimately classify as unfair, because there's nothing quite up to the same par before that point of the game, even accounting Blighttown.

I wouldn't class them as unfair. They're as manageable as any other encounter. They're wielding bows, so your first thought(if you're not a ranged character) is to get close to them. You can roll under the arrows(they're slow enough that even a mid-roll will never get hit, with proper timing), or you can block them. The ledge that the knights are standing on is the only place you can possibly be hit, if you keep moving. When you get close to them, they pull out a shield and draw their sword, which signals that you'd better start blocking or learn to parry them fast. Which is also not so quick that you haven't any reaction time.

The archers go out of their way to give you the hardest time possible, but if you were good enough to make it through Sen's Fortress and take down the Iron Golem, you should be skilled enough to figure out how to make it past the archers. With a little observation, you can find your opening and rush them so fast they don't know which way is up.

Spoiler

That iron golem fight was stupid easy, after I saw him jump backwards a few times, I angled him with his back on a cliff ledge and he jumped off. Fight over. Sen's Funhouse is my favorite area.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

That iron golem fight was stupid easy, after I saw him jump backwards a few times, I angled him with his back on a cliff ledge and he jumped off. Fight over. Sen's Funhouse is my favorite area.

"But not everyone would know to do that or be prepared for that! dfjdslfkjdsklfdsj!!"

On a more serious note, Sen's Fortress disappointed me. There were like, 3 different traps. That was it. And most of them were pressure plates that shoot arrows from the walls. Sen's Fortress was hailed a "Trap Castle." I call it Fail Castle because I really was expecting more.

 

[PrimitiveJudge]

oh right sorry, forgot the spoiler tags =(

 

[Exius Xavarus]

oh right sorry, forgot the spoiler tags =(

I was actually joking. Mocking the complaints I see that're primarily due to an inability to grasp simple strategy. xP

 

[Smeggs]

@OP: You can look around corners...it's called the left stick. I do it all the time in the game.

Your complaint about a lack of tutorial is not only idiotic, but downright wrong and your own fault. If you had bothered to read the shitload of BRIGHT GLOWING RED signs on the ground in the VERY FIRST AREA OF THE GAME you start in, you'd have learned to run literally right down the hall from the starting room of the game. As well as how to cast magic. And plunge attack. And virtually every basic mechanic required to play it.

The only truly cheap thing I recall is the frustratingly bullshit Greatbow Archers in Anor Londo, but even now I've learned that you can run up to the first and lead him back to the walkway to fight, so they don't give me really any trouble anymore.

Poise and virtually all other mechanics can be explained both through looking at them in the status window as well as using basic common sense. What does Poise mean? Balance. As in, you won't get staggered or knocked over easily. Much like you'd expect from Artorias who wields a Greatsword.

The difficulty of the game is blown out of proportion, but it is still much more difficult and skill-requiring than most other games these days, for certain. I know many people who stopped playing early on simply because they're too lazy to try and apply actual skill to the game and wanted victory handed to them.

Dark Souls is full of cheap deaths but in return it also fully encourages you to cause cheap deaths as well by abusing its game mechanics. If you don't abuse anything, it'll never be a fair fight.

My first ever game, I killed the first Black Knight you find (in the undead burgh) by accidentally pushing him off a cliff. He dropped the Black Knight Sword and I've been using it ever since. I am super-overpowered and I don't feel guilty in the slightest.
I killed another Black Knight by (again accidentally) locking him into a place where he couldn't reach me with his weapon properly. He went down easy and the game rewarded me with the Black Knight Halberd.

I know these are just flukes but they never seem to drop anything interesting when I kill them normally haha.

Ha, like how Black Knights can't climb ladders, or how if you have no souls and nothing to lose, run to the bottom of Darkroot Basin at a low level and jump off, the knight will jump after you and die as well, giving you the titanite before you respawn.

I also used both the fall glitch and stood out of his reach and spammed Ceaseless to death with arrows once.

Or early soul farming in Darkroot garden by getting the stupid Forest Hunter AI to jump off that staircase near the entrance when chasing you.

 

[Smeggs]

Dark Souls has some obscure stuff in it like how Dexterity increases casting speed and such and I know a few people who got confused over the lettering for weapons and stuff, they'd use these big 'strong' weapons that weren't tailored to their skills at ALL and the damage wasn't as good as it should have been :/, I don't know if it's the xbox or what but I can't backstab or parry, I've tried but it doesn't work, sometimes i'll backstab them when i'm in front of them instead o.o

Backstab hitbox on some of enemies is oddly placed. When the Black Knights are standing straight, it's actually more to their right or left for some reason. Parrying also takes some work on some enemies, as a lot of them have their own timing with different weapons.

The weapons probably aren't as strong because they're of different scaling class, which you can see on the Weapon's status window. That decides how much more damage they'll do the higher the skill they scale with raises. Also, it doesn't take a genius to equip a weapon, go to the bonfire, up a level and look in the status window to the right and see if the R. Weapon has become stronger. That's how I did it.

 

[deathzero021]

i didn't find it cheap at all. i thought it was really well designed (with the combat and enemies) and i only died a few times on boss fights and getting cornered by a large amount of difficult enemies. Or trying to bite off more than i can chew. Most of my deaths came from falling in blighttown (the only area that i think completely sucks) but after a while i got familiar with the area and that didn't become as large a problem.

I'm not sure what cheap shots you are referring to, Dark Souls certainly doesn't have many surprises other than the dragon bridge which didn't kill me the first time i went through there. it gives you more than enough time to react to most situations and not many things other than falling will kill you instantly.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

I'm not too far into the game, but I have to agree, some mondo cheap crap in the game. Homing arrows. Homing arrows. How could anybody ever hope to defend homing fucking arrows? I mean, at that point you might as well give the enemies a rocket launcher if your whole intention is to be a twat towards the player. Overall the game feels pretty fair the overwhelming majority of the time, but the other times it feels like its being pointlessly punitive and sometimes just outright unfair/cheap. I remember crossing a bridge early on - it was obvious that it was a site for a boss battle. What I couldn't possibly know is that a dragon would swoop down from behind me and kill me from behind, because there's no way to see the dragon beforehand.

I also felt that the game was pretty poor at explaining pretty much anything to you at all. I didn't even know that there was parrying in the game until I read it in the description for the rapier. I thought what was actually the parry was some sort of shield bash that just didn't work, presumably because I was playing pre-patch. I didn't know that you couldn't free-aim your crossbow (which is stupid in of itself) until I read about it online. I've gotten absolutely zero explanation in the game as to what "Humanity" is, and its not in the game manual either - I know what it is, but its mind-numbing to think that somebody looked at the game, saw that a core aspect wasn't explained, and proceeded to say "Yeah, thats perfectly fine. Put the game to print." I think some of this "old-school difficulty" that they seem to be emulating is stupid, because in a lot of old games, there wasn't enough memory to explain in-game how things worked, and trial-and-error was the solution and only because hardware constraints. Even when you pop up the menus and use the "explanation" button/key to find out what, say, faith is, there's still no real explanation into how those numbers translate into gameplay. I quite frankly don't know if any of these stats are particularly useful past reaching Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence/Faith requirements to use certain equipment.

Again, overall, I'm enjoying the game, very much so, but there's a a few completely cheap things thrown in every now and then, and the lack of meaningful information is staggering IMO. I'd recommend the game, but not without an asterisk.

The arrows don't home. At all. And you can block them easily. Also, the dragon appears at the start of the Undead Burg, so seeing a bridge covered in burn marks and charred corpses should probably give you a few hints.

The Intelligence and Faith stats boost sorceries and miracles, and Strength and Dexterity improve damage of weapons based on the weapon's scaling parameters. Resistance is useless. Endurance increases your equipment load, so you can hold heavier equipment without lowering mobility. Attunement grants you more slots for spells. Oh, and Vitality increases your health.

 

[Colt47]

Actually, the most frustrating thing to happen to me in dark souls wasn't really dieing. I was trying to kill the Bridge drake legitimately and got it down to 1/4 health, then it gliched and instantly died off screen. Unfortunately, I'll probably have a change of heart once I'm through this crystal tower / library place.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

I'm not too far into the game, but I have to agree, some mondo cheap crap in the game. Homing arrows. Homing arrows. How could anybody ever hope to defend homing fucking arrows?

With a shield, that's how. You can sidestep arrows, too. I sidestep arrows all the time. Arrows may home, but only just. They only have a very slight change in trajectory and are very, very easy to dodge.

Yeah, I'm not an idiot. I don't expect the game to pull something that is complete bullshit by having the dragon swoop down from behind me from a place that I can't see beforehand with absolutely no audible cues of any kind (which is another thing I dislike about the game - enemies don't make noise)

Enemies do, in fact, make noise. Plenty of it, actually. The funny part is that you actually can see the dragon, before it swoops down on you. And I don't mean at the beginning of the Undead Burg. There's oil on the bridge, so you can tell something is going to light it on fire. Being an open bridge with no other enemies that have fire with them, it should clue you in that the dragon's going to make an appearance as soon as you try crossing that bridge. And being that there's nowhere for it to roost beyond the bridge inside the Undead Parish, that would also clue you in that it's going to come from the open sky behind you.

The arrows don't home. At all.

I'm not sure where you got your information, but you should ask for a refund. Arrows do, in fact, home in on you. But only just, as I said earlier. They've got a very slight change in trajectory when you move. What people don't seem to realize is how little arrows actually do home. "OMG ARROWS MOVE WHEN I MOVE, HOW TO?! I CAN'T! I HAVE LOST MY ABILITY TO CAN!" People are freaking out about it way too much. They're beyond easy to sidestep if you don't feel like simply putting up your shield.

Addendum:

I quite frankly don't know if any of these stats are particularly useful past reaching Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence/Faith requirements to use certain equipment.

There is actually a use for those stats, beyond weapon requirements. Stat scaling is one of them. Dexterity also(which, granted, I haven't personally seen this explained anywhere) reduces the time it takes to cast sorceries/miracles/pyromancies. 45 Dex is where the cast time reduction caps out. Intelligence and Faith also determine the effectiveness of your sorceries and miracles. They also affect and increase the Mag Adjust on catalysts and talismans. As an added bonus, you actually have to have X amount of intelligence before Griggs or Logan will open shop and teach you their sorceries.

 

[PrimitiveJudge]

Arrow's home slightly. They are not patriot missiles, they are arrows, slow, visible and turn like a curveball. The ones that you DO having to worry about are the toxic darts in Blighttown.