Why wasn't Kingdom of Amalur as praised as Skyrim or Dragon Age?

[lapan]

The only thing that gives Dark Souls any difficulty whatsoever is the lack of a checkpoint system of other games or a save anywhere system.

It does have a checkpoint system. It's even more forgiving than most because it doesn't reset everything you found since the last time. It's just that the checkpoints are called bonfires instead of checkpoints and you have to trigger them manually.

 

[lassiie]

First off, I have read through this entire forum and am kind of amazed at how half of the people are talking about KOA and the other half Dark Souls.

KOA was ok, I got bored and never finished it, simple as that. Honestly felt like Skyrim forcibly had sex with Fable and KOA was there weird little offspring, that has none of the best qualities of either game.

Now, Dark Souls on the other hand, is a game I am very well versed in. I have been laughing my ass off at anyone who says Dark Souls is easy the first time they play it through. Is Dark Souls easy for me, yes, because I have played for something like 400 hours over 3 characters, and that isn't even comparable to a lot of people who have played it way more. I am on something like NG+++++++ or something like that, don't remember.

Either way, most of the people on here who have complained about Dark Souls clearly have no idea what they are talking about, and have caused me to laugh at the BS they spew out, as I am sure everyone else on this forum who has played has done the same thing as well. Anyone who says that they ran through this game with no issues and thought all the bosses were easy is completely full of shit. Even if you read the guides before hand, you will most likely die to half the bosses in the game at least once, and you will DEFINITELY die at least once on Bed of Chaos, which to me is the only poorly designed boss of the game.

The other thing that makes me laugh is how people think that the normal enemies are just artificially made harder by giving them more health or damage. The reason they think this is because they are used to playing every other game in existence where your character drastically overpowers the normal enemies, and they are there as filler between story/boss fights. What makes the enemies hard in Dark Souls is that 90% of them play by the same rules that your main character does. Meaning that if you can kill an enemy in 3 hits, they can probably do the same to you, in the beginning at least. Almost every enemy is a threat to you the first time you play through.

The other thing I am sick of seeing is all these people saying, 'I can block with a dex build and a light shield through all the bosses' which is complete bullshit. First off, I bet they probably couldn't even tell me the Stat on the shield that determines its effectiveness to block, otherwise they would have brought it up. FYI, its Stability which determines how much of your endurance gets drained with each attack. I ran a dex/int build, which I found very fun, and I know for a fact that you can't just hold block through every boss fight because I was unable to. Yes, you can block almost every one of a boss' attacks. Keyword there being ONE. Normally with a light shield the first attack will drain the majority of your stamina forcing you to evade or drop your guard. Unless you are using the Grass Crest Shield with a green blossom, your stamina will not restore enough before the next attack, causing you to take massive damage from the guard break. Even with 40 End on my dex build (which is normally considered the soft cap for stats) you would have a hard time guarding against more then two attacks in a row, not to mention almost every boss has one attack that is designed to deal stamina damage while guarding, even though it doesn't deal much damage to your health.

That was a pretty simple explanation on how the blocking and shield mechanics work in this game. I could go way more in depth about the types of shield, resistances that each shield has against each type of attack, but that isn't necessary.

The most important flaw in everything I have read is most players comprehension of the idea of death in Dark Souls. Let me start this off by saying, DEATH IS A MECHANIC IN THE GAME. This game is designed for you to die. It is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to beat this game without dying. You don't reload at an earlier checkpoint, you don't reload a previous save, you dont magically come back to life with less money in your pocket. You resurrect at the last Bonfire you rested at, losing all your souls and humanity, as well as becoming hollowed. You can retrieve your souls and humanity by making it back to your bloodstain without dying again. This mechanic, is quite simply, one of the best I have seen in a long time. It is ungodly unfair when you die, as you have the chance to recover everything you lost, unless you die a second time. I remember early in the game having 40k souls and dying to some random monster, and then trying to get back to my bloodstain. It adds tension and fear of dying. I guarantee you approach every monster with caution when 2-3 levels worth of souls are on the line. Later in the game, souls stop mattering, and you will have 40 humanity that you are terrified to lose as it means grinding for it again. I have seen people mention the Mimic that you encounter in Sen's Fortress the first time that will kill every first time player unless they are told its there. Well, guess what happens, you die, you learn, and you apply what you have learned, primarily you spend the rest of the game attacking EVERY treasure chest before opening it.

As for exploitable AI, yes, almost every game has exploitable AI if you try hard enough. Skyrim being pretty notorious for it. It is only a game breaker if you choose to use it to break the game. If you feel the need to exploit the game, Dark Souls honestly isn't the game for you. Dark Souls was a nice change of pace, because for the first time in years, I remembered what true challenge actually felt like. I remember actually feeling accomplished when I defeated bosses or cleared areas because it was an actual achievement.

This post has gone on long enough. Forgot all the things I wanted to dispute that people had said about dark souls.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

Man - I totally hear you about JRPGs, but you owe it to yourself to play Dragon's Dogma. The story makes more sense after the 2nd playthrough, but Dogma combat destroys all other games in it's genre. You create your own stories with the combat alone.

As to Amalur - I really enjoyed it. A sequel would address the issues that people had, but Ii loved the combat. It was a step forward. Most action RPGs have bland combat, but you really can't say that about Amalur. Amalur deserves a sequel. It's not perfect, but neither is Skyrim (which I refuse to play because the combat drove me away!)

I'm an old school arcade gamer, so Dragon's Dogma really scratched the itch, but Amalur is not bad at all. In fact, my top three. Role playing games with real time action would be Dogma on top, Tales of Vesperia, and then Amalur in 3rd place. I'm glad I own it. I've got to go back an do the House of Valor because I've done everything else. The backgrounds are fun, and I like the character design. I think a sequel would need to be more like Vindictus for PC - THAT game looks tight. Too bad about the server issues though.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Like others have stated, you come over as a huge troll who so desperately wanted to to argue how KoA is good that he made a thread about it and repeats the same arguments over and over and over. A few things:

You can not excuse the flaws KoA had by simply pointing at an other game that had the same flaw. KoA tried to combine a lot of mechanics and aspects that were great in other Games and thus lost focus. As others pointed out, the Combat is great at first, but becomes immensely repetetive. The Story looses itself 10 feet outside of the first Dungeon, and the Sidequests are generic MMO-Quests who rarely manage to hook you in. The Characters and setting are as bland as the so called "Tolkien-Fantasy" you are calling out. It's just that the game play extra pretentious by giving them different names. Watch Yahtzees Zero Punctuation Episode about the Game, he sums it up in the first Minute pretty nicely. The Characters were horribly uninteresting, only sticking around long enough to give their generic sidequest or vomit exposition at you.

Now, of course i could point at Borderlands and say that it has the same bland sidequests. And at Skyrim for either bland Characters or simplistic combat. Or at Dark Souls for having expoitable Combat. Etc. etc. etc.

But fact is, KoA had all of them combined.

Skyrim has them all combined as well; repetitive combat, boring sidequests, and bland characters and story. I don't see how KoA is like an MMO, it's no more MMO-ish than Borderlands, people only say that because it started as an MMO. From the Wiki article it says the game's lore was written with an MMO in mind, not that the actual game itself began as an MMO. It feels like any other open world game to me.

Also, it's hard for me to understand why people play RPGs with bad combat because you are fighting enemies so much of your time played, why would you put up with so much bad to get to the good stuff? That goes for any game really.

Now, about your Dark Souls complaints. First of all, yes its true that there are a lot of occassions where you _can_ abuse systems to ease or outright cheat around the difficulty. But if you do that, you are playing the game wrong. Amalur's Combat is the same. Its absolutely winnable by just mashing LMB and using Dodge ocassionally. Thats it. But if you do that, you are limiting yourself. The Combat only gets really interesting if you actually use the Arsenal given to you.

About the exploitable DS Bosses:

I actually had one Seath encounter where he would spam the one Crystal attack that doesnt cover his belly. It made the encounter a lot easier, but that only happened to me once. The Taurus Demon falling off the Wall is a feature, not a bug. There's an obvious hole in the wall, and if you're playing a build that has enough Stamina and a decent shield, you can usually bait him into doing a backwards jump into the abyss. But its just as possible that he spams his smashes at you, depleting your stamina and thus fu*king you over. But its allways possible to get lucky. The Gaping Dragon can be baited into doing lengthy Smashing Moves or a charge, he takes a while to get back up and can be easily slashed or shot at while he does those attacks. If he hits you however, its potentitally a one-shot. Infernal Discharge can be thrown into the Lava Pit next to his Arena. And lastly, the Iron Golem can be toppled as well, if done next to one of the broken pillars he will trip over the wall and die instantly. This is all a feature, its a reward for thinking around the Encounter and trying to be smart. Especially Discharge and the Golem can take a ton of punishment if you're not playing something heavy, so the game offers an alternative.

The undead dragons can indeed be killed by arrows, btw. But if you stand there and pump 300 Arrows into an Enemy who cant reach you, and then complain about the Game being too easy, i'd recommend thinking about the whole thing again.

Meanwhile, in Amalur: LMB-lMB-LMB-Dodgeroll-LMB-LMB-LMB-Dodgeroll-LIMIT BREAK *everything dies*

What im trying to say, you can easily "break" most Games by abusing certain factors. But thats not a valid complaint when you're trying to sell Amalur as such a great Action RPG. Like others said, the best comparison is that its an Offline MMO. Trying everything, exceeding at nothing. I'd really like to see a sequel where they try to get some focus going. Theres certainly potential in the Game, its just buried by generic, uninteresting RPG-Features from other Games.

PS.

Just as a clarification. I've seen people playing Dark Souls completely naked, on level 1, with the starting Club you get from playing the Hobo. And they completed the game. It's absolutely possible that the Game is subjectively easy for some cracks, but that doesnt mean that its not a ton more difficult than most other Games of this generation.

Most of my complaints about Dark Souls have nothing to do with exploiting the game. It's just a fact you can go up to any enemy (99% of them) with any build and just block and melee attack. The game doesn't force you to use any other strategy whatsoever. Bayonetta throws enemies at you that you have to dodge offset; even Heavenly Sword makes you use different combos against different enemies. With Dark Souls, the first enemy you face is the same as every other enemy. I don't even know about most of those boss exploits, I beat most of them just blocking and meleeing as a thief. I only faced Seath twice and he couldn't damage me either time; the 1st time he cursed me with like 25% health left, then I put on curse resistant stuff and stood in front of him hacking away. One poster said I was lying and another poster said that Seath is the 2nd easiest boss so I don't know which it is. The one major control issue I have with Dark Souls is that when you have your shield up and not locked-on, you can't backpedal for some stupid reason, which makes fighting multiple enemies way harder than it should be.

KoA's combat is way tougher than just pressing attack a few times and then dodging (I don't even get how you can do that as most encounters have you facing several enemies at once). I've died on encounters over and over again in KoA whereas that never happened in Dark Souls. I've only played as the rogue so far and combat really changes as you get new abilities. For example, the charged dagger attack (where you go from enemy to enemy cutting them) feels useless, then you get envenomed edge which puts poison on the daggers thus making that charged attack much better. Then, I got smoke bombs and those are great and I just got gambit which is a total game changer. All the rogue's abilities play off each other. Combat definitely changes way more than it does in Dark Souls because Dark Souls just has you upping numbers and nothing else, which is a trap no RPG should ever fall into similar to a cover shooter turning into whack-a-mole.

 

[Ritualist]

Most of my complaints about Dark Souls have nothing to do with exploiting the game. It's just a fact you can go up to any enemy (99% of them) with any build and just block and melee attack. The game doesn't force you to use any other strategy whatsoever. Bayonetta throws enemies at you that you have to dodge offset; even Heavenly Sword makes you use different combos against different enemies. With Dark Souls, the first enemy you face is the same as every other enemy. I don't even know about most of those boss exploits, I beat most of them just blocking and meleeing as a thief. I only faced Seath twice and he couldn't damage me either time; the 1st time he cursed me with like 25% health left, then I put on curse resistant stuff and stood in front of him hacking away. One poster said I was lying and another poster said that Seath is the 2nd easiest boss so I don't know which it is. The one major control issue I have with Dark Souls is that when you have your shield up and not locked-on, you can't backpedal for some stupid reason, which makes fighting multiple enemies way harder than it should be.

KoA's combat is way tougher than just pressing attack a few times and then dodging (I don't even get how you can do that as most encounters have you facing several enemies at once). I've died on encounters over and over again in KoA whereas that never happened in Dark Souls. I've only played as the rogue so far and combat really changes as you get new abilities. For example, the charged dagger attack (where you go from enemy to enemy cutting them) feels useless, then you get envenomed edge which puts poison on the daggers thus making that charged attack much better. Then, I got smoke bombs and those are great and I just got gambit which is a total game changer. All the rogue's abilities play off each other. Combat definitely changes way more than it does in Dark Souls because Dark Souls just has you upping numbers and nothing else, which is a trap no RPG should ever fall into similar to a cover shooter turning into whack-a-mole.

So what you're saying is it's the game's fault that you played a tank? Which is easy mode for EVERY action rpg mind you.
A game with variety doesn't DEMAND you to play a specific way. Games that DEMAND you to play a specific way are called linear and tend to not be very fun. SO it's bad that there is variety, and it's only bad because you weren't FORCED to explore it?
Blocking and melee as a thief? You use a great shield and buffed your vit and endurance while you were at it? Cause as a dex build you CAN'T block. You lose most of your stamina and damage goes through because you don't have the endurance or stability to fend off a hit. You have to DODGE.

SO, your inability to exit your comfort zone (remember, your comfort zone being easy mode for the game) is a fault in the game? How?

You were a thief? What does that mean? You buffed your dex and endurance and only stuck with low damage weapons? You ever killed Ceaseless Discharge only dealing 46 damage per hit? Because that's what I dealt per hit as a pyromancer who had to level a different weapon. Improper planning left me in a dire situation. Ever try to complete Anor Lano with a divine weapon? Not freaking possible I say.
You said you dropped one of the Four Kings before another had a chance to spawn. Sounds like the two tank runs I did. Four Kings is a DPS race, or an endurance test based on your build. So, you either blatantly lie constantly, or you played the game in the easiest way possible, CHOSE not to explore what the game had to offer, and then faulted it for not FORCING you down a linear path of unfairly difficult progression.

You are a liar, a hypocrite, and quite frankly a delusional. KOA got blown up on because it did everything bad. It had nothing overshadowing it's flaws, it had skewed direction on the kind of game it wanted to be, and combining mechanics of multiple rpg genres all made for an aimless game.
That's why Kingdoms of Amalur wasn't as praised as Skyrim or Dragon Age. It didn't have enough things to make it stand out. Finding that tanking on Dark Souls makes it supremely easy, is not a defense for a game that can be beaten with 1 button.

Now don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with liking a game that did 80% of itself wrong. I can see the good in Clive Barker's Jericho. But that doesn't mean it's not a shitty game.

 

[ERaptor]

-snip-

The Reason people are accusing you of lying is simple, what you say is either false, missing some extra information or you had a really freaking bugged out version. Like other pointed out, its is indeed true that you can Block most attacks, but it drains Stamina. And there are a ton of attacks who outright smash trough your Block, or deal an alternative form of Damage which your Shield can not hold odd completely. An other possibility is, that you were grossly overleveled. Since some high reward, high risk areas are avaible early on you can indeed powerlevel if you want to. And with a high enough Stamina-Level you could indeed block even heavier attacks from bigger Enemies.

And as much as you point this out, most people in this thread and most sources you can look up (Videos on YT for example) outright prove what you say wrong. Try beating Artorias with just "Blocking". Try beating the Goat Demon with just Blocking. Unless you seriously outlevel and outequip the encounter, its very very unlikely it was such a cakewalk like you said.But there is absolutely no point arguing with you about this, is there? We could very well show you a Video of a Thief trying to block the Taurus Demon, or x other Bosses repeatedtly (And then dying horribly), and you still would insist on your "But it isnt difficult!". At least thats the vibe im getting.

And yeah, Amalur throws multiple Enemies at you. But that does not break the flow at all. You engage one guy, mash away, and as soon as you see a telegraphed attack you dodge. Rinse and repeat. Of course, you CAN be fancy and use all your Arsenal. But its entirely unecessary. You can hop around like a Bunny on Acid and just smash LMB to win. And even IF you use the Combat System to its fullest, like i said it gets repetitive. Its simply not that difficult and great a combat system you make it out to be. And a lot of people confirmed me on this. About the only encounters that generally annoyed me, where the ones against Bosses, who have a ludicrous amount of health. And that just adds to the "Mash LMB infinetly to win"-feeling the Game gets. Its not quite as bad as for example Gothic 3, there was certainly _some_ thought in it.

Now, the "empty MMO"-feeling. The thing is, i actually tried to break free from the designated path and run wild. But in Skyrim, when i said to myself "Fu*k this." and walked 50 Miles into the opposite direction of my quest, i would discover interesting new stuff. The Sourrundings changed, the Quests are different. You could discover a town terrorized by Vampires, and while killing half of the Cult you discover a Swamp, fight a Dragon inside of it and then duel a Vampire Lord inside a Cave. It felt organic, like really adventuring. Amalur felt like a Tour with 50 different Tourguides, who are all horribly boring. The Stuff you look at is certainly good looking, but its allways the same boring stuff.

Granted, Skyrim only really kicks in once you get some good Mods going, but the basic were there, the fundament was built, the World delivered. Skyrim is a Giant Cake, with 3 layers of delicious Chocolate. Yes, you need to add the Icing etc. yourself with some mods to add extra flavour, and without it you may soon get tired of eating only chocolate. But the basics are there and damn delicious.

Amalur is all the materials of said cake thrown into the Oven, and then abandoned halfway trough baking.

 

[joest01]

There has to be complexity to the gameplay and game mechanics. There are many enemies in Dark Souls but pretty much all of them require the same strategy to defeat, all you do is block and then attack afterward (for any character build).

Really, you are actually not required to block at all. If you rely on blocking you will run into trouble in later game+ runthroughs for sure. Actually, I would be interested how people in deep ng+++'s beat that silly tree boss. There is only so much stamina you can have, right?

btw, they did balance the game a bit when they nerfed the crystal shield and the gold armor. That shit was game breaking.

But all this talk has made me curious what I was missing in my short and disappointing affair with KoA. So, I am re-downloading before it drops off the psn+ list.

 

[MS267]

Is the OP really still trying to hold up the stance of not just being a troll here? A question is posed to people about why KoA wasn't as praised as other games like Skyrim, but then everyone who comes in with a rational and well thought is met by a response of the OP clasping his hands over his ears and refusing to aknowledge any of the viewpoints put forwards, when the unfortunate answer is... it's just not as good.

I'm going to get one thing straight right now; I've not played KoA. The reason why is every professional reviewer and standard gamer who has played it gives me the same impression that it's just sort of ok - starts interesting for a while but soon becomes boring when you realise the combat system is incredibly simple and the boring, grindy quests are a huge turn off. The OP is the first person I've actually seen give KoA such a glowing recommendation which just suggests he's in a very, very small minority.

Now then, where to begin? I'll start with this "depth" I guess. So KoA has a deep combat system whereas Dark Souls' is completely lacking? Considering the number of posters saying KoA is a cakewalk on hard and combat can be reduced to a simple button mash with game breaking powers given to the player very early on outnumbers people disagreeing by probably about 10 to 1 it suggests a problem here. So the OP is playing a rogue-like and is performing nice fancy combos and is also dying fairly frequently while other people are sticking to one weapon or spell and blazing throguh encounters? That's not actually depth to be honest, that's artificial depth which you're creating for yourself. If hacking away with your greatsword was good for 2 zones and then became obsolete with stronger enemies then there'd be depth as you're forced to mix things up and utilise different strategies, without it however combos become useless and unecessary so I don't think they become a valid argument in looking at how deep the combat system is since from the sounds of it you can pretty much ignore them for the entire game.

Meanwhile, you describe Dark Souls as lacking in depth because you decided to actively seek ways to exploit the game and suck the fun out of it, which doesn't really sit well with me because you're slating a game for your choices. You play a tank and use the same lure-block-melee strategy for the whole game. While is does seem like you're making stuff up even at this point I'll go along with it, but yeah let's say you can repeat one overly simple mechanic (like in say, KoA from the sounds of it) then we're left at an impasse here aren't we? It's no longer a situation where we're judging the games mechanics but rather the choices of the player in the mechanics he chose to use. Your standard Dark Souls player doesn't do this; they use dodges, kicks, parry and riposte's and learn how enemies map their attacks, becoming better and better until, as a previous poster said, they're completing the game at level 1 with the "deprived" class because everything is second nature to them. That is depth. Of course, judging from how you apparently played Dark Souls this is irrelevant - not bothering to use parry and riposte because "it's useless and too risky" (see: I couldn't do it so it must be the games fault), or sitting back and launching 300+ arrows into mini bosses from well before the point you're supposed to fight them (which is so, so dumb. If I found myself doing that I'd probably start re-evaluating my life.)

Now the next thing is that I'd ask you stop talking about Skyrim with such authority. I've tried to be careful with how I've spoken about KoA as I only have things like Angry Joe's review and the opinions of other poster to cite when talking about it, so everything I've said is really a regurgitation of something someone else has said. Meanwhile, here you are having watch someone play Skyrim for a few hours and deciding you're some sort of expert on it. "Oh, this guy was one shotting everything, ergo Skyrim is pathetically easy." To which I'd reply that you should probably get a grasp of the concept of logic. The reason he was doing that it gonna most likely be one or a combination of 3 reasons:

i. He had a late game chracter, has incredible (possibly even glitched) items and good perk investment.
ii. He was fighting enemies which were much weaker than he was
iii. He was playing on a low difficulty setting

Now I've put more time into Skyrim than I have any other game, and I can safely say that it is by no means an easy game if you put it to an appropriate difficulty setting - and it's not even artificial difficulty to be honest. If you put it up to Master difficulty when you're level 1 with an iron sword and some rags then sure, you'll have a hard time since enemies do more damage and soak up an insane amount of hits. I don't think that's artificial difficulty though, because by the end game when youre running around with your Daedric Greatword of Ultimate Badassery with drain HP and fire damage enchants, with perks, damage buffs via armour enchants and 2 Dremora Lords you've conjured how the hell else are you going to make enmies fight back other than let them tank hits? We all know combat's a bit shonky in TES games so it's not like you can make them better at dodging or avoiding your hits. It is at this point however I realise I'm on a bit of a tangent so I'll discreetly get back to the topic at hand.

What I'm trying to say is you can't have such an isolated experience as that and then make claims about difficulty, gameplay, combat, atmosphere etc. based on your experience. For all I know KoA IS harder than Dark Souls but the OP is literally the only person who I've ever seen claim that so I'd like to think I can be safe in making a judgement that it's not since as it is the OP's posts have done nothing but tell everyone else that they're wrong.

You do realise that "other games have these flaws" isn't an excuse to dimiss them? Ok, so maybe one game shares a flaw with KoA, and another shares a diferent flaw. The problem is that these game make up for their shortcomings with what's good about them. Skyrim is glitchy, doesn't have the best combat and has awful level scaling for both enemies and items - on the other hand the world feels rich and expansive, with deep lore, huge potential for different character builds, fantastic freedom and the combat isn't even so bad that I feel fighting is a chore. Dark Souls also has flaws in its combat system and doesn't tell you enough about what you're doing, so the early hours can be extremely confusing - on the other hand it has one of the richest atmospheres you'll find, offers a good challenge to players, and has one of the most perfect learning curves you'll find providing you make it to the point where the game just clicks. I've not seen anything to suggest KoA has anyhing completely special about it to make up for it's flaws and be seen as a truly great game.

 

[Manoose47]

...'Cos it's bad?

Hole in one!
There was nothing in the game we hadn't seen a hundred times before, and whats worse - there was no hook!
sure all fantasy rpg's fall into the trap of having similar lore, creatures, tropes etc. But the memorable titles have their hook,
Elder scrolls has its vast fully explorable land
Bioware titles generally have excellent characters, story-lines and dialogues
games like Vampire TMB, the witcher and dark souls have a Dark grittiness to them.


KOA had none of that, it was like a poor WoW clone with shitty visuals and forgettable characters.

I literally lol'd when OP wrote "Skyrim can't even touch KoA"
to me this is inconceivable, akin to saying that fish eyeballs taste better than chocolate.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

The only thing that gives Dark Souls any difficulty whatsoever is the lack of a checkpoint system of other games or a save anywhere system.

It does have a checkpoint system. It's even more forgiving than most because it doesn't reset everything you found since the last time. It's just that the checkpoints are called bonfires instead of checkpoints and you have to trigger them manually.

Yeah, I realize the bonfires are basically checkpoints but for the most part, you have to play through rather lengthy sections to get to the next one (sometimes the entire dungeon just before the boss). Dark Souls "checkpoints" are much less frequent, plus all the enemies respawn so it is harder than pretty much any other game's checkpoint system.

Now, Dark Souls on the other hand, is a game I am very well versed in. I have been laughing my ass off at anyone who says Dark Souls is easy the first time they play it through. Is Dark Souls easy for me, yes, because I have played for something like 400 hours over 3 characters, and that isn't even comparable to a lot of people who have played it way more. I am on something like NG+++++++ or something like that, don't remember.

Either way, most of the people on here who have complained about Dark Souls clearly have no idea what they are talking about, and have caused me to laugh at the BS they spew out, as I am sure everyone else on this forum who has played has done the same thing as well. Anyone who says that they ran through this game with no issues and thought all the bosses were easy is completely full of shit. Even if you read the guides before hand, you will most likely die to half the bosses in the game at least once, and you will DEFINITELY die at least once on Bed of Chaos, which to me is the only poorly designed boss of the game.

The other thing that makes me laugh is how people think that the normal enemies are just artificially made harder by giving them more health or damage. The reason they think this is because they are used to playing every other game in existence where your character drastically overpowers the normal enemies, and they are there as filler between story/boss fights. What makes the enemies hard in Dark Souls is that 90% of them play by the same rules that your main character does. Meaning that if you can kill an enemy in 3 hits, they can probably do the same to you, in the beginning at least. Almost every enemy is a threat to you the first time you play through.

The other thing I am sick of seeing is all these people saying, 'I can block with a dex build and a light shield through all the bosses' which is complete bullshit. First off, I bet they probably couldn't even tell me the Stat on the shield that determines its effectiveness to block, otherwise they would have brought it up. FYI, its Stability which determines how much of your endurance gets drained with each attack. I ran a dex/int build, which I found very fun, and I know for a fact that you can't just hold block through every boss fight because I was unable to. Yes, you can block almost every one of a boss' attacks. Keyword there being ONE. Normally with a light shield the first attack will drain the majority of your stamina forcing you to evade or drop your guard. Unless you are using the Grass Crest Shield with a green blossom, your stamina will not restore enough before the next attack, causing you to take massive damage from the guard break. Even with 40 End on my dex build (which is normally considered the soft cap for stats) you would have a hard time guarding against more then two attacks in a row, not to mention almost every boss has one attack that is designed to deal stamina damage while guarding, even though it doesn't deal much damage to your health.

That was a pretty simple explanation on how the blocking and shield mechanics work in this game. I could go way more in depth about the types of shield, resistances that each shield has against each type of attack, but that isn't necessary.

The most important flaw in everything I have read is most players comprehension of the idea of death in Dark Souls. Let me start this off by saying, DEATH IS A MECHANIC IN THE GAME. This game is designed for you to die. It is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to beat this game without dying. You don't reload at an earlier checkpoint, you don't reload a previous save, you dont magically come back to life with less money in your pocket. You resurrect at the last Bonfire you rested at, losing all your souls and humanity, as well as becoming hollowed. You can retrieve your souls and humanity by making it back to your bloodstain without dying again. This mechanic, is quite simply, one of the best I have seen in a long time. It is ungodly unfair when you die, as you have the chance to recover everything you lost, unless you die a second time. I remember early in the game having 40k souls and dying to some random monster, and then trying to get back to my bloodstain. It adds tension and fear of dying. I guarantee you approach every monster with caution when 2-3 levels worth of souls are on the line. Later in the game, souls stop mattering, and you will have 40 humanity that you are terrified to lose as it means grinding for it again. I have seen people mention the Mimic that you encounter in Sen's Fortress the first time that will kill every first time player unless they are told its there. Well, guess what happens, you die, you learn, and you apply what you have learned, primarily you spend the rest of the game attacking EVERY treasure chest before opening it.

As for exploitable AI, yes, almost every game has exploitable AI if you try hard enough. Skyrim being pretty notorious for it. It is only a game breaker if you choose to use it to break the game. If you feel the need to exploit the game, Dark Souls honestly isn't the game for you. Dark Souls was a nice change of pace, because for the first time in years, I remembered what true challenge actually felt like. I remember actually feeling accomplished when I defeated bosses or cleared areas because it was an actual achievement.

This post has gone on long enough. Forgot all the things I wanted to dispute that people had said about dark souls.

I didn't use a guide at all for Dark Souls. I played through every dungeon without any walkthroughs whatsoever. I didn't even get hit by a single trap in Sen's Fortress, I'm not fucking lying either (the traps were so fucking obvious). Before I played the game, I did read one of those Dark Souls "quick tips" posts or something (had stuff like always walk around with your shield up and basic stuff like that) and they said to check every treasure chest, which I did all game so I killed the mimic at Sen's Fortress with ease. I read a "quick tips" thing because I hadn't played Demon's Souls and I heard the game is hard. There are several dungeons I made it through without a single death. If you just play slow and cautious, it's actually pretty hard to die. The only time I looked up anything in a guide was for what you do with the boss souls as I knew you weren't just supposed to sell them. I made Quelaag's Furysword and used it for a bit just to change it up, but I mainly stuck to my Iaito just because I thought it was cooler.

I usually play RPGs underleveled so I get a challenge. I don't feel normal enemies should be "filler" and easy to kill, they should pose a challenge, now some games are more about fighting 1 or a couple enemies at a time or some games are about fighting several enemies at a time. The more enemies you fight at a time, the weaker each individual enemy is. Yeah, the enemies may kill me in 3 hits in Dark Souls but they never get those 3 hits in because they are so easy. And increasing an enemy's damage and health to high amounts does make a game artificially difficult. For example, I played through Borderlands 2 on my 2nd playthrough doing just story missions to save the side missions for afterward so I could get awesome items from the sidequests, and some of the enemies literally took ALL of my ammo to kill, that is just artificially difficult.

I never said you can block every boss's attacks with a Dex build, I said you can block 99% of the enemies in the game with a Dex build. I think the only normal enemies I may have not been able to block where the things have rocks in Blighttown and those giant knights in Anor Londo. Boss battles shouldn't be the only battles in a game that test you, normal enemies should test you. I was able to block quite a few bosses like Quelaag and the Gargoyles that I really didn't think I should be able to block. I don't remember every single boss fight, I just remember most of them weren't very hard and it only took me a few tries to beat them if I didn't beat them my first try. An example of an enemy I shouldn't be able to block with my build are the regular knights, but I could block their triple sword attack with no issue. Also, if there is any pause in the enemy's attacks, you can lower your shield and regain massive amounts of stamina. And what other fucking stat other than stability would anyone think is the most important stat for a shield? It's so fucking obvious, just like everything else about the game.

Just cause you did it to me, I'll do it you. I was laughing so fucking hard when you said Dark Souls provided a true challenge. Go play Bayonetta on Normal for a better challenge than Dark Souls. The game has normal enemies along with bosses that force you to use the game's advanced mechanics. Playing Bayonetta on NSIC is a real challenge. I want a tough experience from most games. I played Metal Gear Online for 4 years, which is an online shooter that required the most aiming skill of any shooter ever because you needed headshots to kill as it took full clips to kill with body shots (3 shots to the chest wouldn't even take a quarter of health), and I got good enough to play with and against the very best players in that game. I know what a fucking hard game is and Dark Souls is not one, not even fucking close to one.

I'm an old school arcade gamer, so Dragon's Dogma really scratched the itch, but Amalur is not bad at all. In fact, my top three. Role playing games with real time action would be Dogma on top, Tales of Vesperia, and then Amalur in 3rd place. I'm glad I own it. I've got to go back an do the House of Valor because I've done everything else. The backgrounds are fun, and I like the character design. I think a sequel would need to be more like Vindictus for PC - THAT game looks tight. Too bad about the server issues though.

I probably will check out Dragon's Dogma at some point. The one thing that I heard of the game was that you had to go back and forth over the same areas constantly as you couldn't really fast-travel as every fast-travel used up an item or something. That turned me off as I hate having to grind if I don't want to.

So what you're saying is it's the game's fault that you played a tank? Which is easy mode for EVERY action rpg mind you.
A game with variety doesn't DEMAND you to play a specific way. Games that DEMAND you to play a specific way are called linear and tend to not be very fun. SO it's bad that there is variety, and it's only bad because you weren't FORCED to explore it?
Blocking and melee as a thief? You use a great shield and buffed your vit and endurance while you were at it? Cause as a dex build you CAN'T block. You lose most of your stamina and damage goes through because you don't have the endurance or stability to fend off a hit. You have to DODGE.

SO, your inability to exit your comfort zone (remember, your comfort zone being easy mode for the game) is a fault in the game? How?

You were a thief? What does that mean? You buffed your dex and endurance and only stuck with low damage weapons? You ever killed Ceaseless Discharge only dealing 46 damage per hit? Because that's what I dealt per hit as a pyromancer who had to level a different weapon. Improper planning left me in a dire situation. Ever try to complete Anor Lano with a divine weapon? Not freaking possible I say.
You said you dropped one of the Four Kings before another had a chance to spawn. Sounds like the two tank runs I did. Four Kings is a DPS race, or an endurance test based on your build. So, you either blatantly lie constantly, or you played the game in the easiest way possible, CHOSE not to explore what the game had to offer, and then faulted it for not FORCING you down a linear path of unfairly difficult progression.

You are a liar, a hypocrite, and quite frankly a delusional. KOA got blown up on because it did everything bad. It had nothing overshadowing it's flaws, it had skewed direction on the kind of game it wanted to be, and combining mechanics of multiple rpg genres all made for an aimless game.
That's why Kingdoms of Amalur wasn't as praised as Skyrim or Dragon Age. It didn't have enough things to make it stand out. Finding that tanking on Dark Souls makes it supremely easy, is not a defense for a game that can be beaten with 1 button.

Now don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with liking a game that did 80% of itself wrong. I can see the good in Clive Barker's Jericho. But that doesn't mean it's not a shitty game.

Linear games are usually better than open world games because there is focus. Most developers don't understand how to make an open world game anyways so most of them suck. Rockstar, for example, doesn't as the missions in GTA are mainly go to point B and kill 20 or so enemies. And because it's open world and trying to do so much, it's then not even a good shooter, and that's bad because you are shooting more often than not. The point of an open world game is to give the player options to tackle each mission like the 1st Mercenaries or like Farcry 3 (from what I've heard) or how Watch_Dogs is looking (you have shooting, stealth, and hacking to mix and match with). Games like Bayonetta are some of the best because the game is very much focused on providing awesome hack and slash gameplay and nothing else. Within that hack and slash gameplay, you have so many different ways to take out enemies. It's bad for a game to force you to do something a certain way but it's not bad to force you out of a doing something a certain way; if you have options 1-5 and the game forces you not to do option 1 but still allows for options 2-5, there's nothing wrong with that and it's actually good because that forces you to stop doing the same thing over and over again, totally unlike Dark Souls.

The game allowed me to play as a tank without a build (or equipment) that a tank should have. I didn't wear armor (clothes so my dodge was fast) and I used a light shield (the spider shield most of the game). I ended up using the Iaito as my main weapon, is that considered a low/med/high damage weapon? I don't know, I was using Dex scaling weapons as a Dex build. I played through ALL the dungeons in Dark Souls and the 4 Kings battle I did as my thief with a Iaito and I never had more than 1 King out at once. There hasn't been a single thing I lied about.

The Reason people are accusing you of lying is simple, what you say is either false, missing some extra information or you had a really freaking bugged out version. Like other pointed out, its is indeed true that you can Block most attacks, but it drains Stamina. And there are a ton of attacks who outright smash trough your Block, or deal an alternative form of Damage which your Shield can not hold odd completely. An other possibility is, that you were grossly overleveled. Since some high reward, high risk areas are avaible early on you can indeed powerlevel if you want to. And with a high enough Stamina-Level you could indeed block even heavier attacks from bigger Enemies.

And as much as you point this out, most people in this thread and most sources you can look up (Videos on YT for example) outright prove what you say wrong. Try beating Artorias with just "Blocking". Try beating the Goat Demon with just Blocking. Unless you seriously outlevel and outequip the encounter, its very very unlikely it was such a cakewalk like you said.But there is absolutely no point arguing with you about this, is there? We could very well show you a Video of a Thief trying to block the Taurus Demon, or x other Bosses repeatedtly (And then dying horribly), and you still would insist on your "But it isnt difficult!". At least thats the vibe im getting.

Now, the "empty MMO"-feeling. The thing is, i actually tried to break free from the designated path and run wild. But in Skyrim, when i said to myself "Fu*k this." and walked 50 Miles into the opposite direction of my quest, i would discover interesting new stuff. The Sourrundings changed, the Quests are different. You could discover a town terrorized by Vampires, and while killing half of the Cult you discover a Swamp, fight a Dragon inside of it and then duel a Vampire Lord inside a Cave. It felt organic, like really adventuring. Amalur felt like a Tour with 50 different Tourguides, who are all horribly boring. The Stuff you look at is certainly good looking, but its allways the same boring stuff.

Granted, Skyrim only really kicks in once you get some good Mods going, but the basic were there, the fundament was built, the World delivered. Skyrim is a Giant Cake, with 3 layers of delicious Chocolate. Yes, you need to add the Icing etc. yourself with some mods to add extra flavour, and without it you may soon get tired of eating only chocolate. But the basics are there and damn delicious.

Amalur is all the materials of said cake thrown into the Oven, and then abandoned halfway trough baking.

If you lower your shield in-between enemy attacks (even swings), you regain a lot of stamina back. Yeah, if you just stand with a shield up like a dumbass, you can only block a few swings. I may have been slightly overleveled as I did do every dungeon but I didn't min/max my build, I upped Vit, End, Dex, and Faith all equally. I don't remember every boss that was blockable or not blockable, I also used the Lightning Spear on several bosses. I didn't say I could block every boss, I'm saying I shouldn't be able to tank most normal enemies with my build, especially enemies like knights. That thinking was why I died so much early on, I really thought I'd have to dodge most enemy attacks. I even spent an hour just practicing the riposte because I thought I'd have to learn that do get through dungeons, but I found it was just too risky and just blocking and backstabbing were much safer. Conversely, in Bayonetta, I practiced the dodge offset early on to get decent at it because I felt that was something I'd need to learn and it then payed off as I started facing harder enemies which required the dodge offset.

Finally, you start giving some good reasons why you like Skyrim more. That's the kinda of stuff I wanted to hear from people. People just keep listing flaws of KoA that Skyrim also has, barely anyone has listed stuff they liked in Skyrim that KoA just doesn't have.

As I said earlier in the thread, both were 6/10 games for me on first play, on a second playthrough with the game tailored more towards what others have advised and what I wanted I'd rate KOA:R 7/10, Skyrim 8/10.

I think the most frustrating thing is that KOA:R has a core of utter brilliance, but that core counts for around 15% of the game, with the rest of it being way below that standard.

I like games with good cores to them like Bayonetta and Vanquish. I don't like many open world games like GTA because they try to do everything while doing nothing well. KoA has a solid core to it and the other things it does aren't great but I spend a majority of that time with core fighting. I don't care about most NPCs, I really just focus on the main quest and the faction quests and story-wise they are good enough to hold my attention. I maximize that core I guess.

Really, you are actually not required to block at all. If you rely on blocking you will run into trouble in later game+ runthroughs for sure. Actually, I would be interested how people in deep ng+++'s beat that silly tree boss. There is only so much stamina you can have, right?

btw, they did balance the game a bit when they nerfed the crystal shield and the gold armor. That shit was game breaking.

But all this talk has made me curious what I was missing in my short and disappointing affair with KoA. So, I am re-downloading before it drops off the psn+ list.

I know you don't HAVE to block but Dark Souls is about survival and blocking is the safest way to beat almost all the enemies. It's not a game with a flashy combat system or a game that even scores you (like Bayonetta in both regards), it's again about just getting through to the next bonfire pretty much. I'm not going to play through a game I didn't really like much again just to possibly get the challenge I was hoping for in the initial playthrough. This isn't a 10 hour or so game where you might say "well, the 1st run is learning the game, and the 2nd run is the real deal." Dark Souls is an RPG that takes time to beat once, show me everything you got in my first playthrough. Also, I didn't hate Dark Souls I was just massively disappointed by it, I heard the combat system was great and it was a hard game, and I got neither. In the end, I would give it a 6/10 (where 5 is average) for it's atmosphere and level design.

I'm going to get one thing straight right now; I've not played KoA. The reason why is every professional reviewer and standard gamer who has played it gives me the same impression that it's just sort of ok - starts interesting for a while but soon becomes boring when you realise the combat system is incredibly simple and the boring, grindy quests are a huge turn off. The OP is the first person I've actually seen give KoA such a glowing recommendation which just suggests he's in a very, very small minority.

Now then, where to begin? I'll start with this "depth" I guess. So KoA has a deep combat system whereas Dark Souls' is completely lacking? Considering the number of posters saying KoA is a cakewalk on hard and combat can be reduced to a simple button mash with game breaking powers given to the player very early on outnumbers people disagreeing by probably about 10 to 1 it suggests a problem here. So the OP is playing a rogue-like and is performing nice fancy combos and is also dying fairly frequently while other people are sticking to one weapon or spell and blazing throguh encounters? That's not actually depth to be honest, that's artificial depth which you're creating for yourself. If hacking away with your greatsword was good for 2 zones and then became obsolete with stronger enemies then there'd be depth as you're forced to mix things up and utilise different strategies, without it however combos become useless and unecessary so I don't think they become a valid argument in looking at how deep the combat system is since from the sounds of it you can pretty much ignore them for the entire game.

Meanwhile, you describe Dark Souls as lacking in depth because you decided to actively seek ways to exploit the game and suck the fun out of it, which doesn't really sit well with me because you're slating a game for your choices. You play a tank and use the same lure-block-melee strategy for the whole game. While is does seem like you're making stuff up even at this point I'll go along with it, but yeah let's say you can repeat one overly simple mechanic (like in say, KoA from the sounds of it) then we're left at an impasse here aren't we? It's no longer a situation where we're judging the games mechanics but rather the choices of the player in the mechanics he chose to use. Your standard Dark Souls player doesn't do this; they use dodges, kicks, parry and riposte's and learn how enemies map their attacks, becoming better and better until, as a previous poster said, they're completing the game at level 1 with the "deprived" class because everything is second nature to them. That is depth. Of course, judging from how you apparently played Dark Souls this is irrelevant - not bothering to use parry and riposte because "it's useless and too risky" (see: I couldn't do it so it must be the games fault), or sitting back and launching 300+ arrows into mini bosses from well before the point you're supposed to fight them (which is so, so dumb. If I found myself doing that I'd probably start re-evaluating my life.)

Now the next thing is that I'd ask you stop talking about Skyrim with such authority. I've tried to be careful with how I've spoken about KoA as I only have things like Angry Joe's review and the opinions of other poster to cite when talking about it, so everything I've said is really a regurgitation of something someone else has said. Meanwhile, here you are having watch someone play Skyrim for a few hours and deciding you're some sort of expert on it. "Oh, this guy was one shotting everything, ergo Skyrim is pathetically easy." To which I'd reply that you should probably get a grasp of the concept of logic. The reason he was doing that it gonna most likely be one or a combination of 3 reasons:

i. He had a late game chracter, has incredible (possibly even glitched) items and good perk investment.
ii. He was fighting enemies which were much weaker than he was
iii. He was playing on a low difficulty setting

Now I've put more time into Skyrim than I have any other game, and I can safely say that it is by no means an easy game if you put it to an appropriate difficulty setting - and it's not even artificial difficulty to be honest. If you put it up to Master difficulty when you're level 1 with an iron sword and some rags then sure, you'll have a hard time since enemies do more damage and soak up an insane amount of hits. I don't think that's artificial difficulty though, because by the end game when youre running around with your Daedric Greatword of Ultimate Badassery with drain HP and fire damage enchants, with perks, damage buffs via armour enchants and 2 Dremora Lords you've conjured how the hell else are you going to make enmies fight back other than let them tank hits? We all know combat's a bit shonky in TES games so it's not like you can make them better at dodging or avoiding your hits. It is at this point however I realise I'm on a bit of a tangent so I'll discreetly get back to the topic at hand.

What I'm trying to say is you can't have such an isolated experience as that and then make claims about difficulty, gameplay, combat, atmosphere etc. based on your experience. For all I know KoA IS harder than Dark Souls but the OP is literally the only person who I've ever seen claim that so I'd like to think I can be safe in making a judgement that it's not since as it is the OP's posts have done nothing but tell everyone else that they're wrong.

You do realise that "other games have these flaws" isn't an excuse to dimiss them? Ok, so maybe one game shares a flaw with KoA, and another shares a diferent flaw. The problem is that these game make up for their shortcomings with what's good about them. Skyrim is glitchy, doesn't have the best combat and has awful level scaling for both enemies and items - on the other hand the world feels rich and expansive, with deep lore, huge potential for different character builds, fantastic freedom and the combat isn't even so bad that I feel fighting is a chore. Dark Souls also has flaws in its combat system and doesn't tell you enough about what you're doing, so the early hours can be extremely confusing - on the other hand it has one of the richest atmospheres you'll find, offers a good challenge to players, and has one of the most perfect learning curves you'll find providing you make it to the point where the game just clicks. I've not seen anything to suggest KoA has anyhing completely special about it to make up for it's flaws and be seen as a truly great game.

You should check out Metacritic, KoA got quite a few glowing reviews. I actually watched the Angry Joe's review (which you mention) before even downloading it for FREE because KoA just wasn't a game that got talked about a lot so I was thinking it might be average or something (I'm not going to play a game just because it's free). Angry Joe gave it a very positive review and a 7/10 (which isn't like a 7/10 from like an IGN) and said the combat was the best of the genre. Off that review, I decided to give the game a try. I personally wouldn't give the game over an 8/10 either, but it's still a damn fun game because the combat is a lot of fun. I'm mainly saying other games (like Skyrim) shouldn't be getting that scores they do, not that KoA should be getting praised with 9s and 10s and GOTY nominations.

I'm not saying KoA's combat is so complex and has so much depth, I'm saying it just has more than Dark Souls because Dark Souls' combat has like no depth. Basically, by default, KoA has more depth and it's also FUN. Also, in KoA, my rogue can't fully block attacks by bigger enemies whereas you can in Dark Souls. And my rogue can't block magic attacks from mages because a rogue's shields aren't made for that. KoA throws NORMAL enemies at me that I can't block as a rogue whereas Dark Souls does not. Yeah, there's some bosses you can't block in Dark Souls as a thief/rogue build, but boss battles shouldn't be the only encounters to force you to change up your strategy either.

My friend was actually pretty early in the game, he just simply focused on upping his smithing early on. He did later on use some book glitch to become overpowered though, but that was later. I can get a feel for a game watching gameplay videos or watching someone play, I don't get how that's a weird concept. I can tell the fighting just wouldn't be fun for me in Skyrim, it's just not fluid enough for me. I also know what to expect going the stealth approach from playing Fallout 3. I watched this gamaplay walkthrough of a level in Splinter Cell: Blacklist and I knew exactly how the game was going to play, I bought it, and loved it (the multiplayer sucked though). I've watched the demo videos of Watch_Dogs and I understand how that game is going to play; I get how the hacking works, you have your standard 3rd-person shooting with cover and time slowdown (which can be used for driving and hacking purposes too), you have some basic stealth mechanics at play, you can even use hacking to aid in your stealth, you have that free running from Assassin's Creed and even Splinter Cell. I get how that game is going to play, I know it's going to deliver unless it ends up with lots of glitches and/or poor enemy AI thereby messing up the hacking and stealth aspects of the game.

 

[lapan]

The only thing that gives Dark Souls any difficulty whatsoever is the lack of a checkpoint system of other games or a save anywhere system.

It does have a checkpoint system. It's even more forgiving than most because it doesn't reset everything you found since the last time. It's just that the checkpoints are called bonfires instead of checkpoints and you have to trigger them manually.

Yeah, I realize the bonfires are basically checkpoints but for the most part, you have to play through rather lengthy sections to get to the next one (sometimes the entire dungeon just before the boss). Dark Souls "checkpoints" are much less frequent, plus all the enemies respawn so it is harder than pretty much any other game's checkpoint system.

Besides of Bioshock checkpoints usually reset all progress up until it, which includes enemies.

There are only a few sections in Dark Souls with truly long times between checkpoints, usually it's because you missed a hidden one or haven't unlocked a shortcut yet. The masterkey makes times between them even shorter.

 

[ERaptor]

-snip-

This probably will be my last post in this thread. If i walk aynmore in this cirlce shaped thread with no escape im gonna go mad. We will simply have to agree that we disagree here. Dark Souls was a fantastic Game to me, it offered a real challenge. Amalur was a snore-fest that was doubly depressing to not like because its basically a ton of potential buried beneath a ton of mediocrity. Bayonetta goes into the same category for me like Devil May Cry. Very entertaining if you just want to cut up various dudes in ridicolous fashion, but no actual depth. So yeah, i guess our tastes just differ.

 

[Breccia]

I wouldn't call the game "amazing" but I think it was good and deserved more credit than it got.

 

[Bombiz]

I don't get this world you live in where Dark Souls and Bayonetta are comparable. The only thing they have in common is that their both games. One's a fast paced action game whith all sorts of crazy shit happening all the time and Dark Souls is a slow paced RPG with simple mechanics (note: that's also why they don't tell you anything, because ita so simple). You might as well compare KOA:R with total war or C&C. also I liked Dark Souls more the KOA:R cause it did feel too much like a dungeon crawler.

 

[joest01]

Really, you are actually not required to block at all. If you rely on blocking you will run into trouble in later game+ runthroughs for sure. Actually, I would be interested how people in deep ng+++'s beat that silly tree boss. There is only so much stamina you can have, right?

btw, they did balance the game a bit when they nerfed the crystal shield and the gold armor. That shit was game breaking.

But all this talk has made me curious what I was missing in my short and disappointing affair with KoA. So, I am re-downloading before it drops off the psn+ list.

I know you don't HAVE to block but Dark Souls is about survival and blocking is the safest way to beat almost all the enemies. It's not a game with a flashy combat system or a game that even scores you (like Bayonetta in both regards), it's again about just getting through to the next bonfire pretty much. I'm not going to play through a game I didn't really like much again just to possibly get the challenge I was hoping for in the initial playthrough. This isn't a 10 hour or so game where you might say "well, the 1st run is learning the game, and the 2nd run is the real deal." Dark Souls is an RPG that takes time to beat once, show me everything you got in my first playthrough. Also, I didn't hate Dark Souls I was just massively disappointed by it, I heard the combat system was great and it was a hard game, and I got neither. In the end, I would give it a 6/10 (where 5 is average) for it's atmosphere and level design.

Just to mention that with shortcuts and the master key a runthrough of Dark Souls can be a fairly quick affair. You can ring the second bell within ... I dunno, an hour? Two?

in response to one of your other remarks, your should really try reposting the black knights. Sure its a bit risky but it is a rather satisfying affair

 

[lapan]

Just to mention that with shortcuts and the master key a runthrough of Dark Souls can be a fairly quick affair. You can ring the second bell within ... I dunno, an hour? Two?

You can beat the entire game within 1-1,5 hours if you just do the reqired bosses.

 

[Bombiz]

Just to mention that with shortcuts and the master key a runthrough of Dark Souls can be a fairly quick affair. You can ring the second bell within ... I dunno, an hour? Two?

You can beat the entire game within 1-1,5 hours if you just do the reqired bosses.

some people where able to beat it with in 30min. although that was abusing a glitch so i don't know how much that counts for really.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

I'm super glad to see all this conversation over Dark Souls. I have yet to check that game out, but I've had my doubts about the whole "tank" thing. I can't stand that feeling, which is why Dogma and Amalur were quite welcome.

As to the area of exploration within Dogma - yes, it's a small map, but the combat more than makes up for it. You seem to be a combat guy - I'm telling you that you won't be disappointed! You really owe yourself an opportunity to play it! I will say that if you like Amalur, you will like the combat in Dogma better. It really is better than Amalur's combat, and that's saying a lot.

Regarding the "tank" thing - I don't really like combat focused games where I feel stuck to the center of the screen. Ninja Gaiden did it right. Capcom in general gets it right. Amalur got it right. I feel that most people tend to complain about the story elements while ignoring the fact that Amalur did something that many games before it did not do. I've had to hold my tongue over Dark Souls because so many people enjoy that game...but I'm not as impressed by the videos. I prefer a game that is more nimble.

GLAD to see this thread, and to see someone so outspoken for game play. I thought that was taboo on this site.