Dark Souls

[Kryton]

But yeah DS1 is much looser in than the sequels (in the way you control your character), going back to it is weird. I love DS1 , but I think (again) DS2 had the best mood, DS3 had best graphics.

Never heard of R1 spam before. I assume it's the same type of people who pick Eddie in Tekken tag.

[Thursday]

I wonder how different the perception of it's difficulty would be if you could just instant retry when you die at a boss.

I go back and fourth on this a lot. Sometimes it'll put a bonfire right near a boss, and it'll be no issue, other times there'll be a whole gauntlet to get through just to have another go, and it can just seems a bit crap. "Oh but the bonfire can only go there, because this lore reason..." nah bollocks.

Most of the time you can just sprint past enemies anyway so it doesn't matter much, it's just you have to take a long run-up which is tedious.

[Inspector Norse]

Yeah, that was a big problem for me: easy to figure a way to run past the enemies but a time-consuming ballache doing it ten times when the boss was a tough bastard. I was stuck on the Four Kings for ages, partly because there was no bonfire at all in the area.

[Kryton]

Yeah no doubt some of the difficulty is amped up a notch by bonfire placement. It works in a place like Sen's fortress because of the lore and it being a trial, but it's a right cunt before Four Kings - I remember getting so fucking pissed off with it.

[Thursday]

I mean, I can see why New Londo wouldn't have a bonfire either, but having to get the lift from Firelink is a pain. Even having one just before you cross into the the town would have made it fine.

[H-O-W-L]

Fucking hate cunts who say that certain runs like that which are heinous (New Londo being the fucking worst) are "good" and "immersive". Like fuck is it immersive to re-play the exact same gameplay several times. If I can succeed like, three times consistently, why make me do it a fourth?

[Inspector Norse]

See also: Crystal Cave

[brat-sampson]

Even Taurus Demon, the first actually hard thing you're meant to beat to progress, the run up to it ain't short and feels very punishing to new players. I know plenty who basically bounced off the game before beating him in no small part due to the run-back.

[Thursday]

It's not a particularly bad run-up overall, but it feels it at the time, and the enemy placements can mean it's quite hard to skip past everyone.

[Chedney Honks]

I love the run-ups. Really builds suspense, especially if you've had to burn a couple of Estus by the time you get there. Feels much more rewarding than just an instant restart and throwing yourself at it over and over until you brute force your way through.

[Kelvin]

Yeah, I think the problem with restarting at a boss without the run up is that people would just hammer away at them until the got lucky, whereas the inconvenience of a distant bonfire means you're incentivised to actually learn the attacks and play more strategically. Plus, of course, when you actually beat a tough boss, you really, really appreciate it, knowing you won't have to go back through all that other stuff again. It simply wouldn't be as satisfying if you were always starting at the boss every time.   

[Chedney Honks]

There are some shit ones, though, for sure. Crystal Caves and Bed of Chaos are awful, especially the latter because the boss is unfinished and RNG can easily screw you over.

[Kelvin]

There are some shit ones, though, for sure. Crystal Caves and Bed of Chaos are awful, especially the latter because the boss is unfinished and RNG can easily screw you over.

Oh, god, yeah. Some of those late game levels / bosses are garbage.

[Thursday]

Yeah that's ultimately why I do think some run-up is necessary, but a couple of areas possibly over-do it.

[Bazooka]

In Bloodborne one of the most enemy packed areas, the cursed/dark woods or whatever its called(one with the plant enemies) thankfully is the easiest to get from A to B,but some of the fucking town areas are unforgiving because you miss a bland hole in a wall and run around for hours.

[Inspector Norse]

Even Taurus Demon, the first actually hard thing you're meant to beat to progress, the run up to it ain't short and feels very punishing to new players. I know plenty who basically bounced off the game before beating him in no small part due to the run-back.

Yeah, I bailed there and it was a long while before I came back to the game.

[Inspector Norse]

Out of interest, because I have DS 2 and 3 waiting at home as yet unstarted, are they easier when you know the general idea from the first game, or do they find exciting new ways to piss you off? What's this I hear about DS2 reducing your health bar every time you die?

[Thursday]

It stops at a certain point, but yeah it does.

It's sort of harks back to Demon's Souls where your heath is reduced when you're in spirit or in Dark Souls case - hollow form.

The idea being to discourage you from being in hollow mode, encourage you to go into human mode - but then there's risk of invaders. With Dark Souls, there's really no reason to be in human form other than if you want to summon.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

lore

lore

lore

https://youtu.be/Hh_gIxTitMM?t=36

[falafel]

I wonder how different the perception of it's difficulty would be if you could just instant retry when you die at a boss.

I go back and fourth on this a lot. Sometimes it'll put a bonfire right near a boss, and it'll be no issue, other times there'll be a whole gauntlet to get through just to have another go, and it can just seems a bit crap. "Oh but the bonfire can only go there, because this lore reason..." nah bollocks.

Most of the time you can just sprint past enemies anyway so it doesn't matter much, it's just you have to take a long run-up which is tedious.

My dirty secret. I savescummed the Bed of Chaos on PC.

[Thursday]

They already make it so you only have to do one part at a time anyway, so it's interesting that you would savescum that out of all of them. Did you not find the secret bonfire in Izalith?

I feel like the fact that the boss kind of has checkpointing was an admission from the team that it was shit and they'd give players a break. So that's fine.

[evilcommiedictator]

Out of interest, because I have DS 2 and 3 waiting at home as yet unstarted, are they easier when you know the general idea from the first game, or do they find exciting new ways to piss you off? What's this I hear about DS2 reducing your health bar every time you die?

The humanity mechanic from DS1 is rejigged in DS2, in that when you die you lose a bit of max HP, down to 1/2 of total (3/4 with a ring) and humanity resets you back to full. DS3 is like DS1 however.
Also DS2 has it where if you kill units enough times, they don't respawn, which is nice.
DS3 magic is now a bar instead of a set number of casts, and there is a "special move"  for each weapon that uses the magic bar.

They're mostly the same, DS2 can be very easy if you pick a particular build at the start too.

[Misspent Boners]

Its been two days since the battle and I'm still kind of just shuffling around in disbelief...I'd got to the fog gates of Ornstein and Smough, felt a pang of anxiety in my stomach and spent two sessions doing everything I could to avoid going through them. I even went to the Depths and farmed humanity from the rats thinking I'd need loads to keep re-humaning to summon Solaire to help me. Found the new blacksmith and opened all the short cuts nearby. Then the other morning I thought fuck it I'll go inside and just see what they're like, fully expecting to get annhilated..

Around 4 minutes later Solaire and I had beat them both, Smough biting the dust first and Ornstein second. I had 1 estus left (only went in with 7 after nearly dying to the two huge knights outside)... all the strategies I had went out the window and I just hit the fuck out of them with my zweihander. Still not sure what happened. The two knights outside gave me more grief. I'd reinforced every piece of armour and sword and am level 68 so maybe I could just take the damage and hit hard.

Once more it just made me wonder what the game would he like without any prior knowledge...im loving every second but the bits bemoaned as particularly brutal haven't been...and I wonder if the difficulty has been lessened by knowing that its meant to be a difficult bit so doesn't catch you off guard as much. Those two infamous archers were difficult and took me around 5 or 6 goes but nothing too taxing. I guess that's Reddit hyperbole for you

[H-O-W-L]

To clarify I don't hate runups period but I do hate some of the longer bastard ones. They're more sadistic than they are enthusing.

[Pink Gregory]

So what's the idea of the Soul Level 1 playthrough?

[Chedney Honks]

There are some lore implications, but mostly to show how robust the combat system is if you master it, but mostly to show that you're hard.

[Kryton]

There are some lore implications, but mostly to show how robust the combat system is if you master it, but mostly to show that you're hard.

Wait, what's the lore implication?

And yeah I couldn't imagine doing this without levelling.

[Thursday]

So what's the idea of the Soul Level 1 playthrough?

You play as a Pyromancer because they're the only class that start at level 1. This really limits what you can use because you need certain stats to even wield certain weapons.

What's interesting about it though is you can still upgrade your weapons, and of course the pyromancies can be very powerful and you can fully upgrade that.

So about halfway through my SL1 playthrough - I'd basically reached the maxed potential damage  and it was pretty much more than my first playthrough where I barely knew what I was doing with regards to stat builds and upgrades. So that side of things isn't really harder.

Obviously surviving with such little health and stamina is where it get's difficult, but still doable considering anyone attempting something like it will know all the boss attack patterns very well.

[Chedney Honks]

I've decided I want to become a One Bro. I'm gonna do it.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I've got a bit bored of this. I hit a brick wall trying to beat the Ceaseless Discharge (but that's enough about my sex life) and Seath, both of whom are so big that I can't even see when they're winding up for an attack.

As I whinged in the Doom Eternal thread, over the top difficulty doesn't make a game deeper or more rewarding. It's just a time sink. A rote, clunky time sink. I could entertain some argument that it's thematically pertinent, but that still leaves it as a rote, clunky time sink. Besides, I think the real reasons it's so difficult are far more cynical: artificially padding out the runtime and generating online hype. Once you get past the initial "Oh, fuck off" feeling, there's just nothing much to the experience.

Ho hum. At least the music is excellent and I only spent 12 quid on it.
"Prepare to die." Prepare to ask why [am I bothering to persist with this?], more like