I love FromSoft's 'Souls-Borne' games, I really do. I started my journey with this game series back in 2011 when I first played Demon's Souls, and while I didn't finish it due to starting a job as a professional game reviewer, I did love it (I even beat FlameLurker, which is reportedly the hardest boss in the game.)

After that – between being a game reviewer and not having the balls – I just didn't have it in me to try Dark Souls. I skipped the first one while admiring it from afar, I also avoided the second one because it made no sense to play the sequel without playing the first, and I didn't get back into this style of game until Bloodborne came out for the PS4, and I fell in love.

Sure, I had my fair share of frustrations, going as far as vowing that once I beat it I'd never come back to it, but I did beat it, and I kept playing. New Game Plus just came naturally, I knew I had it in me to chug on forward, and through my exploration I discovered all the little nooks and crannies of that game, then did it all again a few times when the New Hunters DLC Expansion came out. In the end, Bloodborne ended up being my second favorite game of the last decade, next only to Skyrim (On Master Difficulty, of course). I played through Bloodborne a half dozen times, getting platinum, and mastering to the game.

I craved more of this kind of game so I bought Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. I owned the first game, but my PS3 was in my brother's possession and I was genuinely worried that the clunky gameplay would return from Demon's Souls that was absent from Dark Souls II on Ps4! Anyway, I played Dark Souls II for about five hours before realizing...holy shit I hated this game. Dark Souls II wasn't fun, the controls were terrible, the movement was clunky, and it just seemed boring, empty, and aimless. I didn't like it, yet I kept returning to it over the course of a year, restarting game after game until Dark Souls III came out.

At first I was apprehensive; I enjoyed Demon's Souls in all its primitive glory, and Bloodborne ascended to become my second favorite game of the last decade, but I didn't enjoy Dark Souls II. I picked Dark Souls III up anyway, because after watching gameplay, I felt it had the refinement and polish of Bloodborne, so I'd give Dark Souls as a series another chance.

I absolutely loved Dark Souls III, even when it frustrated me. I'd say Dark Souls III is easily in my “Top 5 Gen 8 Games!” list. If anyone was curious, here are my top 5 favorite games from the PS4/WiiU/Xbone era:

1 – Bloodborne (PS4)

2 – Super Smash Bros (WiiU)

3 – Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

4 – Dark Souls III

5 – Fallout 4

And let's be honest, Assassin's Creed IV is only tangentially Gen 8, as it was also released on Gen 7 systems a month prior. I could also replace Fallout 4 with Pokemon X/Y or OR/AS. Whatever. The point I'm trying to make here is that I absolutely love the Souls-Borne game series, I love the old school approach to difficulty, I love the metroid-vania style exploration, and I love the fantasy/sci-fi themes. Like I said, Bloodborne and Dark Souls III are two of my all time favorite games, easily, and I'd kill for more games like that while also wishing they were harder.

I do not need to 'git gud', as I feel my accomplishments in both Dark Souls III and Bloodborne prove that I'm not terrible at these games, and that I'm not averse to the crushing, painful difficulty of it all. I like that shit, it's one of the best things about these games, doubly so when I overcome bosses like Nameless King or Orphan of Kos.

So, having beaten both of those, I decide that I need more Souls in my life, so I go to play the original Dark Souls. All my buddies who like this series say that II wasn't that good, and that I could ignore it, but I HAD to play the first one. Okay, that's fair enough. Any Final Fantasy fan knows that sometimes there are duds in a series (XIII, lookin' at you) that can be avoided. So, I got my PS3 back, I buy the DLC “Artorias of the Abyss”, and I put the disc in.

It doesn't work.

I panic, worried my PS3 is broken upon having it returned from my brother, but then I realize that my copy of Dark Souls is cracked near the middle, which is meaning the PS3 isn't reading the disc. I'm upset, but I love the games enough that I'm willing to overlook this inconvenience, so I buy the “Prepare to die” edition off Amazon. I already bought the DLC, but it's worth it. When the game arrives, I am disheartened to realize that it's PAL region. PEGI 16, it says, for use in Region 2 PS3's. Well fuck, this sucks. Except it doesn't. PS3's are region free, so FUCK YES! The game works!

Finally, I'm ready to embark on my journey to link the first flame or something. I dunno. Told myself I wouldn't look up the story until I finished it. I'd been watching youtube ranking lists, educating myself on what I was coming to expect, and found that Dark Souls I was the hardest one yet (of the 3 Dark Souls games, Demon's Souls, and bloodborne). I do polls, I read up online, and here's the order of most difficult to least difficult the games go:

1 – Dark Souls

2 – Bloodborne

3 – Dark Souls III

4 – Demon's Souls

5 – Dark Souls II

I'm super happy because, aside from OG Dark Souls, that list perfectly aligned with my favorite games of the series. Bloodborne was top for me, followed by Dark Souls III, Demon's Souls, and finally Dark Souls II way at the bottom (I actively dislike that game from what I played, so let's put it out of our conversation from here on out). For that reason, I'm excited to play what is the community voted hardest and most fun of the series!

Except it's really not that good.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't say it's a terrible game or anything, but it suffers from a lot of the shoddy craftsmanship of part 2 and the clunkiness of Demon's Souls. It handles a lot better than Demon's or Souls II, and the level design is better than either of those, but it's still a league behind III and Bloodborne in both of those categories.

So far I've completed about 1/3 of the game (9/26 bosses) on about 20-25 hours of gameplay, and I'm ready to just toss it. Put the game back in its case, and let it rot on the shelf with all the other games I played but never beat. Honestly, it's just not fun.

With Bloodborne and Dark Souls III, I had my fair share of frustration. I've tossed controllers, I've broken controllers, I'm destroyed my own property, and I've wanted to give up many times in the past, but kept going because...well, that's the glory of these games. You play because it's FUN. You play because you're constantly getting better and are always on the verge of conquering what once conquered you. You play because you have to show off your gaming cock to those who would doubt your skill. If you have a platinum in a game like Dark Souls or Bloodborne, you've earned your mettle. That's just that. End of discussion. If you fall down, you get back up again and learn from your mistakes, bettering yourself against enemies that are tough and always a threat, but beatable. I praise this game design and will until the end of time.

But I don't feel that way with Dark Souls. I've beaten 9 bosses so far and even on the ones I struggled with (Capra Demon and Quelaag, I'm looking at you) haven't filled me with any sort of boisterous joy upon defeating them; all I feel is a deep rooted relief that I'll never have to do that again. I haven't enjoyed a single boss in Dark Souls yet, which is a shame because these games are revered for their boss design and fun factor.

Sure, the ones I've fought have mostly been considered pretty easy, and I agree, but for the most part the difficulty comes from an artificial inflation of difficulty, not earned or fair difficulty. The two bosses I've had the most difficulty with were the Capra Demon and Chaos Witch Quelaag, for very different reasons. Capra Demon was only a pain because the arena was so small that I couldn't see shit and I kept getting stuck in pillars. The boss himself isn't THAT difficult, the camera and shitty arena make it difficult. Quelaag was a super boring and easy boss with easy to avoid moves and an open arena, but she has so much health that every fight I got in with her lasted 10-15 minutes, which is ludicrous to do without getting hit twice. Her fight was just a test of endurance, but with the caveat that you only have 5 estus and you have to go through a poison swamp to get to her, and it's impossible to not get poisoned on the way there without having the right equipment.

Neither of these bosses were fun. One was inexcusably annoying, the other was insufferably boring. Now, the correct way to deal with either of these bosses was to change one's equipment, find the magical robe of not dying of poison, and enchant your weapons to match their weaknesses! Except you can't just outright buy purple moss for the poison and pine resin to apply electric enchantment to my weapon (which I tried, still doesn't do any damage to Quelaag). You could walk your ass all the way back to the surface, but getting to the surface from BlightTown is an utter nightmare because of how shitty and LONG that region is.

Seriously, I said it before and I'll continue saying it until I go blue in the face: What moron thought anything about the sewers and blighttown was a good idea? Bad level design, boring art direction, persistent annoyances designed to make you miserable, so many glitches that I died a dozen times to falling through the ground, and it's a world so big that my PS3 actually can't handle it without chugging to 4-8 fps. Utterly unaccepable from top to bottom. Traversing that is an utter nightmare, I never want to return here as long as I live, and I DON'T want to have to backtrack through it. Ever.

In the later games – Bloodborne and DSIII – you could fast travel from any save point back to the hub world or from one place to the next! This eliminated redundancy and allowed you to return to places you could buy items, level up, or refine your equipment! To be fair, Dark Souls allows you to level up at any Bonfire as well as repair your equipment or level up your weapon, but there's still a lot of shit that can only be done at various vendors that are scattered around the world. It's inconvenient, it wastes your time, and it forces you to backtrack far too much.

Now, I realize that these complaints ARE a matter of 'git gud', except I'd have no problem dealing with it in a situation where the game was fun. If the levels were fun to traverse and not a chore, I'd love going back through the castle and blighttown and the sewers. If the vendors were not scattered all over, I'd have a better time seeking them out to find all the weapons and items. See, right now, it seems like the game is actively working against me by making everything as obtuse and unpleasant as possible. On one hand, I get that the game is supposed to be bleak and desperate, but on the other hand I'm still a person playing a videogame, not actively participating in a chore.

Despite levelling up my Estus Flask, I only get 10 charges of it if I return to the firelink shrine. Going back there every time I want a refill on my health potion would be like having to walk without fast travel back to Whiterun in Skyrim every time I wanted to, I dunno, sell stock or recover. Hell, even having fast travel would be annoying, given the loading times on this game.

Honestly, I could go on, but I think you get the point. Dark Souls just isn't a good game. It's not fun, it's just frustrating. Victory awards not a sense of accomplishment, but an exasperated sigh as you realize now you have ANOTHER place to trudge and suffer through. I finally beat Quelaag and Ceaseless Discharge...only to be guided through a bed of lava where there was a Capra Demon and a herd of Taurus Demons waiting for me. The Taurus Demons rush you En Masse and block out your own camera, while the Capra Demon is...frustrating but actually not too bad on his own out in the open. That is, until you get past that first one and have to deal with – I shit you not – 7 more Capra Demons on a bridge all at once, followed by another herd of Taurus Demons.

And that's where I gave up. I finally got to the point where I was at the bottom of blighttown, I wasn't going to dare backtrack through that shit hole (I'd rather push forward and find one of those glorious shortcuts back to the surface world), I couldn't go forward, and it was clear that every step was just anger and frustration without any of the fun or accomplishment that these games are known for.

In Bloodborne, I never went longer than a day or two without returning to Yarnham. When Martyr Logarius bested me time and time again, I kept at him in spite of the long run to his boss arena and the fact that he might have been the hardest in the game for me. Why? He was fun, I felt like I was learning with every loss, and the level was good enough to forgive the frustration I felt when that explodey skull got me again, or the cloud of swords instakilled me. You pick yourself back up, and if at first you don't succeed, die, die, die, die, die, die, and die again until you kill what killed you.

When the Nameless King was regularly killing me in one or two shots, I actually threw my controller at the wall (I get frustrated pretty bad), but the level was so awesome to look at and I got incrementally better every time so I knew that, with time and patience, I'd have him. And I did. And it felt great.

In OG Dark Souls, it doesn't feel like I'm delving into a world wrought with peril and matching wits with epic bosses, it feels like I'm fighting the controls, shitty camera, and terrible design decisions made for the sake of frustration, not fair challenge. When I died in Bloodborne and Dark Souls III, I felt like I deserved it, like I fucked up, and it was on me to overcome my weaknesses. I was frustrated because I knew I could do better, and that I should be doing better faster. In Dark Souls it sometimes feels like the shoddy controls and camera are going to ensure that, even if I do everything perfectly, I might still die. That's not fair.

I could certainly go through, save my souls, level up, make my weapons better, upgrade my armor and shield, try different play styles, explore more, try a different route/branch of the game's open world, or just dick around and practice, but the truth is I just don't want to because that would mean I'd have to backtrack through BlightTown again, then a second time upon returning to get to the next area. That just sounds like a frustration that isn't worth my time.

And that's what's missing in this game. A sense of fairness amidst the desperation and challenge. That's a shame, too, because I Really, really wanna test my might against the franchise's hardest bosses, like Knight Artorias, Manus, and the duo of Ornstein and Smough. I know I can take them on, I love a great boss fight, but I just don't have the heart to suffer through everything needed to get there.

I've beaten 9/26 bosses in this game, and I've not enjoyed any of them. I've been playing for about 25 hours and I've enjoyed maybe two of them. The game feels clunky, I swear I've gotten stuck or lodged myself in the wrong area of the game too early, and as a result it's become nothing but one unpleasant experience after another.

It might be time to play something else until the DLC for Dark Souls III comes out. I got the Season Pass, and I've been deliberately holding off getting all the trophies solely due to the fact hat I want to try again when the DLC comes out.

With that said, what should I play in between now and Tuesday when the last Fallout 4 DLC comes out? I recently 'caught em all' in pokemon and have been formulating the perfect team for when Sun/Moon comes out, so I need something good but quick for this weekend/week.

I was thinking of Uncharted 4; That can be beat in a few days, right?  

I find it amazing that even in something as unrelated as Dark Souls, you always manage to find time to make mention of FFXIII.

Why you don't like Dark Souls boils down to:
- It is slower than Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3
- The controls are more stiff, slower, and methodical than Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne especially

Essentially, the game doesn't play anything like Bloodborne.

You don't like the gameplay of Dark Souls is what your ridiculously long rant that I skimmed the last quarter of boils down to.

By the by, to level up all bonfires effectively, that part of the sewer near a bonfire that is just littered with rats? They drop humanity. Boom, use it and boost any bonfire. Can't level them up to where you want? Go through the graveyard and head shove off into The Catacombs. Make your way down and kill Pinwheel, probably the easiest boss in the entire game, and bam, more upgrading ability.

Don't like your weapon? Try a new one. Upgrade what you have. Don't just accept your weapon if it isn't working for you. There is a huge difference in play style between two handing a greatsword and wielding a shield + sword, or a dexterous bow + sword combo.

Don't like wading through Blighttown? Go back to the Asylum and get the Rusted Iron Ring. Don't like taking the long way down to Blighttown? Start with the Master Key as your gift and go around the cliff edge by heading down from Firelink Shrine. It saves an amazing amount of time, and the only toxic you may have to endure is when going after the Firekeeper Soul.

I'm going to be blunt here and say, yeah, Dark Souls is a bit of a chore when you don't know anything. It isn't easy, won't hold your hand, and puts you through hell if you don't know the most efficient ways to navigate the world. I have yet to beat the game myself, but I didn't quit from dislike. I just sort of stopped after getting about 75% of the way in and had already recently seen my roommate make his way through the next area that didn't particularly excite me.

In the end though, you don't like the game because it isn't fast and fluid. It's part of the reason you don't like Dark Souls 2, besides Dark Souls 2 simply being very different from the rest of the series and not that good. You value fast action and fast skill based gameplay. You don't like methodical and patient gameplay. You want to go in guns blazing, blades swinging, and learn to dodge to win. The first Dark Souls is basically the opposite of that until you "git gud". You don't want to git gud and learn the game though because you aren't a patient gamer.

I mean, look at your top five games:
1. Fast action
2. Fast fighting
3. Fast action
4. Fast-ish action
5. Variable, but generally faster paced gameplay

You may as well stay away from any game that absolutely demands an incredibly slow learning curve that doesn't also involve fast paced gameplay, because clearly you need the latter to make the former bearable.

Despite being a huge Souls fan, I haven't played through much of Dark Souls I, yet. I know, right? Total heresy.

I'm honestly just waiting for a PS4 release. I have a group of Souls friends I met through SotFS, and with exception to Bloodborne (which I Platinum'd with co-workers), I have played through my entire Souls experience with them. I want to share DS1 with them as well, and maybe a Demon's remake, too (even though I Platinum'd that one already).

That all said, I still want to go back and get my Platinums for OG DS1&2.

I enjoyed Demon's Souls and loved Bloodborne. I'm currently, slowly trying to get through DS1 and having trouble staying motivated. I don't know if I'm just sated on Souls atm or if it really isn't doing much for me.

I played through Dark Souls on PC (again) before DS3 came out, and it is without a doubt the most complex, beautiful, inspired and difficult of all the Dark Souls game. (but the mechanics definitely got more user friendly with Bloodborne and DS3)

Demons is still my favorite simply because I was one of the few that pre-ordered the game, and that experience of jumping into the deep-end and not knowing how to swim, and being part of a small community that slowly grew and grew, was one of the best things ever.

I liked it more than DS2.

Until Scholar of the first sin was released.

Have played and platinumed BB, Demon's and DS1 in that order. All games are so addictive and well designed. My favourite is DS1. I really love the DS1 whole world design, how these routes between areas were constructed and intertwined. At the beginning of the game it is impossible to understand. In terms of gameplay I love more Demon's because of more variety in sorcery and overall in building the characters. BB's so gorgeous and have fast-paced combat. So I liked it too, but in terms of RPG and RPG-elements BB is the most limited souls game.

Yaaaaa I'm not reading all that. Checked out after you still hadn't gotten to the point 7 paragraphs in.

So I'm just gonna say you're wrong. DS1 is a masterpiece, and you suck for not liking it.
In all seriousness though, I find experiences within a franchise are always hurt when going backwards. A lot of the mechanics, and core design principles are refined and fine tuned as a series progresses, so when you play those newer games first and then go back to the beginnings, a lot of things just feel off.

All 5 Souls games are great. I would rank them:

1. Dark Souls 2
2. Bloodborne
3. Dark Souls
4. Demon`s Souls
5. Dark Souls 3