In my opinion, Demon's Souls is a bad game.

[Reasonable]

Khuutra said:

Reasonable said:
I 'gotta admire your honesty in posting this, and hope you didn't get pelted by too many half bricks from the many who clearly don't see it that way.

I personally don't think Demon's Souls is bad at all, because it's designed that way, but I agree with you completely and won't be playing the game after trying a friend's import for exactly the reasons you state.

The approach it takes is just not for me, however I think 'bad' means a failure to achieve your design goals - for example bad aiming in an FPS or something like that. There is no doubt Demon's Souls is designed to give exactly the experience you got, therefore I don't think it's bad just not to your (or my) taste in terms of gameplay mechanics.

I just couldn't grind like that either - but I do kind of admire the crazy masochists who do. It's like when I see someone with a Platinum Trophy for Wipeout HD and I think how mad they must be to stick with a game that hard to get that result, but admire the effort.

You don't think it reasonable to make a quality judgment concerning design decisions?

??? Not sure I'm getting your point there, sorry.

I believe DS delivers exactly what the developers intended, and as such is a well made game with respect to itself.  However it's chosen design simply doesn't work for me, personally.  I just can't bother with games that require that level of effort and re-play to complete.  This is mostly a time based decision.  I have a family and kids plus lots of real life activity that limits my gaming time - therefore while I'm happy to invest a fair bit of time into the right game, it won't be one where I replay sections a lot to get a desirable result.  That just doesn't work for me right now.

So I was basically saying you can't call a game 'bad' because it's chosen mechanics or approach don't appeal if they are actually well done and as intended, that just means they don't appeal to you.

An analog would be some friends reaction to watching the film Revolutionary Road.  They said it was bad.  I asked why and they said because it was depressing.  I asked about script, acting, direction, etc. and they said all of that was great.  I then pointed out that clearly the film wasn't bad as everything that you can fairly critique was in fact excellent according to them, the problem was that it told a story they didn't want to experience, namely a very depressing one.  The issue was one of taste, not failure to execute.  I believe the same applies to the OP regarding Demon's Souls.