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sundin13 on 27 March 2015
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theprof00 said:
sundin13 said:


Okay, that makes sense as a philosophy, but I don't think it works as well practically as the Estus Flask system...it seems to create a system based around grinding moreso than any kind of strategic play.

It is the opposite actually because kindling trades gathered resources for health boosts. This encourages you to grind in order to maximize your healing ability.

This instead encourages risk/reward, harming yourself to gain an advantage.

Blood vials don't actually drop all that often, whereas the estus flask can be replenished simply by someone using your bonfire.

Look at it this way. Blood echoes (currency) are a resrouce that do not refill when you die, you have to go back and get your body or defeat whatever killed you.
Health IS a resource that can replenish upon death or returning home.
As such, you can trade your renewable resource for offensive capability.

Not sure if this encourages grinding. I'd say it doesn't. It encourages combat.


While I like the idea that harming yourself gives you an advantage, I don't think the consumable approach to health is neccessary. It produces a situation where you have to grind in order to have enough to play through a certain area.

On the other hand, Estus Flasks operated similar to Energy tanks in metroid. When you collect them, they essentially serve as an extension of your healthbar. This encourages exploration first of all to find the additional shards. Second of all, this creates consistency with your run and allows the developers to tailor the dificulty of levels to the amount of health you should have at this point. I do think that lifegems somewhat broke that system, but I still think at its core it was better than this.

The problem is when you get to a point where you think "I don't have enough Blood Vials to play the way I want to play". When this happens, you are essentially forced to grind until you can advance and I in no way see this as improving any part of the system.

MikeRox said:
BraLoD said:
He stops after the first boss and hate it because he sucks, classic.


To be fair, me and a friend spent an entire evening getting nowhere on Demon Souls and kinda gave up haha.

I keep looking at Bloodborne, but the memory of Demon Souls makes me reconsider... that said, I never tried Dark Souls 1 or 2 because of Demon Souls.

Yeah, I know I've let myself in for a lot of flak here... but I have to say, I totally get the article writer's point.


Try Demon Souls again with the Mage class. I too ran into a wall really early in my Demon Souls run and quit the game until a friend told me to play as a Mage. It is essentially easy mode, but the game is phenomenal if you can get past that early bump.