By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
The_Liquid_Laser said:

Heh, this thread reminds me of most of the comments I read when Demon's Souls and Dark Souls were new games.  Most people didn't like it.  Maybe that is still true, but people don't realize it.

 

To me Dark Souls feels like old school D&D.  You are trying to make your way through a death dungeon.  It is a lot like a roguelike.  It's a real-time roguelike.  I don't think of it as an action game. 

Having said that, Dark Souls is one of my favorite games of all time.  I think younger people want to play it as an action game, because they don't really make challenging action games anymore.  If I want to play a challenging action game, then I'll just play some game from the 80s.  But for younger people, they may not even consider these games, so they try to make Dark Souls into an action game instead.

I wouldn't compare it to a rogue like. Those are about procedural generation, different every time, see how far you get. Dark Souls is the opposite, every enemy is always in the same spot, behaves the same, nothing left up to chance. It's more like Ultima Underworld.

Approaching it like old school D&D is what got me stuck in my first play through. The stats are not all that important, equipment is. I had to throw my notions how to approach an RPG out the window and simply treat stats as 'unlocks' for weapons, armor and spells.

It's still an action game, just a slower paced one. You can't rush it, but you better have good timing and reflexes to dodge and parry. Very different from games like Everquest and WoW where you simply turn attack on and let the dice do the work. Everquest was much harder than Dark Souls even though the actual combat had very little to do with timing. Well, apart from tons of timers before you could use / stack an attack again.