Gave up on Dark Souls after my third attempt

[AngryLittleAlchemist]

mZuzek said:

AngryLittleAlchemist said:

So like Ori and the Blind Forest? That game was way worse about this sort of thing, so I find your love of it a bit confusing after reading this. In fact Ori literally has almost half of the game dependent on enemy A.I. co-operating with the player in order to even do the platforming sections right, which creates scenarios where the enemy A.I. won't respond correctly and you'll lose progress for no reason other than the fault of the A.I. not being good. Just saying, I don't see how that is any better than Dark Souls. 

I've played through the game four times and I have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

At no point in the game do you lose any significant progress upon death unless you didn't save. Which you can do at any time, except for the escape sequences. The longest escape sequence in the game probably lasts around 2 minutes, anyway. No clue what you mean about relying on enemy AI for the platforming, maybe you mean for sections where you need to bash off enemies, which are few and far between, and again, you won't lose much progress upon dying (and also even if you miss the platforming you can still not die...?).

Either way it's probably not much use arguing. Your taste in games is... well, it doesn't quite match up with mine, let's just say that.

@Bolded I really don't think our taste in games is so drastically different that it should garner that kind of response, though. Reminds me of the time I posted a mini-review to no one in particular in the games beat thread in which I stated my opinion on Okami and you seemed to get a bit mad. I still like Okami, just not as much as you. But I love games like Hollow Knight, any of the Metroid games, the Zelda games are quite great. And I hyped up Astral Chain before it was cool (though the final project is somewhat disappointing). I even share almost the same exact sentiments as you when it comes to Nier Automata and it's praise.

If our taste was so little alike that I actually couldn't relate to your takes at all, I would probably not find them as interesting. That's why I asked for clarification on Ori, because I do relate enough to your viewpoints to find where we diverge intriguing. It should be a good thing to have different opinions, not inherently a negative thing. But honestly this isn't the thread to discuss Ori, I shouldn't have brought it up. Was just curious.

SvennoJ said:

Chrkeller said:

Yeah I was talking about bosses not normal enemies. I use shields during the level. When I reach a fog gate I drop the shield and double hand my weapon for extra damage.

And rolling away doesn't work well. Roll past the boss. Stand on his hip, he swings, roll forward. Work those invincibility frames.

I struggled and hated the series, but once I learned some tricks I solo'd each game up to ng+4.

The games are not easy, but they aren't as hard as they are made out to be.

Yep, rolling past then keep running was my strategy lol.

@AngryLittleAlchemist I never had a problem with obtuse game mechanics, Everquest being my favorite game of all time. There you couldn't even tell where the quests were, you had to say the right key words to an npc to even get a quest started. The only 'problem' with dark souls was that it never warns you of its completely different approach to stats and happily lets you 'upgrade' yourself into a dead end. Hence I started over after 20 hours since the amount of souls I needed to 'fix' my stats to where I could use better weapons and spells had gone up exponentially.

I have to disagree with not feeling stupid or cheated after looking things up. Maybe the hint system wasn't working right but I couldn't find the way to the lower depths for the longest time and was stuck with a spiked wooden club in Darkroot garden, not able to use anything better.

I had missed the door probably due to the dragon popping out at you there and/or dismissed it as just another painted on door. I had the key for ages, just never found the door until I looked it up making me feel stupid. Same with the Capra Demon which was especially frustrating since I had not found the closer bonfire yet (dragon in the way, plus didn't look safe to drop down). I kept getting killed by the dogs, solution take the hints sprint to a spot in the back out of reach of the AI pathing... It's just bad design.

Same with the co-op. I started the game later and mostly ended up getting matched with people that were already on NG++++++ or something. I got no where with the Belltower Gargoyle, finally resorted to co-op, dude shows up, kills it in 2 blows. One of the most disappointing experiences in 20 years of video games. and then the annoying invasions during co-op, 20 attempts to reach Ornstein and Smough foiled by invasions of vastly outmatched opponents. 

Despite all that, I loved the game for single player exploration. Without the bosses and the online nonsense, the game was sublime. Getting lost in the lower depths was amazing. Carefully mapping out the the environments in my head, getting a little further each try. Magical place to explore, awesome map design all interconnected, no need for fast travel. To me Dark souls has the best map/world ever created in a video game.

I don't really agree with most of this, either  because I just didn't have that experience, or because I don't mind mechanics being intrusive or annoying at times if it can contribute to interesting ideas. But I can accept them as criticisms. My point with the hints is more so not only are they a cool addition, but I think they also liberate the player to feel free to look up stuff about the game (if they want to) without feeling stupid. The developers already put a "cheat" system in the game basically, mentally I don't think anyone should feel bad for looking up information on the game, after all they could only make the cheat system so detailed. 

What I do kind of agree with is bosses, but only to an extent. Again, haven't played the game in forever so maybe this is a criticism that I'll have to retract, but watching someone play the game recently I kind of forgot how many bosses are just kind of eh at best and bad at worst. I think that back when "Dark Souls is hard!" was a meme and a lot of people accused the game of being unfair, I used to get so fixated on the fact that the bosses "weren't even that hard" to the point that I didn't give as much blame to the poorly designed bosses as I probably should have. The Capra Demon is pretty bad, Bed of Chaos is awful, the bridge Taurus Demon is the kind of boss that isn't "bad" per say but it's such an unfun boss to fight that I wonder why they even have it in the game, Four Kings is kind of similar although not nearly as flawed. Seath's is annoying from what I remember. That being said, I do think it's reasonable to say that most of the bad bosses in Dark Souls, are at the very least easy enough to where their badness isn't too big of a problem (at least again going off memory). And really, most of them are more mediocre than pure garbage. It still sucks that there are so many bosses that I can't call good, but then again I've never really liked the way in which people just look at Souls games as purely boss-oriented. Gwyn is one of the coolest final bosses in games for me, Bell Gargoyles are awesome, Gravelord Nito is good stuff, Ornstein and Smough deserve their reputation (I'll admit the bonfire should have been closer probably), Pinwheel is a very intriguing design with one of the most bizarre tracks in the game, Moonlight Butterfly is very elegant and a pretty good example of the game designers prioritizing a unique experience over purely making everything challenging, Sif is a legend all to it's own, Iron Golem has some cool mechanics tied to him, and the Gaping Dragon is probably my favorite boss in the entire game and one of the most memorable in gaming for me.  And that's not to mention one of the side bosses are among the better ones in the game. 

The sewers in Dark Souls are probably one of my favorite locations in a game ever. That's a very weird sentence to say, because sewers in games are just constantly shit (pun not intended) and some of the most boring padding you'll find. But that's just the power of Dark Souls level design.