http://plebegaming.wordpress.com/2014/07/15/the-struggle-why-i-love-the-souls-series/

How many souls fans are here? Why do you love this awesome series, and how'd you get into it?

Last week I was playing good old Demon's Souls and I recently went back to Dark Souls 2 (PS3) to polish my skills up before I got my hands on the new DLC. Sadly, I can't play it because my computer needs a new gpu, that I'll be getting at the end of the week. It's driving me crazy, so I've been wanting to talk about the game with anyone. Currently trying a DEX/INT build.

Whatever happens in this thread.. I wanna be "Black Widow"... others can be like Cap America, Iron Man, Hulk etc.. but I'm the hot one..

I've beaten Demon Souls only and I don't like how you often have to run through a whole difficult level to get to the boss if you die to the boss. It forces me to not want to do new things or take risks and instead just lame it out. It does look like Dark Souls 2 improved upon that a bit (haven't seen much of DS1).

"There is nothing in the entire series that is “cheap.”": Well thats not true...getting invaded by someone way stronger than you? Trap Chests? Cheaply placed enemies/traps that are almost impossible to avoid? Just because there are bloodstains, doesn't make it any less cheap.

The Souls series however does have some of the best handling of death in any video game though. However DS2 went and made it worse by chipping away at your health bar each time you die @.@

Let me address some of your complaints friend.

All of the levels in Demon's Souls have shortcuts you can activate later in a level that makes you so you can easily return to the boss without having to go through the entire stage again.

There's really no trap that isn't foreshadowed, and that's not even including blood stains, which really should put you on your guard. If you calmly look around you'll notice things like pressure plates for traps and enemies who aren't quite as hidden as they think. Is there anywhere specific you remember a real ambush or trap?

Mimics are easy enough to detect, they have chains resting the opposite way for example, and outside of Dark Souls 2, you can just wail on any chest you see to check for the creepy bast*rds.

I love how the difficulty of the game mostly comes from the lack of attention to detail and the lack of patience people have today. It really teaches you to calm yourself and be more observant in everything you do. For someone like me, usually high strung and twitchy, that's an incredibly difficult thing to do at times. It's a simple concept that's hard to put into pracice at first.

Why not in thread OP?

All? I don't know about all. Its been a while since I played DS so I can't say for sure...

As for ambush/traps...I'm watching The Sw1tcher's DS2 playthrough right now and I've seen a couple, from things simple enough as dudes hiding behind corners or in the tutorial level when you jump down into a pit and its pretty much guaranteed that you will get hit. The games are designed with Trial and Error in mind in a lot of places. It throws you into situations where you will get hit by something cheap, even if you have your guard up, and you just need to not make the same mistake again...

Also, I'm talking about trap chests from DS2, not Mimics...

DS has a lot of great difficulty stuff in it, but its got a lot of things that you are almost guaranteed to get hit by the first time through...

Also, I would like to throw in the Valley of Defilement as a flaw in the games...seems like each one needs to have an area that is absolutely terrible. 

If you calmly approach corners, you can either see the enemy around it or bait him into coming out. As for the drops, you can walk along the ledges and use the camera to pan around to check if the coast is clear. Even if an archer is obscured, the sound cue warns you to sidestep long before the arrow hits.

Trap chests are actually really slow, and the first one you encounter has a dev note warning you about it if I remember correctily.

You have to remember that this is a game with harsh punishments for recklessness and failure. It is almost guaranteed you'll get hit, but I assure you that outside of one scripted scene in Dark Souls, there are no deaths that truly can't be avoided by a painfully slow pace and attention to detail.

I still maintain that the games are cheap and require trial and error. That isn't to say they are bad, in fact, I think they are designed that way, but to say that they are 100% fair just seems silly to me. Yeah, maybe you can avoid all the traps, but if in order to do so you have to play in a way that bores you to death, then I say that isn't exactly fair. The game is designed to piss you off, but with each death, a lesson is learned...thats fine, even if it isn't completely fair. That is why I don't like how DS2 chips away at your life bar. Its really counter-intuitive...