His impatience is what made the game unbearably difficult for him.

Another new player who never actually explored long enough and paid enough attention to locate the SHORTCUTS. That 15 minute gauntlet (ehich is only that ong if you engage every single enemy) is reduced to a five minute one and you can avoid most of the shambles by sprinting.

He's been on a twitter campaign against the game since before it came out. This article is not surprising. I kind of see him as a personification of the "new school" type of player. The one who needs his hand held and unable to think and adapt for himself.

As long as he's not the one reviewing it, I couldn't care less what he thinks. It's clearly not a game for him. For him to take time out of his day to trash the game clearly shows that he's trying to deter people away from it, even though it's been doing great in other reviews. It's a good game, and why people are trying to slander it is completely beyond me...

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.

He has some fair points and he's entitled to his opinion. When I die multiple times and respawn in the same area I just speed run it. Most enemies stop following you after a certain point. If I had to fight the same enemies over and over again I would be annoyed too. He also has a point about bosses not giving worthwhile rewards. I've only killed 4 so far so I don't know about the later ones, but unlike the Souls games they don't give you anything of value (unless the badges do something that I don't know yet). I just can't believe that he spent 12 hours on the first boss. That's insane.

All that being said it's one of my favorite games of all time.

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.

I really hate it when games make you repeat large chunks of an area whenever you die but also making you repeat boss fights takes it to another level, gaming is about enjoyment not frustration. I will probably skip this game when i do get a ps4.

Yeah this. He tried rushing through the game and that's why it took him 12 hours to beat the first boss. I think it took me like 6 hours or so, and that's with lots of exploring, finding short cuts etc.

Basically if it takes more than a few minutes to go from a Lamp to a boss fight, ur doin it wrong.