Dark Souls... (warning to those who like the game)

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Why has this game gotten such wonderful reviews despite its endless flaws such as no pause button, no in-game maps, little to no music, and repetition galore if you die? It really leads me to believe that "professional" game critics were bribed to give it such ovation, and as most game reviewers tend to be neurotypical and I autistic, I therefore absolutely can't trust mainstream game journalism, with games that have gotten bad or average reviews I've liked, and games like Dark Souls that have gotten wonderful reviews that have horribly disappointed me.

Dude, those "flaws" are why I love it. Gamers have become too coddled these days. It is nice to face a real challenge once in a while.

Dark Souls is good only with the DSFix and a controller on steam. Its unplayable otherwise but the game does have good atmosphere, I find Dark Souls to be decent but Dark Souls II kinda sucked and I don't expect much from Dark Souls III.

Its not a prefect series but there are far worse games out there.

They're not bribed.

For those of us that want a real challenge, as it used to be, the Souls games are a rare foray into that. They're still a bit on the easy side for me but still. They're a welcome change.

Lack of a pause button, well, I suspect it's just because of the game's always-online nature. You can be attacked by those red phantoms at any time; you cant PAUSE other players in ANY online game, or use pausing to keep them from attacking you in any online game; games like that do not feature pause buttons. A pause button wouldnt make sense here and would break things.

Lack of minimaps isnt an issue to me. Just learn the layouts of the areas like you would in real life. Look at and actually examine your surroundings. And honestly, minimaps rarely work out well unless the game world is extremely flat. Even a ton of EASY games dont use minimaps. They're another trend that came along though with the easiest of games, heaven forbid the player actually get lost in those rather simple worlds.

Repetition is punishment for death. If the player wants to stop repeating stuff? They need to increase their skill so as to stop dying so damn much. LACK of punishment for death is.... quite frankly I bloody hate the trend. In the games I play I'm used to it, particularly for roguelikes, where you lose literally *everything* when you die. ALL of your items, ALL of your progress, your character is annihilated and must be re-made from scratch. In older games, you had limited lives (usually 3), and got a "game over" when you ran out. That doesnt even happen hardly at all with AAA games (I'd be willing to bet that there are gamers out there that have never seen a game-over screen).

Lack of in-game music is probably just for the sake of ambiance. It's just a matter of preference by the game developers. There are plenty of games that lack music.

All in all, the Souls games are NOT designed for those that are used to the hyper-easy experiences that most AAA games provide. I havent played one in awhile... I'm used to games much harder than the Souls series... but I'm glad they exist.

Dark Souls is a technical masterpiece. From Software may have made the one of the greatest games of all time.

They created their own engine for it, and a pretty masterful one at that. I had played Dark Souls for over a hundred hours on the 360, and I wasn't even near the halfway mark. The difficulty was just well-done, harkening to an era when you had no idea how to play unless you played. The artwork was dark, grim, and sometimes even disturbing.

I could go on and on, but my point being that the development of Dark Souls housed and houses some of the most ingenious minds in game development. I would say I enjoyed it and it's first sequel a heck of a lot more than any ES or Fallout game, with the only game above it in my opinion being Planescape: Torment.

So, I dislike when people criticize Dark Souls for being what it is: a true example of art in video games.

I do not mean any disrespect to the original poster's opinion, I am just stating my opinion.

I like Enchanted Arms a hell of a lot more than the Souls games (I was only able to get through Demon's Souls using an in-game cheat), and wish they would produce a follow-up to that instead of another crappy unplayable piece of shoe.

It's not unplayable.

It's challenging series that is not meant for everyone. You can grind in the game if you find it difficult, just killing the same monsters over and over for experience. It may take awhile and be boring, but it's helpful.

You have to remember at the end of the day not every game is for everyone.

If you don't like the game, don't play it or stop playing it. It is as simple as that.

Like it was stated, not every game is for everyone. I hate call of duty, but I don't actively try to deter people interested in it's concept from playing it. If the game isn't your thing, then find a game that you do like, and play it.

Even a few thousand people spread across the internet complaining about the game won't change it, so there is no point in this thread, in my opinion, as there are many games similar in concept to Dark Souls that you could play instead, maybe The Witcher or Skyrim, if typical RPG elements are more your thing.

Just my opinion, not to offend.

Simply because you find a game too difficult... which I suspect is the actual problem here... doesnt mean it's "an unplayable piece of shoe". You might find it playable if you actually TRIED, and practiced a bit. The game is designed around the idea of it's players doing this. MOST games used to be. They werent afraid to destroy you, and were beaten ONLY by skill. If you didnt have the skill? You didnt beat the game until you did get the skill. Simple as that.

I'm about as critical, negative, and generally unpleasant as it gets when it comes to criticizing games, but even I have no problems with the Souls games really. They control well, they play well, they're very carefully designed, they dont obsess over boring cutscenes too much, and they actually provide a challenge for once. I cant stand easy games. Or ones with too much handholding. Particularly jRPGs, bah. Generally very easy AND stuffed with cutscenes.

But that's a whole other rant for another day.

I could not get it either, I bought Dark Souls 2 not long after it came out and I really could not get into it. I played with magic character, which was supposedly the easy playstyle, but it was super difficult in a non fun way, and in general I had no idea what I was doing, and a hard time to know where to go. I also got Dark Souls 1 as a free download when it was free for gold on Xbox 360, but it felt like more of the same. I really could not get into the supposed story style that everyone talked about.

But something happened not too long ago for me, I found some videos by Extra Credits that started to explain what exactly is found good about it. There is commentary on the subtle things in the game, and it kind of got be interested. I started a new play through, this time as a melee and keeping an eye out for what the game was doing, and I kind of got addicted.

I think what really cannot be understated is the game is hard, you are going to have trouble, but it feels oh so good to actually overcome it. One of the biggest examples I would say I had in the first Dark Souls was with Sif, a boss with a particular attack that would just wreck me, a spin attack that even if I blocked it, it would break through the block and kill me when it came back around. It was super unfair and I was dying over and over again. I was getting stressed, but then I had the thought that maybe I was really not playing right, and I started to pay attention to the subtle changes in the boss where it would announce its different moves, I died over and over again with no real evidence of doing much better. But suddenly at one point I got it, I had pretty much memorised what sort of moves I should do when, and I beat the boss with relatively small amount of damage received or needing to heal. And was a super high feeling, the use of spear to possibly contributed to the problem, but this is what this game is about.

At the start of the game you are weak, but that weakness is not just the character level you are, in fact that is maybe one of the bigger misconceptions of a video game. In Dark Souls what really levels up is the player. When you first enter an area you will have a difficult time, you will move at a snail pace as you don't know what an enemy is capable of, you don't know where enemies are, you will die from hazards that seem plain unfair, and you do not know where the hell you are going. But if you are "levelling" yourself (even without your knowledge), it actually becomes fairly easy, you could go back to an earlier area and find yourself having a fairly easy time, and not because you increased your stats, it is because you know how enemies move, and you know how to hit them and stay safe from the environment. I saw a friend complete Dark Souls the other day in 4 hours while it took me 90 in my first play through.

I am currently in Dark Souls 2, and I had some pretty good moments yesterday. Well not all good, I fought this giant rat which was just the worst because it was similar to a boss I had previously some trouble with, but more so that there were smaller rats that would cause a very bad poison effect (toxic) if they got two hits on me if I did not kill them first quickly, and there was little room to heal in the middle of the fight to heal. I got pretty angry, but I took the chance to learn the tells, and when I thought I had got it I returned my humanity to get my full health back and thanks to the extra leeway I beat the boss in the next fight. Anyway, what was great is I descended some spider webs which I knew was before a boss, I maybe prematurely returned my humanity because it was a little while before the boss, but by keeping at the usual pace I avoided most of the ambushes. I think it was fairly close to the bottom some other a-hole player decided to invade me, it actually happened to me earlier that day and I barely stood a chance, it might have meant death sentence. Only this time I think it was a bit different, I actually was the better player, the guy stood little chance against me and my long spear, I might have had to heal a couple times, but I beat that bastard. I got to the bottom, summoned and NPC, and still beat the boss in that one life, even another fairly tough enemy afterwards, I was a total badass and it was because this game actually made me as a player stronger.

The game is awesome that at first it might appear broken, there is leeway that the player themselves to really grow stronger. You might think that there is no story, but if you open your eyes there is actually a surprising amount of things.

I honestly feel that Bloodborne was From Software admitting that they needed a faster paced game to appeal to a larger audience. The Souls games can be downright brutal even when you know what you're doing and sadly that has allowed the creation of a rather obnoxious number of elitist fans for the series who treat people who don't like the game or have difficulty with it like s**t. It's something that I can't personally stand.

Unfortunately, most gaming communities do something like this. Best to just ignore it.

That being said, they seriously arent too hard if you've gotten the hang of them. I always call them this generation's equivalent of the very first Castlevania game (on the NES). Kinda slow-ish, with deliberate movements, and what seems like very brutal difficulty (and things like nasty knockback if you get hit).... but once you've memorized enemy patterns, they go down if you look at them too hard... so long as you dont make too many mistakes.

Honestly, as I think someone else said above already (or was that in a different topic?), gamers really are too coddled these days. Games that really just... arent all that difficult... are often seen as bloody impossible because players are now conditioned to basically expect victories to be handed to them on a silver platter. And then they give up almost immediately when it DOESNT happen.

To me, a victory that requires no effort is not a victory at all, so... I'd much rather have something like this.

That being said, if someone's idea of good gaming is something a bit more relaxing or whatever, or mostly story-focused, this is NOT the game for them. It's GOING to be frustrating at times, and it's NOT going to let you have more story until you actually earn it, through practice, perseverance, and overcoming powerful adversaries. Other games will better provide the experiences that sort of player is looking for if they're just after simple fun/story/relaxation/random-smashing-of-things.

For me it comes down to time. I don't have the luxury of spending hours of time learning a game's every nuance while battling a design that is deliberately meant to frustrate the player. There's a few cases like Deathstate where I can manage but the Souls series never really caught my fancy. The atmosphere is good but not enough for me to slog through the game to experience it, especially when I can just watch some hapless Youtuber do it and laugh at their deaths.

I can agree with that to a point.

While I can applaud what the Souls series does, they're a bit too slow for me. I'm used to things that move much faster, and have less of the uninteresting "travel time" when you have to backtrack.

Now granted, Castlevania on the NES as I mentioned is extremely similar, BUT, it's also quite short and very "to the point". No "empty" moments or interruptions; just one challenge after the next. No backtracking. Doesnt take bloody forever. And boss fights, well... one thing that bugs me in the Souls games is that bosses will attack you... but then sorta wait a thousand years before attacking again, unless they've entered some sort of combo sequence. Not too fond of that type of boss design. It kinda FEELS like Monster Hunter in a way (which I like), but without the sheer aggression of the monsters that keeps the fights in that game so interesting (really, they dont give you breaks like that). And a bit slower than MH is. Not to mention a lack of complexity in the fights.

Though yes, watching people on Youtube play it can be absolutely hilarious.

Really? Because most of the breaks in the attacks of bosses are just enough at most to cast a spell or heal yourself before having to take another attack. You have to take into account stamina regeneration after blocking or dodging, the possibility of expanding too much stamina with an unnecessary dodge roll, having to lower your shield to regenerate that stamina, having to position yourself in a place you can be safe and have enough stamina to attack. Slower bosses tend to hit even harder so that taking them on wrong will mean that after one attack they will probably break and you probably will not be ready to block before they attack again.

Some bosses may only be open enough to attack after certain attack. Some bosses even have attacks that will hit you in places that are otherwise safe, meaning the illusion of lots of time to attack is a purposeful trap that will kill you if you don't look out. Yes bosses wait, but so does the player, there is a limit to what you can do at any one time before having to wait, and this is what makes the fights thrilling.

Backtracking? Yeah it is a maze, but in Dark Souls 1 there are shortcuts all over the place, and after you have to go back to a lot of places in particular you get quick travel, something unlocked in Dark Souls 2 straight away. Dark Souls 1 in particular actually can give a lot of freedom, rather than backtracking things are interconnected all over the place, rather than a straight pathway it feels more than just a level. And it is kind of crazy actually how quickly it can be beat if you know where to actually go. And part of the trap is being able to beat tough things before easier later, but if you let your guard down too much you can still lose.

Am I the only one that finds Dark Souls harder than some of the old NES and SNES games?

I can freaking rock the world on Mega Man X but I only ever got to Seath the Scaleless on Dark Souls. I have accepted that I'll never win Dark Souls but it seems odd that some people like Misery I believe said it that older gamers were harder. I don't remember anything being quite as hard as Dark Souls. Still I guess whats easy for some is hard for other.

Easy games from me

Doom
Silent Hill
Resident Evil 4
Skyrim (On harder difficulty)

Hard games for me

Dark Souls
Dark Souls II
The Impossible Game
Terraria (Some bosses)