Dark Souls was made to be cheesed

Post Reply New Topic

I feel no shame in cheesing Dark Souls bosses, because the developers obviously wanted me to do this. Now, not every boss is easily beat in some cheap way but enough are that I'm pretty sure it's very intentional. Just a few examples of Dark Souls intentionally encouraging players to cheese it are:

-Having weapons such as Zweihander, gravelord sword, great scythe, ect easily available at the beginning of the game if you look for it.

-Taurus demon can be jump attacked until death.

-Capra demon can be firebombed from behind the fog wall.

-You can summon Solaire and other players in boss fights.

-The existence of Havel's set makes it ridiculously easy to tank certain bosses.

-Ceaseless discharge boss fight, nuff said there.

-You can parry the final boss to death.

-Pyromancies, sorceries, and arrows are a thing.

In summary: this game isn't all that hard and it's full of opportunities to exploit its mechanics for easy wins.

-

For me, I think that the energy required to pull off the cheese things, although I might have done the great scythe thing before, because I do like that weapon for how it can make things easier.

I personally believe that the Taurus demon is meant to be defeated by having it chased you to the other end, dodge one of its attacks, climb the ladder, and then jump down for massive damage. Many bosses in the series is finding their weak points. But ang if my latest game, a heavy character, I was having trouble beating Ornstein and Smough, I have to beat Ornstein first to get his drop, but it is just rather difficult to pull off for me with a character that is so slow and having to deal with more easier to predict Smough with aggressive Ornstein with his electric attacks.

The first time that I played Dark Souls I didn't cheese anything and I didn't read guides. Cheesing Dark Souls is one thing, but if you look up how to cheese Dark Souls on your first playthrough then that's unforgiveable. It's not a very hard game if you know how to play, but that's the point; you don't know how to play, you have to learn.

Bloodborne is the perfect Souls game imo because you can't rely as much on foreknowledge, it's all about using your tools to win.

I never finished a souls game. The closest I got was Demon's Souls which I played a lot of when it first came out. I played a fair bit online and enjoyed the co-op and a bit of the dueling. I did a ton of grinding in that game while listening to bands like The Dillinger Escape Plan and Meshuggah, got carried away and my character got real strong. At some point I started over as a mage and got a little farther. Then when my character was strong enough to potentially brute force through the next section, I had lost interest. I think this was over half way through the game. I just got sick of dying etc. I tried Dark Souls and enjoyed it for a couple hours but lost interest. I tried Dark Souls III and died a few times on the first boss and decided to quit. I tried Bloodborne and didn't get far and gave up. I just don't have the patience for these kinds of games anymore. On another note, did anyone play and/or beat the PS2 games Shinobi and sequel Nightshade? These were hard and cool, enjoyable action games that I got to like the 75% way mark before having to stop. No grinding or loopholes or anything there, you just gotta figure out the technique, pretty tough games. My friend and I and his brother all felt Shinobi was up there in terms of difficulty. Of the three of us, only his brother was able to beat it and I think he like stayed up all night working on the boss over and over again.

If it's intended game design, you can't really call it cheesing. Cheesing generally implies exploiting game mechanics to trivialise content in a manner unintended by the designer. Much of Dark Souls' design is based around players repeatedly playing sections finding the easiest path forward, and sharing that knowledge to others.