Dark Souls

[SlickShoes]

Anyone getting this next week?

I got it yesterday and it is a fantastic game, just as challenging as demon's souls if not more. Anyone going in completely without any demon's souls experience better be prepared to die a lot!

 

[Mr.C]

Did you watch any of the 24 hour marathon IGN did ? Some of the editors including Keza McDonald one of their UK editors who flew over specially for the event played it non-stop and streamed the video feed on the site. They were giving away t-shirts and copies of the game as well as a one of miniture statue. I saw some of it. It's not a game I'm going to get as it way too hard to be fun. I played Demon's Souls a bit and got so frustrated gave up. Whilst I expect games to be challenging these two are just ludicrously hard.

 

[TMRaven]

Demon's Souls was far from hard-- leaning towards easy at times. Dark Souls will probably be more of the same. Its difficulty doesn't come from unfair mechanics or stats, in fact it's usually knowledge based. Most of the people who had an extremely hard time in Demon's Souls lacked the adequate map and enemy knowledge in the game, or plain didn't know how to get the better weapons. All the bosses could be cheesed out without taking much hits, and the game mechanics are extremely simple with nothing more than timing for rolls to avoid enemy attacks.

The other argument can be said that its popularity and fun come from its apparent 'difficulty.'

Really, give the game a shot. It's not going to be extremely hard. As From Software has said multiple times, the game isn't unfair hard, it just punishes people who play like idiots.

 

[Mr.C]

Well I don't play like an idiot. I consider myself a pretty decent player but I still found the first one hard. I'm not the only one of the opinion that they are hard games even a lot of games journalists think the same. Like I said I'm all for a challenge but when a game is hard enough to make it frustrating it's not enjoyable and I'm not interested, I don't have as much time as I use to to play games so I'm not going to waste it on games that are unnecessarily unforgiving.

 

[TMRaven]

The thing that has me the most hesitant about Dark Souls is ign's mentioning of invasions being less frequent and harder to do. That's a very unwelcoming remark in my book, as the invasions were the best thing about Demon's Souls. Of the 400 hours I've spent on Demon's Souls, nearly 300 was making separate profiles just for multiplayer invasions and helping while beating up invaders.

I hope invasions are still a major aspect of Dark Souls.

 

[MRU]

No... Just did not get any pleasure what so ever from Demon Souls, I'd rather invest my whole time in a product where I get a 10% modicum of enjoyment in a 7hour game, than feel utterly frustrated 99.9% of the time with .1% of relief of surviving in a game taking over 100 hours to complete...

Anyone who says the first game wasn't hard, but spent hours upon hours grinding and grinding in order to get just that little bit more powerful or have a weapon so they could survive the next section, are a rare breed. Fair play to them, but 100-400 hours is prob my entire year or two's worth of gaming hours and there are just too many other worthy good games to spend that amount of time in absolute frustration.

My free time is too precious as there isn't that much of it, to bare the burden of Dark Souls. If they at least added a newb / easy option I'd buy it as I'd at least stand a chance of seeing the game, as it stands I'm afraid I'll leave the sadomasochism of gaming to others.

Gaming should be pleasure, escapism and getting away from the daily drudgery - a game where you just survive is what I play in the real world - I don't need it in my pleasure time.

 

[TMRaven]

:S

The 'difficulty' is the whole reason Demon's Souls was Demon's Souls. Without it, it's just an ordinary game that wouldn't be worthy of any praise at all from the Western Community.

You don't have to invest a lot of time either. Two very good weapons are available to you right from the start of the game. There's a dragon longsword that's easily upgradable to +3/4 with the dragonstones scattered around world 2-2. On the first playthrough, you can wack nearly all the enemies to death with only a couple swipes of it, because most everything is weak to fire.

There's also a crescent falchion at the start of 4-1, and you don't even have to confront the Black Skeleton. Just run past him and he'll jump off the ledge trying to lunge at you.

The game arguably gets decently hard with the start of NG+, as every enemy swipe damage is multiplied tenfold, but by then you already know the placement of the enemies and the layouts of the maps.

 

[Mr.C]

No... Just did not get any pleasure what so ever from Demon Souls, I'd rather invest my whole time in a product where I get a 10% modicum of enjoyment in a 7hour game, than feel utterly frustrated 99.9% of the time with .1% of relief of surviving in a game taking over 100 hours to complete...

Anyone who says the first game wasn't hard, but spent hours upon hours grinding and grinding in order to get just that little bit more powerful or have a weapon so they could survive the next section, are a rare breed. Fair play to them, but 100-400 hours is prob my entire year or two's worth of gaming hours and there are just too many other worthy good games to spend that amount of time in absolute frustration.

My free time is too precious as there isn't that much of it, to bare the burden of Dark Souls. If they at least added a newb / easy option I'd buy it as I'd at least stand a chance of seeing the game, as it stands I'm afraid I'll leave the sadomasochism of gaming to others.

Gaming should be pleasure, escapism and getting away from the daily drudgery - a game where you just survive is what I play in the real world - I don't need it in my pleasure time.

I agree with everything you wrote there. That's my view of these games in a nut shell. I bought the first one to see what all the fuss was about. Realising how frustrating it was and totally unenjoyable I made a point not to buy the sequel.

 

[SlickShoes]

I have played about 9 hours of it and killed 3 bosses. I have enjoyed all of it.

The only thing that makes the game hard is that if you make a mistake you will die or come close to death, none of the boss tactics are told to you, you just have to figure it out and the game is not on rails so if you go one way and keep dying try a different way.

I got a couple of good weapons straight away in Dark Souls by just doing a quick suicide run around an area that was a bit tough picking up stuff left on the ground.

I don't think the game is hard at all, it is just unforgiving and punishes you for making mistakes.