Dark Souls or Demon's Souls, which is mechanically harder?

NuclearPenguin

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I felt Demons Souls was more fair. You never felt cheated.
I played 400 hours of that game and every death I could blame on me.

Dark Souls felt cheap in comparison.
 

lapan

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GundamSentinel said:
The big thing I didn't like was that many of Dark Souls' bosses were like Flamelurker: slugfests. Demon's Souls bosses were easier, but at least there was more variety to them. Bosses like Flamelurker, Allant and arguably Penetrator are fun, but I liked that Demon's Souls bosses weren't all like that. I liked the fact that you could cheap many of them if you wanted to, because that implied multiple ways to tackle them.
Yes, they were more experimental. sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't
 

King of Asgaard

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Oct 31, 2011
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Demon's Souls is mechanically harder because it's older, so the mechanics aren't as well developed as in Dark Souls. Case in point being parry windows being harder to connect with, and hitboxes being a bit too big/small in some cases.

Not only that, but the bosses, like False King Allant and and Flamelurker are hectic in a way which not many of the Dark Souls bosses can compete with. That said, bosses are more imbalanced, in that you can get their AI stuck behind a wall, and cheese them to oblivion. Even Old King Doran could have poison clouds tossed at his head to slowly tick away at his 10 billion health, whereas Dark Souls made bosses more air-tight in that regard (Bed of Chaos aside).

Dark Souls is more balanced, too, with all playstyles being equally (more or less) viable. In Demon's Souls, magic was OP and there's no question about that. Even a half-assed mage character could still wreck shit up by the end, whereas miracles were more of a support role, and a few were useless outside of PvP.

I've heard about people complaining about the first few bosses in Dark Souls, like Taurus and Capra. I never understood Taurus; use drop attack, hack at his knees, done. Capra is an ass, I'll agree, until you realise that he's entirely optional. In fact, some of the most annoying bits are completely skipable. Lower Undead Burg, the Depths, 2/3 of Blighttown are all optional. Demon's Souls doesn't do that; everything must be tackled and shortcuts are few and far between.

Demon's Souls is considerably shorter than Dark Souls, with playthroughs, for semi-experienced players, being 5-6 hours and that's with stupid deaths and grinding, while Dark Souls can double that easily. The difference is that the 6 hours must all be tackled, whereas the 12 can be trimmed down with clever shortcuts and speed building.

I find Demon's Souls harder, mostly because it's less forgiving. Fewer checkpoints and losing half your max life upon death is an arse, and that's without bringing up Character/World Tendency. By contrast, hollowing is completely immaterial.
 

scorptatious

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May 14, 2009
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I like to think Demon's Souls was mechanically harder seeing as how you're more than likely going to spend the majority of the game as a soul who's health is cut in half. (Or less when you equip a certain item, can't remember the name of it). At least, unless you're really good. In Dark Souls, you don't get a health penalty as an undead, the health penalty was implement into the curse status ailment instead.

They were both pretty difficult though.
 

00slash00

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I would say Demon's Souls is harder. I think level 3-2 is more difficult than any level in Dark Souls. Also in Dark Souls there is really no penalty for dying. In Demon's Souls, dying causes you to lose 50% to 24% of your max health (depending on whether or not you have a specific item equipped. More importantly, Demon's Souls is harder because upgrading is far more difficult. In Dark Souls you are constantly picking up upgrade materials and farming for more is super easy if you have a certain ring equipped. By the time I finished my first playthrough, I had most of my best gear completely maxed out. In Demon's Souls, you need to kill very specific enemies and item drop rates for upgrade materials are much lower. As a result, you need to be more careful about what you upgrade and just feel less over powered, in general.
 

jnixon

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Demon's souls, for quite a lot of reasons:
1. Why has no one mentioned item burden? the amount of times i had to chuck stuff away because of finding a new shield etc.
2. Old king allant, some of his moves are ridiculous that aoe spell and soulsucker, had nothing like that in dark souls
3. all the skeletons in the storm shrine areas are hard and if you say they aren't, you're lying

saying that the end boss for each shrine was quite easy, bar the penetrator
 

Johnny Novgorod

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ShinyCharizard said:
Demon's Souls had harder bosses. Flamelurker in particular was just brutal.
I thought so too until I realized you can exploit a loophole that makes Flamelurker constantly charge against an obstacle, holding it at arm's length and allowing you to long-range him to death. I had a harder time beating the spider boss from before and even then it turned out for lack of a better strategy I could just level up like mad until I could stomach every attack just by standing still.
 

ShinyCharizard

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Johnny Novgorod said:
ShinyCharizard said:
Demon's Souls had harder bosses. Flamelurker in particular was just brutal.
I thought so too until I realized you can exploit a loophole that makes Flamelurker constantly charge against an obstacle, holding it at arm's length and allowing you to long-range him to death. I had a harder time beating the spider boss from before and even then it turned out for lack of a better strategy I could just level up like mad until I could stomach every attack just by standing still.
Yeah I had to pull the same move on Flamelurker the first time through. Getting him stuck on the tree roots in the corner then just filling him with arrows. I don't like having to do that with bosses though, it just feels too cheap. It's much more exciting to fight them head on and win.