Death Mechanics and Dark Souls

[Grey Day for Elcia]

You only enjoy life because it will eventually end?

I find that... sad.

 

[Angel Molina]

"...and something seemed to snap inside my head."

0_o
I don't post very often... But I am genuinely worried about your mental state, please do take it easy...

On a less depressive and more jesting note: you just made the quote of day! Congrats!

...But seriously, take a break.

 

[Luciella]

lol Yahtzee, you never went through the horror of the Tomb of Giants. That was way more scary than any Amnesia moments or Silent hill moments. I remember u said once something along the lines of that the kind of horror that makes you wonder what is ahead or behind IS the best -if not only- kind of horror.

It is indeed a shame you never went past the first boss, while by no means i can declare myself a pro gamer, i killed that boss in the second try. And by a shame i dont mean by your skills or tastes, no, i mean that if u kept playing you would start an odessy of awe, horror and even pity of the less fortunate than your already unfortunate character.

The crystal cave, the hydras, the secret beach, hell, the catacombs and tomb of giants all of them make you fully think you are inside there, making the best of your resources in order to stay alive and by al means to think fast of a strategy to come out victorious. But also to reveal the story, although simple, very inmersive.

I would by all means suggest to play the game past the gargoyles twin bosses, after those you would have got a hold of the game. But patience is required, even i that spent more than 120 hours in demon souls had a hard time in the way to the gargoyles.

The tomb of the giants is scary? Really? Ok, that's your opinion, I found it to be one of the worst levels in any game I've ever played, it's even worse if you were using a ranged character because you don't know where your targets are to shoot them, not to mention having some areas that lead to dead ends and hiding the way you are supposed to go is just bullshit.

That aside, it's probably a good thing he didn't get too far, otherwise he'd run into the knight twin boss (executioner and dragonslayer), one of the worst bosses in game history, because it wasn't designed to work well with this type of gameplay, and often I'd find myself losing, not because of something I did, but because I would get stunlocked by one, then the other, and so on.

I do understand what they were going for, they were trying to tell a story through their environments and thus get you further immersed into the game, but interesting ideas don't necessarily make a great level.

On a side note, if you don't know the trick with the first boss, it's completely understandable dying to him multiple times, I didn't know it, because the game never tells you that you can do it, so he just kept knocking me off the side.

Heh well regardless of what class you were and whatever weapon you were fond of, the tomb of giants didnt let u see more than one feet ahead of you. I can assure you, being a piro-sword specialist or a dex-bow one had lil importance there.
You couldnt see the mobs to kill them? well yeah no one could, even after getting the lamp it was a tricky situation. And ironically i used the bow (not my favorite and i barely used it thro the game) and ranged spells a lot in that area combined with the sword for final blows. It was all about strategy and ofc, being carfeul enough to not fall into your death. But, the two bonefires there so near from eachother eased a bit the situation.

As for Ornstein and Smough, i infact got thro those bosses in the first try. And mostly because of paranoia, After the whole castle and the rough re-introduction to -dont open chests before you find out if they are alive or not- i figured i would need help for the next boss, whatever it might be. I called upon one blue-gold-phantom and the sun knight phantom, so i had an IA and another player to help me out, or at least distract the bosses while i atked.
The player phantom died almost inmediatly, so i was left with the IA, which helped alot as a distraction and allowed me to kill the bosses efficiently.
In NG+ i got cocky and killed them myself in what amounts to be the 5th time or so. Again its not bad design its strategy.

And the first boss, well they DO tell you that jumping over them is entirely a possibility, since well, the mini boss you have to fight for the first time in the tutorial.
Or if it didnt ocurred to you, if u watched one of the trailers they show that, so it all sumed up to:

-Go thro the fog
-Walk the bridge, having a feeling something is wrong.
-See the mino jump at you
-Panic
-Run back where you came from
-Notice stairs and in panic climb them.
-Notice that you are in the same position as the tutorial boss
-Idea to jump and strike at the boss forms and you execute it.
-Done. Half life of boss gone
-Avoid getting hit. Climb, repeat.
-Boss dead.

 

[Living Cover]

I've been playing a lot of Dark Souls lately (just got past the bell gargoyle(s), altough I feel like I cheated using both of those two knight guys you encounter) and enjoying the hell out of it. I only get frustrated when I die due to mistakes made when out of combat, like falling off a cliff by pressing the wrong button.
Never happens when I'm fighting, then I just accept it, and have another go. I don't get jaded and just stop caring about the death, I get slightly annoyed and worried that if I die on the way back, I won't see those souls again. This aids to make every death matter and to learn from my mistakes and not make them again.
And the sense of acomlishment is pretty damn awesome when you finally manage to take down the current boss encounter.

Which is funny, since I recently decided to finish Assasins Creed: Brotherhood, and the damn game almost made me break the controller out of frustration. No, I haven't finished it (AC:B). And I won't do so either in any foreseeable future.

 

[NamesAreHardToPick]

For the first time against Taurus, I went by the rule of "if you can roll between its feet, that's probably how you should be taking it on" and killed the thing on my second try without any of that elbow-off-the-top-rope stuff.

Catacombs was a miserable place to fight through and the Tomb of Giants was so much worse, which is really the appropriate vibe for trekking through increasingly underground gravesites. It's an epic chore to deal with, enough to be worth dropping the conceit of your "character build" and load up on the proper stuff for that job: miracles and holy weapons. The worst is losing your shield or two-handed stance in order to hold a lamp as you go through the dark....

 

[Sparrowsabre7]

Wait...Yahtzee... what? I thought one of your major beefs with the Mario series was its blind adherence to the lives system and now you're saying you like that? I am confused...

EDIT: HA HA DISREGARD THAT DIDN'T READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE BEFORE POSTING T__T'

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I prefer games that are difficult because of skill needed, not because they force you to fight a million creatures and then an over powered boss. Fighting with tactics is better than forced to fight through a horde of enemies. Its why enemies like the Flood in Halo suck.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Hmm. There's a couple of ways of looking at it. In the good old days (or 'bad old days', depending on your perspective) where life was limited and Game Over meant what it said (i.e go back to the title screen), lives mainly served to draw the game out and make it last longer. Remember, games started in the arcades where they needed SOME way to make you stop playing on a single quarter and when they went to home consoles they still weren't fantastically long, so forcing players to start over if they weren't good enough to beat the game in one go extended the playability of the game (Contra wouldn't be much of a challenge if you could just sit down and beat it through sheer bloody-minded stubbornness and even the legendary Konami Code only improves your odds from "ridiculous" to "plausible"). One of the consequences of this was that lives added tension to the game- each one you lost brought you one step closer to oblivion and forced you to lift your game or pay the price.

On the other hand, games where you can die but which do NOT have a life system of any sort (Jak and Dexter series is one of my personal favourite examples) lack that tension, but give the developers more leeway. You know how sometimes in games with a life system there's just that ONE DAMN BIT that you fail at EVERY time- the pixel-precise jump you have to make to avoid bottomless pits, the freaky part where you have to dodge multiple spinning blades all moving in different directions, that boss who has a brief berserk mode where his attacks suddenly become practically undodgeable? With a lives system these bits can become exercises in frustration and even lead to accusations of poor and unfair design. You can go through the entire game without trouble up until then only to lose all your lives there. In a lifeless system these aren't as punishing and the lack of a 'Game Over' threat hanging over your head means you have room to experiment, be a bit reckless. Instead of cautiously edging between the blades and hoping you don't get caught in a sudden unexpected convergence, maybe you should just sprint at them and jump, maybe theirs actually a sudden pattern in their rotation to let you fly through unharmed? Maybe there's an exact spot you can stand still in where the bosses berserk spray of attacks won't hit you, or maybe you just need to try a different weapon. While lives systems raise the tension, doing so also forces you to play more conservatively and carefully, not experiment, edge through with caution.

I do think Yahtzee is definitely right about having lives but infinite continues, though. Even as far back as Super Mario All-Stars, the first game I got when my parents gave me and my brother our SNES for Christmas all those years back, the challenge went to hell. The All-Stars versions of Super Mario Bros, the Lost Levels, Mario 2 and Mario 3 allowed you to save your progress at each world (and in the case of Mario 3, even go back to play through worlds again to get more items). Hell, in a concession to how bloody hard it was, The Lost Levels allowed you to save your progress at every STAGE! Losing all your lives would force you to continue from the beginning of the world, which was at least a BIT challenging, but it made the games absurdly easy compared with their original NES incarnations (admittedly, knowing where all the world warps where didn't help). As a result, I beat the original Super Mario Bros with comparative ease since I could always start from the beginning of world 8 (although to be fair, world 8 is BLOODY TOUGH). More recent games have been even worse, with 'Game Over' meaning you just lose your checkpoint progress (and maybe a few power-ups).

 

[xdiesp]

Ben has the problems of getting carried away on cuckoo land on his so-vaunted indie author heritage and losing touch with the shared common sense.

Lives in games aren't just relics from the coin-op era, they are a playful measurement of time and skill like the "three strikes and you're out" or equivalent of any sport. One red card and you're out, in the case of Dizzy.

You can see how Mario games have become aware of this when Galaxy started throwing 1ups at you, while going down from 8 (Mario 64) to 3 hit points. That's a children's playground method of timing how long someone does something and with what skill. Even at the arcade, people could not spend the entire afternoon using quarters at the last working SF2 cabinet without being massacred by peers.

Sadly reviewers don't "jump the shark" by displeasing fanboys or losing their funny touch... they start speaking nonsense that others seasoned readers know be bull.

 

[Burst6]

But it doesn't really reward restraint and caution because there is no way to survive other than trial and error. The game is simply guess work.

And whilst the locations are great to look at, I don't find it a payoff enough. I've seen similar locations in other games (Ico, Vagrant Story). I'm not saying the soundtrack should be thumping, but it could've at least have been something like Vagrant Story (a game that does patience and strategy right).

And I don't consider the combat tight either. Arrows that glitch through enemies yet hit you, attacks that sometimes richoches off walls, other times glitching through it, my man rolling around when I don't tell him to, attacking enemies when I'm pressing the guard button.

During that second boss on the bridge, depending on where you land after you attack from above, you're pretty much cornered and unable to escape half the time. Why can't you roll under his legs? Why isn't the bridge's area big enough to manauver around him?

The game simply choses when you live or die. The game might as well just reset the console at random and it wouldn't be any different.

I will admit there are places where trial and error comes in, but most of the time it doesn't. If you keep your shield up and turn corners slowly, you can get through the game without dying as often.

All the problems you have about combat never came up for me. For me arrows always hit in the proper spot. As for the walls, different weapons and different attacks go through walls differently. If i get a mace, stand next to a wall, and attack it'll bounce. If i get far enough away that only the head of the mace hits, it'll go through. It's different for each weapon and attack. Sometimes the delayed attack/roll thing happens. It's a glitch they haven't been able to fix, but ive only experienced it like twice in my over 100 hours of game time.

For the second boss, you're given plenty of space to avoid him. You just need to understand that rolls have invincibility, so if you time it right you can roll through his attacks. I personally have never been stuck by him after the plunge. He attacks so slowly i can just strafe around him before he has a chance to swing after i do my plunging attack. If you want a little tip for beating him, there were some black firebombs in a building on the way to the boss. If you do a plunge attack, then get out of his range and bomb him, you'll win easily.

The thing is, the game's hard. It seems like trial and error because of the difficulty. Sure sometimes it gets really cheap (the dragon on the bridge for example. I think the only reason they kept that is because they wanted a recurring idea from demons souls), but a lot of the time it's just plain old difficult. The enemies are set up to ambush and surprise you, and you have to notice things like this. Bosses get tricky, and you have to learn how to deal with them. Sure you may die, but it's not because the game did something cheap (with a few exceptions), it's because you couldn't stand up to the challenge. What kind of difficult game would it be if you beat everything without dying and having to learn from your mistakes?

As for the music, you can't really compare Vagrant Story and Dark Souls. They aren't similar games. It's just like comparing dark souls to Skyrim. The styles are way too different.

 

[Warachia]

The tomb of the giants is scary? Really? Ok, that's your opinion, I found it to be one of the worst levels in any game I've ever played, it's even worse if you were using a ranged character because you don't know where your targets are to shoot them, not to mention having some areas that lead to dead ends and hiding the way you are supposed to go is just bullshit.

That aside, it's probably a good thing he didn't get too far, otherwise he'd run into the knight twin boss (executioner and dragonslayer), one of the worst bosses in game history, because it wasn't designed to work well with this type of gameplay, and often I'd find myself losing, not because of something I did, but because I would get stunlocked by one, then the other, and so on.

I do understand what they were going for, they were trying to tell a story through their environments and thus get you further immersed into the game, but interesting ideas don't necessarily make a great level.

On a side note, if you don't know the trick with the first boss, it's completely understandable dying to him multiple times, I didn't know it, because the game never tells you that you can do it, so he just kept knocking me off the side.

Heh well regardless of what class you were and whatever weapon you were fond of, the tomb of giants didnt let u see more than one feet ahead of you. I can assure you, being a piro-sword specialist or a dex-bow one had lil importance there.
You couldnt see the mobs to kill them? well yeah no one could, even after getting the lamp it was a tricky situation. And ironically i used the bow (not my favorite and i barely used it thro the game) and ranged spells a lot in that area combined with the sword for final blows. It was all about strategy and ofc, being carfeul enough to not fall into your death. But, the two bonefires there so near from eachother eased a bit the situation.

As for Ornstein and Smough, i infact got thro those bosses in the first try. And mostly because of paranoia, After the whole castle and the rough re-introduction to -dont open chests before you find out if they are alive or not- i figured i would need help for the next boss, whatever it might be. I called upon one blue-gold-phantom and the sun knight phantom, so i had an IA and another player to help me out, or at least distract the bosses while i atked.
The player phantom died almost inmediatly, so i was left with the IA, which helped alot as a distraction and allowed me to kill the bosses efficiently.
In NG+ i got cocky and killed them myself in what amounts to be the 5th time or so. Again its not bad design its strategy.

And the first boss, well they DO tell you that jumping over them is entirely a possibility, since well, the mini boss you have to fight for the first time in the tutorial.
Or if it didnt ocurred to you, if u watched one of the trailers they show that, so it all sumed up to:

-Go thro the fog
-Walk the bridge, having a feeling something is wrong.
-See the mino jump at you
-Panic
-Run back where you came from
-Notice stairs and in panic climb them.
-Notice that you are in the same position as the tutorial boss
-Idea to jump and strike at the boss forms and you execute it.
-Done. Half life of boss gone
-Avoid getting hit. Climb, repeat.
-Boss dead.

The main problem with the tomb is you can't see pitfalls or platforms. Most of the time I died was when I got pushed into a whole that I didn't know was there, the bullshit part I mentioned was the hole patches knocks you down looks like it goes somewhere, it doesn't, you have to go along a skinny walkway next to the whole which you can't see because it's too dark. The mobs got down to just being tedious, the four legged giants were incredibly hard for me because they'd wreck my endurance meter, and I can't run because I can't see where I'm going! Again, having a level where you can't see is an interesting idea, but it doesn't make a good level overall.

When I first went against the knights, I was a melee character, and I have a bad internet connection, every fight against them was 2-1, and that's why the kept stunlocking me, and if I finally did kill one, the other would spam area of effect attacks, and both were way too fast, which is why I said they don't fit into this type of game, just like the flamelurker in demons souls. Also, there is no strategy a melee character can use against them, all you can do is run, but they're faster, so they catch and kill you, or you can try to fight them, but one attacks from behind and the other finishes you off.

It's very easy to miss how to do that move in the tutorial, because they tell you how to do it wrong, they say "Push this button when falling" but if you do that you fuck it up, on my second character I figured out that you have to land on him before attacking, which is why I had no idea that you could do it to the first boss on my first couple fights against him.

 

[Justin Roll]

Yahtzee, I think you're so close to finally figuring out what makes these game so amazing. It's not about a certain pre-set "point" in the game itself in which it suddenly gets better. It's once you die enough times that you forget about being angry about the deaths and start actually learning and understanding the rules of the game. There are these subtle nuances to the way you need to play these games that only comes through trial and error. Once you've figured out the system and start destroying those huge bosses with less and less deaths, that's when the game starts feeling really rewarding.

Though I have to say I thank you for at least playing it for a bit. Also, the Taurus Demon isn't bad once you discover you can fall on his head while attacking to do huge damage.

 

[Luciella]

The tomb of the giants is scary? Really? Ok, that's your opinion, I found it to be one of the worst levels in any game I've ever played, it's even worse if you were using a ranged character because you don't know where your targets are to shoot them, not to mention having some areas that lead to dead ends and hiding the way you are supposed to go is just bullshit.

That aside, it's probably a good thing he didn't get too far, otherwise he'd run into the knight twin boss (executioner and dragonslayer), one of the worst bosses in game history, because it wasn't designed to work well with this type of gameplay, and often I'd find myself losing, not because of something I did, but because I would get stunlocked by one, then the other, and so on.

I do understand what they were going for, they were trying to tell a story through their environments and thus get you further immersed into the game, but interesting ideas don't necessarily make a great level.

On a side note, if you don't know the trick with the first boss, it's completely understandable dying to him multiple times, I didn't know it, because the game never tells you that you can do it, so he just kept knocking me off the side.

Heh well regardless of what class you were and whatever weapon you were fond of, the tomb of giants didnt let u see more than one feet ahead of you. I can assure you, being a piro-sword specialist or a dex-bow one had lil importance there.
You couldnt see the mobs to kill them? well yeah no one could, even after getting the lamp it was a tricky situation. And ironically i used the bow (not my favorite and i barely used it thro the game) and ranged spells a lot in that area combined with the sword for final blows. It was all about strategy and ofc, being carfeul enough to not fall into your death. But, the two bonefires there so near from eachother eased a bit the situation.

As for Ornstein and Smough, i infact got thro those bosses in the first try. And mostly because of paranoia, After the whole castle and the rough re-introduction to -dont open chests before you find out if they are alive or not- i figured i would need help for the next boss, whatever it might be. I called upon one blue-gold-phantom and the sun knight phantom, so i had an IA and another player to help me out, or at least distract the bosses while i atked.
The player phantom died almost inmediatly, so i was left with the IA, which helped alot as a distraction and allowed me to kill the bosses efficiently.
In NG+ i got cocky and killed them myself in what amounts to be the 5th time or so. Again its not bad design its strategy.

And the first boss, well they DO tell you that jumping over them is entirely a possibility, since well, the mini boss you have to fight for the first time in the tutorial.
Or if it didnt ocurred to you, if u watched one of the trailers they show that, so it all sumed up to:

-Go thro the fog
-Walk the bridge, having a feeling something is wrong.
-See the mino jump at you
-Panic
-Run back where you came from
-Notice stairs and in panic climb them.
-Notice that you are in the same position as the tutorial boss
-Idea to jump and strike at the boss forms and you execute it.
-Done. Half life of boss gone
-Avoid getting hit. Climb, repeat.
-Boss dead.

The main problem with the tomb is you can't see pitfalls or platforms. Most of the time I died was when I got pushed into a whole that I didn't know was there, the bullshit part I mentioned was the hole patches knocks you down looks like it goes somewhere, it doesn't, you have to go along a skinny walkway next to the whole which you can't see because it's too dark. The mobs got down to just being tedious, the four legged giants were incredibly hard for me because they'd wreck my endurance meter, and I can't run because I can't see where I'm going! Again, having a level where you can't see is an interesting idea, but it doesn't make a good level overall.

When I first went against the knights, I was a melee character, and I have a bad internet connection, every fight against them was 2-1, and that's why the kept stunlocking me, and if I finally did kill one, the other would spam area of effect attacks, and both were way too fast, which is why I said they don't fit into this type of game, just like the flamelurker in demons souls. Also, there is no strategy a melee character can use against them, all you can do is run, but they're faster, so they catch and kill you, or you can try to fight them, but one attacks from behind and the other finishes you off.

It's very easy to miss how to do that move in the tutorial, because they tell you how to do it wrong, they say "Push this button when falling" but if you do that you fuck it up, on my second character I figured out that you have to land on him before attacking, which is why I had no idea that you could do it to the first boss on my first couple fights against him.

hmm i dont know, i guess it settles on the who likes entirely the game and who doesnt.

The dog-like skeletons in the tomb of giants, were indeed horrible, i did had to go back and train somewhere and upgrade my stuff to kill them since, well i was noobing it i would guess the first time i went thro there.
After my training i went thro them kind of easy.

In Ornstein and Smough, to have the sun knight summoned u didnt need an internet conection its part of the story if you have your human form. Either way i still disagree with you on the not belonging there part, i had fun with them both with and w/o help.
But flame lurker in demons souls, ahhhh i dont know, it was a tricky boss but i still belive it was a good one, even when it took me a lot to kill.

The jump and atack it seemed so logical to me that i didnt thot of the idea of being easy to miss. I guess if the player dont get the idea the first time it will have its concecuences on the mino.

The only bosses i had a hard time with were the iron golem and seath the scaleless.
While the way i used to kill the first, was among the lines of rolling under its feet to conect an atack; each time i rolled target system made me dizzy because of its spins and ofc i fell alot off the bridge due to being unable to see where i was going.

The seath tho was something im ashamed of as a player. The first time, i summoned 2 phantoms to help me. But i didnt knew i had to break the crystal in order to lay a hit at seath and my stupid phantoms didnt moved to do so.
We all died the first time. I figured then, i needed to see how it was done and so i left my sign down in order to be summoned and with that i saw how stupid i was to not destroy that crystal.
lol after killing my seath, i stayed in the library for 20 lvls helping others, which was very very fun since i helped the host get the moonlit sword efficently and kill the bastard fast. It all earned me a lot of co-op souls to lvl and ofc the satisfaction of owning the boss over and over and over again (to kill the trauma ofc hehe)

 

[Warachia]

hmm i dont know, i guess it settles on the who likes entirely the game and who doesnt.

The dog-like skeletons in the tomb of giants, were indeed horrible, i did had to go back and train somewhere and upgrade my stuff to kill them since, well i was noobing it i would guess the first time i went thro there.
After my training i went thro them kind of easy.

In Ornstein and Smough, to have the sun knight summoned u didnt need an internet conection its part of the story if you have your human form. Either way i still disagree with you on the not belonging there part, i had fun with them both with and w/o help.
But flame lurker in demons souls, ahhhh i dont know, it was a tricky boss but i still belive it was a good one, even when it took me a lot to kill.

The jump and atack it seemed so logical to me that I didn't think of the idea of being easy to miss. I guess if the player doesn't get the idea the first time it will have its consequences on the mino.

The only bosses i had a hard time with were the iron golem and seath the scaleless.
While the way i used to kill the first, was among the lines of rolling under its feet to conect an atack; each time i rolled target system made me dizzy because of its spins and ofc i fell alot off the bridge due to being unable to see where i was going.

The seath tho was something im ashamed of as a player. The first time, i summoned 2 phantoms to help me. But i didnt knew i had to break the crystal in order to lay a hit at seath and my stupid phantoms didnt moved to do so.
We all died the first time. I figured then, i needed to see how it was done and so i left my sign down in order to be summoned and with that i saw how stupid i was to not destroy that crystal.
lol after killing my seath, i stayed in the library for 20 lvls helping others, which was very very fun since i helped the host get the moonlit sword efficently and kill the bastard fast. It all earned me a lot of co-op souls to lvl and ofc the satisfaction of owning the boss over and over and over again (to kill the trauma ofc hehe)

The problem with the knights is I summoned up the sun knight (who looks like an onion and yes I know that's part of the point) when I first was going through there, and I didn't know what I was up against, while I was trying to not die, he got killed, and I could never summon him again which is a HUGE design flaw. The reason I say the flame lurker is a bad boss is because you can be screwed into a scenario where what you have makes the boss nearly (if not completely) impossible to beat, not to mention how fast he is combined with how he wrecks your endurance, I had to grind for hours to change a pure melee character into a partial magic character just to stand a chance (he's weak to magic arrow).

Again, I have a bad internet connection, I would love to play the game's online, but it doesn't work for me, in the beautiful castle area (I forget the name) I tested to see how the online was there as I heard plenty of people were having trouble, so I leave a mark and wait to get summoned, going on the internet on my laptop. THREE HOURS LATER AND NOTHING.

I did get summoned on different sessions, and I found those fun, shame the game doesn't make it easy to join games like inviting friends to the game you're on or something. They really kneecap themselves here.

 

[Zom-B]

Hey, he wouldn't have the reputation if it wasn't somewhat true. But okay, I retract my statement.

Yahtzee doesn't seem to like very many games. I can't think of any except Rayman Origins, but I'm sure he must like something.

That being said, the guy has made a career out of basically trashing games and reviewing games negatively. He's not the guy you go to for glowing praise and 5 star recommendations.

He has liked plenty of games. The top 5 of 2011 just came out recently and a lot of his olders videos are positive.

Perhaps you're not familiar with hyperbole or exaggeration for effect. I'm sure that Yahtzee likes games, or else he wouldn't be a game reviewer, however, I'll reiterate my point:

"... the guy has made a career out of basically trashing games and reviewing games negatively."

I've seen dozens and dozens, maybe even hundreds of comments in these forums from people gleefully waiting and hoping for Yahtzee to review a particular game in hopes that he will trash it. That's his rep, and like it or not, that's what people have associated with him and his reviews.

 

[Zom-B]

For the first time against Taurus, I went by the rule of "if you can roll between its feet, that's probably how you should be taking it on" and killed the thing on my second try without any of that elbow-off-the-top-rope stuff.

Catacombs was a miserable place to fight through and the Tomb of Giants was so much worse, which is really the appropriate vibe for trekking through increasingly underground gravesites. It's an epic chore to deal with, enough to be worth dropping the conceit of your "character build" and load up on the proper stuff for that job: miracles and holy weapons. The worst is losing your shield or two-handed stance in order to hold a lamp as you go through the dark....

Heh, luckily for me the order in which I did things I had the sunlight maggot hat to wear. That was a lifesaver.

 

[Zom-B]

The main problem with the tomb is you can't see pitfalls or platforms. Most of the time I died was when I got pushed into a whole that I didn't know was there, the bullshit part I mentioned was the hole patches knocks you down looks like it goes somewhere, it doesn't, you have to go along a skinny walkway next to the whole which you can't see because it's too dark. The mobs got down to just being tedious, the four legged giants were incredibly hard for me because they'd wreck my endurance meter, and I can't run because I can't see where I'm going! Again, having a level where you can't see is an interesting idea, but it doesn't make a good level overall.


It's very easy to miss how to do that move in the tutorial, because they tell you how to do it wrong, they say "Push this button when falling" but if you do that you fuck it up, on my second character I figured out that you have to land on him before attacking, which is why I had no idea that you could do it to the first boss on my first couple fights against him.

I don't know if you missed it or what, but somewhere within the game it basically tells you to have something to give yourself light in the Tomb of Giants. There's the skull lantern, there's spells and there's the sunlight maggot hat, all of which expand your sphere of view enough so that you're not stumbling around in the dark. If you didn't properly prepare yourself, that's not a failing of the game.

For the plunge attack, I'm not sure about waiting to land on him to attack, but it's a relatively easy attack to pull off if you have far enough to fall and good timing. I think it comes down to making sure that your feet are not still "touching" ground and then hitting the R1 attack only in mid-air. The only problems I ever had with the attack were due to me trying it off of ledges that were too low or simply mis-timing my button presses. But once you get the hang of it, it's fairly easy. You can actually roll or leap off a ledge or platform and extend the range of the attack to get enemies you might not be able to just drop on.

I think the failings in the game you are pointing out aren't failings in the game, as much as your own mistakes.