Hating Dark Souls?

[retyopy]

This should be in user reviews, I would think. Sort of.

Good point, maybe, since I haven't played the game.

 

[krazykidd]

Now before you all flip a lid thinking this is a rage thread, your only half right.

Dark Souls is a decent game. But i dont think it requires half the praise it gets. Dont say "oh, its because you suck at it" or "its because you dont like a hard game", let me tell you, ive played Monster Hunter from start to finish since the first one. G-Rank and all.

Dark Souls isnt a game about difficulty. Its a game about beating your face against a brick wall until you find something that works. I WANT to like the game, but i cant, because of the dozens of poor design flaws in the game. ((Due note, this are only things i think are horrible flaws, these views may, and probably will vary person to person.))

Wall of text, read at your own risk.

Spoiler

1: No reason to be melee. Ive played 3 different classes, and so far, ive noticed a trend. I pick Knight, and the game is.... Difficult. Your weapon feels like it does nothing to anything but basic undead, theres no real point to armor when your shield blocks 100% physical damage and you can dodge everything else, and nearly every enemy has a combo that can almost insta-gib you. But then i play Pyromancer. The game is absurdly easy now. Why? Because nothing gets within 20 feet of me. And if it does, its already at less then half health. Every challenge i ran into as a knight, i instantly blew through as a Pyromancer. Armored battle boar? No problem! I have fireballs for days!

2: Constant weapon bouncing. Nearly all of the melee weapons have a habit of bouncing even if half a pixel grazes anything solid. I do like a game where hit boxes are well made, but theres a limit to it. I find myself bouncing off of every surface within 10 feet, while im being beat on by something immune to wrath of walls. ((Or poisoned by rats i cannot hit))

3: Ledges. Everywhere. Nearly all of the deaths i befell were because of ledges. Anything stronger then a rough breeze and your character either recoils like an electric car hit him, or sends him flying. I take no damage from either of these, yet im dying. Why? Because every ledge and its grandmother want me to die. This was a massive pain in the Taurus demon fight where every swing he took either sent me flying, or was impossible to dodge because i chose a class other then Pyromancer.

4: Random Death. Beings you cant kill, and you accidentally drew agro because you bent a piece of their beloved grass. They come rushing at you, and well, you die. Running is a decent option except they chase you far beyond what i would call an area boundary, and will 2 hit kill you unless you block every attack they throw at you.

Dont get me wrong. I love a challenge. Every game i own, ive beaten on the hardest difficulty. And i consider myself more then a hardcore gamer. But whenever i hear about Dark Souls i hear, "You never feel cheated, you always learn something from your deaths", when really, all ive learned is, Hallways suck, ledges suck, 1 pixel of fire igniting your entire body sucks, Giant knights with weapons larger then you suck, and being melee sucks. Almost every death i encounter, i feel cheated on, either because of ledges, wall bounces, or random boss level baddies stabbing me in the back when i didnt even know they were there.

I like the game, and i really want to love it. But i feel its getting far more praise then it really deserves. It went from challenging to "how can we be an arse hat and ruin 2 hours of gameplay?"

And im sorry if it comes off as me raging. But honestly, if i were raging i wouldnt even be posting. Id be at the shooting range, putting several holes in my new favorite target. I feel that Dark Souls was going in the right direction, and ended up getting stuck on, "LEZ MAEK EET HURDER".

Long story short, the game never really gets better, dying never gets easier, and F*CK LEDGES.
So what does everyone else think about Dark souls and its random moments of jerk-mode? Anything ni particular grind nails against your chalk board?

I think your overexaggerating a tad bit ( a whole lot ! )

1)I played Bandit ,havent touched a magic spell yet ( soul lvl 120 )and although it is true melee can feel underwhelming, PYROMANCY IS OVERPOWRED.The trick is to find a weapon that works for you and upgrade the hell out of it.I used the lightning spear and the stone sword. and switch depending on the situation , and upgraded them to the max.I would use the spear when i knew i had to block ( mostly for bosses and giant knights and the such ) the stone sword were when i knew i didn't need a shield and i would dual weild it. Also year armor sucks except for resistance,i wore light armor until i got the stone set and it changed little.

2)Depending on your weapon swing radius, you may hit walls more or less often. Spears for example would never ever hit a wall since you stab straight (unless you stabed into a wall duh). Great Axes which have a bigger radius , are more likely to hit a wall if you are next to a wall.This should be obvious, watch your surrounding and think about how your character swings.

3)What? I don't even ... Ledges are suppose to kill you.Your not suppose to fall down a ledge.Watch where you roll. If your not sure, there are prism stones for this very purpose, you throw it to see if you can jump down, if you hear a noice it's safe ( not meaning you wont take damage though) , if not you will die. Also take recoil into consideration when fighting on a small bridge or something, monsters can block, also your character steps foward when attacking. Just be carful .

4)What beings can you not kill exactly? Everything is killable ( except maybe the floating skulls that explode in the catacombs but you can black that ). Also enemies can HEAR YOU, there's a ring to make you silent, but if they SEE you, they will still rush towards you .Were you expecting enemies like in Metal gear solid 1 ?That wouldn't notice you unless you walking in their blue line of vision ?

I personally like the game, and don't see anything wrong with it.Everything you mentionned in your post is your own fault.Learn from you mistakes, and points in vitality and endurance are always a good investment.

My stats are 40 vit, 50 str, 40 Endurance, 25 dex ,20 resistance and everything else is BASE.I focused on Vit first , and leveled str and endurance almost equally.

 

[Gitty101]

Each to their own I suppose. You don't HAVE to like a popular title. I personally love Dark Souls though, once you get your own play-style going, it gets a lot easier. I do think they could have made the menus a little better and an explanation for what items do would be nice, but those are minor niggles. You just need to be patient, learn enemy timings and the extent of your character's capabilities.

Oh yes, and I also love MH ^_^ Absolutely love the freakin' Gunlance XD

 

[Shru1kan]

Spoiler

Now before you all flip a lid thinking this is a rage thread, your only half right.

Dark Souls is a decent game. But i dont think it requires half the praise it gets. Dont say "oh, its because you suck at it" or "its because you dont like a hard game", let me tell you, ive played Monster Hunter from start to finish since the first one. G-Rank and all.

Dark Souls isnt a game about difficulty. Its a game about beating your face against a brick wall until you find something that works. I WANT to like the game, but i cant, because of the dozens of poor design flaws in the game. ((Due note, this are only things i think are horrible flaws, these views may, and probably will vary person to person.))

Wall of text, read at your own risk.

Spoiler

1: No reason to be melee. Ive played 3 different classes, and so far, ive noticed a trend. I pick Knight, and the game is.... Difficult. Your weapon feels like it does nothing to anything but basic undead, theres no real point to armor when your shield blocks 100% physical damage and you can dodge everything else, and nearly every enemy has a combo that can almost insta-gib you. But then i play Pyromancer. The game is absurdly easy now. Why? Because nothing gets within 20 feet of me. And if it does, its already at less then half health. Every challenge i ran into as a knight, i instantly blew through as a Pyromancer. Armored battle boar? No problem! I have fireballs for days!

2: Constant weapon bouncing. Nearly all of the melee weapons have a habit of bouncing even if half a pixel grazes anything solid. I do like a game where hit boxes are well made, but theres a limit to it. I find myself bouncing off of every surface within 10 feet, while im being beat on by something immune to wrath of walls. ((Or poisoned by rats i cannot hit))

3: Ledges. Everywhere. Nearly all of the deaths i befell were because of ledges. Anything stronger then a rough breeze and your character either recoils like an electric car hit him, or sends him flying. I take no damage from either of these, yet im dying. Why? Because every ledge and its grandmother want me to die. This was a massive pain in the Taurus demon fight where every swing he took either sent me flying, or was impossible to dodge because i chose a class other then Pyromancer.

4: Random Death. Beings you cant kill, and you accidentally drew agro because you bent a piece of their beloved grass. They come rushing at you, and well, you die. Running is a decent option except they chase you far beyond what i would call an area boundary, and will 2 hit kill you unless you block every attack they throw at you.

Dont get me wrong. I love a challenge. Every game i own, ive beaten on the hardest difficulty. And i consider myself more then a hardcore gamer. But whenever i hear about Dark Souls i hear, "You never feel cheated, you always learn something from your deaths", when really, all ive learned is, Hallways suck, ledges suck, 1 pixel of fire igniting your entire body sucks, Giant knights with weapons larger then you suck, and being melee sucks. Almost every death i encounter, i feel cheated on, either because of ledges, wall bounces, or random boss level baddies stabbing me in the back when i didnt even know they were there.

I like the game, and i really want to love it. But i feel its getting far more praise then it really deserves. It went from challenging to "how can we be an arse hat and ruin 2 hours of gameplay?"

And im sorry if it comes off as me raging. But honestly, if i were raging i wouldnt even be posting. Id be at the shooting range, putting several holes in my new favorite target. I feel that Dark Souls was going in the right direction, and ended up getting stuck on, "LEZ MAEK EET HURDER".

Long story short, the game never really gets better, dying never gets easier, and F*CK LEDGES.
So what does everyone else think about Dark souls and its random moments of jerk-mode? Anything ni particular grind nails against your chalk board?

Ledges? Sorry, haven't had problems. I got knocked off once from being attacked near one, haven't engaged enemies near them since. And if walking off is your issue, walk diagonally. Forward and against the wall, its just extra insurance.


The parry/riposte combo works extremely well in tight quarters. Although I haven't been seeing any problems with hardcore recoiling even though I main a black knight sword (claymore-size if you aren't familiar with the sword.). Yeah, a couple spots are indeed overly cheap, the most notable one being at the end of the undead parish with that balcony hallway, you got a turtle (cause damn if those spearmen ever stop blocking until the moment you cant afford for them to attack) on the right and a sword knight on the left. You basically get double teamed unless you barely get spotted by the spear guy first and retreat. This isn't skill difficulty, its surprise difficulty. Well, it would be, if not for my next point.

I hate hate HATE HATE HATE how the enemies can attack through each other. They don't even damage their allies while they do it. It's just bullshit that forces for you to wait until they both present an opening.

Your best bet is to buy a weak bow and a shitload of weak arrows. Aggro them one at a time from range. This ensures your one on one scenario.

All else fails? Easy mode is spears and magic. Although I feel it sucks a bit too much fun out of the game. I refuse to turtle anyone but the snake-men from Sen's Fortress, and that's because I just don't like those guys, at all.

Get the drake sword and it is useful (almost game-breakingly so) until you ring the second bell. Keep in mind to upgrade a weapon to replace it with once it's shine wears off. A good weapon to replace it without upgrading, however, is the lightning spear in Sen's Fortress, dropped by a mimic chest.

All that said, the game becomes easy once you get the controls down. I spent hours dying until I had perfected dodge, parry/riposte and backstabbing. After that, my pyromancy seems more of an afterthought, because you can suddenly take on almost every enemy with any weapon.

If the game gives you room when you are fighting ANY enemy, use it. Being mobile lets you backstab and possibly avoid massive hits that drain your stamina too quick.

I have only had one cheap boss fight, and that is the Capra Demon that holds the key to the depths. Fuck him and his massive overhand swing just as you enter the arena. It can literally kill you before you regain control of your character.

 

[Stall]

Hey, wasn't the OP the brainchild accusing Dark Souls of being a rip-off of Skyrim?

 

[Project_Xii]

Yeah... unfortunately dude almost every one of your points will fall under the "learn to play"/"get better" arguement for hardcore players, myself included. I played melee class and had very little problems. The "flaws" your pointing out are part of the game, and meant to make you play better. There all related to your own skill, not the game being a jerk. When you make a mistake in the Souls games, it's because YOU make a mistake. That's why people love the games.

Suck at melee? Get better. Weapon bouncing? Don't attack like a mad man near walls, time your blows. Ledges? Get better and stay away from them. Random death? You went exploring without knowing what to expect, took on a monster you didn't know how to handle, and died because of it. That's part part of the game, and meant to happen. The whole thing is waiting until your strong enough to fight these things; very few of the bigger enemies are meant to be tackled early on. Many you have to come back much later in the game for.

Even when you do randomly die, it's generally not hard to run back, grab your souls and run for you life again. So while it's possible to see why you don't like these things, ultimately the players are going to say "Get better" to most of it. Especially when many of us learned to overcome those obstacles within the first hour or so of play...

 

[RedDeadFred]

I don't get it either. Saying dying over and over is a selling point is just weird to me. My friend rented it and we were playing it but we just got so bored. I don't see how finishing off a tough boss is a good payoff after taking the trip to get to him about 30 times.
I play games for relaxation and escapism, not for work.

 

[Hazy]

[

(P.S, and if you were to mention the Fog Ring, I would be supporting you 110%. Fuck that thing straight to hell. What were you thinking, From?)

Um... what is the Fog Ring? I might have missed that one...

Oh, you know, just a ring that makes you nearly invisible and incapable of being locked onto.

Nothing game breaking, or anything.

 

[AlternatePFG]

[

(P.S, and if you were to mention the Fog Ring, I would be supporting you 110%. Fuck that thing straight to hell. What were you thinking, From?)

Um... what is the Fog Ring? I might have missed that one...

Oh, you know, just a ring that makes you nearly invisible and incapable of being locked onto.

Nothing game breaking, or anything.

Fog Ring pretty much guarantees I'm going to be avoid doing PvP until that shit is patched out or something.

 

[Condiments]

I don't get it either. Saying dying over and over is a selling point is just weird to me. My friend rented it and we were playing it but we just got so bored. I don't see how finishing off a tough boss is a good payoff after taking the trip to get to him about 30 times.
I play games for relaxation and escapism, not for work.

Don't we all die endlessly to our peers in any multiplayer oriented games in order to acquire the skills to win more often?

There is absolutely no reason a player should lose that many times to a boss if they adjust their strategy based on how they've lost before, or keep attention in battle.

 

[Rad Party God]

Breaking News, someone dies a lot in a hard game and starts whining.

In another news, nobody gives a shit.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Hey, wasn't the OP the brainchild accusing Dark Souls of being a rip-off of Skyrim?

My thoughts exactly. Because he is.

 

[Watchmacallit]

I'm not the OP but I beat the "lava spider" with only spells, didn't melee her once. In fact, I found it more difficult when I did try to melee her the first time.

I meant with pyromancy...I met a guy that was around lvl 70 that barely did damage to it with pyromancy. I was targeting pyromancy specifically because the OP seems to think it is over-powered.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

I'm not the OP but I beat the "lava spider" with only spells, didn't melee her once. In fact, I found it more difficult when I did try to melee her the first time.

I meant with pyromancy...I met a guy that was around lvl 70 that barely did damage to it with pyromancy. I was targeting pyromancy specifically because the OP seems to think it is over-powered.

All you have to do is get an Ascended Flame, and Pyromancy is one of the most useful tools you can get your hands on. :s Even if Pyromancy is really slow, the fact that I can dish out 905 damage to a mob of monsters with a Great Fireball is a little ridiculous, even by NG+ standards.

 

[MIGHTY_MAMOTH]

Dark Souls is a fun game, and I've really been enjoying it, and it is, as most people have pointing out, incredibly hard. But there are a few ACTUAL issues that are more than just difficulty that I find kind of important:
1. Cliffs inherently aren't the problem, it's the camera angles. Sometimes I'll be encountering a skeleton spearman and I'll back into a corridor, and suddenly the camera zooms in on my face so I can't see anything else and I'll get killed because I have no idea what's going on. Ditto with ledges, I'll dodge, then the camera will warp to some weird angle and an enemy will attack me and I'll go flying off a ledge I didn't see due to the camera not always working as well as it could.
2. The game doesn't tell you nearly enough stuff at times. An example is with melee. As some have stated, the Drake Sword is very powerful, but from all the ways I've read on how to get it, some of the ways of getting it are kind of obscure and aren't possible without a strategy guide to know what you're doing. Another example I had was with my weapon. It broke early on, but I didn't know it was broken or how to repair it because the game never made that clear, so I had to look that up.
3. NO PAUSE BUTTON. I can meet the game halfway... if they don't want me to be able to switch gear completely midbattle fine I understand. But what if I suddenly realize I need to use the bathroom, or my roommate comes home with pizza and I want some before he devours and tears the rest apart with his ungraceful pizza grabbing hands, I WANT to be able to stop without getting torn to pieces... just a simple little pause screen... anything!

 

[RedDeadFred]

I don't get it either. Saying dying over and over is a selling point is just weird to me. My friend rented it and we were playing it but we just got so bored. I don't see how finishing off a tough boss is a good payoff after taking the trip to get to him about 30 times.
I play games for relaxation and escapism, not for work.

Don't we all die endlessly to our peers in any multiplayer oriented games in order to acquire the skills to win more often?

There is absolutely no reason a player should lose that many times to a boss if they adjust their strategy based on how they've lost before, or keep attention in battle.

It's not losing to the boss, it's accidentally fucking up again along the way and not even making it to him about 10 percent of the time. I just feel like this game has too much trial and error. For me, that's just work. For others, that's rewarding.
I realize that I'm not good enough at the game yet but I never will be because I don't have the patience for it. It's just too boring for me.
I agree with you on the multiplayer games point which is probably why I really only play co-op type multiplayer games. Or when I do play the more competitive kinds of multiplayer games (I enjoy League of Legends) I ALWAYS play with a group of friends. It becomes more of a social experience and yields much better results because your team is much more organized. I imagine this is the same for online shooters but I don't really play much of those.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Hold on guys copypasteing my opinion from a different thread

Wall o' text alert

Spoiler

"After playing for a while, i really don't care about anything in this game. I mean what's my motivation? I'm currently trying to fight my way past a mob of skeletons and some indestructable rhino before being met with about 5 elite spear guys in this Undead Parish

And for what? Apparently there's some bell i need to ring or something? Why should i care enough to push past the difficulty level?

And any desire to see the sights has been effectively smothered because any new places will have to be trudged through again and again because of the frankly asinine checkpointing system

Compare this to another difficult game like say Persona 3 or 4, you cared enough about the characters and the overall story to push past the difficulty level, it makes you want to see how the game plays out.

I just don't feel arsed enough to continue with Dark Souls really... Fuck it maybe in a few months i'll start a new game and check if there're any good build guides on teh interwebs."

As for the OP, most of the complaints raised are just due to lack of awareness... I mean ledges? Really?

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Overall, when you finally kill that giant Vagina Monster or the Scaleless Dragon or those Belfry Gargoyles single-handedly; it is one of the greatest feelings I have felt in a long while whilst playing a game.

And that, fellow Escapists, is the appeal of this great game. Well said.

Actually, the Gaping Dragon was the easiest boss in the game. It had two moves that it used 90% of the time. It telegraphed these moves as well. Now Orstein and Smough made me cry tears of joy when they fell.

 

[hazabaza1]

To be honest, I'm loving it. However, while I don't think I've encountered any 'random' deaths, I've encountered a few bullshit ones. Like how all grab attacks pretty much have an insta-kill effect. That's bullshit.
Also, fuck you Ceaseless Discharge.

 

[Powereaver]

I find the awkward kick mechanic can be frustrating at times .. you kick at pile of wood or smth instead of the enemy one foot to the left or right.. and sometimes enemies are silly and just run right off cliffs (but this is a benefit.. means one less enemy to kill!) or get glitched climbing up ladders but besides that i cant really find any real gamebreaking issues that make the game "hard" so to speak.