Most demoralizing Dark Souls zone?

[Sniper Team 4]

Hm...going off the very first time I played Dark Souls, the area that finally broke me and made me yank the game out and toss it under my chest of drawers so I never had to look at it again...was Sen's Fortress. I had finally clawed my way through Blighttown, just barely beating Miss Chaos Witch, and was getting really sick of not knowing what was going on, where to go, or really how the game worked. Got to Sen's Fortress, got promptly knocked off that long walkway right at the start, and lost my patience with the game.

Dark Souls II would be The Dark Chasm of Old, mainly because of the boss, but asking me to fight Havel in a narrow space with sheer drops on both ends doesn't help. Honorable mention to all three of the "multiplayer" sections in the DLCs. Never did beat the ice one, and never met anyone who did.

Dark Souls III would be...I really don't know. Nothing in the game strikes me as, "Oh crap, not this again..." There are some bosses--the God Eater, stupid giant Abyss skeleton--but no areas. The swamp was more of a chore than a dread.

Bloodborne (since we're doing Demon's Souls) would be the first part of The Old Hunters DLC. That is just brutal. And Ludwig? You can go suck and die for all I care. I hate you.

 

[Worgen]

Tome of Giants. I went through almost the whole thing before finding out there was a lantern that made things much easier. Seriously, I only found out about the lamp when I looked it up to try and find out what I needed to do to open the gate that would lead to where the boss eventually was.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

Wow, why is no one saying Sen's Fortress??

Always annoying, even when you know what you are doing. I hate going through there.

Blighttown, you can skip the top part so no big deal.
Lost Izalith is easy, minus the piece of shit boss.
Tomb of the Giants is also pretty easy to navigate on repeat playthroughs.

Sen's always is a chore. No shortcuts. No easy way. You just gotta do it.

I love Sen's Fortress, it's fun as hell. Especially when invasions are involved. It's a pity it's an early game area which means it's not a PVP hotspot.

 

[Asita]

Let me put it this way...I'd somehow gotten it through my head that in order to get to Blighttown I had to go through New Londo. You can just imagine how woefully unprepared I was for that. So many ghosts...

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

1. Valley of Defilement zone 1
Makes Blighttown look like a walk in the park. Especially since the boss you face after the zone can knock you off the platforms, dropping you to instant death. Even more annoying is how little souls the enemies drop in relation to their power. One of the least balanced zones in the entire series.

2. Shrine of Amana
Water with bottomless pits, hidden enemies that inflict bleed, casters firing at you from a mile away and enemies with ridiculously high poise attacking you in groups. What saves the area is its visual design. It's just gorgeous, and were it not for that, I think it might cause a lot of players to quit the game altogether.

3. Frigid Outskirts
This would easily be #1 if it wasn't optional. The most horribly annoying, ridiculously long zone with the worst gameplay gimmick in the entire series, difficulty that escalates insanely with some of the strongest enemies in the series and perhaps the laziest but also one of the hardest, bosses in the series waiting at the end. Lud and Zallen are the only boss I never beat in addition to Laurence from the Bloodborne DLC. A shit zone with a shit boss. NOT. WORTH. IT.

4. Catacombs and Tomb of the Giants on your first go

The Necromancers. Bonewheel skeletons. Need I say more?

Those fucking skeleton dogs, arrows showing up from pitch darkness, very narrow ledges with bottomless pits, being unable to know where you're going etc. This is low on the list because the layout is pretty simple and easy to memorize in the end. And since the enemies' agro range is rather short, it's easy to avoid them.

5. Yahar'gul village after beating Rom
Not that hard on repeat playthroughs when you know where the bell ringing women are, but before that it's a nightmare. The enemies aren't that strong, but when they're hyper aggressive and often in groups, it truly makes it a teeth racking exercise. Thankfully it gets a lot easier when you get to the bottom, but even then there's two super strong hunters you need to get past.

6. Brume Tower & the Memory of the Iron King
Not in its entirety, but there are several spots where you have to fight a group of enemies that hit like a truck in cramped spaces who can also respawn before you take out the Nadalia statues. The road to Sir Alonne is also way harder than it initially seems. The enemies agro in such a way that you can't lure them out one by one, and will often fight two or more at a time. This is where you really need a weapon with a wide attack arc.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

6. Brume Tower & the Memory of the Iron King
Not in its entirety, but there are several spots where you have to fight a group of enemies that hit like a truck in cramped spaces who can also respawn before you take out the Nadalia statues. The road to Sir Alonne is also way harder than it initially seems. The enemies agro in such a way that you can't lure them out one by one, and will often fight two or more at a time. This is where you really need a weapon with a wide attack arc.

I'm not proud of this but I was having trouble with Alonne, and the area leading up to him was so annoying that I just grinded until the enemies stopped respawning.

 

[Kerg3927]

Wow, why is no one saying Sen's Fortress??

Always annoying, even when you know what you are doing. I hate going through there.

Blighttown, you can skip the top part so no big deal.
Lost Izalith is easy, minus the piece of shit boss.
Tomb of the Giants is also pretty easy to navigate on repeat playthroughs.

Sen's always is a chore. No shortcuts. No easy way. You just gotta do it.

You do realize there is an elevator that will take you up and down after reaching the top, no?

 

[Dalisclock]

Wow, why is no one saying Sen's Fortress??

Always annoying, even when you know what you are doing. I hate going through there.

Blighttown, you can skip the top part so no big deal.
Lost Izalith is easy, minus the piece of shit boss.
Tomb of the Giants is also pretty easy to navigate on repeat playthroughs.

Sen's always is a chore. No shortcuts. No easy way. You just gotta do it.

You do realize there is an elevator that will take you up and down after reaching the top, no?

The trick is getting to that point. Especially if you don't know about the bonfire just after you get outside.

 

[totheendofsin]

If we're including Bloodborne I'd like to cast my vote for the Forbidden Woods, it's just so large with so many different ways to get lost and turned around. Special mention goes to the second half in which I just memorized the route to the boss and just make a beeline for it whenever I get there in more recent playthroughs.

 

[RaikuFA]

Valley of the giants. So dark and no defending with a shield unless you want to sacrifice vision.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I can breeze through Shrine of Amana, granted that's after a lot of deaths early on but once you know it, it's not that bad.
My vote is for a boss, the Nameless King. F**k. That. Guy. It isn't possible to hate anything about a game more than I hate that boss (optional or not).

 

[Xprimentyl]

Wow, why is no one saying Sen's Fortress??

Always annoying, even when you know what you are doing. I hate going through there.

Blighttown, you can skip the top part so no big deal.
Lost Izalith is easy, minus the piece of shit boss.
Tomb of the Giants is also pretty easy to navigate on repeat playthroughs.

Sen's always is a chore. No shortcuts. No easy way. You just gotta do it.

I was just coming in here to say this! Granted, my DS experience is limited, but just after thinking it couldn?t get worse than Blighttown and those dart blowing dicks, Sen?s Fortress proved me very wrong. Demoralizing is it; just when you make a little more progress than your last attempt, some booby-trap, hidden enemy or clumsy fall off a narrow ledge sends you right back to the beginning.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Another vote for The Valley of Defilement from Demons's Souls. What an unpleasant experience.

 

[Dalisclock]

Wow, why is no one saying Sen's Fortress??

Always annoying, even when you know what you are doing. I hate going through there.

Blighttown, you can skip the top part so no big deal.
Lost Izalith is easy, minus the piece of shit boss.
Tomb of the Giants is also pretty easy to navigate on repeat playthroughs.

Sen's always is a chore. No shortcuts. No easy way. You just gotta do it.

I was just coming in here to say this! Granted, my DS experience is limited, but just after thinking it couldn?t get worse than Blighttown and those dart blowing dicks, Sen?s Fortress proved me very wrong. Demoralizing is it; just when you make a little more progress than your last attempt, some booby-trap, hidden enemy or clumsy fall off a narrow ledge sends you right back to the beginning.

That's what makes Sens Funhouse so annoying. Even if you know where all the traps are, you still have to dodge/outrun them every single time you go up there until you get the elevator unlocked. The upper pathways are really bad in this regard, because one hit from one of those blades knocks you all the way to the bottom(and probably kills you) and the timing on that last set of swinging blades doesn't allow for much error(and that's after you deal with the magic throwing snake(wo?)man covering that final stretch).

When I was first going through that, I asked a friend who loves the series "Is there, by chance, a way to turn the traps off once you get past them?". He started laughing. Serves me right for asking, because I'm playing dark souls.

Anor Londo is paradise in comparison. Sure, there's tough enemies, but most of them can be bypassed until you reach the narrow ledges, the ones who can't be bypassed can be pulled one by one and you almost always have lots of room to fight them in. Even those silver knights aren't really that hard provided you know how to dodge, block and parry.

 

[Weaver]

For me it's The Black Gulch. Fuck that place and everything about it. Being optional i was so, so tempted to just skip it but i powered through.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Fuck the guy who put those 2 archers onto the ledge in Anor Londo. I hate them with a burning passion.
But in terms of a whole area i'd also have to say Shrine of Armana. Yes, i have my screen fairly dark for DS, so no, i can't see the holes without holding the torch.

And playin' pure melee this was by far the most annyoing and frustrating area to fight through. I've not had alot of "problematic" zones in DS2. I didn't like the gutter, because the path you had to take was so random to me - i was completly confused by the layout. But i didn't think the Black Gulch was specially attrocious.

In DS1 it's probably the Picture for me. Wheelies, Harpies and those toxic mada-fa-hers are an incredibly happy-funtime combination.
Also the cardiac arrest i got from the dragon was lovely too. The undead dragon asses in Lost Izalith were just boring as heck to fight against. Lost Izalith was just boring in general.

 

[jademunky]

Frigid Outskirts

Just wandering blindly through a blizzard while GIANT REINDEER charge at you from out of nowhere. Honestly, they are easily the most terrifying creatures in the Dark Souls universe and they're fucking Deer!

 

[Kerg3927]

Let me put it this way...I'd somehow gotten it through my head that in order to get to Blighttown I had to go through New Londo. You can just imagine how woefully unprepared I was for that. So many ghosts...

That's like showing up to your first day of college and to get to your first class, you have to crawl down the nearest toilet forcibly. And gotdamnit! I refuse to be late for my first class!!! I admire the determination. You will go far in life, or at least the gamer part of it. /salute

 

[Kerg3927]

... gang bang you with the raindeers of dickery.

I laughed. I will refer to them from now on as such.

 

[Kerg3927]

At least Anar Londo and Shrine of Armana are beautiful to look at...

Did I go through a different Shrine of Armana or did I have the brightness too low? My Shrine of Armana was about as beautiful as that place under the mountain where Golem lived and ate fish. Dark and horrible.