Ohh, dark souls, you could have been so much more. I bought dark souls during the steam winter sale, and I got a controller for it last night; I've played for 9 hours now and I feel I have perspective on why this game generates so much vitriol. I just got to the bonfire in Darkroot Garden and I'm a level 24 sorcerer using the op Drake sword.
Im a huge ninja gaiden black fan and I think it is a very appropriate game to compare darks souls against because neither game gives a fuck whether you figure out how to play it or not. Neither game gives the slightest clues on EXTREMELY important information like on-landing charge for ngb or running in dark souls. Why isn't running explained in the game? I mean really. Running. Why wasn't there a message for that in the tutorial level? Why did I have to go read about it on a wiki? Thats a pretty shitty thing to do dark souls. As you have probably guessed by now, dark souls hasn't impressed me. I?m having fun playing it, but it doesn't deserve the honor people bestow on it. UPDATE: It seems running is in the tutorial I just missed it. I'm so glad that something so important to gameplay can be missed like that because as we all know, humans always learn things the first time they are told. (<--irony)
Dark Souls combat: boiled down to a no frills, slow paced battlefield awareness and positioning puzzle. Assess where the enemies are and make sure they don?t get behind you and try to lure them out to dispatch them one at a time. Try to get behind them to do a backstab. Fighting groups will get you killed. Thats all I've encountered so far and even though there are a lot of other options EVENTUALLY (like too many hours in for me to care about), I?m going to judge the combat on its core mechanics.
Ninja Gaidan Black combat: group combat at its finest. You are forced to engage 3 or more enemies at all times. Usually two or three will confront you directly while others throw shurikens, shoot firearms, grenades, heave giant clubs, fireballs, or some other form of ranged combat at you. You have to stay moving while inflicting damage. You have to prioritize targets while dodging EVERYTHING using your various ground and air attacks and appropriate weapons.
Blocking and understanding the enemy attack patterns are essential to survival in both games, but one far exceeds the other in pace and complexity. NGB combat was always balls to the fucking wall with shit flying at you and enemies attacking from all sides. You could make some mistakes and still survive. DS has plodding and simple fights that are more about knowing what the enemy does rather that skilled battlefield jockeying. That is the downfall of DS. You can?t attack groups because they kill you too quickly meaning fast combat is out. The "fast" combat I've seen in dark souls have always been backstab fests which aren't particularly interesting to me. I?m not going to discuss how much better NGE's combat in too much length but if you are interested, take a look at the advanced combat faq for that game. http://www.gamefaqs.com/xbox/928401-ninja-gaiden-black/faqs/39056
There is so much variety in Ninja Gaiden's combat compared to dark souls and I think thats a shame. I really like the atmosphere of dark souls. The exploration is tons of fun, but the game completely failing to give the player key information in a useful way and that destroys the experience for me. The trial and error form of teaching is such an outdated method and I am forced to consult a wiki for everything I do, and I hate that. I hate that I have to look up silly shit instead of experiencing it for myself and that brings me to why dark souls is so popular. It is accessible to a large range of people that typical "hardcore" games can't reach. The combat is slow which takes reflex skill out of the picture (in comparison to NGE that is. There is still some reflex with dodging and parrying) and makes the game more about knowledge than skill. This is the classic case of crystallized intelligence versus fluid intelligence. Knowing certain things makes dark souls a tremendously easy experience. You gain knowledge about situations after death and you can then apply that knowledge to future endeavors by avoiding the attack or knowing about an ambush. This is the base formula of learning in a video game. Dark souls follows this but amplifies the penalty tremendously. Instead of just losing some health, you lose real world time for mistakes. Thats a shitty philosophy. Even if your knowledge of NGE is expansive eg knowledge of enemy attack patterns, knowledge of your weapon capabilities, you?ll still get owned if you can?t dance around the battlefield which is that combat fluidity that I find so lacking in Dark Souls. So yeah, Dark souls isn't for me because it is a shitty, watered down, semi-hardcore game. I don?t feel that the instant death and loss of souls adds value to ones life. Losing souls doesn't mean anything to me other than I?ll have to grind a little at the designated grind points that the developer obviously put into the game. Dying doesn't really cost me anything but time, and becoming good at the game doesn't mean gaining any skill, just adding knowledge.
I want to make a little addendum about why I think they made the choices they made that I find so detestable. They wanted to reinforce community sharing with the soapstone messages. The first time I played DS it was on an xbox without an internet connection and I had zero warnings or suggestions. That legacy and sense of discovery is a really cool idea, I just don?t like the way it panned out and would love to see that same idea further developed.
Also, I think dark souls would make a better rougelike. It has all the elements of punishment and discovery without the infinite replayability.
tl:dr Dark Souls has average combat with amazing atmosphere and exploration elements while using questionable teaching methods. Its popular because its not really a hardcore game. Ninja Gaiden Black is better. Fuck off.
Im a huge ninja gaiden black fan and I think it is a very appropriate game to compare darks souls against because neither game gives a fuck whether you figure out how to play it or not. Neither game gives the slightest clues on EXTREMELY important information like on-landing charge for ngb or running in dark souls. Why isn't running explained in the game? I mean really. Running. Why wasn't there a message for that in the tutorial level? Why did I have to go read about it on a wiki? Thats a pretty shitty thing to do dark souls. As you have probably guessed by now, dark souls hasn't impressed me. I?m having fun playing it, but it doesn't deserve the honor people bestow on it. UPDATE: It seems running is in the tutorial I just missed it. I'm so glad that something so important to gameplay can be missed like that because as we all know, humans always learn things the first time they are told. (<--irony)
Dark Souls combat: boiled down to a no frills, slow paced battlefield awareness and positioning puzzle. Assess where the enemies are and make sure they don?t get behind you and try to lure them out to dispatch them one at a time. Try to get behind them to do a backstab. Fighting groups will get you killed. Thats all I've encountered so far and even though there are a lot of other options EVENTUALLY (like too many hours in for me to care about), I?m going to judge the combat on its core mechanics.
Ninja Gaidan Black combat: group combat at its finest. You are forced to engage 3 or more enemies at all times. Usually two or three will confront you directly while others throw shurikens, shoot firearms, grenades, heave giant clubs, fireballs, or some other form of ranged combat at you. You have to stay moving while inflicting damage. You have to prioritize targets while dodging EVERYTHING using your various ground and air attacks and appropriate weapons.
Blocking and understanding the enemy attack patterns are essential to survival in both games, but one far exceeds the other in pace and complexity. NGB combat was always balls to the fucking wall with shit flying at you and enemies attacking from all sides. You could make some mistakes and still survive. DS has plodding and simple fights that are more about knowing what the enemy does rather that skilled battlefield jockeying. That is the downfall of DS. You can?t attack groups because they kill you too quickly meaning fast combat is out. The "fast" combat I've seen in dark souls have always been backstab fests which aren't particularly interesting to me. I?m not going to discuss how much better NGE's combat in too much length but if you are interested, take a look at the advanced combat faq for that game. http://www.gamefaqs.com/xbox/928401-ninja-gaiden-black/faqs/39056
There is so much variety in Ninja Gaiden's combat compared to dark souls and I think thats a shame. I really like the atmosphere of dark souls. The exploration is tons of fun, but the game completely failing to give the player key information in a useful way and that destroys the experience for me. The trial and error form of teaching is such an outdated method and I am forced to consult a wiki for everything I do, and I hate that. I hate that I have to look up silly shit instead of experiencing it for myself and that brings me to why dark souls is so popular. It is accessible to a large range of people that typical "hardcore" games can't reach. The combat is slow which takes reflex skill out of the picture (in comparison to NGE that is. There is still some reflex with dodging and parrying) and makes the game more about knowledge than skill. This is the classic case of crystallized intelligence versus fluid intelligence. Knowing certain things makes dark souls a tremendously easy experience. You gain knowledge about situations after death and you can then apply that knowledge to future endeavors by avoiding the attack or knowing about an ambush. This is the base formula of learning in a video game. Dark souls follows this but amplifies the penalty tremendously. Instead of just losing some health, you lose real world time for mistakes. Thats a shitty philosophy. Even if your knowledge of NGE is expansive eg knowledge of enemy attack patterns, knowledge of your weapon capabilities, you?ll still get owned if you can?t dance around the battlefield which is that combat fluidity that I find so lacking in Dark Souls. So yeah, Dark souls isn't for me because it is a shitty, watered down, semi-hardcore game. I don?t feel that the instant death and loss of souls adds value to ones life. Losing souls doesn't mean anything to me other than I?ll have to grind a little at the designated grind points that the developer obviously put into the game. Dying doesn't really cost me anything but time, and becoming good at the game doesn't mean gaining any skill, just adding knowledge.
I want to make a little addendum about why I think they made the choices they made that I find so detestable. They wanted to reinforce community sharing with the soapstone messages. The first time I played DS it was on an xbox without an internet connection and I had zero warnings or suggestions. That legacy and sense of discovery is a really cool idea, I just don?t like the way it panned out and would love to see that same idea further developed.
Also, I think dark souls would make a better rougelike. It has all the elements of punishment and discovery without the infinite replayability.
tl:dr Dark Souls has average combat with amazing atmosphere and exploration elements while using questionable teaching methods. Its popular because its not really a hardcore game. Ninja Gaiden Black is better. Fuck off.
