Poll: Hardest Souls Game (including Bloodborne)

[major_chaos]

I think I died more to Father whathisname, The blood starved beast, and Vicar Amelia individually than I did to the Capra demon, O&S and four kings combined. So yea for me it was bloodborne by a huge margin.

 

[Hieronymusgoa]

None of the four are easy. They are easiER with practice and as has been said before the skills transfer quite well over between the games. Certain parts suck a** and some are comparatively easy. The transfer of skills make Demons Souls seem the easiest to me since I played Dark Souls 1+2 before.
However the things that fucked me where quite different. Sometimes bosses are annoying as f*ck (Capra Demon, Smelter Demon), sometimes areas are (Blighttown, Shrine of Amara).

From what I've seen Bloodborne might be harder for me since I liked shields a lot in the other three Souls games. Not the Havel kind of shields but shields nevertheless

 

[joest01]

Haven't played Bloodborne and not sure I will. But how anyone can rate DkS1 over DkS2 is beyond me.

I died more on the way to and against Darklurker alone than the entire first game.

 

[fallte]

I find Demon's Souls hardest to play of them all mainly because of its limited weapon options, that whole soul form body form bullshit that forces you to play at half health most of the time, the somewhat confusing mechanics, the fact that your character is kinda slow and some actions are laggy. The crystal lizards that have limited respawns are also very annoying. That being said, most of the bosses are easier than those in later games with the exception of Allant, fuck that guy.

 

[Kyle Winston]

I think Demon Souls is the hardest because of the load times. They are atrocious! I know Bloodborne had this problem, but that got fixed. I haven't heard anything of the sort for Demon Souls. The game feels more like an endurance test than an actual game.

 

[Kingjackl]

I had very little issue with a lot of the commonly accepted hard bosses in Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne (haven't played the others). Four Kings and Ebrietas were the only ones I could say really kicked my arse to the point of needing to rely on cheese strategies to beat them (Havel Armour and Bone Ash cannon respectively). Then again, I rigorously summoned to get past the Gargoyles, O & S and Blood-starved Beast, so I guess Dark Souls wins by having slightly more hard encounters.

I suppose you are technically more powerful in Bloodborne than you will ever be in DS1 by virtue of having a stronger dodge by default and a safer, more applicable parry option. The only barrier to entry is skill, which is purely subjective and I happen to consider myself fairly skilled at that type of game. So yeah, DS1 is hardest for me.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I was going to laugh at everyone in this thread saying Bloodborne is the hardest, but then I started the DLC and man it's kicking my ass all up and down. Mind you, I'm fairly under-leveled for the DLC, but still, the encounters in that are impressively hard and all of the hunters are no joke.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Ofcourse it's slow as these are antique fire-arms. It's the same reason why they aren't very powerful outside parrying. I mean, why not take the stamina bar away while you're at it? That way you could hack&slash like kratos with john woo shooting skills.

This is also a game that has a serrated chain whip cane and a naval cannon fire arm, so I don't think there's a reason they need to be authentic about how the guns fire. They run on blood bullets, too, after all.

And now that you mention the stamina bar, there is actually very little reason for its inclusion, since it regenerates so fast and the penalties are negligible. It's not like low stamina can ever get you caught with your pants down like in Dark Souls. All it does is limit your attacks for like 1 second.

Bloodborne has the tactical pace of a Souls game but with emphasis on offense rather than defense. They meticulously tweaked the game around this concept. Having to separately consider the gun outside of some combo repertoire(combined with stamina management) is what gives this game it's tactical depth. Just look at how boring a straight out action-game like God of War is in comparison. Bloodborne is about 'reading' and anticapting what your enemies are up to instead of just mindlessly mashing buttons. I think the parry timing of the guns(and the way they handle) is an integral part of that.

How is that adding depth though, apart from using it against the occasional brick troll or executioner? How does not including the ability to use it in a combo string make it tactical? The only reason to ever use the gun is against enemies that otherwise can't be staggered and that can wreck you in one or two hits. You can't even manually aim it to shoot someone in the face or legs to bring them off balance or whatever.

You say how boring a straight-up action game is by comparison, but Bloodborne is a straight-up action game. It simply has the weird control constraints of an RPG, but without the added benefits of being an RPG.

There are weapons in the game that allow you to use the guns mid-combo.

The rifle spear, and the reiterpallash both fire if you use the transform attack mid-combo (as well as Simon's Bow blade I believe, though I haven't tried it), and they have some of the fastest firing animations in the game.

If you want to use a gun as an integral part of your combo there are weapons in the game that specifically cater to it. Feel free to use them.