Tell me why you like this series

Demons Souls had god tier visual design and an innovative albeit minimalistic gameplay. Combine that with interesting coop and PVP MP and you have a very good formula. The rest of the game simply built on that and it's success.

It was new. It was fun.

Atmosphere first and foremost.
It just feels so good to traverse those worlds.
I like the gameplay. The rhythm game with the enemies, the deliberate and tactical gameplay. It's simple and rewarding.
NPCs are cool and have good voice acting. The script is god tier. Localisation by that UK company is better than anything else I've seen.
Sound design. Art direction. Interconnected world. Level design that loops back into itself.
Multiple builds. Cool movesets.
Nice lore. You feel like an archaeologist, discovering the world slowly, making your own theories on shit, deciding for yourself what has meaning and what's there only for gameplay considerations.

I could go on and on. I just love Dark Souls. It's getting shit on by contrarians recently, and they can all fondle my balls.

Great atmosphere. Simple but effective gameplay. Great costumization and variety of weapons (DS3 excluded). Great replayability. Had a unique online system shitters kept whining about. Fair difficulty that feels awesome to overcome.

No difficulty settings. Nobody with a job has time to learn this intentionally obtuse crap

I bought a ps3 for it afterward. I had an Xbox because of the mod ease.

Atmosphere and visual design, worlds created by From are very bleak without coming off as unnecessarily edgy, and I very much appreciate the fact that lore is so scarce that fans literally have to piece small fragments together to make sense of all this.

>redditor misusing Yea Forums terms
fucking hell go back

>DS3 excluded
Explain.

>worlds created by From are very bleak without coming off as unnecessarily edgy
This. The melancholy of it all is just so immersive, the silence of that world, the sound of your steps and your gear when you walk, the low key Shakespearean voice acting, all the characters finishing their lines in that desperate and ironic laugh...
Everything is summed up pretty neatly by the Firelink Shrine theme: youtube.com/watch?v=2llS87avh2w
None of what you're doing actually matters, everything is already doomed, and there's a serenity in that. A mix of stoic way of thought and fatalism. I fucking love it man, I don't know, no other game made me feel this way, ever.

fantasy stuff is cool and bloodborne is gay

Not the guy you are responding to but DS3 is a Bloodborne reskin.
Demons and Dark Souls are slower, methodical with the emphasis on 1on1 combat, meanwhile DS3 is a fucking hypefest where everything goes super fast and it's somehow supposed to be a DS title.
I'm not saying you can't get used to it but it feels like a whole different game with just Dark Souls items.

Initially with Dark Souls I found the challenge compelling, but it was the bizarre nature of the world and the great level design that really sealed the deal for me. I got really enamoured with it for a number of weeks.

I've only played the first one, but I like the medieval aesthetics.
That's pretty much it for me.

Neither Bloodborne or DS3 are significantly faster than DeS or DS1.

makes journalist mad

I love that it doesn't have an easy mode.

>DS1 was the game that best captures the sense of lovely melancholy that LOTR had without making the mistake of going too far with the theme and drifting into nihilistic purposelessness like some other series
>Is one of the only vidya where I can have persistent, real-time adventure experience with my friends instead of short, instanced arena fights. Only other one I know is Borderlands, and it's so on-rails by comparison.
>had really exceptional English VA work, which matters a lot to me

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I like the depressive atmosphere and music.The combat is a joke, but the world itself is beautiful to wander through.

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what that guy said

>The combat is a joke
I hate this meme

It feels like an adventure. Dark Souls is the gaming equivalent of going to your library and picking out an old dusty hardcover fantasy fiction and reading it end to end. It's deeply immersive and nuanced in a way few games are or even care to be.

While the series has mechanically improved over time, games like Sekiro are decidedly more arcadey, and not nearly as engaging in that way. Experiences like being cursed in Blighttown for hours, only to work your way up a death-trap fortress and then to stumble into Anor Londo is an experience second to none.

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It's refreshing to play a game that expects a lot out of you and wants you to try as hard as you can to succeed. The feeling of accomplishment is almost orgasmic after beating a particularly hard boss. Also, the lore is incredible and done in a style I have never really seen replicated in that it's extremely deep and detailed yet hidden away and subtle. Good design, good combat, good memes and cute boys.

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it's fun

You can beat just about everything in it without getting hit, if you do it right. Saved me from burnout after decades of jrpgs

>Experiences like being cursed in Blighttown for hours, only to work your way up a death-trap fortress and then to stumble into Anor Londo is an experience second to none.
This. You get stories and memories out of it in a special way.

Dark Souls is the first B-tier game to come along and just destroy all the things triple-A developers were doing at the time. They appealed to people who like GAMES and not walking simulators. Every enemy defeated feels like an immense challenge overcome. There's lots of customization for characters. The world, at least in DaS1, wraps in on itself for maximum immersion and comfy. The combat and boss beating is a rush when you just manage to eke out a victory after trying for a time.

10/10

My greatest disappointment right now is how bland and shallow Sekiro is in terms of atmosphere, lore, etc., compared to Dark Souls 1. The gameplay is infinitely better, but it's literally the ONLY thing it has going for it.

fuck are you talking about? sekiro lore is awesome and i'm not even into samuraishit

>bombardier dash 8

not as good as ATRs but who doesn't love twin turboprop regionals

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ITS FUN BECAUSE ITS HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDD!!!!!!!!!!!

its an easy way to discipline yourself to handle stress

Fuck yeah dude, you nailed it.

Perfect difficulty you can adjust to your taste. No handholding. No "cinematic" bullshit. Unparalleled sense of adventure. Oozing with atmosphere. Great replayability. Unique fantasy setting. Gameplay is simple but effective, with slow paced combat, uncancellable attacks, and timing that make it play like a pseudo-turn-based game. Came out when piss-easy QTE movie-game garbage was peaking.

>Dark Souls is the first B-tier game to come
Isn't Dark Souls considered AAA?

Because getting the Staff Of Ages was fucking fun

I mean, nowadays it's made such a reputation that DS3 might have been called AAA, but on release it was a sequel to a moderately successful cult hit with a couple interesting things about it. The fame came progressively later.
But it's certainly not on the level of advertising/marketing of stuff like a Blizzard/EA/SquareEnix game

DeS and DaS1 are A, DaS2, BB, and DaS3 are AA.

Also Sekiro is AA too.

Sekiro, BB and DaS3 are full blown AAA projects. DaS3 marketing was insane

>SquareEnix game
Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest are not much more popular than Souls

It is though. With very, very few exceptions most enemies can get swatted with no effort. If you get pancaked or turned into shashlyk then that's your own fucking fault.
>oh no a black knight one shotted me with a great sword, this game is hard
Fuck off.

Well alrighty. By b-tier I meant that they had a smaller budget relatively

DS3 and Sekiro both play well and are technically competent, but they just don't have the magic that DS1 had. I blame the linearity, speed, and ability to teleport from the start.

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It wasn't hard for the sake of being hard. The purpose was to give the player a sense of accomplishment (but not one provided through gambling or easy mode)

It's most certainly the linearity. The best games (almost objectively) have metroidvania-style world exploration. Not completely open-world and not completely linear. The games take you on either a somewhat linear with branching paths route (Half-Life 2) or they have you wander around a little world with shortcuts (REmake ).

>It wasn't hard for the sake of being hard
Yeah except for Dark Souls 2

Crashing some shitter's co-op session and fucking up his progress

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Well quite honestly that game is pathetically easy with lifegems. And 2 was shit. 3 is fine but doesn't have the same magic to it

The positive feeling you get from sunbroing

>but on release it was a sequel to a moderately successful cult hit with a couple interesting things about it. The fame came progressively later.
lolno, are you retarded? DS3 was their most successful launch ever, possibly until Sekiro, the fame came with DS1

Edit: And not games like COD campaigns, which are entirely linear. Whenever I play Half-Life 2 I'm reminded of what it feels like to read LotR. The best games take you on a long journey somewhat linearly but with explorable side areas or they have a relatively small area which can be explored with shortcuts (opening locked doors or moving lifts)

It sounds like you're describing Dark Souls as a sequel to Demon's Souls rather than DS3 to DS1

i love dark fantasy with knights and lovecraftian horror elements. the entire design and aesthetic of the world is fucking perfect. it has some of the most beautiful environments and boss fights in vidya

Because I liked DeS. I'm not some disgusting pleb faggot that only played the game after hopping on the prepare to die bandwagon.

Unironically, the setting and lore these games have are one of the main things that keep me coming back to these games. It's unparalleled, imo.

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>DURR HURR 2 is bad meme

2 is the second-best after 1, fuck off. Best character-building, large, open world with lots of branching paths that allows the player to progress non-linearly, almost every weapon and build is viable for PVE and PVP, and has by far the best expansions. It tried to be a little different and wasn't a carbon-copy of DS1 in a new setting.

this. how is it we dont have more sprawling maze levels with cathedrals, castles and corridors in video games?

>ash lake being higher than Izalith
>one singular world tree rather than multiple holding up everything
I get that this is someone's interpretation but still

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i feel cool when I beat the final boss.

Sure i'll bite... It's the only game in any genre with a proper asynchronous single player/pvp experience. It successfully replicates a hunter/prey style gameplay that even hunter/prey games like dead by daylight lack. Simply because when you invade, you invade someone who has their own goals entirely seperate from pvping. Their goal is often survival and progress and usually not to win some objective in asynchronous pvp.

No other game has had the balls to repeat it in such a way, not even dark souls 3 had the balls to make invasions as vivid as they were in 1. By massively overstacking the odds in favour of the host and not the hunter.

In short, it had a kind of competitive play you cannot replicate without making a very similar formula which no souls-like has dared to do.

I've been waiting to play dark souls 3 until now having played every other soulsborne and I thought I was burned out on souls, but somehow they manage to hook me every time. The fact that it absolutely shits on ds2 and has pretty much only good to amazing boss fights as well is also a triumph. These games are pretty much the only ones where I can get really autistic and while I'm sitting and taking a dump I'm thinking about how to allocate my stats and shit and what armor piece would look better from behind and how I can keep a bow despite the weight so I can keep a quiver on the back to make up for the bigger swords that have no quiver and on it goes.

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also I'm reading berserk at the same time which enhances the experience. The fat monks in the mass priest fight really reminded me a lot of some of the characters in there and I was pleased.

I loved Bloodborne. DaS was pretty meh.

These games have something for everyone. The multiplayer is unique and fun, and the PvE is a solid experience. Some want to invade, while others enjoy delving into the narrative and lore, and others just want to fight epic bosses. Singleplayerfags and PvPfags are right at home.

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I like it because it's fun.

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>fun
Buzzword.

Souls combat feels like Bethesda Combat
Just hacking away at an enemy's health bar until it falls over and dies
Prove me wrong
You can't

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I'm gonna have to disagree with you, buddy.

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how you looked typing this

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Dark Souls 1 is unironically a work of art desu.

Even though this is a shit post, you should kill yourself anyway.

Don't reply to this because I'll never see it.

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You are not allowed to say that because it's popular

>tfw playing Conan Exiles and it just makes me wish I was playing Dark Souls

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I hope it gets a re-remaster that unfucks the artstyle that the remaster did. The switch version would be perfect if the audio quality wasn't fucked and it fixed a few minor lighting glitches (and brought back the moon for the fight with sif). PC PTDE version is still the definitive version but the multiplayer is mostly dead and you need to use a connectivity mod.

I don't think anything could recapture the feeling of going in blind on your first playthrough of Demon or Dark Souls. Learning how to play, the movesets for all the weapons, monsters, learning how to parry, all the skills and everything. I actually wanted to git gud.

With the sequels, you already knew how to play and once you learned the enemies and maps it all became running through the numbers again. That first unspoiled playthrough is just magic and I wish I could have that again.

>not even dark souls 3 had the balls to make invasions as vivid as they were in 1. By massively overstacking the odds in favour of the host and not the hunter.
Invasions in DS3 are pure ass.

Its either exactly what you describe, a gank-fest in which the host has multiple phantoms, or it devolves into rollspam and poking until one person gets low, sprints 10 feet and insta-chugs a flask, repeat until someone runs out. It doesn't feel like an individual encounter on your journey to the boss that, after you've won, allows you to continue on your way. It just stops all progress since you'll likely run low on flasks and have to go rest to refill them due to the nature of the encounters.

Sekiro lore, story and characters shit all over DaS, and only autistic retards pretend 18 shades of drab gray environments and vague lore told entirely through item descriptions makes for a more compelling and engaging world.

Playing Demon Souls for the first time

How the FUCK do I deal with the fire blasting spider in the mines?

>Sekiro
>linear
You can go in about 5 different directions once you get to the castle.

2 is complete fucking garbage and the only actually bad game in the series.

I played dark souls 2 first. there was so much shit in that game that I autistically needed to uncover it all. it eventually clicked and I found it fun

Not him but it's generic Japanese. Nioh's world was more interesting with the yokai-human relationships and the different elemental beings ruling over the world.

>DaS is generic dark fantasy
See how easy and utterly meaningless that criticism is?

Cool bosses
The setting and the lore are satisfyingly morbid
The combat style is what I prefer compared to other 3d action games

I'm just talking about 1 by the way.

I agree with you. Bloodborne is the only one with a unique world.

dark souls 1 is the best game ever desu

Execution and how the world is presented are all that matters. Even BB is just Van Helsing meets Lovecraft.

>the only actually bad game
Dark Souls 2 is trash compared to other Souls games but it's still a good game if you compare it to absolute garbage like witcher or stuff like that

It's the only game in the series that I stopped playing before beating. The control are fucking awful and the level design is a joke. Replayability and viability of multiple builds mean nothing if the first time you play through the game it's still a boring chore.

It was like that before Bloodborne's DLC came out

I like the setting.

The first game is full of neat architecture, I loved exploring the world for the first time. Especially Sen's Fortress, that place was the greatest. Then when you enter Anal Rodeo for the first time.

The second one is good too, I can only remember the Bastille for some reason. But going back in time to fight the Last Giant was really cool.

Third one is the best area-wise in my books. I just love that the universe is just so tired now. Due to many Undeads sacrificing themselves to keep the Age of Fire going until it just becomes some warped fucked up thing where everything is convoluted is great. I picked to snuff the flame the first time. Everyone had suffered enough, its time to end it once and for all.

Also, I liken the challenges the Chosen Undead/Bearer of the Curse/Ashen One to ones I face every day. I figure if they can still get up to fight after getting BTFO into the next age, then I can certainly keep trying no matter what.
Its dumb I know, but I like to imagine it that way I suppose.

Best track coming through:

youtube.com/watch?v=tFRaZs6ri7s

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>It's the only game in the series that I stopped playing before beating
This game was so boring I had to use cheat engine to run past everything in the DLCs. I just couldn't stand it anymore. I mean the amound of content this game has while being so fucking bad is insane. People who beat this game while doing all the optional stuff are literally insane as well. I beat Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1, Bloodborne and now Sekiro multiple times but Dark Souls 2 is just something else

Do I really have to explain to you the many ways they are different, or can I just call you a retard?

Exploration, art-direction and overall atmosphere.

Multiplayer game that is thematically about depression where I get to help people kill their bosses and progress.

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it's the essence of Castlevania SOTN translated perfectly into a 3D game series

>le DS2 is bad meme XD do i fit in yet XDDD

Best RPG systems in the series, period.

Use a good shield, good armor and tank it
Or just learn to dodge, when he does the charged fire attack run to where you came from

>good VA work
THIS

t. a living, breathing meme

It's a fundamentally shitty game. No amount of content can fix that. Some people seem to think quantity matters more than quality, and they're idiots.

Sekiro is great but man I miss all the souls-shit like builds and finding equipment by exploring and invasions and finding some new area full of completely different enemies and encounter design
Also man I had no idea how much I would miss invasions before playing a kinda souls style game without them. After 3 phoned the system in so hard I figured I was basically done with it but the threat of invasions and the ability to crash other people's games just adds so much.
Sekiro obviously isn't the game for it, but I hope they actually put the effort the system deserves in for whatever they're doing next.

>You have options for builds so the fucking garbage story, art direction, gameplay and level design are fine!
Kill yourself, retard.

I like slow combat. Well, not exactly slow, but combat in which every attack is a high commitment.

I will always replay Dark Souls with all kinds of builds then lose steam because of Lost fucking Izalith.

I still can't believe people defend DS2. It looks like ass, plays like ass, and represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what made DeS/DaS memorable.
>starts with old ladies laughing at you because the game is hard and you're going to die lots

Learn to speedrun it, it's really easy and takes like 5 minutes once you know the route

I mean I wouldn't go that far but essentially this...kinda sorta. I dunno. Dark souls lore was clearly just an afterthought idk why people pretend that it wasnt. Everything is ambiguous just to save themselves time. Sekiro has like an actual story and for a fromsoft game it's actually fairly coherent as well which is incredibly impressive

the story was GOAT

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Just remembering the level makes me want to kill myself

>so the fucking garbage story, art direction, gameplay and level design are fine!
Yes, they are all fine, you fucking faggot.

You fucking morons can never actually articulate WHY any of that is "shit" you just parrot it over and over again when called out for being mouth-breathing mongoloids.

If the last third of the game matched the first two thirds, I agree. But the entire Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith are genuinely awful. The game feels rushed and incomplete, so I can only give it a 9/10.

The "boss" is still cancer every time

Demon Ruins is fine, Izalith sucks. Its mostly the shitty boss fight, if Bed of Chaos had been a proper, not-shit fight I don't think Izalith would get nearly as much hate. But its both an unfinished area and has the worst """boss""" in the game.

second the blame on being able to teleport immediately. reviewers always complain about backtracking in games but i don't mind it and dark souls 1 works with it really well.

You can kill it without ever having to actually do the side things, just run up the middle before it even breaks the floor, throw a couple firebombs at the right angles and then walk up and smack the bug

Half the time its not even backtracking half the time since there are so many shortcuts and paths that open up from the opposite side once you've made it there

souls and bloodborne and sekiro were kind of the games i imagined that were going to be everywhere in the future of gaming when I was a kid playing the 2 bit shit

just a rough story, explore with fantastic 3d worlds and kill bosses and level up

Even without playing it for a couple years I could probably retrace almost every area of the game map in way I can only do with games I've been replaying since childhood like Link to the Past or Mario 64. I don't think there's another modern game thats imprinted itself into my brain that strongly, its really a design masterpiece.

its fun and i like dark fantasy setting

Imagine being so fucking stupid that you think linear levels with poorly thought out enemy placements combined with unresponsive controls is okay because you can play the shit game multiple ways. Just imagine being that impossibly fucking stupid.

I dont understand why everyone is saying that Sekiro is linear. You have to beat;
>horseback guy
Before you can beat
>genichiro
before you can beat
>corrupted monk
Before you can beat
>owl (ashina castle version)
Aside from prior to the horse guy(I think you can get away with calling everything up to there the tutorial area) what you do in between each of those bosses is entirely up to you. Once you get to ashina castle you can pretty much go wherever you want

This!

Yeah, sekiro is actually really nonlinear, they did a fantastic job on the world design and almost nothing feels arbitrarily gated off until some other progress point is hit. I think the door after Centipede Giraffe is the only thing that stuck out at me a bit.
I think people just don't give it the multiple playthroughs that Souls games get so they don't try out multiple routes.
That and it doesn't have as much area or enemy variety so there's less different areas to stick out in people's heads as "I didn't do this until way later last time," which makes the linear story events like the castle invasion progressing feel like a bigger part of the game, and the difficulty isn't so much area based as story progression based so you almost never find yourself in a place you're not "supposed" to be in yet.
Also fast travel from the start of the game really limits the feeling of exploring to find ways areas interconnect. Anyone have one of these for Sekiro yet by the way?

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Probably the best level design I've ever experienced in a 3D video game.

>somewhat linear with branching paths route (Half-Life 2)

Wut? HL2 is linear as all fuck.

i like knights and wizard shit

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No tutorials, no handholding, just you and a big challenging world to explore. Highly rewarding when you discover how the mechanics work, and just sitting at a bonfire hearing the flames while you are thinking what to do next is kino.

Ludonarrative congruence

The atmosphere, gameplay, and story/storytelling are all in line with one another

this. Also when i first played dark souls it gave me a feeling no other games gave me since i was a child and i was playing Oni on my ps2 late at night.