Difficulty was never the point

This is entirely the fault of the series going multi-platform. In particular PC.ucks.

Gayus Maximus

It was more focused on puzzles and exploration than its sequels. Many of the boss fights would be called "gimmicks" if the game was released today. Gameplay is much slower paced and predictive rather than fast paced and reactive, you can beat the entire game without dodge rolling a single time if you want to.
The game is also absolutely overflowing with atmosphere. Imagine if the second half of DkS1 was as kino as the first half.
youtube.com/watch?v=xnfzIhrGjLc

Is the second half of DaS1 the most disappointing thing in all of gaming just because of how brilliant the first half is?

get gud, the whole game is easy once you learn how to play correctly
there isn't a single part of the game i dread going back to and i know im not alone

the point of it is to have fun

Fun only comes from overcoming challenges. Anything else is artificial fun.

You know that high you get from winning a competitive game or succeeding on something you tried really hard on? Now compare that to when you play through a story game and breeze through all the battles without even thinking, or just watched a movie or TV show. Which one did you have real fun?

I vastly prefer Demon's Souls over the Dark Souls games and Bloodborne.
There. I said fucking said it. Fight me, you cocksuckers.
It also dared to try new and unconventional/never seen before things more than all of its spiritual successor combined (world tendency, old monk fight, etc.)

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kek'd

>ironically mocking something that you do
the fact that you even know who "forsen" is means you don't belong here.

Best solution
>make the base game first
>then add some mediocre EZ mode
If you are not a pussie you are never going to use the EZ mode

No, that's Dark Souls 2, because of coming from the greatness of DeS and DaS, and the pre-release stuff being a bait-and-switch.

>le difficulty
yeah because the games are not challenging

still ruins the game.

when you get to a challenging part your brain will remind you that you could simply start over on easy.

video games should NEVER have multiple difficulties.

So (multiplayer) Broodwar is the most fun game ever made?

Demon's Souls gets major points for being so innovative. Summoning, invasions, messages, and bloodstains were things that no game had done before.

>still ruins the game.
>when you get to a challenging part your brain will remind you that you could simply start over on easy.

Not the games fault if you are a faggot that gets beaten by the game and go for the easy path

players who complain about "gimmicks" are part of the reason that every boss in ds3 was a boring 1v1 duel and not something creative like storm king or maiden astrea
I liked divine dragon though

FORSAAAAAAAAAN Pepega

>Fun only comes from overcoming challenges.
holy shit dude

You’re completely wrong. This might be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen.

Demon's Souls was actually faster and smoother than Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 2.

That's why the difficulty only increased over time and why the fanbase praises it

lmao gramps

...so why are you here wait what..

Bad opinion alert.

>HURRRR
>HURRR I'M BEING RETARDED ON THE INTERNET MOM
read my post again.

it's about ruining an experience. if there is only one path forward then there is only one path forward. the fact is we don't all have loads of time and video games are a worthless waste of time.

it's merely the nagging thought in the back of your head telling you that you don't need to beat your head against the wall.

save your disingenuous arguments for your friends on reddit and twitter

I don't like this game because of the lack of times I heard the word "nigger".

>they all have some extreme bullshit enemies, mechanics or levels that EVERYONE will always dread just going back to
This really hurts the replay value. Too many "that part"s.

>picked up the Hong Kong English version of the game before Atlus published it in NA
>all the friendly bros on the JP server taking their time to show me all the secret items before that spider boss

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>You know that high you get from winning a competitive game or succeeding on something you tried really hard on?
No?

Not to mention the quality over quantity of weapons. Most had unique movesets, including unique parries and backstabs. The animations in Demons Souls are stellar.

>if there is only one path forward then there is only one path forward.
Why the fuck do you care how people play the game?
Again , its your fault if you choose the easy mode if you think the game isnt fair

Shut up you whiny bitch.

>says the nigger word uncensored and without any kind of disclaimer in his mainstream youtube channel
based and /ourguy/

Demon and Dark are equal in terms of innovations and game for me.

I love the open world and connectivity of Dark Souls, but Demon had a shit ton more interesting fights and situations.

I hate this "need for human competition" generation.

>literally post demon's were miyazaki wanted permadeath at first
>Difficulty was never the point.
based retard

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>artificial fun

based and redpilled, if you disagree you're a casual

as opposed to all natural free range fun

You cannot debate how ez souls games.are, or tell other fags to git gud, if you haven't beaten the game blind.

the games were always supposed to be challenging
they wanted them to feel like old games where beating a stage actually took some effort and practice

I don't disagree. Soulsbornekiro games have become really formulaic due to the focus being on combat and difficulty now. Most of the encounters have just become Guitar Hero with the music staff removed as that is the logical conclusion when you push a relatively binary combat system to its limits. DeS struct a really nice balance having fights like Allant, Dragon King and Old Monk in the same game.
DeS also feels as though it has very little padding in terms of encounters, other than some of the cave sections post Armor Spider every single room feels as though the designers had a particular idea and constructed that area to execute it, when they ran out of things to add they stopped.

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adding multiple difficulty modes kills the cohesion of challenge. it's a pretty big contradiction in game's intention it at the same time presents a challenge (in game obstacle) and the means to avoid it (lowering difficulty).

>Accidentally do the areas in the wrong order (i.e. anyone other than False King last)
>Ruin the climax
nice game

“If I had to say for myself, it’s actually the opposite – I’m more masochistic,” he replied.

“Because I created Dark Souls while thinking about what type of game I would personally like to play. I wanted somebody to bring out a really sadistic game, but I ended up having to make it myself.”

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>adding multiple difficulty modes kills the cohesion of challenge
Dark souls 1 2 and 3 + Bloodborne had online aka EZ mode yet people think it was fair.

because it means the game was made to appeal to a large group rather than be a good video game.

your reading comprehension is honestly pathetic. Try reading all of my posts again. Try to dry your tears out of your eyes before you do
save it for your friends on twitch.

That was speculated to be for Monumental Mode.

it's still a way better method than telling the game to stop killing you with a lower difficulty toggle.

First I'm hearing about a "Monumental Mode". What's that?

well you can play the game like the retards who played the bastardized localization and pretend the last boss is the wannabe allan

>appeal to a large group rather than be a good video game
>you cannot have both

Make the game with no difficult in mind
Put some mediocre EZ mode like less damage and more time to parry

Done , you got both

I hate that the lessons learned from dark souls/demons souls wasn't the unique atmosphere and heavy ambience and intricate world but rather "dude difficult lmao". Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro were a disappointment.

you're not accidentally going to run into the false king
you cant progress past the tower knight until you kill the last boss in another area

Difficulty was kinda the point, just not straight forward difficulty, if you didn't learn to manage stamina you constantly had your guard broke and took more damage, if you didn't learn to time rolls you took more damage, a rat isn't hard to fight but getting poisoned is a heavy penality, same with basilisks, its not really hard to avoid ganks but if you don't pay attention for them you constantly get killed, it was about punishing sloppy player who then push themselves to get better.

I feel sorry that you have no idea what it means to try at anything.

I'm sorry you believe being good at a video game is an accomplishment.

How much of a weeb can you be

It's the fault of marketing and the playerbase. Things like atmosphere are less straightforward than "dude I'm hardcore because I beat this hard game".

Yea, no. Dark souls 1 is great, its my fav in the series and one of my fav games of all times but to call ds1 and demon's equal in innovation is honestly laughable.

The only new thing Dark Souls added ontop of Demon's was an interconnected world. Literally every other piece of innovation all came from Demon's.

I did an NPC Old Monk last on my first playthrough, went straight to Allant after Dragon God and Storm King. Astraea -> Monk -> True King is probably the least climactic possible final run of bosses and I managed it entirely by accident.

There is a difference between being punishing and being difficult, losing all progress on death is punishing.

Considering Boletaria has 4 levels whereas every other world has 3 you'd have to be pretty retarded to not to Boletaria last.

he had a chance with sekiro. would had been glorious to see the butthurt if sword saint could had severed your immortality ie 1 death to last boss and you get some kind of bad ending

Dark Souls 2 was far more about "dude difficult lmao" than 3 was, and it shows.

You're right my man, but I do think the difficulty is an essential element in the souls experience. Returning to firestink, bonfires, or the nexus or whatever safe haven you have feels all the more relieving because of how dangerous the world is.
absolutely, unequivocally, and unironically based

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>yet people think it was fair
It’s not, really. The host can still get bodied, sure, but christ the AI is duuuumb.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence to see so many clamoring for an easier difficulty with a new FromSoft game lacking coop.

Sekiro has a great atmosphere, although I only started to get into it once I got to the more fantastical areas, Ashina Outskirts/Castle are quite plain. I thought Fountainhead Palace was great, the vista you see after killing the Monk before hopping down into the water is one of my favourites in souls.

but das 3 is the easiest out of ALL the soulsborne games, BY FAR?

Pleb opinion, the linear nature of Ds3 and the relative difficulty of the first 3 areas compared to both ds1 and 2 make it obvious to me that Ds3 had the biggest difficulty boner.

who is that?

Demon's Souls and Bloodborne are From's best games
Dark Souls is literally garbage for zoomers that want to feel hardcore because they fell for the marketing

No that would be Bloodborne, and it's not even close.

demon's souls sure, it was more designed as a modern take on classic games which inherently make it difficult. Dark souls however has always memed its difficulty

What did you mean by this?

>Difficulty was never the point.
>Save for the fact that it's the primary selling point of the game.

for dark souls yeah, but not demons

The difficult isn't the point, it's there to build the game's universe. It's dark, it's uncaring, it's ruthless. Dark Souls and other games like it simply wouldn't be the same without it's difficulty. They are not good games because they are hard, they are good games because they use their difficulty to put you in the game universe.

Say hello to my little friend.

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The older games (DeS/DaS 1) really just reward the player's caution.
With Bloodborne they muddled things by making encounters unwieldy and more unpredictable. The bosses have ridiculous stamina, are five times as big as you, faster than you, have random one hit kill moves. I think DaS 3 also has this (haven't played it).

With Sekiro it seems they advanced down this path ever further. A lot the game's charm and humour comes from how crazy fast, punishing and devious enemies are. Everything is manic.

Show me a bit of marketing material from 2008-9 that mentions how difficult it is at all. If anything, it probably was almost the opposite, the gaming landscape at the time was heading towards difficulty being a negative, with difficulty in games being associated with meme games like wanna be the guy.

It was DeS’ major selling point too. It’s why I didnt get into it until like a year after it was out, it seemed too hard.

That’d be DS2 for me. Once you realize how little stamina you have and how ADP works its a cake walk

The difficulty is just right. Most of it was caused by lack of understanding of mechanics anyway.

it wasnt. demon's had the theme of dying over and over again so maybe that warped the public image of the future series. the whole prepare to die thing doesnt necessarily mean dark souls was marketed as a difficult game it just means the game is a dungeon crawler with a lots of bullshit gotcha traps that force you to die and learn by dying.

it wasnt a marketing point, but one of the main points of the game was to make it challening
not meme difficulty like i wanna be the guy, but more like old games

underrated post

You're a fucking moron. DS2 had far more enemy spam and boss spam than either of the other two games, and had many enemies (like the Heide Knights) that just broke every design convention the other games tried to adhere to, in order to be 'more difficult'.

Yes and no. I think there's a distinction between 'omg lol so hard' meme difficulty shit and a game that's just generally unforgiving and expecting of the player's competency, especially when it was released a couple years into when gaming got extremely mainstream and game difficulty was quickly being eschewed by publishers and developers alike to accommodate for the influx of shitass noobs and movie game players. DeS was a refreshing take on a genre that was quickly being streamlined and swaddled to avoid things like difficulty, mistakes, or player agency.
As the series got popular, and the idea of hard games being able to make a profit, that was when the meme difficulty shit started to get worked in because players still wanted the feel of their first playthrough challenge but increasingly got savvy to the tricks and mechanics of the games. Sort of like a Red Queen effect but for game difficulty: as the game gets harder the players get better so the next game has to be made harder to accommodate for the increased skill floor.

Something I really dislike about the more recent Soul's games is this insistence on multiphase encounters, they tested the waters in ds2 with Smelter Demon, Fume Knight, Mirror Knight, Velstadt and a couple others that either gained abilities or changed completely at a certain health thresh hold, with BB, Ds3 and Sekiro they've just decided that it was now the norm and every fight is two, sometimes three phases long, often with phases so different they could be split apart into two different boss battles. I find it a pain because it turns every single boss into this weird encounter where half the time you're falling asleep and half the time you're actually having fun, but you've got to do the falling asleep half every single time. I think Sekiro does multi phase bosses the least terribly out of BB/Ds3/Sekiro because the combat system is such that mastering early phases of bosses significantly speeds up their finish time, as a result of the posture mechanic, also in most cases the bosses either dont change that much between phases, only adding 1-2 more abilties (Lady Butterfly, Owl 1, True Monk) orhave their easiest phase be the last phase (Guardian Ape, Genichiro).

That was how the popularity spread through word of mouth yeah, but it was never part of the official marketing. That started with DaS and the cringy "prepare to die" marketing campaign.

How can anyone be this retarded?

Dark Soul's literally went back on DeS's innovations and just took all the normie-friendly ideas.

I honestly wouldn't even have been mad.
Would have been some true Super Ghouls'n Ghosts shit almost.

I haven't played bloodborne or sekiro but 3 is by far the hardest of the Souls games. Every enemy has infinite stamina and attacks a million times per second

>Save for the fact that it's the primary selling point of the game

Thats what I was addressing in the original comment I replied to, Miyazaki's intention's weren't relevant.

>Enemy spam

I hate this meme, the entire series has enemy spam, i can name 20 times in ds1 and 3 where there is blatant enemy spam. The Heide knights just fucking sit there until you kill Dragon Rider, and thats a big who cares because you're already moving on to the underground pirate place.

They should go back to making gimmick/puzzle bosses and focusing more on level design and difficulty. This is why demons souls is the best. Also incorporate the bosses into the level like Sekiro instead of shitty fog gates.

The debate over difficulty is fucking weird, it's like no-one wants to just point out the fact that the loop of learning patterns then executing them is the fun bit. There's no huge input barrier or anything, if you wanted it to be "hard" you'd add bullshit frame-perfect inputs and more buttons. I didn't enjoy Bloodborne as much because I got good at dodging through attacks 3 games ago, I only really enjoyed the bosses that forced you to engage with the parry mechanic.

>gimmick/puzzle bosses
dear god no

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>Other games do it too
>Bad enemy design is excusable so long as you don't have to fight them

Fucking confirmed brainlet.
DS1 spams enemies, yes, but only in select areas and when the enemies themselves are relatively easy to dispatch. They're intended to be relative spikes in difficulty. DS2 does it all the time because fuck it, it's hard right? DS3 does this more, but still not nearly as bad as 2.

>I can name 20 times

Go on, then.

While that might be true in some cases I'm glad they got rid of grasses and never looked back (except in the case of lifegems but they weren't as bad).

Grasses being bad has nothing to do with how they were limited, rather it was the opposite, by the time you were half way through Demon's you had hundreds, tens of the more powerful ones, and they almost trivialize the difficult.

bandai made it famous for that

Dragon god fucking sucked but the Divine Dragon in Sekiro was really great and a perfect example of how to do a gimmick/puzzle fight without making it shit.

That's just a bad boss. The other ones in Demons Souls are gimmick/puzzle bosses as well.

The issue is is that multi-phase fights, I believe, make for more interesting and mechanically more complex (and by virtue of that more engaging) fights. Going back to DeS, DS1, and DS2 most of the boss fights are extremely static in that the first 10% of their hp is largely the exact same as the last 10% of their hp in terms of how the fight goes. Can you parry Gwyn? You just won the entire the fight because he doesn't have phases. Know how not to get hit by Gaping? Time to dodge the same three attacks while you whittle away at its bloated health pool.
Phases also increase the stakes. Shit like Isshin and Geni were cool because as you got nearer to defeating them they got more dangerous (if Lightning Reversal didn't invalidate the fight, but their damage potential is much higher still). Or you can completely alter the fight like lmao1ape going into the second phase. Or Bloodstaved Beast upping the stakes by having the poison aura (even if, again, the fight is trivial if you know it). I think this is why Demon of Hatred is so poorly received because aside from changing a few attacks it's largely just a marathon of dodging the same couple attacks (with an additional variant or two in later phases) and the fight goes on longer than it's interesting.

If any of you fags have read ANY Miyazaki interviews on the subject of Souls difficulty you'd know difficulty is a core element in his games so overcoming the games' challenges feels enjoyable.

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Bro, I love overcoming absurd challenges, and I think anybody asking for an easy mode in a From title is retarded, but you are extra retarded. That is by no means the only way of having fun.

I don't have to try because everything is easy if you put your mind at it. And the stuff that's usually not easy in that case are generally just dumb.

>forgetting PREPARE TO DIE edition of DaS1
user...

For good reason, I’d imagine, because it’s pretty hard to enjoy what’s in these games if you’re not ready for a “harder than normal” overall difficulty.

It’s memey now - thanks Bamco - but I’d rather people really knew what they were getting into.

This man is correct. The conclusion one may draw from it is not, however. Fun is only achievied through overcoming. Having fun is simply not everything a game can deliver though. You can have a joyous experience while breezing through a movie game, for instance.

Bloodborne doesn't have one hit kills, I don't know what you're smoking

Ya Divine Dragon was so good. I really enjoyed spamming R1 and watching the same KB animation over and over and over again. Man, Sekiro IS GOAT

They are designed to be challenging, but the reasons I sank hundreds of hours per game was due to the atmosphere, level design, gameplay variety per playthrough and how the plot was delivered; with much left to interpretation and constant mystery

Sekiro had none of that, played it once and will probably never play it again. I genuinely didn't even like it that much

I feel you 100%. Sekiro was terrible in comparison to its predecessors.

>The issue is is that multi-phase fights, I believe, make for more interesting and mechanically more complex (and by virtue of that more engaging) fights. Going back to DeS, DS1, and DS2 most of the boss fights are extremely static in that the first 10% of their hp is largely the exact same as the last 10% of their hp in terms of how the fight goes. Can you parry Gwyn? You just won the entire the fight because he doesn't have phases. Know how not to get hit by Gaping? Time to dodge the same three attacks while you whittle away at its bloated health pool.
What does it change? You learned the boss, you learned the boss. Now you have to learn 3-4 bosses for 1 boss. It even makes fights feel more repetitive because for the multiple phases, you have to reuse mechanics that you used on other bosses making them feel more the same.

it was even before that

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You do have to fight them, later, to get to Ornstein, you just dont do it right after Dragon Rider LMAO.

>I can name 20 times

>First Iron Pig
>3 tree mob trap near the hidden wall bonfire
>Dogs+Ninja's
>Many different areas with packs of insta poise breaking torch hollows
>Many areas of painted world with Velka Crows
>Many many areas with multiple rats
>Fire dog squads in a few different areas in Blighttown
>Mass ghosts inside the building of New Londo
>2 titanite demon's at the bottom of Sens
>The Crystal Hollows at the start of Dukes
>The Bonewheels, both times
>Literally any part of the Catacombs
>The knife throwing bois in anor londo in the church

Mate, I could go on and on, its in every fucking soul's game, ds1, ds2, ds3, demons, bloodborne.

sekiro is just “that part” but turned into “that game”

Does every boss need to be fucking flame lurker???

Miyazaki: That's not the case. I sometimes get this question from foreign media, and I answered with a no. I was "why are you so sadistic?"

Miyazaki: I don't know about the other staff members, but I'm actually a masochist.

Miyazaki: I'm a huge masochist, so when I make games like these… this is how I want to be treated!

Murohashi: Ooh…

Miyazaki: "I want to be killed this way!" That's how I make it!

Isomura: Amazing! That's some really extreme masochism!

Miyazaki: It's just that sometimes other people don't understand it; it's for my pleasure.

Murohashi: Really? You want to be killed deep in the forest, getting punched by a huge mushroom?

Miyazaki: Yes, yes. And the curse area… When I get cursed…

Isomura: You want to die from a barrage of arrows?!

Miyazaki: It's gratifying. I like that, I just wanted to emphasize it!

Murohashi: Incredible!

Miyazaki: I don't know about the other staff members' fantasies, but I'm not making it from a sadistic stance, but from a masochistic one. I want this done to me!

Isomura: Oh… wow!

Miyazaki: I actually like that. I got some strong responses from foreign media. They said "what the hell are you talking about?!"

ITT: dumb faggots that think they're entitled to an easy mode the developer had no interest in making

IF YOU DON'T LIKE HARD GAMES DON'T PLAY THEM FAGGOTS

It's far too late

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I'll never forgive them for removing the leap overhead attack from Spears on the other sequels.

Of course. With a hidden second phase that adds a mini flame lurker to the mix.

What I can say about this game is that it feels less clunky than Dark Souls 1 and 2. The movement is really smooth, feels responsive and you feel agile without being floaty. I really like how this game feels to play. Weapon movesets are also pretty interesting, the game is dated and every weapon in their respective category has the same moveset, but what is there is very satisfying and ultra weapons have never felt better than in DeS. The game is grossly unbalanced but the janky feel to its balance has a certain degree of charm. As for the bosses, I actually think they are bad. The concepts are great, but too many of these fights are badly executed and they'd be torn apart by Anons if they were in modern Souls. Too many of those are gimmick fights, and most of those gimmicks aren't well executed. Storm King and Tower Knight were good, the others not so much. And bosses that get praised like Penetrator actually have a really small set of moves, so they're very simplistic. False King and Flamelurker are great, though. What DeS does well however is the presentation of everything, the atmosphere is thick, the art style top notch, the story very interesting. This is how a fight that is pathetic gameplaywise like Maiden Astraea ends up being a highly praised boss.
As a sidenote, DeS is closer to Sekiro than it is to Dark Souls/BB in terms of storytelling. You get directly told most of the story, the only thing you have to piece together are some nuances to it, but the basic skeleton of the story is quite accessible.

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Literally the only example of enemy spam in that entire list was the Bonewheels and I guess the Catacombs? But in both cases the enemies are easily beaten, so if you had trouble in these areas you're trash.
I guess you consider more than 2 enemies to be spam? You're retarded. Dark Souls 2 has plenty of instances in which it tosses 5+ enemies at you, sometimes in excess of 8 to 10.

>First Iron Pig is spam
That entire area has like 10 enemies total in it, and they're all aggro'd separately. Are you fucking daft?

That broken archstone at the HUB that never had anything going for it.

>lifegems but they weren't as bad
Lifegems were every bit as bad as grass was in Demon's Souls. Maybe even worse because there were a ton of items like lifegems that produced inventory clutter and ensured you never ran our of healing items.

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A good boss doesn't need this stuff, does Kalameet need another stage to be interesting? Would Dancer really have been a bad boss if it only had the second half? I say no, a boss with a varied enough moveset is interesting without resorting to a multistage encounter. Thats really what it comes down to, for some reason from thinks a stage 1 with 4 abilities, and a stage 2 with 4 abilities, of which only 1 is shared between the two phases, is more interesting than 1 boss with 1 stage with 7 abilities.

I refuse to believe that after playing BB, DaS3, and Sekiro.

I think Miyazaki either misspoke, got quoted out of context, or just changed his mind.

What was it like? I don't think I ever used spears in DeS. I really miss the claymore. Those delicious sweeping attacks.

>just changed his mind
yeah when he saw all that money rolling in

How the fuck is the mass ghost building in new londo not enemy spam? Or the area where you get the firekeeper soul with the fire dogs in blighttown? Or are you just trying to invalidate my point by saying they dont count? Sure, just go name me 20 times in ds2 which are for some reason worse than anything in ds1.

>enbnigger is back to flooding Yea Forums threads
jesus christ man how do you never tire of doing the same shit over and over and over and over

I'm exaggerating, but it is more normal in Bloodborne for bosses you suddenly pull out attacks where they grab you and smash you on the floor athousand times, or the giant snake attack from the Shadows, or that gay spell Micolash does that one-hit kills most players

unironically good marketing that propelled FROM Software into being among the most popular game developers in the world today.

>Dark Souls 2 allows you to stock up on as much health items as you can carry a la Demon's Souls and allows you to disengage from 90% of all mobs
>HURRR DURR UNFAIR DARK SOULS WAS NEVER ABOUT DIFFICULTY EVEN THOUGH I THINK I'M A SUPER HARDCORE GAMER FOR BEATING IT
Oof.

>unironically good marketing

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I consider them not as bad for three reason. One, because their healer per second was slow compared to grasses, grasses were basically ds1 estus level of healing speed, but infinite. Two, because the actually good lifegems that healed a lot didn't drop at nearly the same frequency off enemies that the good grasses did late game in Demons, and three, Estus itself was pretty gimped in ds2, having a much longer animation and taking over half the game before you get the 10 you used to have by default in ds1.

He never stopped, he just went to shitting up RDR2 threads for a while

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it is good marketing but no where does it say that the game is difficult. it's the general publics own fault for thinking that dying means nothing but failure.

>Difficulty was never the point.

Fuck off MatthewMatosis parrot.

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objectively it made the developers more successful so yes, it was good marketing

Not much is left over about it, but IIRC its near the stuff about permadeath in the game.

It had nothing to do with the Land of the Giants Archstone.

It's weird how selective people are about this. Every one of these games makes common use of mobs.

Pepega :mega: FORSAAAAAAN

Lifegems were near-useless during fights, they healed very slowly over time and the only ones you could could an infinite number of were the base gems. Estus flasks also activated slowly and also healed over time instead of being instant. There was nothing wrong with lifegems, you couldn't just sprint 10 feet and insta-chug one or a flask during a fight like you can in DS3, healing was the most punishable in DS2.

what the FUCK was their problem?

Multiplayer invasions were the point.

It was the ENTIRE REASON Souls games were made.

the real point of souls difficulty is and always has been about adapting to different situations rather than dealing with brute force difficulty designed to kill you over and over and over. They sold 2 on the difficulty alone when the point was you would die to something new and try a different approach until you found the one that is easier to get by with

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So you were that fucking Phantom. I only ran like twice to the same fucker jumping like a faggot with this spear. Hope you choke on a dragon cock.

I don't fucking get it, its something that comes up constantly about the differences between all the souls games but they are literally all the same in this regard.

Because losing a fight or slipping off a cliff (dying) is failure.

>until you found the one that is easier to get by with
shitter

Not that user, but I don't agree. Giving bosses different phases enriches them and makes them more interesting. Of course then it's all left up to the execution. You can have a shitty boss with multiple phases or a good boss with only one phase, but if the quality was roughly the same I'd take multiple phases every time. Plus From's modern bosses have a lot of moves even within each phase, it's not like multi-phase bosses are very simplistic in each of those phases. I think most of the skepticism towards the multi-phase bosses comes from Dark Souls 3 where too many bosses just had a gratuitious "ember up" phase where they just got a fire sword and the fight was largely the same, it happened way too often and it was repetitive. And then bosses like Nameless King have one really shitty phase that is trivial and just adds to the frustration of dying because you have to go through it again and it feels like filler. But then you have stuff like Ludwig and Orphan which are very enriched by their phases, I think most Sekiro bosses that have multiple phases are very good too. The Guardian Ape was much more memorable and interesting for having that second phase, and it would have been even without the bait and switch thing.
And Kalameet would have been better with more than one phase.

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but if you die by mistake you can learn from that mistake. and a lesson learnt from a mistake means you will never do it again.

>This entire fucking thread

Jesus christ you people whine so much about what makes the Souls games "Souls Games".

What makes them Souls games is that you go on a classic fabled tale adventure with some realism thrown in to make the experience seem that much more grounded.

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>for some reason from thinks a stage 1 with 4 abilities, and a stage 2 with 4 abilities, of which only 1 is shared between the two phases, is more interesting than 1 boss with 1 stage with 7 abilities

Are you really arguing that DeS and DaS's bosses had more complex movesets than DaS3/BB/Sekiro? The exact opposite is true, even accounting for individual phases. Flamelurker had like three moves.

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You make some good points, and I think in some ways its largely down to execute, there are good and bad multi and single phase bosses, a point I would bring up though is how the abundance of multi phase bosses has created a sort of expectation that has largely removed all the surprise and flavour from those encounters.

Bosses like Gargoyles or O+S in Ds1 are great example of how a certain surprise factor can greatly enhance a boss, these days however every boss is multiphase, so every boss fight has the player thinking around 50% "alright show me the real fight now im ready", sure, they are excited to see it, but they are expecting it, something is lost there.

that was literally just a marketing stunt, the DLC was actually easier than most of the base game enemies especially if you get there by SL 90

>box art (JP), the original, features a dead guy
>it wasn’t supposed to be about the difficulty

I played the shit out of DeS and Das both on release on the ps3. 200+ hours in DeS and 150+ in DaS.

Haven't touched them since but looking back Demon's Souls is incredibly more memorable for me. I'm not sure if it's because it was just my first souls game but I remember each world individually, most npc, every boss, my favorite armors and weapons.

Meanwhile Dark Souls it's just a few snapshots, a few bosses and some areas.
Also the OST, I remember most of the Demon's Souls ost much much better that dark souls.

All that despite my memories for Demon's Souls being obviously older. What made it so special really?

doesn't look dead to me, just sitting

Flute Knight-kun isn't dead, he's just resting.

wrong, genres are based on mechanics and the players input (i.e. method of gameplay), so when you talk about a genre in gaming, you don't distinguish the games based on the method they tell the story or the setting, no, it's all about the players input in the game, the way you control the camera, the way the camera works, the amount of input and control you, as the player, have.

Which is why I find it ridiculous when people group a game like hollow knight with souls games, when hollow knight is a completely different genre.

You can literally pop lifegems while walking and with the slow as molasses pve the slower healing was compensated by the enemies being also slow.

His interview circa Dark Souls 1 release states that he wanted to create the hardest possible game while having it remain fair.

I got bored of Souls and went to play RDR2 but Sekiro brought me back to FromSoft games.

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For Demon's Souls? Definitely. You could cheese the game in so many ways and just using a shield and playing safe was good enough to survive.
You could also cheese bosses with summons.
The only hard part of the game in my opinion is that flame boss thingie if you do not have the Flame Shield/Ring and the duo man eater demon things because fuck me I never figured out their pattern.

This. Discovery via communal participation and jolly co-operation was the real purpose of Souls, which has now been destroyed by elitists and Twitch le blind no backseat streamers.

Aris understands this and encourages participation in his soulsbornekiro playthroughs, as joining together in jolly co-operation is much more important than muh super serious blind run.

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I wasn't explicitly talking about other "Souls-like" but you do make a good point about controls and player input. Never considered that myself.

I agree with the point about people calling Hollow Knight a Souls game, if anything it's a very bad metroidvania

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On average the complexity of bosses has greatly increased over time but there were gems in ds1 that I think top anything done since, I know i've mentioned Kalameet a few times now but on an individual mechanics level he has 3-4 moves for short and close range, with a couple more that he uses whenever which make up a really satisfying boss. Bosses in the later souls games generally dont have more than 5 per stage, and some of the different moves are very similar, such as a left right slash instead of a right left slash, or a 3 hit combo instead of a 2 hit + overhead swipe combo.

Kalameet had a swoop, long range breath, tail swipe, 180 flip sweep, a few different close/midrange claw attacks, a "grab" so to speak and a couple stomp attacks. Very few bosses since have had such variation.

I will fucking rip open your nutsack with my teeth, you fucker. Stop avatarfagging and kill yourself.

there's marketing and then there's falling into your own pitfalls, it's very obvious fromsoft is now "the difficult games developer" just like idea factory is the "titty weeb girls" developer, it's a stigma that plagues and you can never get rid of, instead of fixing that shit they keep making their games harder and harder because they literally ran out of ideas

look at sekiro, it's literally dark souls with more speed and gutted character progression for the sake "balance" according to miyazaki when in fact it's the most unfairly balanced piece of shit they ever made because you either dance to a boss and kill it like it's meant or you don't, there's no extra ways to deal with it and don't get me even started on the fucking headless that REQUIRE stupid ass finite items to even touch them, absolute bullshit design

they are making THE SAME GAME over and over and over because they've never been fucking successful before dark souls so they just tweak a bunch of shit around and then just carry 80% of the rest, I'm fucking sick of them reusing sounds, mechanics, animations and gimmicks, it's annoying, it's tedious and it's not creative

look at fucking zelda, yes, zelda, the one everyone claims "it's the same game everytime" look how fucking different each game plays, the different mechanics, the different dungeons, the new items, the new setting, god damn it even fucking NINTENDO can do it, why not from soft? because they have zero fucking creativity

this guy is fucken cool, i bet he goes outside

>"I want to be killed this way!" That's how I make it!

so kalameet sitting on me was his fetish, nice

I would say Sekiro is actually a step in the right direction, its probably only about 30% souls whereas the last time they tried to escape they made a game so similar everyone changed the genre to soulsborne.

>Sekiro is actually a step in the right direction

better add some more steps because I'm sick of seeing reskinned bonfires after 8 years

Sekiro doesn’t play like souls at all, you’re a braindead faggot, kill yourself

You sound mad as hell because Sekiro is 2hard4u. Also youre complaining about them "gutting progression" by completely changing what genre the game is yet youre complaining also that from keeps making the same game? Fuck off journaliat.

Well played sir

ah that reminds me, I've never liked Joseph Anderson, but I think he did a good job with Dragon's Dogma

Why the fuck do you think that hack is relevant? That bitch parrots me. I've been saying this since before Dark Souls came out, where the fuck have you been?

You know you can smash buttons and take less damage, right?

This, bloodborne was too similar to souls imo and im glad that From is taking steps to branch out into shit that plays a lot differently.

Better get used to it faggot, checkpoints are a staple game mechanic. Dark Souls didnt even do it first, save points in Metroid did something similar faaar before Dark Souls came out.

Thats the 30%, very little is similar, the character progression, story delivery and player movement are nothing like souls, with the combat being reminiscent but the posture system and focus on parrying makes it quite a different experience.

>I've been saying this since before Dark Souls came out
then wheres your youtube video huh???

The bonfires are a staple of what makes these games so good though, what would you go back to? Saved games? Bonfire-style checkpoints are way superior to saves and game overs and I can't come up with a third option that's worth changing to. I don't want change for change's sake, I want them to keep the core things that make these games good and keep the rest fresh. Souls was getting too fanservicey and full of the same tropes, Sekiro is a breath of fresh air since it's written by someone else and doesn't have much fanservice if at all.

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Replied to myself im retarded

if only i had some friends.......

God, why couldn't we have gotten a DaS3 about angels?

You're a dumb faggot, Sekiro is literally the first game they have made since Miyazaki became the CEO.
Clearly it was the best thing that could have happened to the company.
And you never had any valid criticism in the first place, the difficulty in all their games has been perfectly fair and it was always your own fault if you died (Miyazaki games, not DS2 or DS3).

The angels in the ringed city dlc were some of the only legitimately scary enemies in the game before From patched them to make them do baby ass damage for no reason.

Why???

Kill yourself fag
DeS was their greatest game until now but it sure as fuck is Sekiro now.

Dark Souls 3 had a lot of fresh, interesting ideas, both lorewise (the Angels, the Deep) and gameplay-wise (generating your own bonfires, worldstate-changing ceremonies) but somewhere along the lines they decided to take the safest options imaginable and we ended up with the current game. It's sad. I even like Dark Souls 3, but it feels kind of stale, if it weren't for the PvP (that I have since abandoned, it wasn't even that good) I wouldn't have replayed it. Sekiro may have less replay value because of no multiplayer but it was a much better experience for me, I wasn't that immersed in From PvE since my first Souls game.

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I guess we finally found the Demon Soul®

>You know that high you get from winning a competitive game or succeeding on something you tried really hard on?
most people here dont know that

Yes it was

frontlinejp.net/2019/04/03/sekiro-shadows-die-twice-director-miyazaki-discusses-his-vision-and-how-it-was-conceived-part-2-2/

>He says that as Sekiro is different from Dark Souls, players may first find it to be difficult, but as they learn new ways of fighting and new tactics and get better, they should feel the pleasure of getting better, which is part of their usual unchanging theme of gaining catharsis through overcoming hardship, and thinks this would be similar to experiences that people had with Demon’s Souls.

>usual unchanging theme of gaining catharsis through overcoming hardship

That 30% is the only thing making it a decent game. Everything else is shit.
>no builds
>no pvp
>no replayability
>bonfire every 5 minutes
>safety bonfire before every boss
>obnoxious tutorial pop-ups throughout the entire game
>endless stamina
>skills are all worthless as all you do 90% of the game is hit R1 then hit L1 when they block your R1, rinse and repeat 100 times till the boss is dead
>camera is fucking garbage
>exploration is completely unrewarding aside from gourd seeds with 0 tension as the bonfire is just around the corner and you can just die and free backstab something to get your res back anyway

It's like souls but for casuals. Activisions efforts no doubt.

What, really? Last I played was when the DLC came out. Can you just run past and ignore them at this point?

Another thing that I wish they explored was the sort of evolution of humanity. Like the pus of man and pilgrim butterflies. What does the end of humanity's evolution look like? I don't know if this was ever in development, but it seems like there was some idea there at least.

Yes we've identified that Sekiro isn't a souls game thanks for reminding us.

Agreed

And you think what i outlined is a step in the right direction?

Wew lad, you couldn't shitpost harder if you tried.
I suggest you to actually play the game before you post next time though, it's pretty easy to see this kind of bait.

This is objectively not true.

>shieldnoobs detected

I would say that the audience that pure soulsborne games appeal to and the audience that sekiro appeals to dont overlap 100%, you're not part of that overlap and thats fine, the things you listed such as no builds are not inherently a negative so my conclusion is just that you wanted a more rpg experience which sekiro just isn't.

Thats fine but it doesn't make sekiro bad.

>abloo bloo

sums up miyazaki drones very well

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>fanfiction is canon and not the real work
ok

nobody FUCKING gave a shit about fromcuckware before they made their original online system with messaging, invasions, funny bloodstains, ghosts and world tendency, those things coupled with interesting worlds is what drove players to the games they made

if you remove that nothing remains and the dumb drones defending unoriginal asscreed dmc shit like sekiro make mad

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I didnt say it's bad, but its definitely not a step in the right direction.

>people who dont use the dragon form

Demon Souls and Dark Souls 2 were the most fun online parts of this series. I feel like they were most comfy and friendly onlines. Lost of helpful people and just general fun.

Aren't you sick to swing swords at faceless mooks?
What about being sick of dodging attacks?
Being sick of fighting alone against hordes of ugly shit?
Are you sick of bosses too?
Maybe don't play video games if a generic safe place makes you sick.

he'srightyouknow.jpg

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According to your taste, not everyone's taste, im sure there were plenty of people who enjoyed structured story and stream lining of rpg elements for more focus on a singular, more designed gameplay experience.

Im also sure some people didn't.

youtu.be/xnfzIhrGjLc

Yikes.

Sounds like somebody's defending their wasted 60 bucks

So are Demon's Souls and Bloodborne part of the same lore?

Umbasa.

Last time I checked a lore video ornstein became a fucking dragon

Agreed.

It plays even worse than souls. It throws away what made the shit combat bearable : variety.
There is only one way to play it and it never changes and it's so fucking repetitive.

I poured 200 hours in DeS, something around 150 in DaS. I finished Sekiro in 24 hours whilst being rather bored, didn't think much of it and probably will never play it again.
I cannot comprehend what kind of tasteless idiot hail it as fromsoft's best or an indication of improvement.

Take your precious Demon Soul

You're not a true dark souls player if you dont complete the games on NG+ in dragon form

Sure Riiiiiight fucking KEKS PFFT HAHAHAHA!

Soulsborne is shit
Demon souls is shit
Dark souls is shit
Dark souls 2 is shit
Dark souls 3 is shit
Bloodborne is shit
Sekiro is shit
Any future games will be shit

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>Time invested = good
This is such a shit meme

Is your character in Demon's Souls the villain?

It was only ever good in Dark Souls II where it was a Tokusatsu Henshin.

Yes and No. Dark souls is about struggling and triumphing, and about the sense of reward you get after over coming an incredibly harsh obstacle. In this sense difficult is vital to the game experience.

Its like Dwarf fortress. Yeah the fact that Dwarf fortress is ball bustlingly difficult isn't the key part of the game, but it wouldn't be dwarf fortress if it wasn't as hard as it is.

So it's shit got it.

boards.fireden.net/v/search/image/hwU66uvUS8YgrCfzh3VMEA/

OH NONONONO LOOK AT THE SEETHING NINTENBABY

I know.

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Agreed. Normals fundamentally misunderstand these games.

the only thing wrong with demon's souls is running firestorm.

You can't debate this
maybe the upgrade system

Dragon form gamers rise up

Overcoming the challenge is

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No debate needed it's shit LMFAO!

DaS has a better overall soundtrack than DeS, Demon's just has more medieval instrumentation compared to Dark

>weeb dark souls

shh baby shh

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honestly, even though I mainly play from games for the campaign and rarely use coop or pvp. I loved the subtle online aspects, seeing other players as ghosts, reading their messages, seeing how they died, etc, made the game world feel more alive and made me feel less alone in my suffering.

DeS > DaS > BB
Fuck DaS 2 and 3

I don't necessarily agree with that ranking, but I agree DaS 2 and 3 don't matter and don't count.

Agreed here. DS3 was just prettier initially but ends up feeling like the opposite of DS2 - while being just as bad.

okay but he was right, bioshock infinite is a pretentious shit game that tries to act mature while presenting childish interpretations of racism
>hurr throw baseball at interracial couple, wow these people are so awful and racist

even though I disagree with him on some things, he's got to be one of the few youtubers worth listening to

besides, he was quoting interviews with miyazaki

wtf these are just like the two npcs from DS3, were those two based on the demon souls npcs? demon souls and BB are the only two fromsoft games I haven't played in the soulsborne series.

r u me?

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DS2 spam enemies that have high hp, high poise and big hitbox together at you that you have no tool to defeat head on and you just have to run away or cheese them. DS3 in comparison throw enemies at you but sprinkle in mostly weak enemy that is stunlockable with a strong one and give you cover and option to quickly dispatch them to thin the herd, especially with weapon artes. Also, DS2 sometimes make the walk from from the bonfire to the boss simply too much. The hardest normal enemy encounter should be the ones prior to the boss bonfire, not between bonfire and the boss.

Ds3 bosses are fast but more importantly, have really diverse moveset and high aggression. The player have less stamina losson roll to compensate. Most bosses don’t hit you too ridiculously hard so you can have room for trial and error. Also, each have a gimmick you have to solve and adapt to. DS2 bosses are piss easy because they all very simple and clunky moveset. The only way the game know how to increase difficulty is to increase boss’s damage to ridiculous value, make them hp bloat, and/or stack multiple enemy/bosses together. Unlike many multiple enemies bosses in other soulborne, ds2 gank bosses seem to not design give a unique tool via environment or boss’s specific behavior that allow the player to take advantage of. The game constantly throw you in a flat enclosed empty room with boss gank with standard ai and have you deal with it. It get really bad in ng+ when they have shit like double pursuer, lost sinner with pyromancers, etc...where they throw multiple stuffs together with no rhythm or reason just for sake of being hard.

This nigger gets it.

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Finally someone said it. The whole "prepare to die" marketing slogan with ds1 onward was cringy af .

god this
there's no better feeling than creating a naked obese woman character and running through these crazy fantasy worlds with a giant rusty sword hearing nothing but the sound of my enemies dying and the pitter patter of her obese feet stomping on the ground as I read a magical sign on the floor that says "Amazing view ahead" which happens to be some deformed obese demons exposed asshole then a message flashes on my screen saying "Being invaded by Buttholedestroyerxxx"

ADDITIONALLY, I NEVER SAW ANYONE GET LYNCHED, NO WHORES GOT RAPED, AND I DIDN'T SEE A SINGLE CROSS ON FIRE, WITH OR WITHOUT A NIGGER ON IT. ULTIMATELY I FELT THIS DETRACTED FROM THE GAME