lmao this forum makes me laugh
sounds like you're just bad at the game, go watch some No Hit runs and see how it's nothing like DS2.
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"Dark Souls is hard but fair"... has never been true.
- Thread starter Garlador
- Start date
lmao this forum makes me laugh
sounds like you're just bad at the game, go watch some No Hit runs and see how it's nothing like DS2.
There are few, if any, things in Souls (except 2) that you HAVE to see and die to in order to predict and react accordingly.
Dark Souls 1 is fair, mostly.
But there are some cheap segments such as the infamous Bed of Chaos and the first time you meet Seath, where you die eventually to proceed to the Crystal Caves. Most first timers will lose their souls and humanities because of this shit. You also might get cursed while at it.
But there are some cheap segments such as the infamous Bed of Chaos and the first time you meet Seath, where you die eventually to proceed to the Crystal Caves. Most first timers will lose their souls and humanities because of this shit. You also might get cursed while at it.
I think in general, "hard but fair" fits the series well. You'll die more to mistakes than the jank.
This is what "hard but unfair" looks like
You actually can't beat that guy legit
This might be a stretch, but I'll admit that the Ogre fight made me think of the GIF in the OP.
What the hellI think in general, "hard but fair" fits the series well. You'll die more to mistakes than the jank.
This is what "hard but unfair" looks like
You actually can't beat that guy legit
Aside from the (unintentionally?) hilarious contradiction in the bolded, doesn't this just boil down to "I don't like learning from defeat in games"? As far as the combat goes I think it's pretty easy to learn without dying. Keep your distance and bait the enemy into doing its attacks while you dodge so you can learn what it does. I feel like this is true for pretty much all ARPGs, there's just less leeway because you can't take a lot of damage in Dark Souls.
There's a reason people hate on DS2.
If those things don't bother you, there's a lot to like about it, but I like consistency.
All of the games have bullshit things, but DS2 has by far the most of these.
There are many instances where DS2 will, for example, place you in instances with tons of enemies meant to stunlock you to death. There is one very early on in the Bastille, with another right after. It specifically traps you due to a tiny 2 drop jump you can't go back up and you have to fight two normal looking guys with swords that absolutely stun you to death, or at least most players at that level especially without something to stun the enemies back. It sucks. It's not really well sign posted and pretty much guaranteed to be learned by trial and error. I've fuckin 100%ed DS2 6 times. That's over 12 full and 6 half comprehensive playthroughs. I know this game like the back of my hand, and it's just full of these kinds of encounters. They're not hard for me, and definitely not in co-op. But solo, like most players, they most certainly are bullshit.
Whenever I see DS1 brought up to try to counter it the examples seem to be rather few. Yes, it absolutely has some dogshit moments, but most have clear ways of escaping them unharmed. Like with Demon's Souls, the philosophy seems very much to remain that some things are hard, but often there is a solution to make very doable and sometimes even easy. An example of "multiple enemies" is in the undead church where you run up against a bunch of hollows. I see this example cited a lot and I'm like...I mean...I'm sure it's hard if you somehow haven't by that point not learned you're not playing a hack 'n slash. All you have to do to handle it is just...leave. Okay not leave. But back the fuck up. Get out of the room. Why did you dash into a room. The game has repeatedly taught you, with things like a couple fairly harmless ambushes, and enemies hidden around corners, including one you HAVE to have passed on your way there with a balder knight or whatever, to not fucking run into a room. Plus. That room has literally had a fucking lazer priest dude shooting you when you were down below. Why the fuck did you (also me, my first time through; I was very bad at dark souls for a very long time) rush in there? It's such a doable encounter, and there is no shortage of people who succeeded at it first try, with every build in the game. The game has taken a bunch of steps to warn you about it.
This is not the case in the bastille example. There is no good way to approach it as a new player. It just places two normal looking enemies that will fucking stunlock you to death, with no room for you to retreat once you realize you've underestimated them. Any new player is going to die here, and I don't feel that they've learned ANYTHING that will a) increase their skill or b) increase their enjoyment due to having solved something or overcome a challenge. Because you just aren't really given the tools to overcome the challenge. And there are SO MANY of these. DS2 is fucking FULL of dropping you into situations and forcing you to just face a ton of enemies with no recourse. It drives people towards cheesy builds and doesn't really help them to be better players.
With the church example, it did help me to be a better player. And my time through the Depths was completely different because it taught me that I had better get my act together with watching out for rooms. So even though I failed, it taught me better. I could stop, go in slowly, and play safe. I could learn. DS2 just wanted me to die. And that opinion has only continued to be reinforced as I played it.
Thankfully I felt that the DLCs for Dark Souls 2 were far more meaningful with their difficulty. There are still some really dumb parts, but I feel most are signposted much better and provide better examples for how to handle them.
If those things don't bother you, there's a lot to like about it, but I like consistency.
All of the games have bullshit things, but DS2 has by far the most of these.
There are many instances where DS2 will, for example, place you in instances with tons of enemies meant to stunlock you to death. There is one very early on in the Bastille, with another right after. It specifically traps you due to a tiny 2 drop jump you can't go back up and you have to fight two normal looking guys with swords that absolutely stun you to death, or at least most players at that level especially without something to stun the enemies back. It sucks. It's not really well sign posted and pretty much guaranteed to be learned by trial and error. I've fuckin 100%ed DS2 6 times. That's over 12 full and 6 half comprehensive playthroughs. I know this game like the back of my hand, and it's just full of these kinds of encounters. They're not hard for me, and definitely not in co-op. But solo, like most players, they most certainly are bullshit.
Whenever I see DS1 brought up to try to counter it the examples seem to be rather few. Yes, it absolutely has some dogshit moments, but most have clear ways of escaping them unharmed. Like with Demon's Souls, the philosophy seems very much to remain that some things are hard, but often there is a solution to make very doable and sometimes even easy. An example of "multiple enemies" is in the undead church where you run up against a bunch of hollows. I see this example cited a lot and I'm like...I mean...I'm sure it's hard if you somehow haven't by that point not learned you're not playing a hack 'n slash. All you have to do to handle it is just...leave. Okay not leave. But back the fuck up. Get out of the room. Why did you dash into a room. The game has repeatedly taught you, with things like a couple fairly harmless ambushes, and enemies hidden around corners, including one you HAVE to have passed on your way there with a balder knight or whatever, to not fucking run into a room. Plus. That room has literally had a fucking lazer priest dude shooting you when you were down below. Why the fuck did you (also me, my first time through; I was very bad at dark souls for a very long time) rush in there? It's such a doable encounter, and there is no shortage of people who succeeded at it first try, with every build in the game. The game has taken a bunch of steps to warn you about it.
This is not the case in the bastille example. There is no good way to approach it as a new player. It just places two normal looking enemies that will fucking stunlock you to death, with no room for you to retreat once you realize you've underestimated them. Any new player is going to die here, and I don't feel that they've learned ANYTHING that will a) increase their skill or b) increase their enjoyment due to having solved something or overcome a challenge. Because you just aren't really given the tools to overcome the challenge. And there are SO MANY of these. DS2 is fucking FULL of dropping you into situations and forcing you to just face a ton of enemies with no recourse. It drives people towards cheesy builds and doesn't really help them to be better players.
With the church example, it did help me to be a better player. And my time through the Depths was completely different because it taught me that I had better get my act together with watching out for rooms. So even though I failed, it taught me better. I could stop, go in slowly, and play safe. I could learn. DS2 just wanted me to die. And that opinion has only continued to be reinforced as I played it.
Thankfully I felt that the DLCs for Dark Souls 2 were far more meaningful with their difficulty. There are still some really dumb parts, but I feel most are signposted much better and provide better examples for how to handle them.
I always consider the term 'fair' to describe the difficulty of a Dark Souls game is a bit weird. "The game doesn't cheat so it's fair" is a strange proposition. With that thought, you could pit the player against 100 enemies and call it 'hard but fair'. That's a very special definition of fair.
32 adapt is the sweet spot. The next step is at 70+ and isn't worth it.
I don't know the iframes on Sekiro's dodge because I wasn't able to find it in the guidebook believe it or not but I would bet money they purposely made it lower than the the norm to push deflection. In the guide it's stated that it has a whopping 20 active frames to deflect/parry compared to the 5-8 in the souls games shield, and more than the 13 the standard dodge frames souls gives you.
Here is where I disagree with you as someone who also played DS:Remastered recently for the first time. I went that way, got bodied hard by the skeletons, realized "this clearly isn't the best way to go", explored, and found 2 other paths much more reasonable. The first guy you see when you land in Firelink shrine tells you to go to the undead burg for the first bell. At some point I'm going to blame the player for the mixture of ignoring the npcs and stubbornly heading down a path that feels wrong because the enemies are so much stronger then what you just fought.
This is really frustrating as a souls fan.
The games don't care if you've played other games, and you have to unlearn a lot of bullshit, but damn if once you get used to them they aren't fun. And man idk I greatly enjoyed the satisfaction of figuring them out myself, as they are so clearly designed to gently guide you towards figuring them out. They're not just ubisoft games with the markers cut out. That would suck. They're designed in such a way that demands you figure stuff out, but does a lot of things to help you do that.
Once you figure that out, they are so, so much easier than people describe them as. People want the games to play like they want them too.
I think this is actually really bad because a lot of people who go in wanting a difficult game, but who adapt more quickly end up being disappointed. And idk. It sucks.
And I say all this when it took me like a week to finally get to and beat the Taurus Demon. I was BAD. But I took the game seriously, and learned it, and now I play them to relax. I didn't gain more skill. I tend to not be super skilled at video games. These games have a difficulty I am positive anyone can learn.
Gen 6 game design really, and that's exactly what's so good about it.
It's not always fair - there are some surprises that are 99 out of 100 times going to result in a new players death. And that's ok, the games play with death not being the end in mind, it's a core mechanic.
"Cur-"I think in general, "hard but fair" fits the series well. You'll die more to mistakes than the jank.
This is what "hard but unfair" looks like
You actually can't beat that guy legit
"OH NO YOU DON'T!"
Excessive, but I can see the boss' point there. Heroes that heal are a pest and must be dealt with swiftly. Bunch of cheaters.
Same.
For me, it takes me ages to get used to it, because I have to feel it. If I stop playing and come back, I completely have unlearned it again. I never had that trouble with literally any of the other souls games. But Dark Souls 2 just does not make sense to me visually. It's like a bad audio sync. I can always get used to it after a while, but it takes forever to do so and I never feel good about it. Also good lord the animations are dumb as hell, especially how everything you parry just sits on its butt.
Dark Souls 2 started off as my least favorite game in the series when I played it the first and second time, but once I isolated the issues I had with it (i.e., needing to increase adaptability to make better the iframes and accepting that you can get killed by a thousand cuts very quickly because of being staggered so easily), it came out on top as my favorite one in the series due to the sheer scale and wide variety of locales. Admittedly they aren't as well-made as some areas in Dark Souls 1 or 3, but the game is considerably more endearing to me due to the heavy emphasis on fantasy over the other titles.
I really never expected to be in this position and completely understand the issues you have, OP, but years later I've grown to appreciate the title considerably more than what my first experienced allowed me.
Also I may have a different definition of "jankiness" because I would never think to describe the games this way. Outside of the questionable hitboxes in Dark Souls 2, most of which is rectified by adaptability, I always found everything to be responsive and working as intended.
I really never expected to be in this position and completely understand the issues you have, OP, but years later I've grown to appreciate the title considerably more than what my first experienced allowed me.
Also I may have a different definition of "jankiness" because I would never think to describe the games this way. Outside of the questionable hitboxes in Dark Souls 2, most of which is rectified by adaptability, I always found everything to be responsive and working as intended.
Yeah this is was weird to me. Like, I'm very familiar with and follow the games, so obviously I know about the huge amounts of people who dislike DS2. But it still seems odd to me someone on a forum like this could miss that? I mean we get threads about it CONSTANTLY.
That attack in the gif hit the player. The animation is janky as fuck, but it did connect with the player's hit box
I forgot all that fuckery.
And the ridiculous part is that most enemies, Boss included, can be cheesed out.
Haha. I'm just so use to writing "IMO" when writing anything online.
But no I'm fine with learning from defeat. The problem is having to backtrack to where I am because something wasn't telegraphed well enough. Stuff like the boulder on the stairs, the oil on the bridge isn't obvious to someone playing for the first time. Just because YOU noticed it doesn't mean everyone will. Which is the problem. FROM could easily relay this to players in a way that doesn't punish you by having you retread ground. If you must have players learn by doing then at least put it just after a bonfire.
There is no one-stop solution to damage evasion in DS2 as there is in DS1. Roll distance, Roll "quality", and stamina for shielding are now 3 stats rather than 1 as it was in DS1. The player needs to choose what types of damage evasion to specialize in, rather than having a simplistic stat build that does everything well.
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ok so this sounds like bullshit but it's how i experience the game:
for me the game is an rpg, in the sense that I feel like I can inhabit my character, feel immersed, etc.
a lot of the bullshit deaths (capra demon camera angles, pursuer hitbox) to me have always served to further the feeling of despair/"here we go again" which to me is very key to these games.
Imo, Celeste is a game that also uses this to great effect. Both games are essentially built for you to "learn" a route and then build your experience executing the route by making you repeat them until it feels fluid. For me this all comes together really wonderfully, like the things the game is trying to make you feel + the actual world state within the game coalescing very nicely.
In terms of "fairness", the games are incredibly fair imo. It has plenty of bullshit, but I don't think this goes against the game's design. It's like saying INSIDE is bullshit because you didn't notice a branch, tripped over it, and got a special animation of your character dying, it's an intended aspect of the game that the devs thought you might experience. The souls series literally is about palimpsestic cycles both in it's lore and it's enactment; layering your experiences/runs over each other until they form this unrecognizable/recognizable thing you can look back on, where things are simultaneously a blur and vivid. Being hit by a bullshit stab from the Pursuer is VIVID. And you also learn that your dodge timing is off.
tl;dr, I don't think a game trying to make you suffer is inherently unfair, especially when a key part of the game is doing things over and over. The mood you get from attempting/failing/getting shit on by stuff you weren't expecting serves the game very well, and is inherently tied to the mood of overcoming shit. You can argue that this can be achieved with less bullshit, but imo the bullshit is part and parcel
for me the game is an rpg, in the sense that I feel like I can inhabit my character, feel immersed, etc.
a lot of the bullshit deaths (capra demon camera angles, pursuer hitbox) to me have always served to further the feeling of despair/"here we go again" which to me is very key to these games.
Imo, Celeste is a game that also uses this to great effect. Both games are essentially built for you to "learn" a route and then build your experience executing the route by making you repeat them until it feels fluid. For me this all comes together really wonderfully, like the things the game is trying to make you feel + the actual world state within the game coalescing very nicely.
In terms of "fairness", the games are incredibly fair imo. It has plenty of bullshit, but I don't think this goes against the game's design. It's like saying INSIDE is bullshit because you didn't notice a branch, tripped over it, and got a special animation of your character dying, it's an intended aspect of the game that the devs thought you might experience. The souls series literally is about palimpsestic cycles both in it's lore and it's enactment; layering your experiences/runs over each other until they form this unrecognizable/recognizable thing you can look back on, where things are simultaneously a blur and vivid. Being hit by a bullshit stab from the Pursuer is VIVID. And you also learn that your dodge timing is off.
tl;dr, I don't think a game trying to make you suffer is inherently unfair, especially when a key part of the game is doing things over and over. The mood you get from attempting/failing/getting shit on by stuff you weren't expecting serves the game very well, and is inherently tied to the mood of overcoming shit. You can argue that this can be achieved with less bullshit, but imo the bullshit is part and parcel
Your thread is about Dark Souls 2, not Dark Souls in general. I quit DS2 early when it became clear it was more interested in cheap shots than actually fair gameplay, including breaking its own rules. For example, having normal enemies spawn super high up in hidden alcoves that lead nowhere, just so that they can drop down (somehow receiving no damage) and backstab you no matter how much you check your surroundings. It was obviously made by someone who completely misinterpreted what Souls games are about, and to this day people who defend it are completely incomprehensible to me.
Dark Souls 3, helmed by Miyazaki, instead errs on the opposite side, obsessively telegraphing pretty much any and every threat to you, which obviously makes it an easier game (not "easy", per se, but still probably the easiest Souls game). Haven't played much of Sekiro other than about an hour at a friend's house but it felt very fair too.
Never had much problem with DS2 even without putting stats on adaptability. Also never heard of anyone stuck on the Dragonslayer or the Pursuer, specially someone that got through DS1/3/Bloodborne with ease. I mean, it's normal to die some times, the game will feel somewhat different from the other ones, but i don't think it's necessarily worse, you just have to be used to DS2 differences. I die a lot in every Souls games anyway.
People are different. Imo Dark Souls 3 is the hardest of the bunch by far, and i don't think there's a consensus on which one is the hardest.
Edit: Ok, you didn't played 3. Even then, is not hard to see opinions on how Dark Souls 2 is laughable easy while Capra Demon and O&S are the hardest shit ever. People are different.
People are different. Imo Dark Souls 3 is the hardest of the bunch by far, and i don't think there's a consensus on which one is the hardest.
Edit: Ok, you didn't played 3. Even then, is not hard to see opinions on how Dark Souls 2 is laughable easy while Capra Demon and O&S are the hardest shit ever. People are different.
I think that "tough, but fair" may be understood differently by different types of players.
"Tough but fair" has never meant there wouldn't be surprise deaths or jank. Tough but fair, for me, means that despite the presence of any surprises or jank you will always be able to use what you learned upon death to advance successfully in the future. You might be frustrated to find you can't swing your weapon horizontally in close quarters and be killed with no means to defend yourself. But you will also know, for next time, you will need to do something different to overcome your obstacle.
Because what makes Dark Souls "fair" is that your circumstances are constant. The things that kill you don't change. They won't play out any differently in subsequent attempts. The only thing that changes is how you approach it. Enemies and traps are always in the same exact place and you need to adapt what you are doing to progress. This is what makes Dark Souls "fair" to me.
"Tough but fair" has never meant there wouldn't be surprise deaths or jank. Tough but fair, for me, means that despite the presence of any surprises or jank you will always be able to use what you learned upon death to advance successfully in the future. You might be frustrated to find you can't swing your weapon horizontally in close quarters and be killed with no means to defend yourself. But you will also know, for next time, you will need to do something different to overcome your obstacle.
Because what makes Dark Souls "fair" is that your circumstances are constant. The things that kill you don't change. They won't play out any differently in subsequent attempts. The only thing that changes is how you approach it. Enemies and traps are always in the same exact place and you need to adapt what you are doing to progress. This is what makes Dark Souls "fair" to me.
Dark Souls 2 was a major step back in fairness. Broken hitboxes, stupid adaptability stat, unfair mobs. It just took so much of the good from Dark Souls and made it unnecessarily worse
All this talk about DS2 and here I am about to hop on this weekend to help a friend out with the 4 Kings.
Asymmetry is kinda the whole point of single-player games, so I don't think there's a lot of value in the framing of "fair" and "unfair" in the first place. I'd certainly never use it.
things can be deeply unfun to learn, though, for a ton of different subjective reasons
things can be deeply unfun to learn, though, for a ton of different subjective reasons
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I'm sorry but I just want to point out that roguelikes are literally Trial and Error as their core design philosophy, so this idea that somehow they are not trial and error but Dark Souls is just makes me laugh.
EDIT: Nevermind, I misread your first sentence.
Point still stands though, Roguelikes will kill you for not knowing just as if not more often than Souls with far harsher penalty for doing so.