I'll never be able to wrap my mind around why people love this game so much. I get most people don't, it's mainly a hardcore, vocal minority on the internet.
Dark Souls is a multimillion seller franchise, so the bolded is objectively wrong.
But still. It's dark, drab, kind of ugly, awkward, slow, clunky,
Its combat is slow, weighty and methodical, where each blow counts. This makes it more mechanically thoughtful than most games, and is precisely why people love it.
Also it's a visually evocative game, with some of its strongest points being how varied it is in a way that still feels deeply interconnected, both in terms of traversal and how you can see so many other parts of the game world in the distance (but this is only apparent after you've played quite a bit and familiarized yourself with the world, of course.
and...not fun? Definitely not appealing in a visual or control sense. Skeletons with shields? Not the most original concept either.
The game has a ton more than "skeletons with shields". It's a pretty huge game with extremely varied locales and enemies. And even among those "skeletons with shields", there's a lot of variety in how they attack and must be approached.
I guess it gets so much love in places like this exclusively cause it's..hard? Sure, but that doesn't make it any good. I didn't notice even one vaguely impressive thing about it.
Every single game can be deconstructed to the point that its elements feel unspecial and rote. I can play a walled demo of Breath of the Wild and say I don't find a single thing impressive about it (people have even done it with the full game), and there's absolutely nothing you can do to counter that point, because no single element about it will be the "best thing ever".
It's fine not to like something, but saying "millions of people are objectively wrong, this is bad" after playing a very limited demo isn't going to make you seem very insightful, especially considering Dark Souls is a game notorious for putting off people at first and making them fall in love later.
Edit:
Millions of people buy McDonald's everyday, doesn't mean it's good.
This is a
very disingenuous thing to say when the poster you were replying to was simply pointing out your objectively wrong statement that the game has a minority fanbase. That's, of course, on top of being shittily elitist.
Edit 2:
1. I never created a new thread asking why people like Souls. I don't think so highly of myself to believe that deserves its own thread. There's a difference in creating a thread about my dislike for a game released last year, to making a post in a current thread about a demo just released.
2. The person I quoted truly hadn't played a second of the game but felt compelled to hate on it. I've played hours of dark souls, both from switch demo and other platforms. So yeah, small difference there.
3. Mario Odyssey is an infinitely more approachable game that can be enjoyed by anyone. Souls isn't- it's defining quality is actually how NON approachable it is. So in that context, my question makes a lot more sense, and is more relevant. None of the adjectives I described can apply to SMO, and even someone who hates that game deeply can't deny that.
But yeah I'm a "hypocrite".
No one of these post-hoc rationalization arguments have any relevance whatsoever to the point. "Creating a thread" vs "posting in a thread" doesn't change how wrong or right you are; a specific person playing more or less of a game doesn't change the fundamental argument you both used that "millions of other people love these games"; and Souls being more approachable actually makes it
more impressive that it is loved by so many people. So yes, using an argument in a thread and then dismissing that very argument in another according to how it suits your goals is, indeed, highly hypocritical.
To be 100% clear, I'm perfectly fine with you disliking Dark Souls. It's when you start comparing it to McDonalds and telling people they pretty much have bad taste that I raise an eyebrow.
