A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

>Did you bother to even consider that you had written ambiguously?

All speech is ambiguous. You're expected as an adult to try to understand other people. You failed to understand me, and looking back at my post it ought to be obvious that you didn't read it carefully at all. The connection with the preceding sentence (a given in any paragraph you dunderhead) does not amount to "everyone does NG+ on their second play through". Nowhere is this written or implied. It's simply pure lazy reading on your part, eager as you are to take issue with what I said. And if you're going to come back with me with this sort of bullshit, maybe you should have some kind of real issue with what you now realise I actually said. But no, we get...

>I mean seriously, your criticisms of the game are just generic whines because you've encountered a hard one.

I've played through both games 3 times each. I didn't find them overly hard. Dark Souls is harder, and some bits were tough. I like that. And alternating bosses is exactly how I dealt with the harder bosses. None of this conflicts with my criticisms at all. Do you have some kind of argument to make? Or are you just upset that in your rush to piss on my post you grossly misinterpreted it? The point stands: the first play through is largely about bumbling around wasting your time. It is disorganized. It lacks clues. Do you have an answer to this, the thing I actually said? It seems it's very hard for you to change your P.O.V. to a superior one, one that can actually be defended with an argument, rather than garbage attacks like accusing me of "whining" because the game is "too hard". In fact, I don't think it's all that hard at all! Which is why in this very thread I spoke about how easy it is to beat the game with vitality builds, which is what I did on my first play through. The only "whining" here is that you didn't read my post, were butthurt by my retort, and without responding with an argument - one that contradicts something I actually said.

>Demon Firesage isn't particularly weak to fire. And what does it matter? You don't need a fire weapon to kill him.

Does this contradict me? I mean, I don't even disagree with it, nor can I see how you would infer that I would from my comments - except by guessing. How many bits of hidden and often counter-intuitive information do you suppose there are in Dark Souls? Demon Firesage is an EXAMPLE of how badly coordinated it is. The fact that you can still beat the boss is completely beside the point. How about: the location of all the fire embers, which is impossible to know by any means other than running around? But hey, I don't NEED the embers I can beat every boss by skill alone, so it doesn't matter how poorly arranged they are. So why even bother to put them into the game at all? Hopefully you can now see how silly this line of argument is.

>You also don't need to parry Gwyn to beat him, so why does it need to be spelled out?

First, I didn't say it needed to be "spelled out". Why do you feel licensed to put words straight into my mouth? Just sticking a sign on the door saying "parry him" is stupid, and a good example of why the lazy soapstone sign system is poorly conceived. One better way to handle this would be to make it so every character (no exceptions - unless there is a CLUE for the exception) with a certain characteristic is parryable. Or you could have disparate hints that can be combined to obtain that information. And so on. Just sticking random stuff like that in there and waiting for people to stumble into it is the kind of thing that is good for autistics who want to collect useless information, not people who want to experience an open fantasy world where decisions are meaningful.

Demon's Souls is more polished in spite of following the same basic design approach - because it is smaller and simpler, and so there is less room for inconsistency. For example, for the most part the boss dependencies go down five straight lanes. This is simpler and less interesting than Dark Souls' more complex boss dependencies, but it is very consistent. Bosses come at regular intervals and the archstones are warpable in the same way all the way through the game.

I mean, this ought to be the most elementary thing but some people in this thread just can't get it into their heads. What is the most interesting map for a small village? The answer: no map. You want to wander a bit and discover some things for yourself. There isn't much room in that sized place for things to become too messy. Does that apply to a city? No! Even with a quite a detailed map a city will always have nooks and crannies. But without a map or some directions you'll just wander around with zero clues as to where the interesting stuff might be. Of course, in a real city you can just ask people for directions, which is more interesting than using a map. But you can't do this sort of thing in Dark Souls, and that is the core of the problem.

>The game isn't really about trying a bunch of stuff until you find the "right" way to beat an area. If you think your best bet is to go everywhere and pick up every item, then you don't have a very good understanding of the character building mechanics.

What is the game "about"? It's about exploring interesting areas while fighting monsters. And part of the exploration is discovering detail like items, monster placements, bonfires and traps. But it is not done all that well, because most of the discovering comes about by way of trial-and-error. If you can't see that discovering things foreshadowed by clues and an organized system of placement is more interesting than stumbling upon stuff at random, then you should play more video games before commenting on them on the Internet.

>Although there is often a message by the door that says Try Parrying.

Which is sheer laziness. If From had put in their own hints then they could calibrate the level of detail in the hints so that the player gets just enough information to be HINTED without sticking neon signs on every hidden item or illusory wall. I mean, if your defense is "sometimes you get lucky and there's a sign telling you the answer directly", then I can only laugh right in your face.

>There are plenty of other games that hand-hold and don't have the time investment requirement of Dark Souls.

This is the classic conflation comment. You conflate my irritation with the disorganization and time-wasting of Dark Souls with an aversion to time investment and a love of hand-holding. In fact, I love to put lots of time into a game that I like. I like Dark Souls and have invested 200+ hours into it. I like to invest my time in things that are _enjoyable_. And Dark Souls has faults that detract from the experience relative to Demon's Souls, which is a less ambitious but more polished game. Just as Tetris is a far more polished game than Dark Souls even though Dark Souls has far higher potential and is overall the better game. It's like intelligence: a person with IQ 140 has the potential for not just cleverness but also stupidity far in excess of, say, a dog. The dog is a more polished animal mentally than many people, because there's only so far wrong it can go in life.

>I feel like Dark Souls respects the player much more than those games, because you truly do have the freedom to make your own choices.

Well, this just goes to show how little you've thought about this. It's only a "decision" in the most degenerate, worthless sense unless you have enough information to make a good one. That is the entire point of my posts in this thread. And far from respecting you it is in fact simultaneously (a) making a fool out of you by giving you the illusion of meaningful choice, and (b) showing contempt for your time by including so much trial-and-error.

Again for the people who still don't understand that I like this game, you need to realize that only an ambitious and interesting game can harbor these sorts of flaws.

This is a really ignorant comment. First, it's downright silly to assume that KB+M is necessarily better for every game; even if the developers had invested time in improving the KB+M controls, the game would still operate far better with a gamepad. Second, it's also downright silly to think that there's no reason to ever use a gamepad with a PC. If you already have a gaming PC and you don't have a console, that's a pretty big reason to play it on PC. If you have a high resolution monitor that you want to take advantage of, that's a pretty big reason to play it on PC. If you're interested in modding, that's a pretty big reason to play it on PC.