A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty
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A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty
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Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty
#2I wanted to read more, but it was basically a walkthrough of the game... I will have to save this one for later.
Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty
#3Dark Souls is a bigger, less polished version of Demon's Souls. It has a problem with hidden information that can only be discovered through trial-and-error. Demon's Souls was like this too, but the scope was small enough that it didn't cause big problems. Not sure what there is to praise about the character builds. In both games there's an easy and obvious way to get a bulletproof character: plow everything you have into vitality and endurance. The difficulty of Dark Souls (which is harder than Demon's Souls) should be applauded, but it's really quite disorganized, and there seems to be a lot of misplaced praise out there for the trial-and-error, but this part of the game really just sloppiness. It needs better clues - dialogue, books, inscriptions on walls, etc. The soapstone sign system is just pure laziness. Trying to play it off as some genius design choice is degenerate. There's a reason both titles give the wiki URL on the PS3 cases..
Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty
#4Having played both Demon and Dark souls, I think Demon souls was only better in that it flushed out the Maiden and the monumentals in a way which was deliberate and set the tone of the game. Dark Souls could have used something along these lines, but in every other respect it's the better game. From the improved enemy AI, to balance in the weapons and crafting, to the variety of locations and enemies, and don't forget the subtle lore in the item descriptions and placement of unique enemies and items. Dark Souls is just plain better.
That said, they both rank as my favorite games of the last ten years.
Edit: Also, if this has convinced you to pick this game up for the PC (it's often on sale on Steam for under $10), don't forget to get DSFix for the graphics and DSMFix fix for mouse and keyboard support. It wasn't a very good port, but the community has made it great.
DSFix: http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?tag=dsfix DSMFix: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~petska/
Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty
#5I don't think the writer's point is well made by his gushing style (and this is also a page that could badly benefit from some nicer fonts and pictures to break up the wall of text). However I am a huge fan of Demon's Souls and will probably get around to Dark Souls eventually too. It's the closest thing that I've come across so far to an immersive version of Nethack.
Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty
#6Dark Souls is a bigger, less polished version of Demon's Souls. It has a problem with hidden information that can only be discovered through trial-and-error. Demon's Souls was like this too, but the scope was small enough that it didn't cause big problems. Not sure what there is to praise about the character builds. In both games there's an easy and obvious way to get a bulletproof character: plow everything you have…
I disagree that a high vit + end build is bulletproof. I'm absolutely certain that most anybody could destroy that build easily in PvP.
One of the great things about the build system in Dark Souls is a build that is great for PvE may not be a great build for PvP.
Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty
#7Dark Souls is a bigger, less polished version of Demon's Souls. It has a problem with hidden information that can only be discovered through trial-and-error. Demon's Souls was like this too, but the scope was small enough that it didn't cause big problems. Not sure what there is to praise about the character builds. In both games there's an easy and obvious way to get a bulletproof character: plow everything you have…
I fully agree with you on the hidden information problem. So many people seem to kind of praise this though.
I, for one, started 3 characters and with every one of them I ran into a problem at around the time when the lightning spear becomes too weak. Pretty much the only option I saw was to craft a weapon, but the crafting system just isn't explained at all. The only way to learn something about the crafting is, as you said, trial & error, which is just frustrating, especially if you have to sacrifice rare resources for that.
Basically if you want to play the game without the wiki (which still feels a bit like cheating for me) you either have to put in insane amounts of effort (I mean come on, it's still only a game!), or you're fucked.
I really hope Dark Souls 2 is better in offering at least basic explanations of the friggin' game mechanics.
Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty
#8Dark Souls is a bigger, less polished version of Demon's Souls. It has a problem with hidden information that can only be discovered through trial-and-error. Demon's Souls was like this too, but the scope was small enough that it didn't cause big problems. Not sure what there is to praise about the character builds. In both games there's an easy and obvious way to get a bulletproof character: plow everything you have…
I disagree that a high vit + end build is bulletproof. I'm absolutely certain that most anybody could destroy that build easily in PvP. One of the great things about the build system in Dark Souls is a build that is great for PvE may not be a great build for PvP.
Okay, so it's bulletproof for PvE.
Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty
#9Having played both Demon and Dark souls, I think Demon souls was only better in that it flushed out the Maiden and the monumentals in a way which was deliberate and set the tone of the game. Dark Souls could have used something along these lines, but in every other respect it's the better game. From the improved enemy AI, to balance in the weapons and crafting, to the variety of locations and enemies, and don't forge…
I just got it on sale for $7.50. I had a pirated version I played a few hours in (wanted to see how the port was; as you say, it's pretty bad) that circumvented GFWL, storing my save in a local 4-meg file rather than on some server somewhere. And I can't restore him! I'M VERY SCARED TO START AGAIN.
But I might just do so with the fix.
Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty
#10Having played both Demon and Dark souls, I think Demon souls was only better in that it flushed out the Maiden and the monumentals in a way which was deliberate and set the tone of the game. Dark Souls could have used something along these lines, but in every other respect it's the better game. From the improved enemy AI, to balance in the weapons and crafting, to the variety of locations and enemies, and don't forge…
>Dark Souls is just plain better.
Nope. It has a worse frame rate, just for a start. All the qualities you list are laudable, but they don't even come close to addressing "every other respect". For example, Dark Souls requires you to pick up way more items than Demon's Souls. More items is good - but not if it turns into a tiresome exercise in collection.