Okay thinking about picking this up this weekend. Looking at what people are saying is that the game is amazing, but worse than the souls games. I tapped out on the souls games because I was just unable to get past a certain point.
Thoughts on is it hype or is it really this difficult.
I found my way to the Forbidden Woods. The place is HUGE! I found 4 runes just running around the place. The snakes can EAD.
The game surpasses souls
Heard this game was booty. True or no?
Fam, these fucking Wolves and the Rats in the sewerā¦ Iām getting shit on. I found that badass looking hunter gear tho so thatās nice.
Dat av doe LOL
Easily the most booty.
biggest booty in the wƶrld 4 shizzel
progress so far :
Managed to kill the guy on top of that tower in old yarnham. That guy did NOT fuck around. sheesh.
Killed amelia and the first boss in the chalice dungeon. Seems the only way to head now is to the witch valley.
INB4 everyone makes knee jerk posts having only read the title and not the actual article. Itās an interesting comparison between a Souls like game, Super Meat Boy, and Faster Than Light, all 3 are very difficult in their own ways and show their are different types of difficulty in games not just different degrees.
^
whoever wrote that article is obviously too much of a scrub to appreciate the challenge the game delivers.
He even says so himself :
āBloodborne is currently enjoying from all quarters. Even the most enthusiastic of them
point out that this kind of game isnāt for everyone, and Iām an example of who theyāre not for, and why.ā
lol GG fucking noob.
Iām gonna finish the article Zoo, but, and to take his words, you only get to make one first impression, this
Kind of makes me not want to finish it because itās making an assumption about me the reader that he has no insight into, and imo, comes across as patently false. As a pretty heavy Souls players I absolutely remember my experiences as a new player and how much the game kicked my ass, or I got lost, or stuck, or whatever else.
Everyone was new to something once, and I would bet dollars to donuts that most people remember their first time playing something that was really tough.
That article really just boiled down to āGame wants me to commit to decisions, and punishes me for making bad ones, and the check points are too far apart, Itās just not for meā Which is fine, but not particularly insightful or anything. I think the most interesting point in the article is the complaint about Check Points. I think Checkpoints and how to use them well within a game is a really interesting conversation point when it comes to modern gaming. I havenāt gotten to play Bloodborne yet (I read this thread EXTREMELY cautiously, and greatly appreciate the use of spoiler tags) and I have noticed people even in this thread say the Lamps (Bonfire equivalent) are quite far apart. I wonder if this was a decision made from the begining or in a āvacuumā or if peoples response to Dark Souls 2 had anything to do with how far apart the Lamps are. It was of my opinion that in Dark Souls 2 there where WAAAAAAAAAY too many fucking bonfires in Drangliec. They are fucking everywhere and death become a super trivial matter because your blood stain was always a hop skip and jump away from where you respawned. The the fear of losing, or the desire to plan out how to get back to your blood stain (Or special tricks to keep it from disappearing should you fail to get back to it) have no place in Dark Souls 2 cuz there are very few locations where you werenāt within breathing distance of your blood stain when you respawn. Too many check points.
Dark Souls 1 does have a few Bonfires within spitting distance of each other but they generally tend to be hidden bonfires like the Chaos Sister Bonfire and the Bonfire right after it leading to Ceaseless Discharge but in this case the Chaos Sister Bonfire is a hidden one.
So yea, I mean itās not really something I can comment on further until I play Bloodborne, but I have a feeling the Lamps tend to paced in relatively the same manner as in Dark Souls 1, meaning pretty far apart, and I think that does this series a big favor, in Dark Souls 2 putting them everywhere diluted a good chunk of the experience of just dieing.
I guess Iāll end this with the note that unlike Super Meat Boy and FTL, Death tends to be a massive theme in the Souls style games from FROM, and that devaluing the players death devalues the theme of death for the whole product in general.
Edit: One last note, I don;t think FTL has a very good sense of difficulty, a good difficulty is one where your death was caused by some kind of bad choice, but FTLs system is completely random, and the game forces forward progress because a big red wall is coming up behind you that will insta kill you pretty much, so youāre not really allowed to make intelligent choices in FTL, youāre simply moving forward and hoping for the best with your fingers crossed. FTL became a lot more fun when I installed the hack that removed the chasing fleet. You still had the random factor with the encounters but where now allowed to make intelligent decisions about your exploration choices because there wasnāt a āwall of lavaā chasing you forcing you to make jumps that you couldnāt possibly be prepared for 90% of the time.
Also I could be completely wrong here, but after a good deal of time with the game Iām pretty convinced itās impossible to finish the campaign scenario with certain ships, especially the starter ships, and thatās bullshit. Thatās not difficulty. Thatās planned obsolescence. Meh.
I suck at this game. I at least killed a pig in a sewer.
I beat the shadows boss in the woods. One of the most intense boss encounters I had since fighting the Father early on. It was easy at first but when I killed one of them the fight got retarded will quick. Bastards doing their best Dhalism impression got me salty real quick. The reach they gain was pure bullshit. Thankfully I beat them on the first try.
The writer says heās a big fan of Super Meat Boy and FTL which are arguably just as if not harder than a Souls game so you clearly missed the point of the article which is like I said that games can have differnt types of difficulty not just different degrees. For example beating 1001 Spikes on 1 life is infinitely more impressive to me and Iād wager most gamers than beating a souls game on 1 life, just because a game is difficult that doesnāt mean that everyone who doesnāt like that specific type of difficulty is a āfucking noobā, hell by your own logic I could call you a noob for not having the mind games, build order timings, and reflexes to make Diamond league in StarCraft 2. To take the same context to an extreme end of the spectrum to make the idea obvious you then could call Daigo a noob if he sucked at DOTA 2 with your line of thinking.
The only unfortunate thing about Souls series besides cheaters in PVP is that they seem to attract elitist, simple minded gamers like you who are so overly defensive and immaturely lash out at everyone who doesnāt share the same love for them as you do. Iām sure when I buy a PS4 Iāll love BB as much as everyone else and dump dozens of hours into both PVE and PVP, but I do understand that not everyone is into the experience it gives and that not liking a Souls game doesnāt mean theyāre a noob or have no skill, although it is true a lot of gamers donāt like souls games because they actually donāt have the patience to learn from their deaths as the games demand which in turn stops them fro mdeveloping skill.
@crotchpuncha Correct me if Iām wrong but that part you quoted I just read that as a guy who played a Souls game and it just never āclickedā for him. Every souls fan has that moment I remember for a lot of people it was when that dragon was waiting near the bridge in 1-2 of Demonās Souls and after dying to him a bunch SRKāers realized they could just shoot him with arrows from far away without triggering him. For Dark Souls I went through the āWTF is this shit and why is it so popularā phase or a few hours until I learned how riposte timing by practicing in Undead Burg and it was like āohhhhhhh so thatās how I kill multiple enemies!ā and apparently this writer just never got that āAHA!ā moment.
Dang dude, took me 4 lol
The boss after that is kinda easy but kinda bullshit. The enemies in the next area are pretty damn annoying though. Iām just a tad ahead of you, what level are you?
Iām around level 50. I mainly focus on skill, strength and stamina.
Ah, Iām 50 right now too actually. I seem to do worse in co-op but if you want help for the next boss I can join you. I need the souls anyway
Thatās my point tho. Heās saying āyouāre big fans who are good at these games so you just donāt know what itās like for us new people, you wont relate to my problem with Bloodborne, youāre too deeply entrenchedā and I call bullshit, I remember restarting Demonās Souls 5 times, then shelving it until Dark Souls came out and playing that, restarting 5 times until it clicked and then going back to DemonāsSsouls a few months after that and getting into that game to. I am a huge Souls fan, I am deeply entrenched in the series and I absolutely relate to peoples first experiences with the series and ānot gettingā it.
I mean if the writer of the article is dismissing me and telling me his article isnāt for me because Iām a fan and I wont relate to his woes then why should I finish it? Even the writer doesnāt think I should. Thereās a really interesting conversation to be had in that article but Iāve already been told not bother before the article has really even started.
Thatās all I was getting at with that particular line of the article.
Itās too bad to, thereās an interesting conversation to be had there but he closed the door on it before it could be had. I think the Souls games are highly social interaction games (despite the lack of Mic support), they promote conversation, research, and thinking. They are the kinds of games that promote community, when I finally decided to devote actually really giving these games a shot with Dark Souls 1 when I got stuck (couldnāt figure out how to deal with the gargoyles, couldnāt find the door to lower undead burg, Blighttownā¦just Blighttown, all of it) instead of quitting I came to SRK and asked people for advice and THAT is when I had my āAh Ha!ā moment. It was the realization that, imo, Iām not supposed to be doing this alone. No one can find all this shit on their own, the games are meant to be talked about within the community, itās a community drivin experience be it Sunbroing or Invading or just asking people for help, a big aspect of these games is community. One thing I really loved about these games was that it reminded me of being a kid and talking with my friends about Zelda 1 or something and he found this secret and I found that secret and together we learned new shit and got better through the community aspect of being into the same shit and talking about it.
It would be interesting to ask Dan at IGN if he ever bothered asking anyone else in the office for help, advice, or anything, or if he just tried to solo that shit on his own. I am of the opinion that he probably never bothered to look for outside help or guidance because he never found the short cut that makes getting back to the boss he hated slowly trudging back to every time he died an apparently trivial manner. Perhaps if someone had told him about the short cut it wouldnāt have taken him a supposed 12 fucking hours to beat the Cleric Beast 
My problem with him is it doesnāt even seem like he WANTED the aha! moment. He had VERY little positive to say about from any type of informational view point. Most, not all sure enough, but most of it just felt like complaining. And some of it was complaining about things that are just wrong. Just like in every past souls game, you actually DONāT have to kill every enemy on the way to the boss, and if you search around, even if youāve never played one before, you should notice there are a bunch of locked doors, if you just have some curiosity, you should end up finding at least SOME shortcuts. And so far every area except for one single instance have very straight forward, straight-to-the-boss paths with minimal encounters. The game is NOT at fault because he couldnāt or didnāt find them or care enough to explore to happen upon them.
Now you could make the case that maybe a game should be a little more directed, and sure enough he mentions this point and how he isnāt against NOT being hand held, and yet he actively complains about issues that are solved should he have just explored. But that drive to explore precludes hand holding, which he supposedly doesnāt want, yet seems to get annoyed, inadvertently, when it isnāt there.
Edit: I saw this article earlier and pretty much didnāt even want to talk about it because while you, @orochizoolander wanted discussion, the guy who wrote the article didnāt! He has his opinion and thatās fine, itās just not really worth talking about when itās a misinformed one due to not simply having the patience to search, and the open-mindedness to give it a fair, un-biased chance. And I tend to not be interested in such discussions because thereās no point, itās his opinion, and thatās all there is to it.
As for the ādifferent types of difficultyā thing, yeah sure thereās different types. Thereās executional, explorational, on-the-spot problem solving, long term problem solving, physical(kinda, sorta, or definitely if you mean games like DDR), timing, memory, etc. etc.
Iāll take you up on that. Iāll add you the next time I get on.
If if itās booty, then itās this kind of booty.
Iām getting in a week, Iāve never been more excited to get bodied, killed, maimed, and broken completelyā¦My body is ready.
