
A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty - evo_9
http://savetherobot.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/the-great-big-puzzle-box-a-close-look-at-dark-souls-ingenious-difficulty-as-witnessed-by-one-dead-guy-in-sens-fortress/
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tomlu
The author neglected to mention my favourite trap in Sen's fortress.

There's an elevator you can get on that if you don't get off in time will
bring you headfirst into a bunch of spikes. The genius part is the elevator
floor is covered in blood, a hint you would certainly notice if you take your
time and proceed cautiously. This is the sort of thing that makes every death
feel deserved, which is pivotal to the souls series.

~~~
zerohm
There are lots of little clever details like this. You might have also noticed
that in Ornstein and Smough's chamber there are two elevators: a large one
(for Smough) and a small one (for Ornstein).

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zainny
What really annoys me about Dark Souls is the shitty PC port. They're still
selling tons of copies of the game for PC because of all the silly hype around
it, and yet the game is virtually unplayable - even with all the mouse fixes,
mods, etc. Why is it acceptable for game developers to completely abandon
their customer base and continue to sell a broken product?

I picked up the game during a Steam sale, spent a good few hours trying to
make it playable with a variety of mods, fixes, etc. and then just gave up
completely. And for those few hours I did play it, nothing about it stood out
to me as being incredible or ingenious.

~~~
vacri
I bought a controller especially for that game and never looked back. This
being said, I completed the game right up to just before the final boss fight
on kb + mouse... but with the controller, the game is really incredible.

The port is shitty without the third-party fixes, but they also specifically
said "we're not PC people, this will be a shitty port". They didn't launch the
PC version with a lot of fanfare - and their customer base is on the consoles,
not the PCs.

One of the weird things about the port is that the mouse movement is locked -
it doesn't matter how quickly you move your mouse or how far, only how long
you move it for. You move a set amount given a set length of time. Took me a
while to figure it out.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Which makes sense. They don't want you to be able to turn too fast.

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Rickasaurus
Having 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](http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?tag=dsfix)
DSMFix: [http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~petska/](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~petska/)

~~~
dsuth
If you like the feel of Dark Souls, try Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, if you have
a Wii U or 3DS. The theme is very different, but the game is very similar in
terms of difficulty, crafting, and multiplayer. It also sports, quite
literally, the most finely tuned difficulty ramp I have ever come across in a
game. Every new challenge will be amazingly tough, yet fair. The boss
creatures are very inventive too. It ranks equally with the Souls games for
me, which are easily my favourite games in the last 10 years too.

~~~
Rickasaurus
Oh man, have you seen that new Monster Hunter Online game out in Asia? I'm so
jealous.

~~~
dsuth
Got my eye on it. So I can run the other way and not get sucked into a black
hole!

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mekpro
I found that most of the fun in this game can be easily destroyed by FAQs and
Youtube. I myself get very frustrated by Sen Fortress's Bonfire that i can't
resist the urge to get an answer from wiki. After read this, I find myself
regretted because i had missed the crucial experience of this game. Explore or
dead !

I wish I could forget everything about this game so that I can innocently play
it from the start again.

~~~
quanticle
This is why I play randomized rougelikes, like Nethack, or more recently,
Torchlight. You can't make spoilers for a game that randomizes its levels.

~~~
cheald
If you like roguelikes, check out Binding of Isaac. I can't figure out _why_
it's so compelling, but boy howdy, is it ever.

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n1ghtmare_
Honestly, this is in my top 5 all time favorite games. It's brilliant. By the
time I finished it, it wasn't difficult anymore, you just have to master it.
Can't wait for Dark Souls 2.

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ilitirit
Classic Reddit "review" of the game's predecessor:

 _Demon’s Souls is a game that will make you into a man. A scrawny fourteen-
year-old, after two hours with this game, will be grooming his muttonchops and
ready to ship off on the next boat to fight the Kaiser. If you are already a
man, it will make you into some sort of bizarre double-man. What’s that you
say? You’re a woman? You don’t want to be a man? Too bad. Too bad. That’s the
Demon’s Souls way.

You’ve probably heard that Demon’s Souls is hard. Pshh. Lots of games are
hard. Some are even harder than this one. The difficulty is not the point.
What sets Demon's Souls apart is the way that it doesn't just kill you, but
also stomps on your genitals when you’re down. And it will make you realize
that that’s what you needed all along.

It’s a lot like life. Sometimes in life you win, and sometimes the giant
armored skeleton stabs your face off because the flying mantis monster you
didn’t even see shot you in the back with a spike at just the wrong time. And
when that happens in life, do you respawn at the same spot and carry on like
nothing happened? NO, asshole. You go back to the beginning of the level,
leaving all your hard-earned souls out there on the pavement, and you fight
your way back. And you learn a lesson from the whole thing, because you should
have been wearing your Thief’s Ring, now shouldn’t you? That’s life.

The trend in hard games these days is to unlock “Easy” mode for you once
you’ve died enough times. Do you think Demon’s Souls does that? Do you think
Demon’s Souls is so much as aware of the concept of “Easy” mode? NO IT IS NOT.
If Demon’s Souls even knew we were talking about “Easy” mode, it would come
over here and kick the shit out of all of us. And we would deserve it.

I’ll tell you what happens in Demon’s Souls when you die. You come back as a
ghost with your health capped at half. And when you keep on dying, the
alignment of the world turns black and the enemies get harder. That’s right,
when you fail in this game, it gets harder. Why? Because fuck you is why.

Have I told you about the online elements? At any time when you’re in Body
form, another player from anywhere else in the world can invade your game and
murder you to regain his own body, or just to keep you on your toes. This
happens when you’re in the middle of fighting armies of unthinkable monsters
that are probably already three-quarters of the way towards killing you. And
no, you cannot opt out of this feature! This is what you signed up for when
you agreed to be a man.

When this happened to me -- when a guy strolled into my game like it was Taco
Bell and exploded my torso, costing me my body and all my progress in the
level -- was I mad? No, because I was too busy being in awe at how fucking
hardcore the experience was.

Now, don’t let this dissuade you. Demon’s Souls is a pitiless master, but let
it never be said that it is not fair. The game rewards handsomely those who
stand up to it, and the greater the challenge, the greater the glory.

What the hell are you waiting for?_

www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/acz2t/let_me_tell_you_about_demons_souls/

~~~
JonSkeptic
My mustache grew two sizes just from reading that!

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anigbrowl
I 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.

------
jackmaney
A while ago, I foolishly decided to spend $40 to get Dark Souls: Prepare to
Die edition on Steam. The controls were so atrocious--both in the default
choice of key bindings and in the control execution that made me feel as
though my character was wading through Vaseline--that I found it completely
unplayable.

~~~
alex_c
Ah, yes... the PC version should come with a giant red warning that says "DO
NOT ATTEMPT TO PLAY THIS WITHOUT A CONTROLLER".

There's still a learning curve even with a controller, but once past that the
controls have a beautiful simplicity and responsiveness that I've seen in very
few other games.

~~~
jackmaney
What's the point of playing a PC game with a controller? If I wanted to play a
game with inferior controls, I would just use a console.

~~~
sullichin
In the case of Dark Souls, kb/m is by far the inferior control scheme.

~~~
jackmaney
Yes, that's why the game is horribly, horribly broken.

~~~
nemetroid
I don't agree that mouse input is inherently superior. The main advantage is
boundless motion, e.g. aiming a gun or controlling a camera. If that is not a
major part of the control scheme in a game, controllers are often better.

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hobs
I wanted to read more, but it was basically a walkthrough of the game... I
will have to save this one for later.

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roarroar
Dark 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..

~~~
octaveguin
Diablo 2 was arguably terribly designed similarly - character builds required
external information to progress to the harder difficulties. Not to mention
what I'm sure the designers weren't intending at first - repeat farming over
and over of the same content.

In the end, this became what made it such a huge hit. The fact that you had to
study character builds made a sort of meta game.

Minecraft is another example where you have a wiki tabbed while you play.

And lets not even get started on dwarf fortress - the awful UI is the game.

I believe the metagame is whats at work in all these. A lack of tutorials and
good ui feels somehow more authentic and rewarding.

~~~
roarroar
It reeks of autism. You know it's bad because it forces you out of the game to
look at some web page. It's basically showing total contempt for the
aesthetics and fantasy of the game in favor of the endless cataloging and
retrieval of pointless information.

~~~
vacri
This is just not true. You can play the game fine without the wiki, and I did
so on my first playthrough... with a kb+mouse. You just can't min/max without
the wiki.

And if you want to PvP, then sure, you need to min/max... but if you're
PvPing, you're going to be going to a wiki anyway.

~~~
roarroar
What's not true? I didn't say you were forced as some kind of hard requirement
to use the wiki - just that the use of the wiki forces you out of the game and
that it is clearly designed to be used in conjunction with a wiki. It should
be taken as read that it can be played without it. I mean, who wrote the wiki?
The requirement for guessing and repeating segments is just so high that it
detracts from the experience. This isn't about knowing every little detail for
"min-maxing" either - it's about basic organization to make discovery of
information systematic rather than being a sheer time sink. So tell me: how do
you figure out that for the Demon Firesage - located in a fiery area, covered
in fire - the weakness is.. fire? Trying a bunch of stuff, in this case
totally counter-intuitive. What reason would you have to think Gwyn can be
parried, when no other boss in the game can be? By trying a bunch of stuff and
stumbling upon it since, again, it is counter-intuitive. In other words: by
having complete and utter contempt for the value of your own time.

It completely takes away from the sense of fantasy, as well. The whole point
with these open world games is to feel like you have the freedom to make your
own choices. But if you know that your best best is to go everywhere and pick
up every item you can then it feels like janitorial work, not a grand
adventure.

~~~
vacri
_the use of the wiki forces you out of the game and that it is clearly
designed to be used in conjunction with a wiki._

Are you aware that this is a console game, and was for quite some time before
it was ported to PC? It _really isn 't_ 'designed for use with a wiki', let
alone 'clearly' so. Yes, for competitive PvP you need to know as much as
possible, but that's the same with any game.

 _So tell me: how do you figure out that for the Demon Firesage - located in a
fiery area, covered in fire - the weakness is.. fire?_

You seem intent on min/maxing. I don't use fire weapons and every time I've
beaten the fire sage, I've done it by reading its actions and responding
appropriately - and this in particular is the absolute strength of the game.
You really _do not_ need to use a fire weapon to fight it; it's a matter of
interacting with the game rather than just going "boss fight, wail away at it
with $bigweapon".

 _What reason would you have to think Gwyn can be parried, when no other boss
in the game can be?_

You don't need to parry Gwyn to defeat him, same argument as above.

I relished the challenge that the game provided, a game that rewards skilful
play more than decking your character (and I'm not particularly dextrous). You
evidently don't like that, and prefer min/maxing and decking things. That's
fine, each to their own, but it doesn't make it a shit game because you didn't
like developing that skill.

~~~
roarroar
>I don't use fire weapons and every time I've beaten the fire sage, I've done
it by reading its actions and responding appropriately - and this in
particular is the absolute strength of the game.

So why bother with all the fancy environments (which are extremely costly to
produce)? Why bother with all the character builds? What a load of garbage.
The combat is in fact clunky and repetitive. You wouldn't play this game if it
was just boss battles, which just goes to show that it's not the key strength
of the game. The key strength of both games are the environments, with the
boss serving the SECONDARY purpose of providing a climax.

And the point of my post is not that Demon Firesage is impossible without fire
weapons. I've beat it without fire weapons, and it is one of the easiest
bosses. My point is that the game is poorly organized and in many ways
counter-intuitive. And Demon Firesage is a perfect example of this. So what is
your rebuttal? Are you even making one? Do you have a brain? You look like
someone who is so in love with Dark Souls that when someone (A FAN OF THE GAME
NO LESS) criticizes it you run in all butthurt looking for something to take
issue with, barely bothering to read what was said before replying.

>It really isn't 'designed for use with a wiki'

It has the URL of the wiki on the back of the PS3 case. So does Demon's Souls.
They very clearly intended players to have the wiki available. Did you think I
came into this thread not knowing it was on the PS3? Motherfucker I own it on
the PS3 as well as the PC. It is quite possible to finish the game without the
wiki. But the point of a game is to be ENJOYED, not finished. And the level of
trial-and-error present in Dark Souls detracts from the experience. This
doesn't apply in Demon's Souls because it's just that much simpler and
smaller. Are you going to respond to this, or just post more reactive bullshit
about Demon Firesage, which was an EXAMPLE?

>I relished the challenge that the game provided, a game that rewards skilful
play more than decking your character (and I'm not particularly dextrous).

Good for you. Maybe you'll get around to making a point in this reply?

>You seem intent on min/maxing.

I'm not "min-maxing" anything. There's no need to "min-max" Demon Firesage.
It's not a hard boss.

>but it doesn't make it a shit game because you didn't like developing that
skill.

Are you a fucking imbecile? I finished this game 3x. I will probably finish it
again. It is a nice game, and nowhere near as hard as the hype would suggest.
But it is very poorly organized, and overall a less polished product than
Demon's Souls. So here's a crazy idea I just had: maybe next time read the
top-level comment so you know the general point being made and respond to
that, instead of reactively scanning deep into the thread to find something to
take out of context. And then maybe you will succeed in responding to
something I actually thought or said. Like the fact that it Dark Souls is a
messy game oriented heavily toward trial-and-error. So please just read what I
said in this post, understand it (this is important when talking to people),
and then respond to this last about messiness and trial-and-error, because (in
spite of the fact that you are too stupid to see it), everything else I've
written is just a minor elaboration on this one point.

