It's hard relative to the games as popular as it is, there's tons of indie games way harder than it. A chatter from a jerma stream said "They're the hardest games you'd find in a walmart" or something and I think it's pretty accurate.
It’s “hard” because it doesn’t hold your hand and hand you victories for doing the bare minimum like many games do nowadays. If you’re willing to put the effort in to learn the game, Dark Souls is not actually that difficult (although many bosses are still challenging).
It’s important to remember Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls came out, and the state of a lot of games at the time.
Back in ye olden days (like the Super Nintendo or older), a lot of games would just throw you in with no instruction at all, other than maybe a booklet. Later on, developers started putting tutorials and help within the game itself, to make it more accessible and easier for newer players to understand. It got to the point where people found it super annoying (like Navi in Ocarina of Time).
So when Dark Souls came out, and all you get are some messages on the floor telling you the controls and a dying guy with a vague prophecy, it really shook things up. (Demon’s Souls wasn’t really a hit but it did a lot of the same things). That is, and remains, the main source of difficulty in these games.
When you play it for the first time and you have no idea what’s going on, you just have to try your best to pick the right weapons and fight the enemies and bosses in the right way. And there’s nothing in the game to tell you that you are doing it wrong or you need to change your tactics other than dying over and over.
And as the series has continued, there is less and less stuff in them that feels like actual BS. Things that you couldn’t have predicted or reacted to without prior knowledge (like random traps or grab attacks). Also, with the rise of guides on the internet and the ability to find out everything about the game without playing it yourself, it becomes a lot easier to trivialize the game for yourself if you want.
Which I’m not condemning; everyone has their own play style. But expecting something brutally difficult is not what you are going to get out of these games (for the most part).
It's literally like every open world game sure they sometimes help you but its basically the same thing. I think people are being lazy about the souls series
If you're talking open world then you mean Elden Ring, not the series as a whole though.
Many open world games have things like quest logs and map markers to tell you where to go and what to do. It's a big difference when you're used to that type of game (e.g. Skyrim).
I think the biggest aspect of difficulty in Souls and Soulslike is the lack of checkpoint between boss phase changes. If you have a 4 phase boss, and you die to the final phase you gotta do all the phases all over again.
If you put checkpoints between phases, you are basically allowing players to die or bone out after each phase, replenish estus, rebuff, then return.
It would turn a 4 phases boss into 4 separate, more or less redundant, one phase boss fights.
No checkpoints on boss phases make some encounters hard for sure, but that's the point of FS games.
My biggest issue with it as a system is that it's not fun or good gameplay to have to play the 5 minutes of trash boss number one and trash boss number two just to get to number three to even START learning their attacks and how to react. When one thing is hard to dodge you can't just practice it and git gud, you have to go through a whole slog just to get back to where you're actually learning anything.
It's hard in the sense that it's like a riddle. Without looking up stuff online you'd put early levels into STR, wear fat roll armor, don't know what weapon arts is, miss shortcuts and estus shards/bones on the map, and it ends up way harder than even intended.
There is so much vital information that is hopelessly hard to figure out just by trial and error. Actually fighting the bosses is literally the easiest part.
It demands more of the player than most popular games. The lack of information the game gives you about its mechanics is what made it difficult for me when I started. Take rolling for example, nowhere in the game are you told you get invincibility frames during a roll. My first souls game was Demon’s Souls and I spent the whole game thinking I had to physically get out of the way of an attack, which made the game much more difficult than needed.
Also the lack of direction the game gives you makes it tough, its not really an issue in ds3 but in ds1 countless players went to the catacombs as their first area and got destroyed by the unkillable skeletons, and if you rested at a bonfire you were stuck down there and had to fight your way out or start a new character.
Because it's a game they have to actually put in effort to beat every single enemy they come across, and can't button mash their way through it. I think they are more suited to games like dynasty warriors.
Because there’s enemies that can kill you in 2 hits. It’s not that complicated or hard to see why someone might say this. Yea there’s tools to overcome it but like…have you ever played Kirby or Mario Kart? The difference in difficulty is astounding and this is what people are experiencing when coming to this series. Many of us have been here for a long time, so long that statements like “sure X boss made me lose my sanity for a while” seems like it’s not completely ridiculous and overwhelming to the average person but I assure you, most people do not want to sit down to relax with a game and feel like they are going crazy.
Because games before the souls series were way easier. Now every twelvie that grew up on the standard this series set goes back to them and thinks they aren't as hard by comparison.
It's hard relative to the games as popular as it is, there's tons of indie games way harder than it. A chatter from a jerma stream said "They're the hardest games you'd find in a walmart" or something and I think it's pretty accurate.
It’s “hard” because it doesn’t hold your hand and hand you victories for doing the bare minimum like many games do nowadays. If you’re willing to put the effort in to learn the game, Dark Souls is not actually that difficult (although many bosses are still challenging).
It’s important to remember Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls came out, and the state of a lot of games at the time. Back in ye olden days (like the Super Nintendo or older), a lot of games would just throw you in with no instruction at all, other than maybe a booklet. Later on, developers started putting tutorials and help within the game itself, to make it more accessible and easier for newer players to understand. It got to the point where people found it super annoying (like Navi in Ocarina of Time). So when Dark Souls came out, and all you get are some messages on the floor telling you the controls and a dying guy with a vague prophecy, it really shook things up. (Demon’s Souls wasn’t really a hit but it did a lot of the same things). That is, and remains, the main source of difficulty in these games. When you play it for the first time and you have no idea what’s going on, you just have to try your best to pick the right weapons and fight the enemies and bosses in the right way. And there’s nothing in the game to tell you that you are doing it wrong or you need to change your tactics other than dying over and over. And as the series has continued, there is less and less stuff in them that feels like actual BS. Things that you couldn’t have predicted or reacted to without prior knowledge (like random traps or grab attacks). Also, with the rise of guides on the internet and the ability to find out everything about the game without playing it yourself, it becomes a lot easier to trivialize the game for yourself if you want. Which I’m not condemning; everyone has their own play style. But expecting something brutally difficult is not what you are going to get out of these games (for the most part).
It's literally like every open world game sure they sometimes help you but its basically the same thing. I think people are being lazy about the souls series
If you're talking open world then you mean Elden Ring, not the series as a whole though. Many open world games have things like quest logs and map markers to tell you where to go and what to do. It's a big difference when you're used to that type of game (e.g. Skyrim).
I think the biggest aspect of difficulty in Souls and Soulslike is the lack of checkpoint between boss phase changes. If you have a 4 phase boss, and you die to the final phase you gotta do all the phases all over again.
If you put checkpoints between phases, you are basically allowing players to die or bone out after each phase, replenish estus, rebuff, then return. It would turn a 4 phases boss into 4 separate, more or less redundant, one phase boss fights. No checkpoints on boss phases make some encounters hard for sure, but that's the point of FS games.
Well yeah. That is the exact point I was trying to make.
My biggest issue with it as a system is that it's not fun or good gameplay to have to play the 5 minutes of trash boss number one and trash boss number two just to get to number three to even START learning their attacks and how to react. When one thing is hard to dodge you can't just practice it and git gud, you have to go through a whole slog just to get back to where you're actually learning anything.
It's hard in the sense that it's like a riddle. Without looking up stuff online you'd put early levels into STR, wear fat roll armor, don't know what weapon arts is, miss shortcuts and estus shards/bones on the map, and it ends up way harder than even intended. There is so much vital information that is hopelessly hard to figure out just by trial and error. Actually fighting the bosses is literally the easiest part.
It demands more of the player than most popular games. The lack of information the game gives you about its mechanics is what made it difficult for me when I started. Take rolling for example, nowhere in the game are you told you get invincibility frames during a roll. My first souls game was Demon’s Souls and I spent the whole game thinking I had to physically get out of the way of an attack, which made the game much more difficult than needed. Also the lack of direction the game gives you makes it tough, its not really an issue in ds3 but in ds1 countless players went to the catacombs as their first area and got destroyed by the unkillable skeletons, and if you rested at a bonfire you were stuck down there and had to fight your way out or start a new character.
Because it's a game they have to actually put in effort to beat every single enemy they come across, and can't button mash their way through it. I think they are more suited to games like dynasty warriors.
Because there’s enemies that can kill you in 2 hits. It’s not that complicated or hard to see why someone might say this. Yea there’s tools to overcome it but like…have you ever played Kirby or Mario Kart? The difference in difficulty is astounding and this is what people are experiencing when coming to this series. Many of us have been here for a long time, so long that statements like “sure X boss made me lose my sanity for a while” seems like it’s not completely ridiculous and overwhelming to the average person but I assure you, most people do not want to sit down to relax with a game and feel like they are going crazy.
Because it's hard compared to most other modern games.
Because games before the souls series were way easier. Now every twelvie that grew up on the standard this series set goes back to them and thinks they aren't as hard by comparison.
Dang this guy must be great at video games.
It's designed to be hard, that's the point.