>>741538548
>No one upgraded armor
>the estus upgrade that doubles your estus is in the catacombs and it's disconnected from the rest of the world and you have no reason to go there until very late game
>your character is indeed pretty fragile compared to other games of the era

I swear, if they did the DS3 or Demon's Souls approach of no armor upgrades then people would find it much easier. armor upgrades are cheap and easily double your defense , so players might be running around in high poise metal armor, but it does less defense than upgraded black leather armor.

I have watched normoids play for over a decade and almost NO ONE upgrades armor. It just doesn't click to them that it's important and they complain about dying. Even worse is watching people play NG+ or some challenge mod, and again, no one upgrades armor. Andre and the Giant blacksmith literally sells you the shit for almost nothing to bring them to +7.

>>741538548
I'm pretty sure this came out when shit like QWOP and I wanna be the guy was all the rage

>>741538548
Because gaming became normie-tier between Demons Souls and Dark Souls 1, so for a fuckton of people it was the hardest game they've ever played. I grew up on NES so Dark Souls difficulty was familiar to me.

>>741538548
The landscape of video games at the time was all about cinematic story telling and accessible gameplay. Dark Souls was only hard because it was obtuse in its design. It harkened back to an older style. It trusted the player to figure it out themselves. It became popular through word of mouth rather than critical acclaim. You had to be there. Sorry you missed out.

marketing

>die in any other game
damn...
>die in Dark Souls
OMFG SO HARD WTFBBQ

>dark souls is totally easy bro
>ok name a harder game
>uhhhhh ummmm

>>741539195
mario party

>>741539195
Battletoads

>>741539195
>>ok name a harder game
monopoly

>>741539195
Touhou

>>741539195
literally any Ninja Gaiden game

>>741538548
Because the game was merciless compared most mainstream games from the time. There was no difficultly settings either, so it isn't like you could just tone down the bullshit. The game outright punished you for fucking up which was also rare for the era.

aaa game with no difficulty slider and it has enemies that hit hard, there was obviously way harder games at time but they were way more niche

>>741538548
The lack of hand holding and actual punishments for failure (Losing your souls, boss runbacks.)
There's a lot you can do to make the game easier but you're not going to know that playing it blind for the first time. You have over a decade of hindsight and difficulty creep from later games.

>>741538976
There's no need to upgrade armor. There's no need to even wear armor at all. Just use a fucking shield. Shields are so absurdly powerful in Dark Souls 1, they are the ultimate crutch. If you really go all-in on them and make the Greatshield of Artorias you basically turn the game off right there, it's over.

>>741539195
Any Armored Core game, maybe even including AC6

>>741539236
>>741539246
>>741539265
>>741539296
>>741539303
i played all of these, they don't even come close to DS

>>741538548
>millennials
wtf i thought fromslop was only ever praised by retarded zoomers

>>741538976
>upgrading armor
ISHYGDDT

>>741538548
Demon Souls came out in 2009 which is when many modern game trends started. Look at the other games from that year.
>Assassin's creed 2
>Batman Arkham Asylum
>Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:
>Uncharted 2
>Left 4 Dead 2
>Dragon Age: Origins
>Minecraft
>Infamous
>Prototype
>Borderlands

Demon Souls is the only game you can even call hard. When Dark Souls came out it marketed on the idea of being hard and unforgiving, and compared to Uncharted 2 it is. The people who cared about hard games needed a challenge after Ninja Gaiden 3 shit the bed.

there is no dark souls without git gud so this thread is based on a lie

>>741538548
It was. You may know the tricks & gimmicks from their bazillion games 15 years later, but back then nobody knew what the hell was happening - no guides, no frame of reference, no equivalent, nothing. Nevermind inside the game - no map, no quest log, losing souls, try the boss again, but here's 50 enemies along the way, every ingle one of each can kill you if you're not careful.
2011 was the year Skyrim came out, remember ... and nothing like Dark Souls existed, nobody knew what was going on. The 17 fans of Demon's Soul don't count.

>>741539756
I forgot Bayonetta and Just Cause 2. Lots of games that year.

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>>741539195
>name a harder game
Like 70% of the NES library maybe?

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>>741539195
Literally any 6th gen action game on the second to hardest difficulty or hardest difficulty. Then add the additional difficulty of getting top ranks. I don't think there's ever been a bigger "right place at the right time" game than Dark Souls. It successfully marketed itself as le hardest bideo game eberrrr made xd to retards who have little to no experience playing video games.

>>741540026
I think you're just salty that your niche series never broke out the way Souls did

>>741539964
most of the NES library isn't even hard, let alone DS-level hard

>>741539443
>If you really go all-in on them and make the Greatshield of Artorias you basically turn the game off right there, it's over.
You don't even need to go that far to cheese 99% of the game. Not even close. You put on the eagle shield and level endurance a bit and you can already block through almost everything. Even the basic bitch heater shield could block more than it should desu

>>741540026
If Ninja Gaiden was actually a hard game I wouldn't have been able to beat 90% of it just by mashing buttons. It's a meme hard game, same as Souls.

>>741540026
doesn't count if it's an option. no shit any game is going to be harder if you play it on hardest difficulty. DOOM is the hardest game of all time i guess.

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>>741538548
Good marketing. Although difficulty was never the point of DeS/DS, Miyazaki made statements prior to release claiming that DS1 would be more difficult than Demon's Souls. Bamco's marketing team rolled with this and invented the "Prepare to Die!" tagline in Western marketing, founded on Demon's Souls' reputation amongst players. Players were going into DS1 ready for an insanely difficult experience, and that posturing led to its cult reputation as one of the "hardest games of all time". Of course, DS1 wasn't really difficult, but it was difficult compared to other popular games, and people hadn't yet figured out how to abuse its systems to win.
>>741539173
>It became popular through word of mouth rather than critical acclaim
Are you retarded? It was a GoTY runner-up and one of the most popular games of the year. It had a spot in E3 2011, and Westerners were already familiar with From through Demon's Souls, which was a breakout hit.

>>741539801
>The 17 fans of Demon's Soul don't count

this revisionism needs to stop. This board was rife with discussion of the game, me and several classmates played it and discussed it. Even my fucking band director who kept a PS3 in his office had it.
This idea that DeS was some literal who game is such a fucking lie and self-report. If it was truly so rare in a beloved franchise the PS3 copies would be worth hundreds because of low print run but they're not because it was printed and sold to oblivion.

>>741539964
Try actually playing some NES games you stupid troon.

Dark Souls is harder than like 99% of NES library and the few games harder than it are mostly just broken kuso trash or just extremely unforgiving and tedious where you have only a few lives for the entire game.

>>741540026
>>741539303
NGB/NG2 is ONLY harder on MNM (a mode exclusive to it that wasn't even in the original game). NGB is also arguably the hardest action game to beat on the highest difficulty (ignoring challenge run/speedtrooning meme shit, in which case any game can be hard)

And Dark Souls only has one difficulty, while NG has multiple easier difficulty levels nowhere near as hard as Dark Souls.

>>741539451
Lmao, absolutely fucking not.

Reminder if the roles would be reversed and Dark Souls was as niche as Armored Core was, then you would be claiming Dark Souls is the most hardcore, underground, brutal action RPG out there.

You're just a braindead contrarian idiot.

>>741538548
Demon's/Dark Souls is hard as fuck and if you think otherwise there is a near 100% chance you are a zoomer shitstain playing it well after release with hundreds of hours experience from later Souls games and preconceived notions about the game.

Zoomers go back to DeS/DaS after having played all the other Souls games, guide in hand, look up the most OP cheese builds, and expect a kaizo bossrush where you sprint past all the enemies and the bosses are brutally difficult and chain 20 attacks together that you rollspam through, and are disappointed.

That's not what the game was at all or ever meant to be. It was always about the level designs themselves, the environments, the atmosphere, and the bosses were meant as more unique and memorable experiences that feel like they actually belong in that environment instead of just another rollspam jankfest against another humanoid boss.

It took me less time to go from first time playing Contra to a deathless clear than it did just to beat the first fucking area (1-1) of Demon's Souls.

I don't think zoomers realize the reputation Demon's/Dark Souls had around launch and for even a good decade later. It was the first of its kind and was much more punishing in terms of soul form and invasions. Souls was always seen as a very niche, very difficult, very hardcore game. This was not some casual's viewpoint, even those who were hardcore and underground universally acknowledged it as an extremely difficult and even obtuse game, viewed as far tougher than even the hardest of old school Nintendo-hard games.

>>741540531
obsessed unc

>>741540531
>Souls was always seen as a very niche, very difficult, very hardcore game
For poser tourist retards, maybe. Otherwise no.

>>741540739
Post clears or kys right now poser

>>741540382
>Westerners were already familiar with From through Demon's Souls
like 12 people maybe

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>>741540382
>This is an analogy we often use: We are trying to create a game that is spicy. And we want to make it as spicy as possible. But it’s edible and tastes good and leaves you wanting more.

>>741540531
what in the world?
Are you actually claiming that beating Undead Burg is harder than clearing Contra?

>>741540818
>Undead Burg
>Demon's Souls
Kill yourself you fucking secondary retard

>>741540461
How can you be this delusional about DS1? It's genuinely easy as fuck.

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>>741540782
Retarded zoomer.

>>741540818
Beating Contra is pretty easy, takes like 5 hours max, maybe 10-15 for a deathless run.

Most people don't even beat the first area of their first Souls until 10+ hours in. That's one of the biggest difficulty humps as you are totally new to the mechanics and systems and also have very basic build and no way to level up.

>>741540872
Other way around. The historical revisionism here is CRAZY, and I can only assume with near 100% likelihood that you are a zoomer shitstain subhuman that never was on message boards around 2009-2011.

>>741540906
Look, I get you and your nerdy band mates were into it, but no one I knew had ever even heard of Demon's Souls until Dark Souls blew up. And it was mostly in a "did you know that they made a game before this one?" way

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>>741538976
You forgot the most important one.
>Stamina actually needed to be meaningfully managed
Dark Souls is not hard in retrospect but you have to understand that the last decade of "action" games had been dominated by hack n slash games like god of war, DMC, etc where no such management really existed and you could mash away. A whole generation of gamers who don't have patience or any knowledge of constant meter management so stamina really threw a lot of people for loop as they tried to wrap their heads around it. Seriously if you watch a lot of old lets plays of people playing dark souls 1 or dark souls 2 around release they have very little patience and handle stamina poorly.
We can also bring up how games generally had less care for the environments/levels so many gamers weren't used to danger ready to pop up around every corner. They just run around like every thing they have to deal with will be out in the open 10 feet away from them before they deal with it.

Again i'm focusing primarily on the PS2 generation and some of the 3D games before that, not gaming as a whole. Some of the most popular games in those eras have absolutely nothing that "teaches" you skills that cane be applied to dork souls so these gamers were completely unprepared for the souls experienced.

>>741540906
>>741540998
Demon's Souls was cult classic status, definitely well-known by enthusiasts and people on the internet, but it took off much more with Dark Souls and gained retroactive popularity. It had critical acclaim and mulitple publications gave it RPG of the Year, so it was never like some complete no-name literally who game.

Funny thinking Dark Souls was the normalfag moment for the series, and then it had another one with Dark Souls PC, Dark Souls 3, then Elden Ring, each time getting bigger and bigger.

>>741540998
>but no one I knew had ever even heard of Demon's Souls until Dark Souls blew up
That's not true at all.

I have friends that are not really gamers and only occasionally play western AAA games and before Dark Souls had ever come even they were well aware Dark Souls was going to be a "super hard game" by reputation of Demon's Souls alone.

>>741541136
The mythos around Bloodborne helped expand the series. This game only for PS4 with full orchestral music and huge bosses. I think it helped make the prospect of DS3 cooler.

>>741540998
>no one I knew had ever even heard of Demon's Souls until Dark Souls blew up
That's because your friends were 5 years old when DeS came out. I gave you empirical evidence, and you gave me an anecdote. That you weren't around when DeS was relevant doesn't mean it was never relevant to begin with. I'm not arguing that DS1 wasn't the more popular game or that its later success didn't overshadow DeS; I'm arguing that DeS was far from niche. DeS wouldn't have won Gamespot's 2009 GoTY award if it weren't moderately popular.

>>741541136
Also want to add that its popularity was basically entirely word of mouth, Demon's Souls had a small budget and near non-existent marketing. Even in Japan, the quality was so remarkable that many people were importing copies. It was really a watershed moment in gaming, we had never seen an action RPG/dungeon crawler like this before ever. It was such an incredible breath of fresh air, the likes of which the industry had never seen.

Truly great games will ALWAYS rise to the top.

>>741541295
That doesn't change the fact that Demon's Souls was niche compared to Dark Souls.

>>741540739
>For poser tourist retards, maybe. Otherwise no.
Ironic. What made them hard is that nobody knew how to beat them when the games were new. Everybody on the internet had to figure it out together. The formula is stale now after over a decade of souls likes everyone knows what to do so if you play it today it isn't as hard. Ninja Gaiden 2 on Master Ninja is much harder from a pure skill stand point than Dark Souls but I never had to ask myself what to do next. Also the time Demon Souls came out every game was extremely easy. The whole 7th Gen was the start of handholding in games in general so the Souls games stood out a lot.

>>741540958
Yeah I'm so "braindead" I didn't need the internet to beat DS1 easily. Look in a mirror, retard.

>>741541492
>What made them hard is that nobody knew how to beat them when the games were new.
What are you talking about? The blockers in these games is just shit like beating a boss which is only ever a skill issue, not solving puzzles or figuring out where to go next or something.

Why are people acting like you need a guide to beat these games? I bet all of them without ever looking anything up at all. I only look shit up after I beat them to see if there's anything I missed. Actually, I concede I needed to look up how to access the DLC for Dark Souls but From fully expected people wouldn't be able to figure it out and just straight up posted the instructions on their website.

>>741541468
Now you've shifted the goalposts from "DeS was niche" to "DeS was niche compared to DaS". I've explicitly conceded the latter earlier. Let me remind you:
>I'm not arguing that DS1 wasn't the more popular game or that its later success didn't overshadow DeS; I'm arguing that DeS was far from niche
That DeS was comparatively niche compared to fucking DARK SOULS doesn't make it a niche game. Please, zoomanon, I'm trying to be polite. Lurk 1000 moar years before posting.

>>741541295
Demon's Souls sales were very slow burn though. It sold 930k lifetime, only 150k which came from first month, and had under 250k total by six months (US sales)

That means almost 75% of its sales came over six months after release, which is an *extremely* high percentage

>>741541763
>a game that was refused to publish by Sony in US and Europe, and when it was finally published by Atlus in US had only initial shipment of 15k units is not niche
retard

>>741538548
Probably the whole
>prepare to...LE DIE!!!
Thing

>>741541809
Because it received almost no marketing from Sony. Sony has straight up admitted they thought it was going to be a huge bomb and so didn't put much effort into it. But word was well and truly out by the time of Dark Souls. Dark Souls only exists in the first place because Demon's Souls was a very well known game.

>>741540872
then just name a harder game, we're all waiting

>>741540531
I just played it as the first souls game ever for me, completely blind, and there were only 3 bosses i didnt one shot and all of them i killed on the second try

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>>741541945
>because Demon's Souls was a very well known game.
You really are a fucking retard

>>741538548
you had to be there

>>741541706
>What are you talking about? The blockers in these games is just shit like beating a boss which is only ever a skill issue, not solving puzzles or figuring out where to go next or something.
I'm guessing you played them years after release then. Everyone knows not to put points in resistance, how to cure curse, etc. But when the other game on the self at gamestop was Uncharted 2 you can see why people thought it was hard. Every game listed in this thread that people are saying is considered harder than Dark Souls is not from the 7th Gen or a Ninja Gaiden game a series know for being really hard.

>>741542039
Do you think Namco was eager to finance Dark Souls because nobody had ever heard of Demon's Souls before? They were absolutely riding on the coattails of Demon's Souls. They knew this would be a multiplat success.

>>741538548
Every fucking person I see 'first time' gwyn somehow magically knows to try parying him. Then every single one makes a 40m retrospective talking about how gwyn being a 'weak anticlimax boss' is thematic or intentional or what have you.

Bitch don't even PRETEND you pressed the parry button even a single god damn time through your entire first playthrough after testing it out in the asylum, Gwyn's hard as fuck with near zero downtime between actions if you're fighting him head-on, and he hard hard punishes the crutch slow-swinging black knight weapons that many / most new players will be rocking most of all. The game's just tainted by too much cultural penetration for its own good is all, everyone who's gaming now has encountered its mechanics somewhere else and so are coming in with at the time unintended levels of genre knowledge. It's the difference in design mentality between mario bros 1 and 2, you don't introduce the nutbuster 9000s until AFTER everyone's learned how to stomp a goomba

>>741542139
>Everyone knows not to put points in resistance
The game straight up tells you what each stat point does.
>how to cure curse
The game also tells you this.

You sound like someone who only came to the game from online discussion. The rest of us actually bothered to do things like read the item descriptions and noticed there's a "help" option on the stat screen and actually looked at what leveling up each stat did to the rest of the stats.

>>741542313
Can you even name a single other game that requires you to read something? Stuff like this is just proof that Dark Souls is the hardest game of all time.

>>741541494
sorry to have hurt you like that anon. you are smart. maybe next time, you will even reply to the correct post

>>741542002
Already did but ok. Armored Core Last Raven
Sekiro
Any of the good Super Monkey Balls

>>741542039
>anon presents well-articulated arguments
>you bitch and cry

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>>741541809
See >>741541373. DeS achieved relative popularity in NA in its first month due to surprisingly high sales, which only grew as it was picked up and shared by critics, explaining the low release sales compared to the lifetime sales figure. It gained cult status, and that cult was relatively large. That its sales on release didn't compare to some of the biggest games of its time doesn't mean it didn't exceed sales expectations, or that it was condemned to be a niche shovelware title like some of From's earlier games.
>>741541889
>initial shipment of 15k
But it went on to exceed that 10x and sell 150k in its first month, you disingenuous retard. See picrel. Also see >>741540906.
>>741542039
>no argument
You lost.

>>741542313
>the game tells you how to cure curse
where?

>>741542264
>Every fucking person I see 'first time' gwyn somehow magically knows to try parying him. Then every single one makes a 40m retrospective talking about how gwyn being a 'weak anticlimax boss' is thematic or intentional or what have you.
Fair point, Gwyn is the largest enemy parry works on in DS1 and he can be hard if you don't parry.
>Bitch don't even PRETEND you pressed the parry button even a single god damn time through your entire first playthrough after testing it out in the asylum,
Well now you're saying dumb shit, parrying in DS1 is generally easy and highly rewarding.

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>>741542687
The giant popup that appears after you get cursed.

>>741538548
terrible unintuitive controls
the game doesn't tell you anything
you can go to the skeleton zone on accident and get killed over and over
having to run back through the whole level to the boss

it wasn't as much difficult as it was annoying as shit to play which the average millenial conflated with difficulty while soifacing

>>741542556
if that is your best answer then i'm gonna keep calling DS hard

>>741542385
Ok now we know you're trolling. Well done, good bait was had. Everyone go home now.

>>741542687
You meet two merchants that sell the item that cures curse before entering new londo ruins. It straight up says the item cures curse.

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Because with every new console generation games used to get easier and more handholdy, Dark Souls was a hard reset for the whole industry and the reason why every game nowadays tries to be super challenging and hardcore.

>>741538976
you only need 10 estus at a time in DS1 and pinwheel is absolutely not late game

>>741542643
Left is definitely true. For example, nobody used to say "You didn't beat the game" to people who used the pause glitch to beat yellow demon in megaman. It was just a given it's a bullshit boss. They certainly never said that shit to people who didn't beat the whole game using nothing but the megabuster.

>>741542729
why would you even point this out lmao

>>741542313
>The rest of us
I don't think you actually played it when it came out. Playing it without a guide years later is not the same. That is a challenge people tell you to do if you are new to the souls games to emulate how it felt playing back then. Games used to come with a guide book with all the secrets in hints laid out for you that you'd buy separately at gamestop or look up on gamefaqs. Demon Souls and Dark Souls didn't have this when they were new. It took a while for people to find everything. The 7th console gen was when everything was casualized so the Souls games were by far the hardest games you could get at the time.

>>741542973
To prove the anon asking is retarded? Lmao cope harder

>>741542973
It's retarded, but I can sort of understand why they added it. Getting cursed is the single most debilitating status effect in the game, and you can theoretically get to the Depths without meeting Oswald or the female undead merchant, even if unlikely on a first playthrough.

>>741540320
do you think Halo Legendary counts since it carved out its own niche and has its identity as a difficulty?

>The game is hard because it doesn't tell you basic information
>This is good game design

>>741539484
I have played all of these and DS doesn't even come close to being difficult. I'm pretty sure both Red Alert 2 and Warcraft 3 campaign on higher difficulty literally takes 100x more skill and harder than literally all From game put together. Literally.

>>741540906
and how many of those sales were japanese vs us and yurop?

>>741538548
Gamers are malevolent cattle. Give them what they really want, an affirmation of their narcissistic delusions that they're better than everyone else, and they are clay in your hands. That fundamental defect of character is what Fromsoft built an empire off of

>>741538548
Spoiler: normies getting into games psyopped themselves and bullied anyone else who didn't play/beat it by saying git gud.
Obviously the most retarded contingent of the population to "prove themselves" played it and joined the bandwagon.
Dark Souls is a great piece of art, it feels like a repository for Vidya and dark fantasy tropes for a dnd setting they thought it was sure to fail, but from a game standpoint it's pretty bad.

>>741543242
I'm stealing this, you couldn't have articulated it better.

>>741543019
>It took a while for people to find everything.
We're not talking about 100% the game or something. We're just talking about beating it. It is not even remotely implausible for someone to beat Dark Souls without using a guide when it came out. I did it. Probably tens or even hundreds of thousands did it. Doing it on release day or 10 years later doesn't really matter. It's not about when. It's just about whether or not you have any foreknowledge of the game.

There is a lot of shit in the game that you're not likely to do without referencing other sources, like some of the npc side quests and shit, but beating the game itself is not really that big a deal. The big blocker for everyone in Dark Souls was not "I'm lost! I don't know where to go! I don't know what to do!". It was just "I can't beat Ornstein and Smough. Oh, nevermind. I finally managed to beat them."

>>741538548
they didn't. everyone else did. you had to be there and obviously were not.

>>741543376
>director of the game straight up said he designed the game to be very difficult
>all the marketing was about how the game is very difficult
>HURR DURR THEY NEVER PSYOPED ANYONE EVERYONE ELSE DID
You clearly weren't there yourself.

>>741543239
Japan accounted for 20% of the sales at the absolute most. I don't know why you think this game set in a Western fantasy setting was super popular in Japan but no one in the West played it. Literally every From souls game has Western gamers as its main demographic.

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>>741543239
In Japan, DeS sold 36k copies in its first week and a total of 134k copies after 5 months. This is extremely low compared to the game's release in the US, where it sold 150k copies in its first month alone.

Every single Monster Hunter has been harder than Souls games. Even Wilds. This simple fact mindrapes /v/ for some reason.

Crash Bandicoot 1 is like Dark Souls

>>741543327
>Doing it on release day or 10 years later doesn't really matter. It's not about when. It's just about whether or not you have any foreknowledge of the game.
It does matter when because the souls formula has been done so many times people know what to expect now. Going back and saying "oh Sekiro was harder" after beating it isn't the same. Once you beat one soulslike game they all become easier. When Demon Souls was first out and hardly anyone was playing it the whole game was a big challenge. That is why the word of mouth was so good and it is why they marketed Dark Souls on is difficulty.

>The big blocker for everyone in Dark Souls was not "I'm lost! I don't know where to go! I don't know what to do!". It was just "I can't beat Ornstein and Smough. Oh, nevermind. I finally managed to beat them."
You have to explore and find things in the game in order to beat them. That is when people get stuck because they haven't explored enough.

>>741543317
Screencap it for reddit or X "the everything app" they should love it.

>>741543185
no, that's a different thing. we are talking about games where the difficult option is the only way to play. it's one thing to design your game to be hard from the getgo and another when your game is hard because someone added an enemy spam mode to it last minute

>>741539195
romancing saga minstrel song
>umm ummm no it's super easy compared to dark souls
post your save you fucking larper

>>741543663
>You have to explore and find things in the game in order to beat them. That is when people get stuck because they haven't explored enough.
The paths are largely very obvious and not something the player is not going to see is an option available to them. The only path that is necessary that I might concede a player may not find on their own is the jump in Anor Londo. Apart from that you're not going to miss anything you need.

Also, let's not forget the game has a player controlled inbuilt hint system. That shit was available right from day fucking one.

>>741543109
>dark souls is easy bro you just have to read item descriptions and look around
>ok where does it tell you about curse?
>oh it tells you after you get cursed

>>741543230
>have to pull out RTS to compare to an action rpg

>>741543835
>player controlled inbuilt hint system. That shit was available right from day fucking one.
Wow I wonder why they put that in.

>>741543826
fuck it, i'll double up and add yggdra union on gba, too. it came out around the same time as fraud souls

>>741543948
It's the game's "easy mode" for retards. Most people never bothered reading those messages.

>>741543239
this nigga doesn't know asians actually hate fromslop

>>741543857
To be fair, two early-game vendors sell purging stones, so knowing how to cure curse before you get hit with the debuff depends on whether you chose to read or not.

>>741543987
where'd you get that from?

>>741543987
Alright anon I'm sure the mimic didn't get you because you noticed the chain was different and you figured it out, no other reason.

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>>741538548
Souls was just the right janky dungeon crawler at the right time to completely mindrape a generation of gamers into thinking of it as some kind of spiritual revelation.

>>741543925
Skyrim on Legendary is harder.

>>741544015
yeah all asians have the same opinion, from Taiwan to Korea!

>>741544228
How much does one mimic death set you back, though? Hardly at all.

>>741544284
name 1 thing asians have a vastly different opinion on, other than each other

>>741539195
Pac man is harder than any fromshit game

>>741544228
I never claimed I beat Dark Souls without dying once.

This argument is purely about whether or not it's possible to beat Dark Souls without using a guide. I say anyone who claims it's not possible to beat Dark Souls without looking things up online is a retard.

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Mayn, it was better in 2012. Kinda shit but way better.

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>>741544284

>>741543925
Nigger, he asked what games are harder than DS, not what ARPG games are harder than DS. Those familiar with RTS and fighting game consider From's games to be meh when it comes to difficulty.

>>741544371
If your goal is to reach the end, Pac Man is absurdly difficult. But that's not most people's goal so I think it needs to be clarified what exactly we're comparing here.

>>741544557
>Chinese, Korean, and Japanese speakers hate SoTE
It's truly grim how these demographics have degenerated into gachafags.

>>741544607
>Nigger, he asked what games are harder than DS, not what ARPG games are harder than DS
nigga it's fucking obvious i am asking for action games. if you have to switch genres to present something harder then you are full of shit.

>>741544935
>won't say nigger with a hard r
>didn't communicate clearly in the first place and blames others
>extremely narrow taste in games
You are an absolute negroid zoomer tourist, holy shit

>>741541373
I bought an imported copy in EU just to play it because I was already a FROM Software fan.
It was so worth it.

>>741545216
>complains about muh hard r
>switches to "negroid" in the same post

>>741544813
It's just people with a higher average IQ reacting to an incredibly mid combat system stretched to its breaking point in some of the emptiest maps that have ever existed.

>>741544935
OK then nigger
>Rabbi-Ribi
>CoD series on Veteran and Realistic diff
>Sifu
>Barony (although this game is 100x more bullshit compared to aRPG)
>Remnant 2 (though not that much)

That's what I played recently and those games felt more difficult compared to DS. Is that enough to satisfy your zesty-ass criteria?

>>741545428
Remnant games are absolute bullshit on the highest difficulty if you're playing solo.

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notice how he never vouched for fraud souls in the face of the real big dog in the thread

>>741544397
>This argument is purely about whether or not it's possible to beat Dark Souls without using a guide. I say anyone who claims it's not possible to beat Dark Souls without looking things up online is a retard.
Then you are arguing with yourself because the argument I was making was that Dark Souls was hard without a guide not that it wasn't possible. "Dark souls is easy" is something that is only said by people who played sekiro or elden ring first and went back to play dark souls for the first time. Nobody was saying dark souls was easy when it first came out. Have experience in other souls games or just knowledge on how they tend to work gives you a big advantage. The souls games are the hardest games of the 7th gen. You could make an argument for Ninja Gaiden 2 but I had a much harder time beating Dark Souls the first time than Ninja Gaiden.

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>>741545838
>The souls games are the hardest games of the 7th gen
are you sure you want to declare absolute statements like that?

>>741545996
Name a harder one. I haven't seen anything in this thread that is 7th gen and harder.

>>741539156
Normies didn't play demons souls. The average gamer wasn't even aware of fromsoft until dark souls except for the handful of armored core spergs

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>>741538548
PC users. This shit started with the release of the PtDE for PC. Before that... DeS/DS1 had a comfy community of people who liked old school RPGs.
One of the few games/series where a PC release was a mistake.

>>741540125
It is if you take the limited lives into account, which is entirely artificial but still the main part of the difficulty. I'm not good at games at all but I've eventually beaten every boss in every FromSoft game, and I would never even attempt trying to beat the average NES game. The amount of memorization and trial and error, figuring out exactly where to stand or how to approach every enemy on every level, and the length of the near-flawless execution you need to get to the end in one go, is way too much.

>>741539156
>Because gaming became normie-tier between Demons Souls and Dark Souls 1
>2009 to 2011
?

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>>741546107
i named a few that you didn't address, including one that was in that fucking gen, but pic related would genuinely make you shit yourself

>>741546148
the average NES game can be casually beaten by fucking arin from game grumps while he chats with his friend on the couch.
most early levels in NES games are super easy even, and the games only really crank up near the end.
i have no idea where you got the thought that you would not be able to beat NES games if you got through shit like ornstein & smough.

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>"millennials" brought up in arcades, are those who screamed for casual "accessibility" this in every game
>to where we today most games play themselves and gameplay often isn't even a consideration
Positively potato.

>>741546256
I don't know what post you are referring to if it is this one >>741545428 then I disagree because I'm not counting playing on the hardest difficulty and the other games are post Souls. Also Sifu isn't too hard. I haven't played The Last Remnant so I won't comment on it but most games that gen were a cakewalk. Games have gotten harder due to Dark Souls influence. Saying something is the hardest game is subjective and I haven't played every gen 7 game but it was definitely the hardest for me.

>>741546410
By playing them? Like I said, the length of the near-flawless execution is the issue. In Souls you can get hit countless times and get a dozen heals per boss or section between bonfires, and if you fail you just try again, eventually you make it. The average boss fight lasts for what, a few minutes maybe? NES games you get can get hit 0-5 times, multiplied by 3 or so lives, for the entire game or you have to do it all over again. To this day I could never beat Contra without the Konami code.

>>741546147
PC games are "hard" as standard. It's console games that are typically movie games made to be easily beaten by braindead morons. Nobody on PC was amazed at this difficult game that was something they've never experienced before. They were just happy to see a console game that isn't just a movie game.

>>741546785
>To this day I could never beat Contra without the Konami code.
Because the game is a glorified scam.

Games back in the NES days fall into two categories; games that take about 20 minutes to beat so they are made stupid hard to pad playtime and games that take about 20 minutes to beat and were originally arcade games designed to steal money from children and so they were stupid hard.

>>741538548
better question is how they gaslit retards into thinking broken bugs = game difficulty

>>741546693
no, >>741543982 that was me. this was released in the xbox generation when the ds lite and psp released. and before you say anything about previous gen hardware, a shit ton of games released on the previous gen during this time. see: sonic generations

>>741547189
i meant to say sonic unleashed, but there were plans for generations on wii, i think

>>741546785
i guess you're right. point well made.

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>>741546917
holy newfag. We are talking about the late 00s/early 10s.

>>741547061
Funny enough most bugs in DS1 were extremely helpful exploits. Quantity storage, Strong Magic Shield, Dragon Head Stone, spellswap, moveswap, wrongwarp, etc.

But yeah, Ornstein's a glitchy shitter.

>>741547535
>We are talking about the late 00s/early 10s.
Yes. And? What's your point?

>>741538548
It didn't.
You're a mentally ill terminally online brown child with the IQ of cold dog vomit who lives in a fantasy world.

I never played a frmosoft game (I played a bit of DS1 and just stopped playing when I died to some armored pig that didn't have armor on it's ass), which one should I start with

>>741538548
Because western games didn't know how to do boss fights. Big fights was either enemy waves or a QTE

>>741547732
NTA but at that point in time "PC games" were already mostly ports and multiplats, plus the vast majority of games that were primarily PC had saving/loading, completely negating any difficulty.

>>741548684
Bitch boy you probably don't even know what Crusader Kings and Jagged Alliance are.

>>741544250
I'm not going to watch that video but he's right. Matt's videos get some things right, but they get so much wrong. I won't elaborate further just now because it's quite obvious if you have a functional brain.

>>741548778
nta but crusader kings is easy as fuck the only "difficulty" is learning all the mechanics once you are familiar with them you can got from small count to emperor of half of europe in like 2-3 generations I've done it several times and I'm not even good at the game
it's an amazing game for roleplaying but as a strategy game it's braindead easy

>>741548778
Jagged Alliance 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, but you're delusional if you're touting it or Crusader Kings as some sort of hardcore difficult experiences not found on consoles.

>>741548969
Dark Souls is also easy when you learn all the mechanics. What's your point?

>>741547978
Dark Souls. Don't look up anything.

>>741538548
FromSoftware did absolutely nothing. It was marketing, as always.
Gen Z is extremely susceptible to marketing because they do not possess critical thinking.

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>>741549815
this

>>741549758
Sure. I'll play it offline so I don't get those messages. Do I play the original PC port or the new one?

>>741538548
Dark Souls IS pretty hard if it's your first time playing the game. But once you finish it once and have a rudimentary understanding of the various mechanics, it immediately gets significantly easier.

>>741538548
Peoole who don't get it don't remember just how bad gaming had gotten in late 00's and early 10's

>>741549850
>created by GRRM
>"it looks incredible" -GRRM

>>741549815
>FromSoftware did absolutely nothing
Miyazaki had to have approved the "Prepare to Die" marketing tagline from the trailers, as well as PtDE.
>Gen Z
DS1 is a millennial game DOE

>>741540382
>Although difficulty was never the point of DeS/DS
hahahahahha that stupid quote will never stop being funny.
Fromsoft games are supposed to be difficult, but not to the extreme many think they are.

>>741549815
>FromSoftware did absolutely nothing
You mean apart from deliberately designed an obtuse and difficult game? They weren't trying to make what they thought was a normal game and people just happened to find it difficult much to their surprise. Miyazaki has said multiple times he designed a game that is difficult on purpose. He also said he wanted a lot of stuff that is not intuitive so that people would have to work together collectively in order to solve it.

>>741540817
IMAGINE

>>741538548
It's journos who are to blame

>>741543279
It's actually a really good game :)

>>741551176
It's a functional game that plays into the fantasy of being the average dude in a big scary world but as a game it's pretty bad.

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>>741539195
Call of duty world at war, on veteran.

>>741539296
Literally has easy mode

by the standards of mainstream popular releases it's quite difficult, that's the truth. comparing it to even the 5th gen I'd still say it's harder than the average release, something like tombraider 3 might be harder but that's considered one of the toughest games of that gen.

>>741551310
It was great. The fantasy ARPG combat was way ahead of the competition at the time, which was mostly stuck in one of two categories: incredibly basic, janky and silly sword-swinging, or clicking on an enemy and waiting for the the animation to finish, but it's actually just dice rolls under the hood and what's on screen isn't anywhere close to an accurate representation. You had other more action-oriented games with better combat of course, but those tended to be more imprecise, fast-paced, button-mashing, musou-likes. The kind of relatively precise and deliberate combat introduced in Souls, like a fighting game in slow motion, I'm not sure if it had really been seen before.

On top of that it was throwing you into the deep end of a hostile world at a time when everyone else was doing kid glove tutorials and games that played themselves. It was really a much-needed shock to show what games could be.

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>>741546193
Gaming was yellow paint tier from like 2006 to probably 2015 where indies and AA were finding success.
Triple A would continue the trend of yellow paint slop but the point is the era where basically 99% of games were casual slop was gone.

>>741553223
ill smash the cunt with a hammer thank you that thing aint natural

name 1 series harder than souls
yep you can't
1 boss harder than malenia
yep you can't

>>741553865
what about gothic?

>>741553959
The only hard part of gothic is forcing yourself to play such a terrible game.

>>741554107
AKA i cant play it but won't admit to it

>>741539195
Castlevania
Castlevania III
Castlevania Adventure
Castlevania Adventure II
Ys Chronicle Nightmare Difficulty
Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl (Expert difficulty)
Alisia Dragoon
Greendog the Beached Surfer Dude
Getting optional endings in the majority of bullet hells

>>741548684
>NTA but at that point in time "PC games" were already mostly ports and multiplats,
Nigger, The Men of War series alone disproves your opinion, not to mention the many strategy games of that era.

>PC had saving/loading,
Nigger, the entirety of From's catalogue of game have a save/load function.

>>741551413
Actual PTSD right here. Kalameet has nothing on this bullshit.

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>>741538548
Dark Souls was one of few games of their time that actually punishes players in a significant manner that eventually caught on with the mainstream, 'Prepare to Die' marketing be damned. It may have taken Demon's to get there too, but regardless a turning point was made in a time where vidya was generally soft.

Today, third-person action games are now pretty standardized like most genres, with the devil only in the details, and so more people are used to this kind of game now than they were back then.

>>741554616
Strategy games are the exception, but they also became more and more of a niche at that time. RTS was already on its deathbed in 2005.

And obviously I meant saving/loading anytime/anywhere, allowing you to easily save scum.

>>741539195
any monster hunter before world
any smt
any ninja gaiden

>>741538548
>Dark Souls is actually EASY because uuuuh.... Ninja Gaiden exists!
>no I never actually played it haha

The newest NG game has as many CCU players as the original Dark Souls game that hasn't been available for sale for over 10 years

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>>741555443
pic related

>>741555480
Hilarious and deserved, NGfags are some of the most obnoxious and delusional fans despite seemingly how few of them there are.

>>741555443
>The newest NG game has as many CCU players as the original Dark Souls game that hasn't been available for sale for over 10 years
mogged

>>741555443
It's easy because you can just circle strafe 99% of the enemies and there's nothing they can do about it.

>>741551413
There's a difference between hard difficulty and poorly designe fucking anoying difficulty.

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>>741538548
It is hard. Fuck off

>>741559294
No their isnt

>>741559513
It's been so long since I've gone that way. They knew what they were doing.

>>741559531
>their
ESL opinions are irrelevant

>>741538548
if you zoom out from internet enthusiasts and consider the gaming diet of casuals who make up the silent majority of the gaming market, Souls is probably the hardest game series they will actually play or try. it's mostly just ignorance and the gaming equivalent of Nolanfags who unironically think he is the best director in the history of cinema.

>magic
>spear shield poking
>fat roll poise stacking
>zwei in the cemetery
>at least one black knight weapon drop
There are so many ways a player could trivialize the difficulty or stumble into an easy playstyle. You would have to do really dumb shit like missing the regular uggrade embers, wasting a ton of souls on resistance, or killing key npcs to make completing the game hard in your save file.

>>741560941
Doing that doesn't count. You have to compare a Dark Souls challenge run to the default difficulty in other games. Also, it has to be a 7th gen game, and an action-RPG, and at least as long as Dark Souls, and just as well-known. Then you see how hard it is to name a game more difficult than Dark Souls.

>>741538548
Marketing team and trailers "you die a lot", "prepare to die again and again", etc
Generally it was one of easier games, thanks to mmo mechanics like "death is cheap and you won't lose progress" and others.
So mostly very agressive marketing and pcfags being happy to get any console games back then.

The better question is, how and more imprtant why, soulsborne fanbase are so sure that these games are "anti industry" and "anti gamejournos", when they were shileld by said journos before even release.

>>741539756
>>Batman Arkham Asylum
Was definetely more brutal than das

>>741560941
Don't forget the drake sword. First playthrough I got it legit trying to cheese the dragon with a bow. Trivialized everything up to anor londo.

>>741539195
I hate you nonwhite zoom zooms so fucking much.

>>741546193
What else happened in 2011? Think REALLY hard. Yes, videogames became incredibly mainstream within those two years moreso than before.

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>>741539195
nioh
nioh 2
haven't played 3 so idk about it

>>741562363
These games are just as easy

>>741539685
kys

this is a really bizarre troll by this guy, he takes the fallacy that souls isn't "hard at all" and then uses it as a launching point to claim that anyone who thinks certain old games are harder are actually casuals for not getting clears, of games that are easier than dark souls.

Dark Souls is really difficult. If you play the game blind.
Which none of you did, you're all larping.

>>741563871
I did worse than that, I had an asshole friend guide me in ways that would only make my life harder whenever I asked a question.

>>741538548
If you compare it to things like Zelda and Kingdom Hearts, which were the closest things to it at the time, then yes it was way harder.

>>741563871
It's fairly tough if you think the dodge button is supposed to be used to avoid attacks instead of phasing through them.

>>741561429
>Don't forget the drake sword. First playthrough I got it legit trying to cheese the dragon with a bow. Trivialized everything up to anor londo.
The shitty Drake Sword is already utterly outclassed by the time you have to fight Quelaag

>>741564269
You'll be alright rolling away from most enemies in Dark Souls 1, mostly just Black Knights and the big skeleton dogs coming to mind. It's later on in the games where everything is designed to catch rolls.

>>741563998
>I did worse than that, I had an asshole friend guide me in ways that would only make my life harder whenever I asked a question.
Name 3 examples

>>741538976
Upgrading armor is pointless when Stone armor exists and available right after undead burg.

>>741538548
PS3 was plagued with handholdy mechanics. This game did a 180º and defied the norm back then.

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>>741555480
>mogged by vanilla ds2

>>741565268
>PS3 was plagued with handholdy mechanics
No, just normie shit

>>741538548
because it came out during the 7th console generation, everything released around the same time was so unbelievably easy that a dolphin could beat it.
Seriously, look at what games were popular around the time. 7th gen was when games were at their most patronising.

>>741540531
You keep say shit like this, but even with minimal knowledge, in Souls you can patiently walk through an early level with shield up and enemy attacks will bounce off you. All the difficulty is in simply being aware of the enemy placements so you don't get hit by gocha traps and getting when you should let down your guard. This is slightly unintuitive at first, but requires very little twitch skill. The way that NES games will throw stuff at you at a rapid pace and expect you to clear out the entire game at once. NES Mario is ungodly more difficult than Souls without significant self imposed challenges once you know both games well, as its just so much easier to slip and flub a technical test in that and get punished so much worse for it.

>Souls was always seen as a very niche, very difficult, very hardcore game.
People weren't wrong to thing that, since it immediately punishes mashing way, way harder than a typical action game at the time would, which was both shocking and refreshing. This lasts basically until you find how powerful good defensive equipment or magic is and then rape most of the rest of the game.

>>741540531
>Demon's/Dark Souls is hard as fuck
>no penalty for death
I bet you are one of faggots who called vanilla wow a hardcore experience, lmao

>>741540531
>Souls was always seen as a very niche, very difficult, very hardcore game.
Is that a bait? Or are zoomers THAT deluded?
It was one of the most popular e3 games, fucking retard. With every single gaming media telling how you should totally play it, year ahead of console launch

>>741539443
Armor helps you not get stunlocked by one or two puny hollows. In NG+ a stunlock from them can 100-0 even high hp characters if they don't have decent defence. It helps against bonewheels too.

>psy op
i'm so tired of retarded twitter words

>>741540320
>DOOM is the hardest game of all time i guess.
Which is funny because on most of the lower difficulty levels the game is pretty damn casual, and especially so with a mouse and modern source port.

The game desperately needed something between UV and Nightmare that's strategic but not so unfair.

>>741566448
Nightmare is just a difficulty where you need to have memorized the best route to the end of the level beforehand. The combat itself is still easy.

>>741543987
>It's the game's "easy mode" for retards.
The game should have forced you to be human in order to even see the messages, that would have been much more interesting and fair but at the same time you should have been able to recover your human status from your dropped pile of souls and I have honestly no idea why the games don't work that way

>>741546693
>I'm not counting playing on the hardest difficulty
That's an extreme copout, given how many games are balanced around the top difficulty and then cut down for the others.

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>>741559513
>hard
>shows bullshit
i think there's a difference between "hard" and "bullshit"

>>741546917
>PC games are "hard" as standard.
PC games are quicksavefests as standard, lol

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>>741567038
i can't believe that these horrible games are this popular

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>>741567113
>ds1 level design

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>>741567174
>it's hard but fair dood

>>741538548
You don't understand the atmosphere of the industry in the late 00s.

They were OBSESSED with making everything as dumbed down and handholdy as humanly possible in order to "appeal to the wider audience". Corridor level design, bullet sponge protagonists, braindead combat; everything to make sure that you're never forced to think or get better at the game. People latched on to this and Minecraft partially as a rejection of what the industry was trying to push on everyone.

>>741542794
It's better to go to New Londo for a bunch of easy loot. A character that can survive the depths can deal with the ghosts in New Londo, even if cursed.

>>741538976
this guy upgrades armor HAHAHAHAHA
but honestly, compared to DMC or other hack n slash slop it's difficult and punishes you for spamming the attack button like a retard

>>741546410
>got through shit like ornstein & smough
I 'got though' them first time by just mashing through Epstein's attacks with heavy armor on, I had enough HP I barely had to worry. There are so many of means of breaking the game like this that make it a joke.

>>741538548
They didn't. This is why the generational cutoff is wrong. Nobody born before 1990 that played vista was particularly surprised besides the fact that someone actually made something like it and put it out in the market of 2009 - 2012. That particular stretch was the era with things like Army of Two, Fallout 3, Saint's Row 2, etc, which I'm not denigrating but let's be honest here...

>>741567375
>but honestly, compared to DMC or other hack n slash slop it's difficul
Where zoomers like that even coming from?
You literally couldn't beat first level/tutorial of Bayonetta if you got hit even once because of time limit. While in dark souls you could get hit by first boss(giant ass demon with big mace, in case your zoomer brain doesn't remember) many times before even needing to heal

>>741544228
You can tank the mimic with high hp and descent defence, though.

>>741567406
>i was overleveled with the cheesiest build ever. it was easy
so you actually never beat them

Do I play the original DS1 or the remastered version? I haven't played anything in the series

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This person easily beat every single FROM game without any problem.
Soulsfags are famously shit at video games.

>>741559513
Jaaaank. What's worse is that if you go fast(you don't even need to sprint, just jog), then you will get over the bump without issue.

>>741552580
>comparing it to even the 5th gen
5th gen games tended to have really tough optional challenges for max % though, which is part of why it's the best gen. Souls actually such at doing proper completion challenges like this, as the RPG elements work against this.

>>741567643
That Wolong boss is bullshit though.

>>741567643
you autolose any argument by posting assmongoloid

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>>741567375
>but honestly, compared to DMC or other hack n slash slop it's difficult and punishes you for spamming the attack button like a retard
have you even played dmc? or are you this confident in your opinion because you played darksiders 2 and the old god of war games so now you think every hack n slash game is like that?

>>741567794
>god of war
god of war in god of difficulty is harder than most dmc games

>>741567643
>dude spent 1 hour trying to kill first boss, while complaining about him not floating in the air for few seconds during jump attacks
Dark Souls fandom is cancer of gaming industry

>>741567794
>yo DMC on satanic crack homofaggot setting (enemies have 1000000x more health and deal one gorillon more damage) is hard as fuck!!!
artificial difficulty

>>741567643
fluoride stare

>>741567358
>deal with the ghosts in New Londo, even if cursed
Being cursed makes the ghosts vulnerable to you in the first place, as otherwise the area is super risky if you don't know how to rush it

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>>741568071
i didn't even bring up dante must die, but to address your point
>artificial difficulty
so is shit souls?

>>741567576
I eventually returned with a more limited build, but the degree to which the game requires artificially imposed limitations to remain challenging is silly.

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>>741567576
>you didn't beat the boss because you... used the equipment and methods provided by the game to overcome him
are all soulshit fans like this?

>>741568351
any decent rpg allows you to break the game. it means that it's possible to be creative

the main reason why the game is hard is because it is very obtuse with its information. not because the actual execution is hard. when you play the game for the first time you have no idea what you are doing and thats where the difficulty comes from. you dont really know about upgrading armor, or exactly how stat bonuses work, or about getting cursed in the depths, or getting poisoned in blighttown, or all those things that make the game annoying and unpredictable.

>>741538548
If you didn't play it on ps3 or 360 in the first month of release you won't get it.
The Anal Rodeo archers, pre first update filtered an entire generation.

>>741538548
Because games were honestly fairly slow and clunky at the time, and Dark Souls had extremely unorthodox controls for a fighting game.

I remember when I first picked it up, back in 2011, it took me several days to get past undead burg. I look back at it now and I wonder what the fuck was wrong with me, struggling against the 3 bomb hollows outside of firelink, but I think games are just faster and more spastic now. Parrying as reaction based mechanic is in almost eveything, every game has a sprint/dodge/wallrunning nonsense, so meandering around is almost seen as comically slow now.

The internet and streamers also made thr game easier. Back then, Dark Souls had a slrt of arcane feel to it because it was poorly translated, and had no indication of what to do and where to go. The stats and weapon scaling system seemed nonsensical until you played for a bit. Leveling resistance (or failing to level resistance) was a meme, and the community generally kept up the mysteriousness by being vague on Gamefaqs.

There was also a rigid honor code that you were sort of forced to learn by trial and error. Communication being nonverbal was a massive departure at the time, remember, this is the era of CoD lobbies.

>>741569169
Nah, almost everyone is like this when they first pick up one of From's games. It's because they just control in a really weird way compared to a lot of other games.

>>741569169
>it took me several days to get past undead burg. I look back at it now and I wonder what the fuck was wrong with me, struggling against the 3 bomb hollows outside of firelink
It's funny, because while I didn't struggle immensely, when you first start, and if you try playing the game like a "regular action game" where positioning and being in vs out or range of attacks at the right time is what seems to be important, than that first set of staircases is going to be throwing all these gotchas at you, where you might try to engage with an enemy and find some other one pops up or that a hollow behind is throwing burning pots at you and you're trying to space out your attacks and figure when you'll get a turn to land hits.

Once you understand that, no, this doesn't matter and that you can draw out individual enemies and whack them to death after their attack hits and bounces off your shield, when seemed to be a challenge is released to be 'fake' and actually a test of knowledge, unless you deliberately throw away all of your defensive tools.

>>741538548
no one who played vidya before cod and movie games that play themselves thought it was le hard

>>741538548
Because its competition was Skyrim.
Thats it, end of thread.

>>741570356
The game does a very good job of at least initially seeming impossibly difficult though.

>>741567761
>um you're not allowed to show the collective retardation of soulsfags by showing a mouthbreathing roachlord breezing through our le hardcore gaemz
like cockstroke or however it goes

>>741570356
I've been playing games since before your grandfather spurting your father into your mother's cunt, mate. It is absolutely a hard game.

>>741554559
rondo of blood beats my face in but I can beat dark souls just fine so this is true :^)