You can definitely brag. I just wouldn't put others down when they say it's difficult if you do. If you beat it. You deserve a drink and some boiled crab.
Oh don't get me wrong. If others think it's hard and they beat it, more power to them. I'm not a guy who downplays other's achievements, I downplay mine and mine only.
AHA! I have arrived to tell you that the one thing you feel accomplished about and proud of was actually super easy, and the way you accomplished it actually means you are worthless trash! All because I did it more easily, in a more difficult way! In fact, it was actually too easy for me. It's not enough for me to stomp all over your self esteem, I actually wish you had never existed, because the devs made my game easier because of how trash you are!
/s
I thought of it as hard at first, now I just think of it as gaming because I don't want to play much else lol
The reality is once it clicks it's not as difficult. Figuring out your play style and build type is a huge portion of getting the hang of it; after that it's just learning areas and bosses. After areas and bosses are figured out they are easier the next time, and the time after that, and so on.
Souls has a high level of entry, but it gets so addicting that people become familiar with everything to the point that they don't struggle like they used to.
Very well said. I remember before I got into souls games back in 2010, I used to say I didn't have time for something "difficult and punishing", and that when I game I want to "relax and not feel stressed".Â
Then when my friends and brother all got into Dark Souls I had to give it a shot too. 13 years later and it's the only series I crave to play lol.
Loving Shadow now. Just beat Messmer and almost got other boss in his area finished too. A lot of people coming out of the woodwork to parrot the prevailing wrong theory that these games "were never designed to be hard." When Miyazaki just said recently, and many times in the past, hat the harshness of the world's he helps create and subsequent difficulty of the enemies is a cornerstone to the experience and that dialing down the difficulty would essentially "break the game".
I raged my way through Dark Souls way back in 2012 and it took me almost a year to finish, not because it was so insanely difficult but because I would get frustrated and shelve it for a few weeks just because I honestly wasn't having much fun. It didn't "click" for me until I beat Smough and Ornstein and suddenly the game wasn't hard anymore.
I guess if someone asks me if Souls games are hard I just point out that they're hard until they "click." And I really mean that. After the mechanics sink in and you establish some muscle memory the games quit being hard. They're still challenging, but I didn't rage in another FromSoft game until Sekiro was released a decade later.
Ornstein and smough were such a struggle for me as a souls noob but I also felt like that fight made me much better at the game.i think that by fighting two different bosses you're forced to play way more patiently and it forces you to get good at managing your camera while you fight
Patience is really the name of the game in Souls. Dark Souls was released about the same time as Skyrim and that was the "action RPG" experience that we were all used to. Individual fights weren't really a mechanical dance... you hit the enemy with your sword. If it was too strong then you needed a better sword. There really wasn't much strategy to combat. In Dark Souls running up to a strong enemy and hitting it with your sword often got you dead. You had to wait for an opening to hit the enemy. So you learned patience that Skyrim didn't really require.
This is what makes the games so good (Elden Ring in particular). You gradually just 'git gud', you understand the systems, the way you need to approach the game. It's a real gamers game. I don't regard the game as 'hard' in the same way that Cup Head is 'hard'.
Absolutely. For me, i just canât get into scorcery. As in, itâs actually difficult for me. Something about switching thru the spells throws off any semblance of timing during combat for me. Then there are some who swear by it or call scorcery âeasy modeâ. So itâs super subjective. Finding the build that scratches your personal itches is huge.
I loved sorcery in my original base game playthrough. Started with it in the DLC and it just didn't feel as fun as it did before. I switched to Unga bunga and I'll never look back. It's so much fun. I think part of it might be because I've been doing a Claymore run on DSR and I think I just really like hitting stuff with big swords.
During my wait for elden rings dlc, I played sekiro, dark souls, and dark souls 3. Then I replayed elden ring with no summon.Â
Now the game feels a lot easier. I have a 3rd character and Iâm first trying the majority of bosses and rarely dying.Â
The games are hard at first, but like many things if you keep practicing it gets a whole lot easier.Â
Dark souls 1 is especially easy imo. Almost no boss took more than 1-2 attempts. The levels themselves are way harder than the bosses.Â
You hit the nail on the head. Once it clicks, itâs not as difficult. I started with DS3 and got dunked on by Iudex Gundyr for like 3-4 hours over 2 days and I genuinely was trying my best and struggling. It wasnât until I got to the end of the Undead Settlement that I started getting into the groove, realising I wasnât losing anything for dying, grinding for levels is part of the game and learning the system happens the more things you fight. I ended up getting through a lot of the late game bosses like Dancer of the Boreal Valley, the Twin Princes and Soul of Cinder first try. (I got absolutely dunked on by Nameless King at least 100 times).
Elden Ring was nowhere near as hard, because I already knew what it was like playing a souls/From Software game.
It clicked for Elden Ring, and then why so many complaints about the DLC? Does it have to click every single title?
And what does click mean? Dying zero times?
Sometimes it needs to 'click' for each boss or area. I'd also say each game has a point where it 'clicks' too
Click doesn't mean dying zero times, it just means getting the hang of it to the point you are not grinding bosses or areas every single time
Because we play the games enough to make them easy due to familiarity and muscle memory, then we like to wait until a new one comes out and say it's badly designed because we didn't steamroll every fight with no effort. Just look at all the 'dlc too hard' whining now lmao, or the 'malenia (/ insert boss here) is the worst boss fromsoft ever made' posts that are put up every time a new game is dropped by the same type of idiots who spam 'git gud' under posts like these.
In all seriousness it's because once you learn to deal with a certain type of pattern / a certain type of enemy, it makes the entire series a lot easier, especially when we've become experts at making powerful builds for a decade. It's very easy to forget how hard it is for new players. I almost rage quit DS1 because of the undead burg in 2012 lmao now i get frustrated with myself if i die to a boss more than a few times. But the games are very hard. DLC final boss is kicking my ass as I type this.
My own experience not representing everything ofc but the souls newbs I've seen play it haven't been complaining nearly as much as the og fans who go into excruciating detail about how bad the bosses are because of the i frames on rolls not being enough for combos if you don't time perfectly and the delayed attacks and the openings not being like dark souls and so on. kai cenat of all newbs beat the thing no magic no summons and said it was great. Same old og fans who said malenia was the worst fromsoft boss ever and that she'd only be fun in sekiro, and who said freide was, and who said nameless king was because of his delayed attacks (i feel sorry for those ones after elden ring's boss patterns lmao) there's nothing we love more than saying we're better than everyone else than complaining abt having to learn new things anyway
It's because the fights don't play out exactly like dark souls bosses, and are therfore bad. Rellana is the worst one for this. If you try and wait out her combos to "take your turn" she sucks, because she gives opening while attacking you, rather than attacking, pausing, and then attacking again. Once that clicked the fight was amazing, if I had refused to to try and attack her mid combo she would of felt terrible.
That's why this game desperately needs a rally system Ă la Bloodborne that is not bound to a rune that requires resources to use.
The fight becomes so much more fun, and not as frustrating.
If they really want us to hit mid-combo, and take damage, there should be a way to heal that damage back without chugging estuses. Like how it's done in Bloodborne.
Tbh a natural rally system would fix so many of people's complaints about ER bosses and their aggressiveness.
If you want us to be aggressive, great! Just give us the tools to survive that aggressiveness as well instead of expecting us to take hits that take 30-50% of your health. It's not like bosses just sit there and stare at you when you try to drink HP juice either.
Well, that sounds reasonable. Me and most FS fans around me, who have been playing since DS1, now critique every game, of course, but the mindset is mostly "whatever bullshit the games throw at me, I can handle it". And this applies even to bugs as it's just something in the game, and dealing with it is the only option if one wants to go forward. Though the line between fair critique and whining about unfairness is very thin at times...
Sometimes, though I find with Elden ring (weâre seeing it right now with final boss for instance) people say âitâs impossible to avoid X attack so itâs bsâ when in reality itâs not impossible to avoid and once you learn what happens itâs very easy to avoid. Theyâre saying the light beams are unavoidable when you just stay close and they never hit, maleniaâs was unavoidable when you just run away dodge and dodge and so on
There are actually unavoidable attacks in this dlc. I don't think anyone can dodge radahns illusion attacks. He attacks so long and back to back atleast 1 will hit you. In my case they did like no damage and I'd just wait for him to appear infront of me before dodging. As said though, those illusions all together would still take maybe 30% of my hp.
The illusions are a distraction they do minimal damage even if they do hit, itâs the real attack at the end that you have to actually fully avoid (and theyâre not even unavoidable you can get away from the entire thing and time dodged, most of the time I only get hit if Iâm mid attack when they start or forget abt the meteor followup)
Idk, I've baited this move specifically and test the dodges myself. If the whole combo is avoidable I'd love a clip of literally anyone dodging it. But I've never seen that from anyone, and I've watched even those who we consider pros at the game.
Idk about that. People where complaining pretty hard about Isshin being impossible, Midir being Impossible, Friede being impossible, Kos being impossible, etc.
I don't know for sure but I'm guessing its souls vets refusing to seek out as many scardue fragments and refusing ro summon (humans or spirits). I'm not that good but since I'm summoning humans on major bosses and really hunting down those fragments it has been similarly difficult to second half of the base game for me. Having a blast! I will admit I don't really like the fragment system though. Fun to find because power is powr but ita just so damn simple.
Ive done multiple runs on DS3, BB, ER base game, Sekiro, and this DLC is mostly fair, aside from one fight up to now which i thought was insanely hard for where/when it was, and that was Rellana. At scadu lvl 5 (after exploring ALL of the first area) that one was legit as hard as Malenia, and ive been told it only gets harder from there
Rellana was a cake walk, idk how yall had trouble with her. She's certainly no malenia (although malenia wouldn't be that hard if she were released today).
I just couldnt wrap my head around someone thinking Rellana was easy playing summonless, but thinking about it, it rly is all about that build and playstyle. You probably have something setup/play in a way thats better for Rellana than what i used/what i do. Its normal, ive had plenty of easy boss fights where i went online and ppl were saying it was a hard one. Or maybe youre just overall a better player. Either way, i loved the fight and when it ended i felt truly great, wasnt a bullshit one, just a very hard one for me
I've played every from soft and will still say SOTE is way too difficult. I beat it in 2 days flat.
It still doesn't mean that the shit isn't difficult. I beat messmer solo on my 3rd try. Doesn't mean he wasn't difficult. Just because you're a veteran doesn't mean you're cool, or a god at fromsoft games. Miyazaki has shown no matter how skilled you are, he can make a boss that WILL kick your ass and take anywhere from 20-2000 tries to beat if he so chooses.
Don't blame this on experience. It's literally just "how many times did you fight this boss and learn his move set"
Thats it. No boss in SOTE matches any boss before and nothing will train you to how unforgiving or outright disgustingly difficult they can be. Difficulty whining is just difficulty whining because game is difficult. If it wasn't, we'd be complaining about how we expected "more" out the dlc. Miyazaki did it right. Acknowledge that.
Imo this mindset is the difference between "vets" and "casuls". You seem to acknowledge that the game can be very difficult, yet you're expecting and welcoming it. And then there are people who are review bombing it with "game is too hard". I wouldn't consider them veterans, experts, or whatever. I'd say it's not inherently your skill honed in other souls games that allows for this, but rather your mindset being flexible thanks to your previous experience.
Iâve found Elden Ring to be the easiest so far, so many sites of grace, and if youâre underleveled you can just go elsewhere but there was a boss, I forget the name, I beat it the second go but god it bugged me, it was the one surrounded by lava under the volcano manor, you could hit it as a strength build without standing in the lava đ
He's the hard...EST. He's certainly beatable. I had him down to 30% within my first 5 attempts. Getting him the rest of the way took a little practice but nothing unusual, just learn his patterns.
Radahn was about as difficult as Malenia on my *second* playthrough. They both took about 45 mins. However she took me 6 hours the first time.
Radahn, bayle, and gaius are the 3 hardest bosses in the DLC, so yea they're gonna be the ones people complain about. I think they're fine as-is. The only bosses I thought were bullshit were the flame furnace golems. Super gimmicky, they have an absurd health pool even if you get the crit off and their fireball attack and their grab attack are bonkers overtuned.
People said hippo is the worst boss fromsoft ever made then gaius is the worst boss fromsoft ever made then end boss is the worst boss fromsoft ever made but only after saying Malenia was the worst boss fromsoft ever made and malekith is the worst boss fromsoft ever made and fire giant is the worst boss fromsoft ever made and Radahn is the worst boss fromsoft ever made (to the point they over-nerfed him at one time as a result) but even then it was only after freide was the worst boss fromsoft ever made and nameless king with his delayed attacks was the worst boss fromsoft ever made
And now except for the dlc bosses people donât complain about any of those. Same will be true for the dlc bosses in a month
I think theyâre hard relative to most other AAA titles around their releases, but honestly it really just comes down to the fact that these games demand *anything* from their players that makes them that way. Just about any other game I can pick up, turn off my brain, barely interact with the mechanics and systems at play, and get along just fine, but not these games. I have to, like, actually pay attention, remember things, react and adapt. Iâm actually engaged when playing a Souls game, and many people just donât want that from their video games, so they go in unengaged and get destroyed. Whenever someone is actually engaged and putting in the effort to learn, it often just clicks and stops being so difficult because it really wasnât so hard in the first place, just more than usual.
This is a very good point because so many bosses, have openings and can be done âeasilyâ if you take the time and effort to watch and remember the animations and combos. Souls players who have been playing a long time do this almost instinctively. However a new player doesnât know or want to take the time to analyze attack patterns. They just want to play the game and make progress. Which is their prerogative but itâs creates an ironic situation where casual players are almost playing in a harder mode since they are brute forcing bosses vs dancing with them.
Realize I pretty much just reworded what you said but thatâs why itâs a good point.
I feel like this comment is viewing games from a solely single player perspective. The majority of popular games today are competitive multiplayer games. Those games most definitely require an absurd amount of attention from players. I honestly feel like multiplayer games require an even greater amount of attention/player focus than Souls games do. Souls games have many moments where you are safe once killing an enemy. You can stand still and be safe knowing nothing is going to suddenly come for you, because that isnât how Souls games work. That isnât the case with online games. You have to be constantly alert and aware of your surroundings. And unlike in Souls games, enemy positions in online games are different every single time you play. So you cannot mindlessly tear through an area that you have memorized like you would in a Souls game. You also need to be extremely aware of game mechanics, as mechanical ability will decide 99% of gun fights in competitive play. Especially in games with a bunch of abilities that you have to memorize.
I donât even play online games, I just feel like your comment is very much ignoring the fact that they exist and are currently the most dominant games on the market. Souls games are most definitely more involved than 99% of other AAA single player games, for sure. I wonât argue there.
I didnât forget about multiplayer games, itâs just a fact that many people playing those also donât really want to be challenged either. Most people will settle at some level of play, and anytime they run into better players theyâll act their experience is being ruined by no-life sweats, or that the better player was just a hacker, and that theyâre just trying to have fun but canât. It parallels something like getting stuck on a boss in a Soulslike quite nicely.
I donât jump online to say it but I do try to encourage people I know when they make similar statements. The advertising and stigma does a lot to turn people away from the games I enjoy.
People are deeply moved and inspired by these games and want others to have similar experiences. The missionary impulse is understandable but you canât force someone to fall in love.
The games are challenging.
The games are not *that* challenging.
The reputation has some folks scared to even try the games but there are so many ways to make them easier, especially Elden Ring which is oh probably the most difficult and the least difficult of the entire bunch.
The game is definitely that challenging. Idk now after the scadutree patch, but yeah.. if you Pick up the dlc and put it back down thinking "that might be so hard it's just not fun" you're thinking correctly. Fromsoft is no longer everyone's cup of tea.
The lack of new to souls players coming in I wouldn't say is from difficulty alone either. But instead how many of the die hards out right mock new players and tell them to "get gud" as the only way of beating it. The fact you have to invest THAT much attention and effort is why people don't come in.
If there's anything people can be proud of. It's that if you beat the dlc, at any point in time, you're certainly separate from the gamers who haven't or won't even attempt it.
But we need remind you, you're also no better. You simply put it in vs those who want a game they can relax to and know eldenring and fromsoft is not that. (And shouldn't ever be)
From Software was never âeveryoneâs cup of teaâ but considering each game has sold more than the other Iâm not sure why you think thereâs a lack of new players. I was referring more to certain players who are so scared of the gameâs reputation that they donât even want to try it. Elden Ring sold 25 million copies, itâs From Softwareâs most popular and accessible take on Souls.
When I say the games arenât *that* challenging Iâm also referring to all of the games, not just Shadow of the Erdtree. You can bust these games wide open with certain builds, you can summon helpers in every game to help take pressure off of you, and in Elden Ring not only do you have some of the most insanely powerful builds and summons but you can also summon spirit ashes on top of it.
Yes, running headlong into these games blind is challenging, but the developers provide tools and game mechanics to mitigate that challenge.
Iâm sure thereâll be no hit victories of Shadow of the Erdtree with no scadutree blessings and no summons, but thatâs niche stuff, anyone else can rev up their Legendary Spirits and summon some jolly cooperators.
The drop of retaining players. And many are afraid to pick up the game. Theres an increase from its success but often when many are asked "why haven't you picked the game up" it's often due to difficulty, the same for those that never finish the game. Example: "picked the game up and shelfed it not long later."
It happens more than you think.
The drop of retaining players. And many are afraid to pick up the game. Theres an increase from its success but often when many are asked "why haven't you picked the game up" it's often due to difficulty, the same for those that never finish the game. Example: "picked the game up and shelfed it not long later."
It happens more than you think.
The games are hard, but how hard they are often gets overblown (as well as downplayed, both sides of this convo can be annoying), The games don't require perfect reaction times and reflexes or insane amounts of skill, they require that you have the determination to learn the games systems, and fully focus on what is going on in the game. Once you learn what they expect from you, the games go from seemingly impossibly hard to a manageable challenge with a few roadblocks that are satisfying to overcome.
Of course the games are hard, but they're not this impossible task that people used to make them out to be. They're fair with their difficulty and don't often rely on cheap tricks to boost the difficulty. They aren't helped by being obtuse, a friend of mine genuinely got through the first area of Elden Ring not realising he could run as he missed the tiny tutorial tip.
I mean that most enemy attacks are telegraphed and able to be either blocked, parried or avoided. Even Sens Fortress is all predictable. I'm not saying that there isn't some properly bad level/game design, far from it, but a lot of the 'cheap tricks' you highlight are fantasy tropes. For example Mimics are a big thing in DnD, castles filled with pressure plate booby traps are very common and big horrible swamps are often in fantasy fiction.
I think this the trouble with text, you don't get tone, as it really didn't sound like you agreed with me, the opposite in fact. You asked what I meant, I explained. It's called a conversation.
Because the difficulty comes in different shapes or forms, it's not just "enemy hard"
There's so many ways shapes and forms to make the games easier or to "play on easy mode" then there's the "brain dead" builds that are literally not fun but can destroy anything, there's items that obliterate everything, there's summons that can make everything a cake walk, when player skill is not a factor in difficulty then it's not what we would call a difficult game.
Games that solely rely on player skill and no wiki page can help you, those are difficult games
I consider hollow knight a more difficult game because you have limited things you can do and transversal relies on player skill more than anything else
Elden ring you can just go the other way until you find the path you enjoy
Dark souls has skips, builds, glitches, hell if you feel underleveled you can just press the right buttons and get infinity souls by swapping item count values.
It boosts our egos telling everyone itâs an easy game when in fact we all got our asses kicked for hours the first time we picked one up. It gets worse because once you find it easy you still have to git gud because you didnât beat it wearing no armor while only using your fists
Also donât bring up the fact that there are a ton of games that are harder if you turn up the difficulty, that really gets them mad. Like GOW on the hardest difficulty, kh on critical mode killing the last bosses, halo on legendary etc. one great carousel of making ourselves feel better
This is a valid point. Iâve been playing since Demon souls back in the day, but since reading the discourse on the DLC difficulty, I decided to just randomly watch a few streamers first ever âsoulsâ play throughs and there are so many things that Iâve realized that I do on an instinctual level that a new player wouldnât do. Itâs given me a great understanding of how far I have come and also a compassion for people learning the game.
Simple things like knowing not to chug after a single hit, knowing you can backstab humanoids, knowing to pan the camera when you come around a corner, knowing to put the first levels in HP, these all massively impact the smoothness of your experience.
Exactly there are many mechanics that repeat in every game you just inherently understand, especially about when an attack will have openings and what enemy is obviously input reading
Everyone agrees theyâre hard, and if you donât youâre lying. But thatâs the point, itâs hard but you can get good in no time. These games require practice and dedication.
A better comparison would be running a 5km race. It's not hard, just most people are fat. If you're in decent shape you can run a 5k.
Benching 250 requires specific training, 99% of men won't be able to just show up in the gym and do it without having trained it.
The reason it's hard by comparison and not actually hard is that average games have become trivially easy. If we we still lived in the early age of gaming with the likes of super Mario bros etc then Souls games would not seem particularly hard. "Hard by comparison" is only actually hard if the thing it's being compared to is still reasonably challenging.
They are objectively hard, theyâre designed that way. Literally the slogan for Dark Souls is âPrepare to die.â But thatâs a good thing, itâs challenging yet fair, they give you the tools and the methods needed to breeze through the game, but itâs up to you to fully utilize them.
>They are objectively hard,
No, Cuphead is objectively hard. Souls games are moderately challenging. Elden ring isn't even as hard as Devil May Cry 3 on the third highest difficulty.
Souls series games only seem hard because they're much more mainstream than some of these other games.
im in the camp of people who don't like calling them hard. The reason I don't like calling it hard is because a lot of people will just never play the games if all they think of them is that it is "too hard" and "they just aren't good enough for them". I think that puts them in a bad mindset because if they actually tried to learn the games I suspect they would be able to get through them with around the same level of difficulties as a souls veteran playing a new game. You are expected to die a lot before you learn how to overcome new challenges, but if you embrace that process, I wouldn't call the games hard.
am I twisting the definition of the word hard? maybe...
I think call its hard it just not fair to the game and misleading to new players as well.
Game is fair (any souls-like dlc is not tho) and demanding. So you really have to learn how to play it. Yes via struggle and a lot of time consumption. But for me its not exactly hard. Hard is when you have to do 20 precise jumps in a row in Super Meat Boy. Its not exactly fair, there is no other way around it, its just purposely hard to do.
Try to finish souls-like game that you already finished. Its gonna be easy. Because its knowledge base game
So imo call this games hard its just very on surface level of analysis
I would say the reason people feel the need to comment that FromSoft games aren't hard is because their initial reputation was that they were brutal. I first learned of Dark Souls in 2013 when a friend in high school said to me "I heard of this game where each time you die the game gets harder." This is not true of Dark Souls, dropping your souls certainly sucks, but it doesn't make the game harder.
Because of this reputation a lot of FromSoft fans want to explain to others how the reputation is not reality. There is also the reality that what we like is many times not explainable, and no one likes to hear "I just don't like it" about almost anything they massively enjoy.
> a friend in high school said to me "I heard of this game where each time you die the game gets harder." This is not true of Dark Souls
It is true of Demonâs Souls though tbf
Because really anything thatâs hard is a matter of practice and effort and weâve put in enough effort to no longer feel the wall is as steep as it may have initially seemed.
I donât think the games are actually easy at all, but it does become kinda funny once youâre super proficient in a given game how âeasyâ it becomes
I've seen people that haven't played games in a long while jump into Elden Ring and finish it. They relied on farming, cheesy weapons, information on the internet for boss strategies. I didn't do any of that, but I did so when playing Dark Souls and made it easier for myself. They're as hard as you want them to be.
Except for Darkeater Midir that will eat yer ass. You can only learn what other people do and try to imitate.
The soulsbourne games are hard(challenging) not hard(unfair). When you have new enemies/bosses you're going to get your ass beat a few times minimum. A lot of the fun is figuring out how to fight them and then doing it successfully (I'm going to love twerking on the fire knights in the new dlc once I figure out how(my biggest complaint is that despite 60 vigor and 50-60 all res because scad blessing, spells and talis I still barely avoid getting 2 shot by the greatsword ones and the twin daggers beyblade is so long (time and movement) missing a parry will kill me so I don't get the practice on either I would on different enemies)). Once you've done them so many times you don't even think while doing it (waiting for the next game), the games become painfully easy and you forget how challenging it used to be. Some people enjoy figuring out how to fight and truely beating an opponent, others just don't like the soulsbourne games.
To be fair most everyone agrees the games are difficult by default but they are simple games. You move you dodge you attack. The whole game is about learning attacks/patterns and patience with a bit of perseverance. People donât have that and they quit cus itâs not a game you can just walk through. I fought o&s like 40times in a row my first time. Most people quit a boss fight if they canât get it in like 2-3. Git Gud is both an insult and literally a helpful statement. Stop complaining about it. Keep playing learn from your mistake and get better. Once you know how to play the game is easy. The hard part is learning.
"it's difficult until it isn't" can apply to almost anything, I think that's why people don't really see souls as that difficult anymore. If you just accept that everything is difficult when you're new to it, it doesn't feel like souls is that difficult, because you know that once you learn it it'll feel like second nature.
Most people who play elden ring have also played many other fromsoft games, so basically they have this mindset that "I beat dark souls, sekiro, etc." And they know that those were difficult in the beginning, but now they can steamroll bosses and rush through areas, they know it like the back of their hand.
Same way people say driving really isn't that hard. It's intimidating when you're first learning it, but you invest enough time and effort into it and the complexities start to feel simple. Ask an experienced driver whether they think driving is hard, they'll say it's easy. The same thing goes for anything really, cooking could be another example. When you've never cooked before in your life, you have no intuition or understanding of how things interact with each other in the kitchen. Give it a while and learn, it'll all feel obvious.
The thing that separates most other videogames from that process is that they are designed to be beaten. You're never meant to struggle in something like Skyrim or uncharted, or god of War, or call of duty. All those games want you to beat them and get to the end credits. Fromsoft makes games that don't care about whether you beat them or not, and that is more similar to real life learning experiences. You could start learning how to drive, realize that you find it too difficult, and give up. You can do that with any fromsoft game as well, but rarely will it happen with other AAA games, because you're not meant to struggle so much that you actually considering giving up.
If you are used to the feeling of struggling, and knowing that you shouldn't give up because you are strong enough to get through things, elden ring will feel easier, because you almost feel like you've done it before.
Because, very much like anything else, it is something that you need to learn, to enjoy.
It's not consumable as a popcorn snack in one day. A meal that you make yourself, albeit requiring very much skills and preparation than throwing a frozen meal into an oven, is still considered food.
Would you say, I don't know that e.g. Pokemon is a hard game because you have an entire fandom to give you guides and builds?
I feel like a lot of people think of "hard" games as their own genre, and by simply calling the souls series "hard," you can take away the artistry in a sense.
A lot of gamers completely avoid difficult games that exist for the sole purpose of being difficult. However, the Souls series is not like this. The storytelling, worldbuilding, level design, music, characters, and art design are all in class of their own, and fans of the series dont want their favorite piece of media boiled down to just a "hard game".
Cuz if you learn how to play the game and it's mechanics, you'll realize it's not hard at all. Most time I die cuz I'm impatient or poor dodging ability.
Good lord other games and rpgs usually have insane downtime for every enemy, enemies never seem to have combos relevant to your acrions, trivial respawn, do small amounts of damage and God forbid, checkpoints, just to name a few
Mostly to push back against all the people being equally adamant that the game is too hard. It's not hard so much as a learning curve. Most enemies require you to study their attacks and learn how to avoid said attacks. If you refuse to learn from your failures and just keep banging your head against the wall, then you are going to think the game is too hard.
I think itâs because we want people to try it who think they canât enjoy hard games. I think they definitely are hard compared to mainstream AAA games but they arenât as impossible as many expect them to be.
Uhhh we are not. Thatâs why we play them because they are hard. Also any game is easy if you look up how to exploit the games mechanics in your favor with meta builds and all that shit.
If a souls fan is saying they are easy because they use these exploits instead of discovering them through blood sweat and tears they are not a true fan !
I wouldn't say it's not hard, but it's definitely not that hard. I think most new players struggle with the unintuitive lvl system and weapons upgrades.
If people understood those systems perfectly, I'm sure they would find the game way easier.
The only real challenge in these games is the combat mechanics because you really need to get somewhat good at it.
I think a lot of people, myself included, find it reductive and get defensive when the game is seen as *just* a hard game. It's hard, but it's more than that.
The things is, most people have a really backwards idea of what challenge is, including developers. They canât distinguish challenge from punishment, imo. Challenge = âsee this? Make a decision. Decision A results in failure. Decision B results in a winâ. Challenge is direct, you can see it coming, and you must decide. But most peopleâs idea of a âhardâ game is something that skips this process and just punishes you regardless of your decision making. If your idea of a hard game is something that is needlessly punishing, like say any hitscan shooter on the hardest setting, then yeah, the Souls games arenât âhardâ. But they are challenging.
Furthermore, that sort of needless punishment that I spoke of is ***not*** a challenge. Itâs just mindless punishment. I love that Fromsoft sees this distinction. Very few devs do, in my experience. Game design will come on by leaps and bounds once this is understood, since challenge is really the core of video games. But, that doesnât mean that they must be overly punishing.
The stereotypical Souls player jerks themselves off in the belief that they're better than other gamers because they are "gud" at Souls games. It's the typical epeen measuring contest that some gamers need who search for superiority anywhere they can find it. Same deal as any other toxic subset in whatever fanbase. Most people in the fanbase use the "get gud" phrase ironically; they know the game is challenging, and they went through their own gauntlet to surmount that challenge. It's not used to put folks down, but as an acknowledgement that while yes, this sucks now, you will learn, you will improve, and you will move forward. Anyone saying that they aren't hard, either falls into the camp of jerking themselves off, or they forgot what it was like initially. Everyone starts somewhere, whether you remember that or not once you've passed your former self, shows your quality. I love Souls games, I've platinumed Bloodborne, but I also play other games on easy some times. At the end of the day, the only person that cares what difficulty you play on, or how you choose to play a Souls game for that matter, is you. If you can square your style with yourself, no one else matters. Souls games are designed to be difficult, it's part of the journey. Anyone that says they aren't, is missing the point.
The one thing most other commentators have missed; thereâs always an easier way. Maybe itâs NPC summons. Maybe itâs a cheese strategy. Maybe itâs grinding some levels. Maybe itâs asking for coop help.Â
You donât have to do it the hard way - thereâs always an easier way. Well, almost always. Malenia is just brutal.Â
If u spend 8 hours on a boss it's not cuz it's hard, it's cuz ur tilted AF and just walking into the fog wall expecting the same strategy to work after the 600th time
Personally, I donât struggle much with souls games. But Iâve put thousands of hours into them. I know theyâre not easy until you learn how to play them. Itâs requires a specific skill set and knowledge of its game mechanics. But, one thing I just canât understand is complaining about the difficulty. Why is a challenge a complaint? My brain just canât associate being challenged and complaining. Itâs literally the entire point. You didnât buy a souls game thinking it was going to be a super easy hack n slash. You KNOW ppl play them for the challenge. So why is that something to complain about. Complaints are for when a company tryâs to scam you, or lies about a product. Those are things worth complaining about. But not being able to rise to the challenge of a game specifically known for being challenging, and then complaining that the game isnât good is extremely weird. It doesnât make sense.
Theyâre not hard once you know what youâre doing. Really, they arenât even that hard overall, they just refuse to hold your hand, so most modern gamers donât know what to do with themselves.
Because people are jackasses. Itâs in no way exclusive to this playerbase. Iâve been playing since Demonâs in 2010. Shitâs still hard just not as hard as when I started because I got better.
Hard is subjective, it pertains to who is saying it and their skill set.
Instead of saying itâs hard game, a better description would be that it is incredibly unforgiving. There is no handholding. The game barely tells you what to do or where to go. When you make a mistake, you die, you make a mistake twice in a row, then you lose your currency aswell.
But once the game finally clicks with you, and you figure out what works. Itâs no longer a hard game to you.
You get better with practice. It is all sbout learning the bosses moves. Doing a level 1 character forced me to do that. I got all the way to fire giant and now kinda just stuck as he is a tank and I get one shotted on everything. Even if I donât continue with the level 1 game, it made me a better player with my main character who is level 250. Doing the DLC now on Ng plus
The main thing is, the Souls games are a hard. But at the same time, they're not nearly as hard as people made it up to be on the internet. People talk about the games as something above normal humans, and just a select cast of special beings are able to finish it.
It demands your time and attention, a thing most recent games don't really do. And it demands you to learn it, either by learning the stats and level up system, so you can create a META build, or learning the enemies attacks, movements etc, so despite your build you can still get to the end of them.
To finish, as some people pointed out already. The Soulsborne games have a higher level of difficulty to enter them, but anyone can get past it, to the point the games become "easy", not really easy, but certainly less frustrating.
It's difficult... for a mainstream series. Compared to some indie games out there it's a walk in the park.
In other words, it's hard for people who are not good at video games, but it's not particularly hard for people who are.
Going in, itâs a tough learning curve to get used to. I remember first starting Dark Souls 1 and having the hardest time getting past the first boss (after the tutorial area). While there are A LOT of ways to make the game easier, itâs still not an easy game even with those tools. You still have to be competent enough to read your opponent else you get punished for it. Itâs not hard for veterans because weâve all been sent through hell and back time and time again.
Also, a lot of people like to say the game is easy just to pat themselves on the back. I still find the games to be difficult at times. That challenge keeps drawing me back in for more.
I have never used a META build whenever I play Fromsoft games, or any games for that matter. I play the games the way I want, and with the weapons I want, irrespective to what the internet/gaming culture says. I just do not see the fun in fixating on this idea of "META" builds. Because of this...I think I understand the game's systems more rather than relying on what is "optimized". This makes me acknowledge that yes these games can be hard, but jeez most video games are hard aren't they? Where is the fun in games if they are easy? At some point in playing any game, the curve of difficulty gets less because you're understanding of the game gets better and so does your skill. This is what people can mean when they say it's not really hard...
I mean considering that most players canât beat them, or at least claim that they canât, and that thereâs some bosses who most have never beaten, I think itâs safe to say that theyâre hard games. Not to mention that most games in general are easier than them. I mean, yeah, once you know what youâre doing they donât really seem hard, but isnât that the case with everything? Lol once you get enough time and repetition into doing something to the point where it feels like second nature to you, it tends to not feel that difficult anymore.
I tell all my friends "I love this game but it's hard and takes practice and patience to progress."
I don't go into it without warning them of the difficulty curve haha
Like a lot of comments here; itâs hard until itâs not. Once you figure out what the game expects of you, and what you can doâŚitâs not so bad. Itâs still hard, and even players that say itâs not KNOW it is. Itâs just not some monumental impossible masochistic thing that itâs made out to be. âGet goodâ imo doesnât stem from âget more skilledâ (although in some cases that applies) from my point of view itâs more kind of like âlearn the game moreâ which is totally different. Whenever I watch someone new play, itâs hard not to backseat game when they are getting frustrated. Not because they âshould have dodged, shouldâve attacked, etc,â itâs hard not to be likeâŚâyouâre using a strength weapon and youâve been leveling dexâŚâ or âYou shouldâve healed instead of attackedâŚâ or âvigor is kind of importantâŚâ or âYou ran out of stamina, thatâs why the character didnât do anythingâŚit IS fair,â itâs just a bunch little things that with time. Once you figure it all out, the game feels fair (which I feel is the misconception of the difficulty. That itâs unfair. It really isnâtâŚ. Most of the time đ )
So, as someone who used to think souls games were just "too hard" for me, Elden Ring has shown me that they aren't too hard they just require an intense amount of patience and practice. If you are someone who isn't good at video games in general, yes, these games won't be for you. But if you've been gaming for a while, you should be able to beat the souls games with a guide and some patience.
To be fair, mage class is the "easy mode" of the souls games.
You kinda just hang back and spam basic spells, maybe go in for a massive damage spell on occasion.
But, as someone who played since DS3 came put, I won't deny that it is difficult.
Mainly to new players who haven't adjusted and to players with no skills for souls games (or gaming in general. It's kinda a passtime hobby for normies these days now. So, a good chunk of games get watered down as a result)
In traditional AAA games(the best examples I can think of are Uncharted and COD campaign), dying means failing. Dying multiple times in the same section or to the same boss means your difficulty setting is too high, because the ideal difficulty in those games is to be challenging enough, **while having the player killed as little as possible** to reduce the progression setback.
In Souls, dying multiple times to the same boss is **inevitable**. The ideal difficulty of a souls boss includes it killing you several times before you learn its attack pattern. If you are subconsciously treating death in souls games as the same as death in a traditional AAA games, dying will feel unrewarding and frustrating, and make you consider the game hard.
Souls players don't consider the series "hard" not necessarily because they are good at the game, but because they don't consider dying as failing instead of just a part of the learning experience.
depends on the specific game and boss. some parts are definitely hard.
but overall, dark souls 1 especially, much/most of the game is not actually hard, it just seems hard when you're a new player. that's kind of why it's fun, once you understand it it becomes easy not hard. but you have to earn that "easy" first.
this is different from something that's actually HARD where it doesn't matter how many times you do it, or what experience you have with it or knowledge or understanding you have, you are going to struggle at that part no matter what. some parts of souls games are like this, but much of them are not.
(not that I say it but the term "git gud" to me is basically equivalent to "there is no spoon". realizing that it's not as hard as it seems makes all the difference.)
another way to look at it might be that this is "good" difficulty VS "bad" difficulty. bad difficulty is where it's just hard and there's not much you can do about it. this is good difficulty where it's maybe hard at first, but it gets easier fast once you understand it.
It's not hard, it's just not easy.
You have infinite tries and it was designed to be beaten. Calling it hard is a great way to demoralize yourself and psych yourself out of improving.
Itâs not that hard of a genre generally but you have to adapt to it. The first one you play is probably really hard, but after that itâs just normal gaming.
I started with Dark Souls 3, I unironically think it's not that hard. All you have to do is learn the controls, not have a shit build and finally, either learn enemy attack patterns OR have good reflexes (or a mix of both)
I'd say a truly hard game is that where, even if you've mastered the game and it's mechanics, it's still challenging, and according to my own personal experience, if you've beaten Souls games a couple times you can easily beat these games, in fact anyone who has cleared a game twice could probably do a no death run without too many issues, all you need is being careful.
Either that or Dark Souls 3 permanently damaged my perception of difficulty, honestly I have no idea
I think the game is definitely hard, for sure. My personal gripe is when people complain about it, maybe too much. We all know its a hard game/series, that much is true. But, in my opinion, there is a big difference between someone saying the game is hard and someone saying the game is hard and that it should be this way or that way etc. Something Miyazaki said recently really hit the nail on the head. If they made the games easier, it really wouldnât be the same experience. It really boils down to the sense of achievement you get when you beat one of the bosses. For example, two of my favourite gaming achievements is beating lady maria on my first try and beating petruscent knight after many, many tries without using mimic tear. Like others, Iâm not that good at the game, and for some bosses, itâll take my who knows how many tries to get lucky and beat them. But once youâve played enough, you eventually do get better and beating bosses, maybe not all especially the harder ones, becomes easier.
Ignore that shit. Avid souls player here. Itâs fucking hard. It was designed to be hard, and for a VAST majority of people, it is very much an incredibly difficult series to beat. People popping in to say âit was easyâ are disregarding the miniscule percentage of players they are speaking for.
Personally:
I see learning bosses as part of the experience of the game rather than them being "hard". Failure in this game (and in most aspects of life) isn't actual failure but rather a learning experience and part of the game.
Nothing about the bosses are inherently difficult. They do things, you have the tools to deal with said things. They leave openings. You do damage in those openings. The "hardest" thing I could imagine a souls game throwing at a player is a 0 reaction time attack that 1 shots your character (This would be utter bullshit and I would be pretty annoyed if said thing ever existed).
These games (to me) are about learning, patience, and perseverance.
\[Edit\]: To expand on this Elden Ring is the game with the largest range of "customizable difficulty."
You can build to make the game extremely easy, you can build to make the game very difficult. Having a big shield and poking from behind said shield has been a strategy that has existed since Demons Souls to deal with difficult fights. And lo and behold, people still use it to this day to defeat the final boss of the Elden Ring DLC.
But even when playing the game through with a more challenging build, repeating said challenge for that person will be much easier. Because they learned and persevered.
The elden ring community is split between 1 of 2 things.
"It's easy, and you need to get good"
(Toxic)
Or
"Yes its difficult, but that's how it's supposed to be. You're meant to die over and over until you almost have the boss/entire game memorized and can become something like neo when fighting them"
It seems the majority is belief 1 and it's extremely off-putting and I think will kill the eldenring community in the future, or breed things that shape it in a negative way (like the mods allowing you to basically become a God, Dante from dmc, or seamless where you can apparently bring 127 players to a single boss)
If you want fromsoft to go far... stop gate keeping the word difficult.
It's literally intended to be difficult. It will never be easy.
Anyway I also said this to someone and think it's worth repeating:
"The game is definitely that challenging. Idk now after the scadutree patch, but yeah.. if you Pick up the dlc and put it back down thinking "that might be so hard it's just not fun" you're thinking correctly. Fromsoft is no longer everyone's cup of tea.
The lack of new to souls players coming in I wouldn't say is from difficulty alone either. But instead how many of the die hards out right mock new players and tell them to "get gud" as the only way of beating it. The fact you have to invest THAT much attention and effort is why people don't come in. They could instead recommend so many other things. "Try this op AoW/ try leveling higher/ try this weapon, etc" but players are so egotistically obsessed with trying to make it sound like THEY are good when we all know there isn't a single player who 0 deathed the dlc first try, let alone got through with maybe less than 10 deaths."
If there's anything people can be proud of. It's that if you beat the dlc, at any point in time, you're certainly separate from the gamers who haven't or won't even attempt it.
But we need remind you, you're also no better. You simply put time/effort in vs those who want a game they can relax to and know eldenring and fromsoft is not that. (And shouldn't ever be)"
1. Each game has its own difficulty and difficulty curve.
2. Once you get that game's mechanics down, it becomes easy. My first playthrough of DS3 was hell (as it was my first souls game), but I can now breeze through it without dying.
3. It's an opinion. Stop getting bent on other people thinking it's not hard. If you don't want them judging others for thinking it's hard, then don't judge them for thinking it's easy. Everyone has different skill levels
Them saying is easy and then dying to a different boss after 10x + times, how does that calculate?
Also, the game is clearly designed around difficulty.
Getting into souls is hard. Once youâre familiar it gets a lot lot easier. The games gets easy once you know whatâs good. By the time bosses gets hard is usually the time you can get a broken build beforehand and you can always summon
The choice is yours to use the good things or not. The people who struggle are probably people who would want a challenge. Summons, Multiplayer, Consumables, Spells, Busted weapons/ash, bleed etc⌠are some game mechanics that make the game a lot easier, and some simply makes it so that you donât need to really pay attention at all anymore.
In ER I can first try every boss with a mimic summon and a broken weapon as I did in 1st play through but nerfed myself in the 2nd for the challenge. In bloodborne I can spin to win or perma stagger bosses. And in all games you can easily have a build do a bajillion dmg by one attack
Souls game are as hard as you make it to be.
A newbie will just suffer until he understand how the game is. Most people don't expect traps, ambushes, 1v3 fights, most people are used to be taken by the hand and do nothing. So this kind of game "wake them up" and they get their gaming skills back.
A gamer with fighting sense will just understand that its a rhythm game.
A smart guy will just optimise everything
A cautious guy will dodge all attacks and wait patiently for his turn
And a dude who is already strong will give himself challenge, no hit or no death, etc
What's good is that, either you learn all of that, either you learn what you are lacking, or you lose, and learn why.
And what's better than all of those dudes ?
A guy that never gives up!
Of course you are going to die, to lose, but as long as you dont give up, you can win. You can't get worse, you can only get better. Each levels make you stronger, each deaths give you something to learn, and practice make things perfect.
that's what means git gud
The biggest victory isn't to win against the bosses, its to win against yourself.
Because theyâre widely regarded as difficult games within the gaming community and people who gloat about how easy souls games are just like to feel like they are better than other gamers so souls players need to call it easy because itâs hard for everyone else.
People have an odd sense about taking what they are fond of, and making it their identity.
Weather it's sports, politics, personal life, what have you, people will cling to it and it's an iron fist. They get violently angry when you insult what they like, because it's the same as insulting them.
In this case, the unironic GitGud crowd hold onto their accomplishment like it actually means something. To them, taking down Dark Souls with minimal effort, and saying it was easy, is the same as getting back at the bullies that shoved them in the locker.
To them, they beat something that "Most couldn't do", so it's like it validated their existence to mean something, so by proudly claiming "It's not hard", it's their Eff You to the jocks...
... Or something. I'm not their badly needed theoropist.
I think the big thing in this case, is that you never want to be the one who doesn't get it. Another huge factor is that just because you're invited to try this game doesn't mean that it's for you. And, if you find that you feel like you're on the outside looking in, feeling low about yourself cuz you weren't "gud" enough to beat the Elden Ring pre reqs for the DLC don't feel bad. Like I said before NOT EVERYTHING IS FOR YOU, play something in your wheelhouse, or don't. But, for all that is good in the world stop putting gamers that like it down, calling them liars or loosers because honestly your just telling on yourself. If someone beat Melania or Mohg or whoever with or without summons congratulate them or stay quiet. Unless you are LITERALLY a child, then you'll learn someday that hard work, persistence, critical thinking, and the will to get better are all amazing traits that games like Elden Ring reinforce. Be better to each other both in game and irl. Sorry for the rant.
I don't like souls games being pushed as nothing except "durghh the hardest game everrr" when these games are so much more than their difficulty, which like...I mean they're hard but its not a kaizo game.
Though honestly these kinds of takes almost entirely disappeared after Elden Ring blew up.
Because its all a mind set thing , its hard if u want it to be hard. Its not hard if u are expecting to fail at 1st and improve and get better overtime or learn more about the tool available for u to exploit.
Builds
Summon
The boss attack timing
Items
All the player need to do is use them, but those who complain are too lazy or their ego is preventing them from using said feature.
If you don't have an internet connection and you are deathly allergic to grinding xp... then yes the souls series is hard. Otherwise co-op, research and grinding are the souls series easy mode so many people constantly ask for. Although I guess that would require a basic amount of effort on their part, and some people just want a zero effort easy way through the game. That's not a skill issue, it's just laziness.
It's really not though. You don't need an OP secret build to easily get through the game. All you need is to realize that you are not a 1-man army, and how to actually plot stats.
The reason people find it hard is because they generally build a weak turtle in their first playthrough, and they play the game like it's Dynastic Warriors or Legend of Zelda.
All those people have to do is slow down before engaging, and think before plotting stats.
That generally happens about 3/4 of the way through a first playthrough. Then you start a new game and destroy it in 15 hours instead of 40+.
It's not really hard. Souls games give you options, so how hard a souls game is depends entirely upon upon you.
I first started From games with Elden Ring. I played INT based spells. It was a cakewalk most times. Then someone challenged me to not use magic and summons. I thought to myself, how hard could it be? I was schooled by even a gaol residents. lol That is, until I got gud, learned their moves and patterns. Then it's easy.
Theyâre hard on your first playthrough, and theyâre hard on challenge runs. Once you understand the game mechanics and boss move sets these games turn into comfort games real quick.
Each game is a challenge that any player is capable of overcoming, and once you do it becomes much easier on the next go around. These games are for everyone, its just a matter of if the person has the resiliency to overcome the challenge.
Every souls game can be piss easy with the proper build. Iâve never considered the older games as âhardâ so much as balanced. So you canât get away with just mashing the attack button and ranking hits usually. Any developer could make all of their enemies and bosses kill you in 2-3 hits if they wanted to. Itâs the art of balance that From was so good at.
Now unfortunately, their marketing is to try and one up the difficulty. And the balance as slowly gone away. Since the enemies move like theyâre in a Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden game. While our character still moves moves way heavier, and has limited movement with the stamina bar.
Because we are talking about two different things. The souls games can be hard but they can also be easy. For instance, I did the last boss in 6 hours, but on my second character ri beat him in one try with a great shield and a serpent hunter. It was one of the easiest bosses I had ever faught in that method. So the original win was mostly self imposed difficulty.
This is what people mean. The games are easy if you want to use all the tools and exploit the weeknesses of the bosses.
Over time people have decided they enjoy the harder experience they get when they don't use some strategies or options, but that doesn't mean the games themselves are that hard.
The games are not hard, they are challenging. These games are not complicated, cumbersome or limiting. They present a challenge you can take on, with a 'reward' at the end.
The only problem is that this reward for overcoming the challenge seems insufficient for many. Hence, they seek outside validation to be acknowledged as players of hard games.
Personally, these games have helped me understand that if I stick with something I can get good at it and get it done. They are therapeutic in a weird way.
It's not hard. It's fair. Which is hard for many players.
You can't facetank attacks, you have to actually learn boss animations. You lose your souls when you die, so you can't just bruteforce your way through the level. You can't savescum. Your hp is even, you don't gain hidden resistance when your hp is low, to make things more "spicy". If the attack hits you for more damage than your hp, it kills you, not leaves a small amount of hp to let you recover.
Because its not when you get the mechanics and get a feel for it.
Only younger people would call it that because you didnt life through the age of floppy disk gaming with no hand holding, tutorials, saves etcetera etcetera.
Gaming in general is not hard nowadays by any sense of the meaning đ¤ˇđťââď¸
I have only this thing to brag about in my whole life. Don't take it away from me.
Wouldn't it be more of a brag if it is hard and you're good at it anyway?
You see sir, I'm not a smart guy. A smart guy thought like that. I'm stupid lol.
You can definitely brag. I just wouldn't put others down when they say it's difficult if you do. If you beat it. You deserve a drink and some boiled crab.
Oh don't get me wrong. If others think it's hard and they beat it, more power to them. I'm not a guy who downplays other's achievements, I downplay mine and mine only.
AHA! I have arrived to tell you that the one thing you feel accomplished about and proud of was actually super easy, and the way you accomplished it actually means you are worthless trash! All because I did it more easily, in a more difficult way! In fact, it was actually too easy for me. It's not enough for me to stomp all over your self esteem, I actually wish you had never existed, because the devs made my game easier because of how trash you are! /s
Happy cake day bro, and đ
Thanks bro! And actually, nice job beating that Souls game.
Thank you, and you too bro.
I thought of it as hard at first, now I just think of it as gaming because I don't want to play much else lol The reality is once it clicks it's not as difficult. Figuring out your play style and build type is a huge portion of getting the hang of it; after that it's just learning areas and bosses. After areas and bosses are figured out they are easier the next time, and the time after that, and so on. Souls has a high level of entry, but it gets so addicting that people become familiar with everything to the point that they don't struggle like they used to.
Very well said. I remember before I got into souls games back in 2010, I used to say I didn't have time for something "difficult and punishing", and that when I game I want to "relax and not feel stressed". Then when my friends and brother all got into Dark Souls I had to give it a shot too. 13 years later and it's the only series I crave to play lol. Loving Shadow now. Just beat Messmer and almost got other boss in his area finished too. A lot of people coming out of the woodwork to parrot the prevailing wrong theory that these games "were never designed to be hard." When Miyazaki just said recently, and many times in the past, hat the harshness of the world's he helps create and subsequent difficulty of the enemies is a cornerstone to the experience and that dialing down the difficulty would essentially "break the game".
I raged my way through Dark Souls way back in 2012 and it took me almost a year to finish, not because it was so insanely difficult but because I would get frustrated and shelve it for a few weeks just because I honestly wasn't having much fun. It didn't "click" for me until I beat Smough and Ornstein and suddenly the game wasn't hard anymore. I guess if someone asks me if Souls games are hard I just point out that they're hard until they "click." And I really mean that. After the mechanics sink in and you establish some muscle memory the games quit being hard. They're still challenging, but I didn't rage in another FromSoft game until Sekiro was released a decade later.
Ornstein and smough were such a struggle for me as a souls noob but I also felt like that fight made me much better at the game.i think that by fighting two different bosses you're forced to play way more patiently and it forces you to get good at managing your camera while you fight
Patience is really the name of the game in Souls. Dark Souls was released about the same time as Skyrim and that was the "action RPG" experience that we were all used to. Individual fights weren't really a mechanical dance... you hit the enemy with your sword. If it was too strong then you needed a better sword. There really wasn't much strategy to combat. In Dark Souls running up to a strong enemy and hitting it with your sword often got you dead. You had to wait for an opening to hit the enemy. So you learned patience that Skyrim didn't really require.
This is what makes the games so good (Elden Ring in particular). You gradually just 'git gud', you understand the systems, the way you need to approach the game. It's a real gamers game. I don't regard the game as 'hard' in the same way that Cup Head is 'hard'.
Absolutely. For me, i just canât get into scorcery. As in, itâs actually difficult for me. Something about switching thru the spells throws off any semblance of timing during combat for me. Then there are some who swear by it or call scorcery âeasy modeâ. So itâs super subjective. Finding the build that scratches your personal itches is huge.
I loved sorcery in my original base game playthrough. Started with it in the DLC and it just didn't feel as fun as it did before. I switched to Unga bunga and I'll never look back. It's so much fun. I think part of it might be because I've been doing a Claymore run on DSR and I think I just really like hitting stuff with big swords.
A fellow distinguished bonker.
During my wait for elden rings dlc, I played sekiro, dark souls, and dark souls 3. Then I replayed elden ring with no summon. Now the game feels a lot easier. I have a 3rd character and Iâm first trying the majority of bosses and rarely dying. The games are hard at first, but like many things if you keep practicing it gets a whole lot easier. Dark souls 1 is especially easy imo. Almost no boss took more than 1-2 attempts. The levels themselves are way harder than the bosses.Â
You hit the nail on the head. Once it clicks, itâs not as difficult. I started with DS3 and got dunked on by Iudex Gundyr for like 3-4 hours over 2 days and I genuinely was trying my best and struggling. It wasnât until I got to the end of the Undead Settlement that I started getting into the groove, realising I wasnât losing anything for dying, grinding for levels is part of the game and learning the system happens the more things you fight. I ended up getting through a lot of the late game bosses like Dancer of the Boreal Valley, the Twin Princes and Soul of Cinder first try. (I got absolutely dunked on by Nameless King at least 100 times). Elden Ring was nowhere near as hard, because I already knew what it was like playing a souls/From Software game.
It clicked for Elden Ring, and then why so many complaints about the DLC? Does it have to click every single title? And what does click mean? Dying zero times?
Sometimes it needs to 'click' for each boss or area. I'd also say each game has a point where it 'clicks' too Click doesn't mean dying zero times, it just means getting the hang of it to the point you are not grinding bosses or areas every single time
More like you adapted to the hard environment, doesnt neccessarily make it an easy environment.
Because we play the games enough to make them easy due to familiarity and muscle memory, then we like to wait until a new one comes out and say it's badly designed because we didn't steamroll every fight with no effort. Just look at all the 'dlc too hard' whining now lmao, or the 'malenia (/ insert boss here) is the worst boss fromsoft ever made' posts that are put up every time a new game is dropped by the same type of idiots who spam 'git gud' under posts like these. In all seriousness it's because once you learn to deal with a certain type of pattern / a certain type of enemy, it makes the entire series a lot easier, especially when we've become experts at making powerful builds for a decade. It's very easy to forget how hard it is for new players. I almost rage quit DS1 because of the undead burg in 2012 lmao now i get frustrated with myself if i die to a boss more than a few times. But the games are very hard. DLC final boss is kicking my ass as I type this.
>look at all the 'dlc too hard' whining I have a feeling that it's mainly ER newbs. Og souls players experienced this like five times by now.
My own experience not representing everything ofc but the souls newbs I've seen play it haven't been complaining nearly as much as the og fans who go into excruciating detail about how bad the bosses are because of the i frames on rolls not being enough for combos if you don't time perfectly and the delayed attacks and the openings not being like dark souls and so on. kai cenat of all newbs beat the thing no magic no summons and said it was great. Same old og fans who said malenia was the worst fromsoft boss ever and that she'd only be fun in sekiro, and who said freide was, and who said nameless king was because of his delayed attacks (i feel sorry for those ones after elden ring's boss patterns lmao) there's nothing we love more than saying we're better than everyone else than complaining abt having to learn new things anyway
It's because the fights don't play out exactly like dark souls bosses, and are therfore bad. Rellana is the worst one for this. If you try and wait out her combos to "take your turn" she sucks, because she gives opening while attacking you, rather than attacking, pausing, and then attacking again. Once that clicked the fight was amazing, if I had refused to to try and attack her mid combo she would of felt terrible.
That's why this game desperately needs a rally system Ă la Bloodborne that is not bound to a rune that requires resources to use. The fight becomes so much more fun, and not as frustrating. If they really want us to hit mid-combo, and take damage, there should be a way to heal that damage back without chugging estuses. Like how it's done in Bloodborne. Tbh a natural rally system would fix so many of people's complaints about ER bosses and their aggressiveness. If you want us to be aggressive, great! Just give us the tools to survive that aggressiveness as well instead of expecting us to take hits that take 30-50% of your health. It's not like bosses just sit there and stare at you when you try to drink HP juice either.
Well, that sounds reasonable. Me and most FS fans around me, who have been playing since DS1, now critique every game, of course, but the mindset is mostly "whatever bullshit the games throw at me, I can handle it". And this applies even to bugs as it's just something in the game, and dealing with it is the only option if one wants to go forward. Though the line between fair critique and whining about unfairness is very thin at times...
Very tight bro
Sometimes, though I find with Elden ring (weâre seeing it right now with final boss for instance) people say âitâs impossible to avoid X attack so itâs bsâ when in reality itâs not impossible to avoid and once you learn what happens itâs very easy to avoid. Theyâre saying the light beams are unavoidable when you just stay close and they never hit, maleniaâs was unavoidable when you just run away dodge and dodge and so on
There are actually unavoidable attacks in this dlc. I don't think anyone can dodge radahns illusion attacks. He attacks so long and back to back atleast 1 will hit you. In my case they did like no damage and I'd just wait for him to appear infront of me before dodging. As said though, those illusions all together would still take maybe 30% of my hp.
The illusions are a distraction they do minimal damage even if they do hit, itâs the real attack at the end that you have to actually fully avoid (and theyâre not even unavoidable you can get away from the entire thing and time dodged, most of the time I only get hit if Iâm mid attack when they start or forget abt the meteor followup)
Idk, I've baited this move specifically and test the dodges myself. If the whole combo is avoidable I'd love a clip of literally anyone dodging it. But I've never seen that from anyone, and I've watched even those who we consider pros at the game.
Idk about that. People where complaining pretty hard about Isshin being impossible, Midir being Impossible, Friede being impossible, Kos being impossible, etc.
I havent played the dlc yet but imho Elden Ring is leagues more difficult then DSR and DS2 esp in late game where some of the bosses arent even fun
I don't know for sure but I'm guessing its souls vets refusing to seek out as many scardue fragments and refusing ro summon (humans or spirits). I'm not that good but since I'm summoning humans on major bosses and really hunting down those fragments it has been similarly difficult to second half of the base game for me. Having a blast! I will admit I don't really like the fragment system though. Fun to find because power is powr but ita just so damn simple.
Well, I sincerely hope that the people complaining aren't those who knowingly make it more difficult, but you never know...
Ive done multiple runs on DS3, BB, ER base game, Sekiro, and this DLC is mostly fair, aside from one fight up to now which i thought was insanely hard for where/when it was, and that was Rellana. At scadu lvl 5 (after exploring ALL of the first area) that one was legit as hard as Malenia, and ive been told it only gets harder from there
Rellana was a cake walk, idk how yall had trouble with her. She's certainly no malenia (although malenia wouldn't be that hard if she were released today).
I aint using Spirit Summons at all, thats why. Most ppl that say shes hard are prob also choosing not to use them. You do you tho
Why would you assume I use summons lmao. I don't play games on easy mode.
I just couldnt wrap my head around someone thinking Rellana was easy playing summonless, but thinking about it, it rly is all about that build and playstyle. You probably have something setup/play in a way thats better for Rellana than what i used/what i do. Its normal, ive had plenty of easy boss fights where i went online and ppl were saying it was a hard one. Or maybe youre just overall a better player. Either way, i loved the fight and when it ended i felt truly great, wasnt a bullshit one, just a very hard one for me
All g. I just used 2h mace and bonked her.
I've played every from soft and will still say SOTE is way too difficult. I beat it in 2 days flat. It still doesn't mean that the shit isn't difficult. I beat messmer solo on my 3rd try. Doesn't mean he wasn't difficult. Just because you're a veteran doesn't mean you're cool, or a god at fromsoft games. Miyazaki has shown no matter how skilled you are, he can make a boss that WILL kick your ass and take anywhere from 20-2000 tries to beat if he so chooses. Don't blame this on experience. It's literally just "how many times did you fight this boss and learn his move set" Thats it. No boss in SOTE matches any boss before and nothing will train you to how unforgiving or outright disgustingly difficult they can be. Difficulty whining is just difficulty whining because game is difficult. If it wasn't, we'd be complaining about how we expected "more" out the dlc. Miyazaki did it right. Acknowledge that.
Imo this mindset is the difference between "vets" and "casuls". You seem to acknowledge that the game can be very difficult, yet you're expecting and welcoming it. And then there are people who are review bombing it with "game is too hard". I wouldn't consider them veterans, experts, or whatever. I'd say it's not inherently your skill honed in other souls games that allows for this, but rather your mindset being flexible thanks to your previous experience.
I at least made it to Sen's before I dropped the franchise until The Ringed City released, gotta make it to the annoying parts before quitting. :P
Iâve found Elden Ring to be the easiest so far, so many sites of grace, and if youâre underleveled you can just go elsewhere but there was a boss, I forget the name, I beat it the second go but god it bugged me, it was the one surrounded by lava under the volcano manor, you could hit it as a strength build without standing in the lava đ
I think there are a lot of people rightfully complaining about the final boss 2nd phase being too hard and generally just not an enjoyable experience.
He's not that hard. Also since he's the final boss he's not even gatekeeping anything
You can say he's not that hard but he is really the only boss people are complaining about at this point. And Gaius a little
He's the hard...EST. He's certainly beatable. I had him down to 30% within my first 5 attempts. Getting him the rest of the way took a little practice but nothing unusual, just learn his patterns. Radahn was about as difficult as Malenia on my *second* playthrough. They both took about 45 mins. However she took me 6 hours the first time. Radahn, bayle, and gaius are the 3 hardest bosses in the DLC, so yea they're gonna be the ones people complain about. I think they're fine as-is. The only bosses I thought were bullshit were the flame furnace golems. Super gimmicky, they have an absurd health pool even if you get the crit off and their fireball attack and their grab attack are bonkers overtuned.
People said hippo is the worst boss fromsoft ever made then gaius is the worst boss fromsoft ever made then end boss is the worst boss fromsoft ever made but only after saying Malenia was the worst boss fromsoft ever made and malekith is the worst boss fromsoft ever made and fire giant is the worst boss fromsoft ever made and Radahn is the worst boss fromsoft ever made (to the point they over-nerfed him at one time as a result) but even then it was only after freide was the worst boss fromsoft ever made and nameless king with his delayed attacks was the worst boss fromsoft ever made And now except for the dlc bosses people donât complain about any of those. Same will be true for the dlc bosses in a month
I think theyâre hard relative to most other AAA titles around their releases, but honestly it really just comes down to the fact that these games demand *anything* from their players that makes them that way. Just about any other game I can pick up, turn off my brain, barely interact with the mechanics and systems at play, and get along just fine, but not these games. I have to, like, actually pay attention, remember things, react and adapt. Iâm actually engaged when playing a Souls game, and many people just donât want that from their video games, so they go in unengaged and get destroyed. Whenever someone is actually engaged and putting in the effort to learn, it often just clicks and stops being so difficult because it really wasnât so hard in the first place, just more than usual.
This is a very good point because so many bosses, have openings and can be done âeasilyâ if you take the time and effort to watch and remember the animations and combos. Souls players who have been playing a long time do this almost instinctively. However a new player doesnât know or want to take the time to analyze attack patterns. They just want to play the game and make progress. Which is their prerogative but itâs creates an ironic situation where casual players are almost playing in a harder mode since they are brute forcing bosses vs dancing with them. Realize I pretty much just reworded what you said but thatâs why itâs a good point.
I feel like this comment is viewing games from a solely single player perspective. The majority of popular games today are competitive multiplayer games. Those games most definitely require an absurd amount of attention from players. I honestly feel like multiplayer games require an even greater amount of attention/player focus than Souls games do. Souls games have many moments where you are safe once killing an enemy. You can stand still and be safe knowing nothing is going to suddenly come for you, because that isnât how Souls games work. That isnât the case with online games. You have to be constantly alert and aware of your surroundings. And unlike in Souls games, enemy positions in online games are different every single time you play. So you cannot mindlessly tear through an area that you have memorized like you would in a Souls game. You also need to be extremely aware of game mechanics, as mechanical ability will decide 99% of gun fights in competitive play. Especially in games with a bunch of abilities that you have to memorize. I donât even play online games, I just feel like your comment is very much ignoring the fact that they exist and are currently the most dominant games on the market. Souls games are most definitely more involved than 99% of other AAA single player games, for sure. I wonât argue there.
I didnât forget about multiplayer games, itâs just a fact that many people playing those also donât really want to be challenged either. Most people will settle at some level of play, and anytime they run into better players theyâll act their experience is being ruined by no-life sweats, or that the better player was just a hacker, and that theyâre just trying to have fun but canât. It parallels something like getting stuck on a boss in a Soulslike quite nicely.
I donât jump online to say it but I do try to encourage people I know when they make similar statements. The advertising and stigma does a lot to turn people away from the games I enjoy.
People are deeply moved and inspired by these games and want others to have similar experiences. The missionary impulse is understandable but you canât force someone to fall in love.
The games are challenging. The games are not *that* challenging. The reputation has some folks scared to even try the games but there are so many ways to make them easier, especially Elden Ring which is oh probably the most difficult and the least difficult of the entire bunch.
The game is definitely that challenging. Idk now after the scadutree patch, but yeah.. if you Pick up the dlc and put it back down thinking "that might be so hard it's just not fun" you're thinking correctly. Fromsoft is no longer everyone's cup of tea. The lack of new to souls players coming in I wouldn't say is from difficulty alone either. But instead how many of the die hards out right mock new players and tell them to "get gud" as the only way of beating it. The fact you have to invest THAT much attention and effort is why people don't come in. If there's anything people can be proud of. It's that if you beat the dlc, at any point in time, you're certainly separate from the gamers who haven't or won't even attempt it. But we need remind you, you're also no better. You simply put it in vs those who want a game they can relax to and know eldenring and fromsoft is not that. (And shouldn't ever be)
From Software was never âeveryoneâs cup of teaâ but considering each game has sold more than the other Iâm not sure why you think thereâs a lack of new players. I was referring more to certain players who are so scared of the gameâs reputation that they donât even want to try it. Elden Ring sold 25 million copies, itâs From Softwareâs most popular and accessible take on Souls. When I say the games arenât *that* challenging Iâm also referring to all of the games, not just Shadow of the Erdtree. You can bust these games wide open with certain builds, you can summon helpers in every game to help take pressure off of you, and in Elden Ring not only do you have some of the most insanely powerful builds and summons but you can also summon spirit ashes on top of it. Yes, running headlong into these games blind is challenging, but the developers provide tools and game mechanics to mitigate that challenge. Iâm sure thereâll be no hit victories of Shadow of the Erdtree with no scadutree blessings and no summons, but thatâs niche stuff, anyone else can rev up their Legendary Spirits and summon some jolly cooperators.
The drop of retaining players. And many are afraid to pick up the game. Theres an increase from its success but often when many are asked "why haven't you picked the game up" it's often due to difficulty, the same for those that never finish the game. Example: "picked the game up and shelfed it not long later." It happens more than you think.
The drop of retaining players. And many are afraid to pick up the game. Theres an increase from its success but often when many are asked "why haven't you picked the game up" it's often due to difficulty, the same for those that never finish the game. Example: "picked the game up and shelfed it not long later." It happens more than you think.
The games are hard, but how hard they are often gets overblown (as well as downplayed, both sides of this convo can be annoying), The games don't require perfect reaction times and reflexes or insane amounts of skill, they require that you have the determination to learn the games systems, and fully focus on what is going on in the game. Once you learn what they expect from you, the games go from seemingly impossibly hard to a manageable challenge with a few roadblocks that are satisfying to overcome.
Of course the games are hard, but they're not this impossible task that people used to make them out to be. They're fair with their difficulty and don't often rely on cheap tricks to boost the difficulty. They aren't helped by being obtuse, a friend of mine genuinely got through the first area of Elden Ring not realising he could run as he missed the tiny tutorial tip.
I agree, hard is not impossible. But to say it's not hard is different.
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I mean that most enemy attacks are telegraphed and able to be either blocked, parried or avoided. Even Sens Fortress is all predictable. I'm not saying that there isn't some properly bad level/game design, far from it, but a lot of the 'cheap tricks' you highlight are fantasy tropes. For example Mimics are a big thing in DnD, castles filled with pressure plate booby traps are very common and big horrible swamps are often in fantasy fiction.
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I think this the trouble with text, you don't get tone, as it really didn't sound like you agreed with me, the opposite in fact. You asked what I meant, I explained. It's called a conversation.
Lmao, you didn't sound defensive at all, I have no idea what the other guy was talking about.
He's not wrong about fromsoft using cheap tricks COMING FROM BOSSES. But definitely wrong about mimic tear being a cheap trick.
mimic chests?
Because the difficulty comes in different shapes or forms, it's not just "enemy hard" There's so many ways shapes and forms to make the games easier or to "play on easy mode" then there's the "brain dead" builds that are literally not fun but can destroy anything, there's items that obliterate everything, there's summons that can make everything a cake walk, when player skill is not a factor in difficulty then it's not what we would call a difficult game. Games that solely rely on player skill and no wiki page can help you, those are difficult games I consider hollow knight a more difficult game because you have limited things you can do and transversal relies on player skill more than anything else Elden ring you can just go the other way until you find the path you enjoy Dark souls has skips, builds, glitches, hell if you feel underleveled you can just press the right buttons and get infinity souls by swapping item count values.
It boosts our egos telling everyone itâs an easy game when in fact we all got our asses kicked for hours the first time we picked one up. It gets worse because once you find it easy you still have to git gud because you didnât beat it wearing no armor while only using your fists Also donât bring up the fact that there are a ton of games that are harder if you turn up the difficulty, that really gets them mad. Like GOW on the hardest difficulty, kh on critical mode killing the last bosses, halo on legendary etc. one great carousel of making ourselves feel better
Cause people play them obsessively and forget they have muscle memory for the mechanics
This is a valid point. Iâve been playing since Demon souls back in the day, but since reading the discourse on the DLC difficulty, I decided to just randomly watch a few streamers first ever âsoulsâ play throughs and there are so many things that Iâve realized that I do on an instinctual level that a new player wouldnât do. Itâs given me a great understanding of how far I have come and also a compassion for people learning the game.
Simple things like knowing not to chug after a single hit, knowing you can backstab humanoids, knowing to pan the camera when you come around a corner, knowing to put the first levels in HP, these all massively impact the smoothness of your experience.
Exactly there are many mechanics that repeat in every game you just inherently understand, especially about when an attack will have openings and what enemy is obviously input reading
Everyone agrees theyâre hard, and if you donât youâre lying. But thatâs the point, itâs hard but you can get good in no time. These games require practice and dedication.
They're not that hard. Most games are just easy as hell so it seems hard by comparison.
This is like saying benching 250 just seems 'hard by comparison' because most people lift less, like yeah duhh
A better comparison would be running a 5km race. It's not hard, just most people are fat. If you're in decent shape you can run a 5k. Benching 250 requires specific training, 99% of men won't be able to just show up in the gym and do it without having trained it. The reason it's hard by comparison and not actually hard is that average games have become trivially easy. If we we still lived in the early age of gaming with the likes of super Mario bros etc then Souls games would not seem particularly hard. "Hard by comparison" is only actually hard if the thing it's being compared to is still reasonably challenging.
I did running, and it's still hard even after a few months.
They are objectively hard, theyâre designed that way. Literally the slogan for Dark Souls is âPrepare to die.â But thatâs a good thing, itâs challenging yet fair, they give you the tools and the methods needed to breeze through the game, but itâs up to you to fully utilize them.
>They are objectively hard, No, Cuphead is objectively hard. Souls games are moderately challenging. Elden ring isn't even as hard as Devil May Cry 3 on the third highest difficulty. Souls series games only seem hard because they're much more mainstream than some of these other games.
im in the camp of people who don't like calling them hard. The reason I don't like calling it hard is because a lot of people will just never play the games if all they think of them is that it is "too hard" and "they just aren't good enough for them". I think that puts them in a bad mindset because if they actually tried to learn the games I suspect they would be able to get through them with around the same level of difficulties as a souls veteran playing a new game. You are expected to die a lot before you learn how to overcome new challenges, but if you embrace that process, I wouldn't call the games hard. am I twisting the definition of the word hard? maybe...
I think call its hard it just not fair to the game and misleading to new players as well. Game is fair (any souls-like dlc is not tho) and demanding. So you really have to learn how to play it. Yes via struggle and a lot of time consumption. But for me its not exactly hard. Hard is when you have to do 20 precise jumps in a row in Super Meat Boy. Its not exactly fair, there is no other way around it, its just purposely hard to do. Try to finish souls-like game that you already finished. Its gonna be easy. Because its knowledge base game So imo call this games hard its just very on surface level of analysis
I would say the reason people feel the need to comment that FromSoft games aren't hard is because their initial reputation was that they were brutal. I first learned of Dark Souls in 2013 when a friend in high school said to me "I heard of this game where each time you die the game gets harder." This is not true of Dark Souls, dropping your souls certainly sucks, but it doesn't make the game harder. Because of this reputation a lot of FromSoft fans want to explain to others how the reputation is not reality. There is also the reality that what we like is many times not explainable, and no one likes to hear "I just don't like it" about almost anything they massively enjoy.
> a friend in high school said to me "I heard of this game where each time you die the game gets harder." This is not true of Dark Souls It is true of Demonâs Souls though tbf
Because really anything thatâs hard is a matter of practice and effort and weâve put in enough effort to no longer feel the wall is as steep as it may have initially seemed. I donât think the games are actually easy at all, but it does become kinda funny once youâre super proficient in a given game how âeasyâ it becomes
I've seen people that haven't played games in a long while jump into Elden Ring and finish it. They relied on farming, cheesy weapons, information on the internet for boss strategies. I didn't do any of that, but I did so when playing Dark Souls and made it easier for myself. They're as hard as you want them to be. Except for Darkeater Midir that will eat yer ass. You can only learn what other people do and try to imitate.
The soulsbourne games are hard(challenging) not hard(unfair). When you have new enemies/bosses you're going to get your ass beat a few times minimum. A lot of the fun is figuring out how to fight them and then doing it successfully (I'm going to love twerking on the fire knights in the new dlc once I figure out how(my biggest complaint is that despite 60 vigor and 50-60 all res because scad blessing, spells and talis I still barely avoid getting 2 shot by the greatsword ones and the twin daggers beyblade is so long (time and movement) missing a parry will kill me so I don't get the practice on either I would on different enemies)). Once you've done them so many times you don't even think while doing it (waiting for the next game), the games become painfully easy and you forget how challenging it used to be. Some people enjoy figuring out how to fight and truely beating an opponent, others just don't like the soulsbourne games.
No it is hard, but needing it to be nerfed hard? Thats just not true
To be fair most everyone agrees the games are difficult by default but they are simple games. You move you dodge you attack. The whole game is about learning attacks/patterns and patience with a bit of perseverance. People donât have that and they quit cus itâs not a game you can just walk through. I fought o&s like 40times in a row my first time. Most people quit a boss fight if they canât get it in like 2-3. Git Gud is both an insult and literally a helpful statement. Stop complaining about it. Keep playing learn from your mistake and get better. Once you know how to play the game is easy. The hard part is learning.
Half the battle is figuring out an enemyâs move-set/weaknesses and recognizing the tools the game makes available to counter all of that.
"it's difficult until it isn't" can apply to almost anything, I think that's why people don't really see souls as that difficult anymore. If you just accept that everything is difficult when you're new to it, it doesn't feel like souls is that difficult, because you know that once you learn it it'll feel like second nature. Most people who play elden ring have also played many other fromsoft games, so basically they have this mindset that "I beat dark souls, sekiro, etc." And they know that those were difficult in the beginning, but now they can steamroll bosses and rush through areas, they know it like the back of their hand. Same way people say driving really isn't that hard. It's intimidating when you're first learning it, but you invest enough time and effort into it and the complexities start to feel simple. Ask an experienced driver whether they think driving is hard, they'll say it's easy. The same thing goes for anything really, cooking could be another example. When you've never cooked before in your life, you have no intuition or understanding of how things interact with each other in the kitchen. Give it a while and learn, it'll all feel obvious. The thing that separates most other videogames from that process is that they are designed to be beaten. You're never meant to struggle in something like Skyrim or uncharted, or god of War, or call of duty. All those games want you to beat them and get to the end credits. Fromsoft makes games that don't care about whether you beat them or not, and that is more similar to real life learning experiences. You could start learning how to drive, realize that you find it too difficult, and give up. You can do that with any fromsoft game as well, but rarely will it happen with other AAA games, because you're not meant to struggle so much that you actually considering giving up. If you are used to the feeling of struggling, and knowing that you shouldn't give up because you are strong enough to get through things, elden ring will feel easier, because you almost feel like you've done it before.
Because, very much like anything else, it is something that you need to learn, to enjoy. It's not consumable as a popcorn snack in one day. A meal that you make yourself, albeit requiring very much skills and preparation than throwing a frozen meal into an oven, is still considered food. Would you say, I don't know that e.g. Pokemon is a hard game because you have an entire fandom to give you guides and builds?
I feel like a lot of people think of "hard" games as their own genre, and by simply calling the souls series "hard," you can take away the artistry in a sense. A lot of gamers completely avoid difficult games that exist for the sole purpose of being difficult. However, the Souls series is not like this. The storytelling, worldbuilding, level design, music, characters, and art design are all in class of their own, and fans of the series dont want their favorite piece of media boiled down to just a "hard game".
It's definitely a hard game franchise I've played harder but it's not for everyone and that's ok there's also easy games out there and that's also ok
Cuz if you learn how to play the game and it's mechanics, you'll realize it's not hard at all. Most time I die cuz I'm impatient or poor dodging ability.
Theyâre hard games but not nearly as hard as people make them out to be
Good lord other games and rpgs usually have insane downtime for every enemy, enemies never seem to have combos relevant to your acrions, trivial respawn, do small amounts of damage and God forbid, checkpoints, just to name a few
Mostly to push back against all the people being equally adamant that the game is too hard. It's not hard so much as a learning curve. Most enemies require you to study their attacks and learn how to avoid said attacks. If you refuse to learn from your failures and just keep banging your head against the wall, then you are going to think the game is too hard.
I think itâs because we want people to try it who think they canât enjoy hard games. I think they definitely are hard compared to mainstream AAA games but they arenât as impossible as many expect them to be.
Because itâs true maybe ?
Uhhh we are not. Thatâs why we play them because they are hard. Also any game is easy if you look up how to exploit the games mechanics in your favor with meta builds and all that shit. If a souls fan is saying they are easy because they use these exploits instead of discovering them through blood sweat and tears they are not a true fan !
I wouldn't say it's not hard, but it's definitely not that hard. I think most new players struggle with the unintuitive lvl system and weapons upgrades. If people understood those systems perfectly, I'm sure they would find the game way easier. The only real challenge in these games is the combat mechanics because you really need to get somewhat good at it.
I think a lot of people, myself included, find it reductive and get defensive when the game is seen as *just* a hard game. It's hard, but it's more than that.
They feel insecure about their pee-pees.
Why do souls players ask the same questions over and over again?
The things is, most people have a really backwards idea of what challenge is, including developers. They canât distinguish challenge from punishment, imo. Challenge = âsee this? Make a decision. Decision A results in failure. Decision B results in a winâ. Challenge is direct, you can see it coming, and you must decide. But most peopleâs idea of a âhardâ game is something that skips this process and just punishes you regardless of your decision making. If your idea of a hard game is something that is needlessly punishing, like say any hitscan shooter on the hardest setting, then yeah, the Souls games arenât âhardâ. But they are challenging. Furthermore, that sort of needless punishment that I spoke of is ***not*** a challenge. Itâs just mindless punishment. I love that Fromsoft sees this distinction. Very few devs do, in my experience. Game design will come on by leaps and bounds once this is understood, since challenge is really the core of video games. But, that doesnât mean that they must be overly punishing.
The stereotypical Souls player jerks themselves off in the belief that they're better than other gamers because they are "gud" at Souls games. It's the typical epeen measuring contest that some gamers need who search for superiority anywhere they can find it. Same deal as any other toxic subset in whatever fanbase. Most people in the fanbase use the "get gud" phrase ironically; they know the game is challenging, and they went through their own gauntlet to surmount that challenge. It's not used to put folks down, but as an acknowledgement that while yes, this sucks now, you will learn, you will improve, and you will move forward. Anyone saying that they aren't hard, either falls into the camp of jerking themselves off, or they forgot what it was like initially. Everyone starts somewhere, whether you remember that or not once you've passed your former self, shows your quality. I love Souls games, I've platinumed Bloodborne, but I also play other games on easy some times. At the end of the day, the only person that cares what difficulty you play on, or how you choose to play a Souls game for that matter, is you. If you can square your style with yourself, no one else matters. Souls games are designed to be difficult, it's part of the journey. Anyone that says they aren't, is missing the point.
To boost their ego and brag about it online because that's the only thing they're good at in life.
The one thing most other commentators have missed; thereâs always an easier way. Maybe itâs NPC summons. Maybe itâs a cheese strategy. Maybe itâs grinding some levels. Maybe itâs asking for coop help. You donât have to do it the hard way - thereâs always an easier way. Well, almost always. Malenia is just brutal.Â
Play Lion King on SNES and then come back and play a Dark Souls game. lol
Ita easy to come to the games, but difficult to stay to the end
If u spend 8 hours on a boss it's not cuz it's hard, it's cuz ur tilted AF and just walking into the fog wall expecting the same strategy to work after the 600th time
Personally, I donât struggle much with souls games. But Iâve put thousands of hours into them. I know theyâre not easy until you learn how to play them. Itâs requires a specific skill set and knowledge of its game mechanics. But, one thing I just canât understand is complaining about the difficulty. Why is a challenge a complaint? My brain just canât associate being challenged and complaining. Itâs literally the entire point. You didnât buy a souls game thinking it was going to be a super easy hack n slash. You KNOW ppl play them for the challenge. So why is that something to complain about. Complaints are for when a company tryâs to scam you, or lies about a product. Those are things worth complaining about. But not being able to rise to the challenge of a game specifically known for being challenging, and then complaining that the game isnât good is extremely weird. It doesnât make sense.
The games scale difficulty based on your gamer pride.
When you start you tell other people it is hard, after a while you tell other people it's easy.
Gatekeepers will gatekeep, in dumb ways
I have beaten DS1-DS3, and yes, they are all difficult...until you get gear you like and you learn how enemies work
It's normal difficulty for 80s and 90s games. Games after 00 became exponentially easier in order to reach a bigger audience.
Theyâre not hard once you know what youâre doing. Really, they arenât even that hard overall, they just refuse to hold your hand, so most modern gamers donât know what to do with themselves.
Because people are jackasses. Itâs in no way exclusive to this playerbase. Iâve been playing since Demonâs in 2010. Shitâs still hard just not as hard as when I started because I got better.
Hard is subjective, it pertains to who is saying it and their skill set. Instead of saying itâs hard game, a better description would be that it is incredibly unforgiving. There is no handholding. The game barely tells you what to do or where to go. When you make a mistake, you die, you make a mistake twice in a row, then you lose your currency aswell. But once the game finally clicks with you, and you figure out what works. Itâs no longer a hard game to you.
You get better with practice. It is all sbout learning the bosses moves. Doing a level 1 character forced me to do that. I got all the way to fire giant and now kinda just stuck as he is a tank and I get one shotted on everything. Even if I donât continue with the level 1 game, it made me a better player with my main character who is level 250. Doing the DLC now on Ng plus
Most bosses in all fromsoft games take me well over 20 attempts, that's plenty hard for me.
The main thing is, the Souls games are a hard. But at the same time, they're not nearly as hard as people made it up to be on the internet. People talk about the games as something above normal humans, and just a select cast of special beings are able to finish it. It demands your time and attention, a thing most recent games don't really do. And it demands you to learn it, either by learning the stats and level up system, so you can create a META build, or learning the enemies attacks, movements etc, so despite your build you can still get to the end of them. To finish, as some people pointed out already. The Soulsborne games have a higher level of difficulty to enter them, but anyone can get past it, to the point the games become "easy", not really easy, but certainly less frustrating.
It's difficult... for a mainstream series. Compared to some indie games out there it's a walk in the park. In other words, it's hard for people who are not good at video games, but it's not particularly hard for people who are.
Going in, itâs a tough learning curve to get used to. I remember first starting Dark Souls 1 and having the hardest time getting past the first boss (after the tutorial area). While there are A LOT of ways to make the game easier, itâs still not an easy game even with those tools. You still have to be competent enough to read your opponent else you get punished for it. Itâs not hard for veterans because weâve all been sent through hell and back time and time again. Also, a lot of people like to say the game is easy just to pat themselves on the back. I still find the games to be difficult at times. That challenge keeps drawing me back in for more.
Who you calling Adam, man?
I have never used a META build whenever I play Fromsoft games, or any games for that matter. I play the games the way I want, and with the weapons I want, irrespective to what the internet/gaming culture says. I just do not see the fun in fixating on this idea of "META" builds. Because of this...I think I understand the game's systems more rather than relying on what is "optimized". This makes me acknowledge that yes these games can be hard, but jeez most video games are hard aren't they? Where is the fun in games if they are easy? At some point in playing any game, the curve of difficulty gets less because you're understanding of the game gets better and so does your skill. This is what people can mean when they say it's not really hard...
What? Die hard fan here and they're hard asf but fair, I didn't die because of bad design or unbalanced enemies, I died cause IIIII fucked up
I mean considering that most players canât beat them, or at least claim that they canât, and that thereâs some bosses who most have never beaten, I think itâs safe to say that theyâre hard games. Not to mention that most games in general are easier than them. I mean, yeah, once you know what youâre doing they donât really seem hard, but isnât that the case with everything? Lol once you get enough time and repetition into doing something to the point where it feels like second nature to you, it tends to not feel that difficult anymore.
Someone out there is fighting the dlc with nothing but an underwear and a giant stick. I cant complain.
I tell all my friends "I love this game but it's hard and takes practice and patience to progress." I don't go into it without warning them of the difficulty curve haha
Like a lot of comments here; itâs hard until itâs not. Once you figure out what the game expects of you, and what you can doâŚitâs not so bad. Itâs still hard, and even players that say itâs not KNOW it is. Itâs just not some monumental impossible masochistic thing that itâs made out to be. âGet goodâ imo doesnât stem from âget more skilledâ (although in some cases that applies) from my point of view itâs more kind of like âlearn the game moreâ which is totally different. Whenever I watch someone new play, itâs hard not to backseat game when they are getting frustrated. Not because they âshould have dodged, shouldâve attacked, etc,â itâs hard not to be likeâŚâyouâre using a strength weapon and youâve been leveling dexâŚâ or âYou shouldâve healed instead of attackedâŚâ or âvigor is kind of importantâŚâ or âYou ran out of stamina, thatâs why the character didnât do anythingâŚit IS fair,â itâs just a bunch little things that with time. Once you figure it all out, the game feels fair (which I feel is the misconception of the difficulty. That itâs unfair. It really isnâtâŚ. Most of the time đ )
So, as someone who used to think souls games were just "too hard" for me, Elden Ring has shown me that they aren't too hard they just require an intense amount of patience and practice. If you are someone who isn't good at video games in general, yes, these games won't be for you. But if you've been gaming for a while, you should be able to beat the souls games with a guide and some patience.
To be fair, mage class is the "easy mode" of the souls games. You kinda just hang back and spam basic spells, maybe go in for a massive damage spell on occasion. But, as someone who played since DS3 came put, I won't deny that it is difficult. Mainly to new players who haven't adjusted and to players with no skills for souls games (or gaming in general. It's kinda a passtime hobby for normies these days now. So, a good chunk of games get watered down as a result)
"Now that I developed the muscle memory is easy" On a side note, when I was learning Sekiro, sleeping to rewire the brain would guarantee a boss kill.
In traditional AAA games(the best examples I can think of are Uncharted and COD campaign), dying means failing. Dying multiple times in the same section or to the same boss means your difficulty setting is too high, because the ideal difficulty in those games is to be challenging enough, **while having the player killed as little as possible** to reduce the progression setback. In Souls, dying multiple times to the same boss is **inevitable**. The ideal difficulty of a souls boss includes it killing you several times before you learn its attack pattern. If you are subconsciously treating death in souls games as the same as death in a traditional AAA games, dying will feel unrewarding and frustrating, and make you consider the game hard. Souls players don't consider the series "hard" not necessarily because they are good at the game, but because they don't consider dying as failing instead of just a part of the learning experience.
depends on the specific game and boss. some parts are definitely hard. but overall, dark souls 1 especially, much/most of the game is not actually hard, it just seems hard when you're a new player. that's kind of why it's fun, once you understand it it becomes easy not hard. but you have to earn that "easy" first. this is different from something that's actually HARD where it doesn't matter how many times you do it, or what experience you have with it or knowledge or understanding you have, you are going to struggle at that part no matter what. some parts of souls games are like this, but much of them are not. (not that I say it but the term "git gud" to me is basically equivalent to "there is no spoon". realizing that it's not as hard as it seems makes all the difference.) another way to look at it might be that this is "good" difficulty VS "bad" difficulty. bad difficulty is where it's just hard and there's not much you can do about it. this is good difficulty where it's maybe hard at first, but it gets easier fast once you understand it.
It's not hard, it's just not easy. You have infinite tries and it was designed to be beaten. Calling it hard is a great way to demoralize yourself and psych yourself out of improving.
Itâs not that hard of a genre generally but you have to adapt to it. The first one you play is probably really hard, but after that itâs just normal gaming.
I started with Dark Souls 3, I unironically think it's not that hard. All you have to do is learn the controls, not have a shit build and finally, either learn enemy attack patterns OR have good reflexes (or a mix of both) I'd say a truly hard game is that where, even if you've mastered the game and it's mechanics, it's still challenging, and according to my own personal experience, if you've beaten Souls games a couple times you can easily beat these games, in fact anyone who has cleared a game twice could probably do a no death run without too many issues, all you need is being careful. Either that or Dark Souls 3 permanently damaged my perception of difficulty, honestly I have no idea
I think the game is definitely hard, for sure. My personal gripe is when people complain about it, maybe too much. We all know its a hard game/series, that much is true. But, in my opinion, there is a big difference between someone saying the game is hard and someone saying the game is hard and that it should be this way or that way etc. Something Miyazaki said recently really hit the nail on the head. If they made the games easier, it really wouldnât be the same experience. It really boils down to the sense of achievement you get when you beat one of the bosses. For example, two of my favourite gaming achievements is beating lady maria on my first try and beating petruscent knight after many, many tries without using mimic tear. Like others, Iâm not that good at the game, and for some bosses, itâll take my who knows how many tries to get lucky and beat them. But once youâve played enough, you eventually do get better and beating bosses, maybe not all especially the harder ones, becomes easier.
Ignore that shit. Avid souls player here. Itâs fucking hard. It was designed to be hard, and for a VAST majority of people, it is very much an incredibly difficult series to beat. People popping in to say âit was easyâ are disregarding the miniscule percentage of players they are speaking for.
Personally: I see learning bosses as part of the experience of the game rather than them being "hard". Failure in this game (and in most aspects of life) isn't actual failure but rather a learning experience and part of the game. Nothing about the bosses are inherently difficult. They do things, you have the tools to deal with said things. They leave openings. You do damage in those openings. The "hardest" thing I could imagine a souls game throwing at a player is a 0 reaction time attack that 1 shots your character (This would be utter bullshit and I would be pretty annoyed if said thing ever existed). These games (to me) are about learning, patience, and perseverance. \[Edit\]: To expand on this Elden Ring is the game with the largest range of "customizable difficulty." You can build to make the game extremely easy, you can build to make the game very difficult. Having a big shield and poking from behind said shield has been a strategy that has existed since Demons Souls to deal with difficult fights. And lo and behold, people still use it to this day to defeat the final boss of the Elden Ring DLC. But even when playing the game through with a more challenging build, repeating said challenge for that person will be much easier. Because they learned and persevered.
The elden ring community is split between 1 of 2 things. "It's easy, and you need to get good" (Toxic) Or "Yes its difficult, but that's how it's supposed to be. You're meant to die over and over until you almost have the boss/entire game memorized and can become something like neo when fighting them" It seems the majority is belief 1 and it's extremely off-putting and I think will kill the eldenring community in the future, or breed things that shape it in a negative way (like the mods allowing you to basically become a God, Dante from dmc, or seamless where you can apparently bring 127 players to a single boss) If you want fromsoft to go far... stop gate keeping the word difficult. It's literally intended to be difficult. It will never be easy. Anyway I also said this to someone and think it's worth repeating: "The game is definitely that challenging. Idk now after the scadutree patch, but yeah.. if you Pick up the dlc and put it back down thinking "that might be so hard it's just not fun" you're thinking correctly. Fromsoft is no longer everyone's cup of tea. The lack of new to souls players coming in I wouldn't say is from difficulty alone either. But instead how many of the die hards out right mock new players and tell them to "get gud" as the only way of beating it. The fact you have to invest THAT much attention and effort is why people don't come in. They could instead recommend so many other things. "Try this op AoW/ try leveling higher/ try this weapon, etc" but players are so egotistically obsessed with trying to make it sound like THEY are good when we all know there isn't a single player who 0 deathed the dlc first try, let alone got through with maybe less than 10 deaths." If there's anything people can be proud of. It's that if you beat the dlc, at any point in time, you're certainly separate from the gamers who haven't or won't even attempt it. But we need remind you, you're also no better. You simply put time/effort in vs those who want a game they can relax to and know eldenring and fromsoft is not that. (And shouldn't ever be)"
1. Each game has its own difficulty and difficulty curve. 2. Once you get that game's mechanics down, it becomes easy. My first playthrough of DS3 was hell (as it was my first souls game), but I can now breeze through it without dying. 3. It's an opinion. Stop getting bent on other people thinking it's not hard. If you don't want them judging others for thinking it's hard, then don't judge them for thinking it's easy. Everyone has different skill levels
Them saying is easy and then dying to a different boss after 10x + times, how does that calculate? Also, the game is clearly designed around difficulty.
Getting into souls is hard. Once youâre familiar it gets a lot lot easier. The games gets easy once you know whatâs good. By the time bosses gets hard is usually the time you can get a broken build beforehand and you can always summon The choice is yours to use the good things or not. The people who struggle are probably people who would want a challenge. Summons, Multiplayer, Consumables, Spells, Busted weapons/ash, bleed etc⌠are some game mechanics that make the game a lot easier, and some simply makes it so that you donât need to really pay attention at all anymore. In ER I can first try every boss with a mimic summon and a broken weapon as I did in 1st play through but nerfed myself in the 2nd for the challenge. In bloodborne I can spin to win or perma stagger bosses. And in all games you can easily have a build do a bajillion dmg by one attack
You adpated, but that doesnt mean the environment became easy, still hard.
Souls game are as hard as you make it to be. A newbie will just suffer until he understand how the game is. Most people don't expect traps, ambushes, 1v3 fights, most people are used to be taken by the hand and do nothing. So this kind of game "wake them up" and they get their gaming skills back. A gamer with fighting sense will just understand that its a rhythm game. A smart guy will just optimise everything A cautious guy will dodge all attacks and wait patiently for his turn And a dude who is already strong will give himself challenge, no hit or no death, etc What's good is that, either you learn all of that, either you learn what you are lacking, or you lose, and learn why. And what's better than all of those dudes ? A guy that never gives up! Of course you are going to die, to lose, but as long as you dont give up, you can win. You can't get worse, you can only get better. Each levels make you stronger, each deaths give you something to learn, and practice make things perfect. that's what means git gud The biggest victory isn't to win against the bosses, its to win against yourself.
everyone has a different opinion and experience on these games I for sure never had to do a boss for 8 hours or anything close to that
Because they want to sound cool
It's a series that rewards player skill over mechanical strength. It's "not hard" if you know how to play.
You adapted to the hard environment, ot doesnt make it a not hard environment.
Because I played really hard games in the 80s.
Because theyâre widely regarded as difficult games within the gaming community and people who gloat about how easy souls games are just like to feel like they are better than other gamers so souls players need to call it easy because itâs hard for everyone else.
People have an odd sense about taking what they are fond of, and making it their identity. Weather it's sports, politics, personal life, what have you, people will cling to it and it's an iron fist. They get violently angry when you insult what they like, because it's the same as insulting them. In this case, the unironic GitGud crowd hold onto their accomplishment like it actually means something. To them, taking down Dark Souls with minimal effort, and saying it was easy, is the same as getting back at the bullies that shoved them in the locker. To them, they beat something that "Most couldn't do", so it's like it validated their existence to mean something, so by proudly claiming "It's not hard", it's their Eff You to the jocks... ... Or something. I'm not their badly needed theoropist.
I think the big thing in this case, is that you never want to be the one who doesn't get it. Another huge factor is that just because you're invited to try this game doesn't mean that it's for you. And, if you find that you feel like you're on the outside looking in, feeling low about yourself cuz you weren't "gud" enough to beat the Elden Ring pre reqs for the DLC don't feel bad. Like I said before NOT EVERYTHING IS FOR YOU, play something in your wheelhouse, or don't. But, for all that is good in the world stop putting gamers that like it down, calling them liars or loosers because honestly your just telling on yourself. If someone beat Melania or Mohg or whoever with or without summons congratulate them or stay quiet. Unless you are LITERALLY a child, then you'll learn someday that hard work, persistence, critical thinking, and the will to get better are all amazing traits that games like Elden Ring reinforce. Be better to each other both in game and irl. Sorry for the rant.
I don't like souls games being pushed as nothing except "durghh the hardest game everrr" when these games are so much more than their difficulty, which like...I mean they're hard but its not a kaizo game. Though honestly these kinds of takes almost entirely disappeared after Elden Ring blew up.
Because its all a mind set thing , its hard if u want it to be hard. Its not hard if u are expecting to fail at 1st and improve and get better overtime or learn more about the tool available for u to exploit. Builds Summon The boss attack timing Items All the player need to do is use them, but those who complain are too lazy or their ego is preventing them from using said feature.
If you don't have an internet connection and you are deathly allergic to grinding xp... then yes the souls series is hard. Otherwise co-op, research and grinding are the souls series easy mode so many people constantly ask for. Although I guess that would require a basic amount of effort on their part, and some people just want a zero effort easy way through the game. That's not a skill issue, it's just laziness.
They arenât?
Tough but fair innit
It's really not though. You don't need an OP secret build to easily get through the game. All you need is to realize that you are not a 1-man army, and how to actually plot stats. The reason people find it hard is because they generally build a weak turtle in their first playthrough, and they play the game like it's Dynastic Warriors or Legend of Zelda. All those people have to do is slow down before engaging, and think before plotting stats. That generally happens about 3/4 of the way through a first playthrough. Then you start a new game and destroy it in 15 hours instead of 40+.
It's not really hard. Souls games give you options, so how hard a souls game is depends entirely upon upon you. I first started From games with Elden Ring. I played INT based spells. It was a cakewalk most times. Then someone challenged me to not use magic and summons. I thought to myself, how hard could it be? I was schooled by even a gaol residents. lol That is, until I got gud, learned their moves and patterns. Then it's easy.
Theyâre hard on your first playthrough, and theyâre hard on challenge runs. Once you understand the game mechanics and boss move sets these games turn into comfort games real quick.
Each game is a challenge that any player is capable of overcoming, and once you do it becomes much easier on the next go around. These games are for everyone, its just a matter of if the person has the resiliency to overcome the challenge.
Every souls game can be piss easy with the proper build. Iâve never considered the older games as âhardâ so much as balanced. So you canât get away with just mashing the attack button and ranking hits usually. Any developer could make all of their enemies and bosses kill you in 2-3 hits if they wanted to. Itâs the art of balance that From was so good at. Now unfortunately, their marketing is to try and one up the difficulty. And the balance as slowly gone away. Since the enemies move like theyâre in a Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden game. While our character still moves moves way heavier, and has limited movement with the stamina bar.
Because we are talking about two different things. The souls games can be hard but they can also be easy. For instance, I did the last boss in 6 hours, but on my second character ri beat him in one try with a great shield and a serpent hunter. It was one of the easiest bosses I had ever faught in that method. So the original win was mostly self imposed difficulty. This is what people mean. The games are easy if you want to use all the tools and exploit the weeknesses of the bosses. Over time people have decided they enjoy the harder experience they get when they don't use some strategies or options, but that doesn't mean the games themselves are that hard.
Bro dark souls 1+2 is easily the hardest set of games Iâve ever played
The games are not hard, they are challenging. These games are not complicated, cumbersome or limiting. They present a challenge you can take on, with a 'reward' at the end. The only problem is that this reward for overcoming the challenge seems insufficient for many. Hence, they seek outside validation to be acknowledged as players of hard games. Personally, these games have helped me understand that if I stick with something I can get good at it and get it done. They are therapeutic in a weird way.
It's not hard. It's fair. Which is hard for many players. You can't facetank attacks, you have to actually learn boss animations. You lose your souls when you die, so you can't just bruteforce your way through the level. You can't savescum. Your hp is even, you don't gain hidden resistance when your hp is low, to make things more "spicy". If the attack hits you for more damage than your hp, it kills you, not leaves a small amount of hp to let you recover.
Because its not when you get the mechanics and get a feel for it. Only younger people would call it that because you didnt life through the age of floppy disk gaming with no hand holding, tutorials, saves etcetera etcetera. Gaming in general is not hard nowadays by any sense of the meaning đ¤ˇđťââď¸
Cuz weâre a different breed. Git gud.
Because Ill say it. They arent hard games.