Dark Souls II Announced

[Retrogamer0001]

The knight statue is actually gorgeous - one of my favorite pieces of game memorabilia in my collection. The weapons are nothing special, and I didn't really expect them to be. The art book and poster are really cool though. All in all, satisfied with the CE.

[soul_hacker]

I beat the first boss today. Then I went down and got destroyed by those turtle things. My god, they were everywhere.

[Hazerd]

For the amount of people playing these games and for all the times i hear "i platinumed demons souls, or dark souls" are these games really that hard?

I was browsing the Dark Souls II gamefaqs message board, and its just amazing how people gloat about being all hardcore when playing these games and kids should go play Elder Scrolls or Pokemon if it's too hard.

I hate to give into the hype and go buy it just to see whats the fuss is all about, i feel its a huge bandwagon or something.

[Retrogamer0001]

For the amount of people playing these games and for all the times i hear "i platinumed demons souls, or dark souls" are these games really that hard?

I was browsing the Dark Souls II gamefaqs message board, and its just amazing how people gloat about being all hardcore when playing these games and kids should go play Elder Scrolls or Pokemon if it's too hard.

I hate to give into the hype and go buy it just to see whats the fuss is all about, i feel its a huge bandwagon or something.

The games are punishing, but it if you properly upgrade your equipment and pay attention to enemy attacks, you'll do fine. That being said, prepare to die countless, countless times, especially on some of the bosses and more difficult enemies. The level designs, unique items, and overall gameplay is second to none, and I recommend these games to anyone looking for something different than the run-of-the-mill, hold-your-hand type of games that seem to be all we get today. You can probably score Demon's Souls for seven or eight bucks right now, so you really have no excuse not to try it.

[Hazerd]

For the amount of people playing these games and for all the times i hear "i platinumed demons souls, or dark souls" are these games really that hard?

I was browsing the Dark Souls II gamefaqs message board, and its just amazing how people gloat about being all hardcore when playing these games and kids should go play Elder Scrolls or Pokemon if it's too hard.

I hate to give into the hype and go buy it just to see whats the fuss is all about, i feel its a huge bandwagon or something.

The games are punishing, but it if you properly upgrade your equipment and pay attention to enemy attacks, you'll do fine. That being said, prepare to die countless, countless times, especially on some of the bosses and more difficult enemies. The level designs, unique items, and overall gameplay is second to none, and I recommend these games to anyone looking for something different than the run-of-the-mill, hold-your-hand type of games that seem to be all we get today. You can probably score Demon's Souls for seven or eight bucks right now, so you really have no excuse not to try it.

That bolded line right there is what im talking about, people playing these games think they are some hardcore look at me being a big man with my masochist game.

Whats wrong with "hold your hand games" if you enjoy the story, gameplay and whatever else?

Whats an example of a "hold your hand games"? would you consider Uncharted or God of War those? Because i enjoy those and will continue to buy the new ones they put out.

They can be pretty punishing if you turn up the difficulty imo.

[Retrogamer0001]

I actually play games for two reasons - to enjoy a challenge and to enjoy the story. The Souls series is very challenging, without doubt, and has a very loose, organic story-line that is reminiscent of the old Ninja Gaiden games, where the more you play, the more story is revealed. The characters are dark and full of despair, and you really feel like everyone has given up. I love that about the series, and it's not something you often see anywhere else in modern gaming.

As far as "hold your hand" type of games, I would consider Uncharted to be one of those series, as I have played through them on normal difficulty without issue. Even Bioshock, a series I dearly love, is not very challenging. Any game can be challenging if you put it on the hardest difficulty, so I don't really consider that to be a legitimate argument. With the Souls games, you don't get to choose what difficulty to play on, you just suffer through it. After completing one play-through, you get a New Game + option where everything gets ramped up in difficulty and your character gets weaker. I believe you can go up to NG+++++, where things get criminally insane. If you find someone who has beaten it at that difficulty, then they have the right to gloat.

[dsheinem]

I actually play games for two reasons - to enjoy a challenge and to enjoy the story. The Souls series is very challenging, without doubt, and has a very loose, organic story-line that is reminiscent of the old Ninja Gaiden games, where the more you play, the more story is revealed. The characters are dark and full of despair, and you really feel like everyone has given up. I love that about the series, and it's not something you often see anywhere else in modern gaming.

As far as "hold your hand" type of games, I would consider Uncharted to be one of those series, as I have played through them on normal difficulty without issue. Even Bioshock, a series I dearly love, is not very challenging. Any game can be challenging if you put it on the hardest difficulty, so I don't really consider that to be a legitimate argument. With the Souls games, you don't get to choose what difficulty to play on, you just suffer through it. After completing one play-through, you get a New Game + option where everything gets ramped up in difficulty and your character gets weaker. I believe you can go up to NG+++++, where things get criminally insane. If you find someone who has beaten it at that difficulty, then they have the right to gloat.

"Challenge" and "Difficulty" are both very relative terms, and while the Souls series is quite tough for the genre (e.g. you die a lot, penalties are harsh, there's a lot of trial and error), that doesn't make it necessarily any harder than games that are more twitch-based (where the difficulty is based on how fast you can move sticks and press buttons in a particular order), games that force you to make a series of tough/right narrative choices to get a good ending, games that require you to outmaneuver human opponents, or even games that leave you unsettled or perplexed given their themes. People who gloat about beating Souls games can certainly feel good about beating a game that is designed to be tough, but once they start suggesting that it is "harder" than games in other genres their arguments start to overreach.

[MrEco]

For the amount of people playing these games and for all the times i hear "i platinumed demons souls, or dark souls" are these games really that hard?

I was browsing the Dark Souls II gamefaqs message board, and its just amazing how people gloat about being all hardcore when playing these games and kids should go play Elder Scrolls or Pokemon if it's too hard.

I hate to give into the hype and go buy it just to see whats the fuss is all about, i feel its a huge bandwagon or something.

The difference between a Souls game and most other games today is not in the literal difficulty. It's in the type of play style required to overcome that difficulty.

There are actually plenty of games today, both indie and mainstream, that can be very difficult especially on higher difficulty settings. But the difficulty in most of these games comes from skill based gameplay more than anything else and very little to no strategy. Now there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion, but perhaps you can understand why so many people put on their big boy pants (so to speak) when they talk about their accomplishments in a Souls game.

Take, for example, most first or third person shooters these days. You might run up against a difficult section in the game, but success is often determined by finding decent cover and having good aim with your gun. Not much else. Where as in a Souls game there's much more depth of strategy required to beat any given section or enemy. Different enemies have different attack patterns, the environment you fight them in can give either you or them a significant advantage, and then everything about your character can influence the outcome of a fight as well. For example you have to be careful of the swing speed and reach of your weapon to properly use it, there are a multitude of different weapon attack animations that can effect how it is used (Stabs, horizontal ground sweep, vertical swing etc), and then the whole time during a fight you have to be careful of watching your stamina bar which is used up any time you attack, dodge, or a block.


In general what makes a Souls game "difficult" is a combination of traditional timing/skill (Like can be found in just about any game with real time combat) and a certain depth to the mechanics which requires the player to always be thinking about what they are doing. On top of that you then also have the fact that the game is practically free of all direction, much like how older open world RPG's were. You will rarely, if ever, be flat out told what direction is best to go in. It's a level of strategy to the gameplay and pacing that is, unfortunately, rarely seen these days in AAA quality titles.


I guess it's a little hard to explain in words, but I hope I've cleared up some of the mystery.

[Retrogamer0001]

For the amount of people playing these games and for all the times i hear "i platinumed demons souls, or dark souls" are these games really that hard?

I was browsing the Dark Souls II gamefaqs message board, and its just amazing how people gloat about being all hardcore when playing these games and kids should go play Elder Scrolls or Pokemon if it's too hard.

I hate to give into the hype and go buy it just to see whats the fuss is all about, i feel its a huge bandwagon or something.

The difference between a Souls game and most other games today is not in the literal difficulty. It's in the type of play style required to overcome that difficulty.

There are actually plenty of games today, both indie and mainstream, that can be very difficult especially on higher difficulty settings. But the difficulty in most of these games comes from skill based gameplay more than anything else and very little to no strategy. Now there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion, but perhaps you can understand why so many people put on their big boy pants (so to speak) when they talk about their accomplishments in a Souls game.

Take, for example, most first or third person shooters these days. You might run up against a difficult section in the game, but success is often determined by finding decent cover and having good aim with your gun. Not much else. Where as in a Souls game there's much more depth of strategy required to beat any given section or enemy. Different enemies have different attack patterns, the environment you fight them in can give either you or them a significant advantage, and then everything about your character can influence the outcome of a fight as well. For example you have to be careful of the swing speed and reach of your weapon to properly use it, there are a multitude of different weapon attack animations that can effect how it is used (Stabs, horizontal ground sweep, vertical swing etc), and then the whole time during a fight you have to be careful of watching your stamina bar which is used up any time you attack, dodge, or a block.


In general what makes a Souls game "difficult" is a combination of traditional timing/skill (Like can be found in just about any game with real time combat) and a certain depth to the mechanics which requires the player to always be thinking about what they are doing. On top of that you then also have the fact that the game is practically free of all direction, much like how older open world RPG's were. You will rarely, if ever, be flat out told what direction is best to go in. It's a level of strategy to the gameplay and pacing that is, unfortunately, rarely seen these days in AAA quality titles.


I guess it's a little hard to explain in words, but I hope I've cleared up some of the mystery.

Very well said

[Pulsar_t]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhIIhW4Cf5M