Is Dark Souls overrated?

[vortex]

DS universe is not overrated. DemS, DS and BB are very original and unique games. Ds2, DS3 are lacking for in-depth story.
Narration and voiceacting are excellent but overral plot is basically the same. Too much overusing the same concepts. Gameplaywise, my opinon is that DS3>DS2.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Story was always shit in Dark Souls.

 

[Cromwell]

Dark Souls is good, most parts of the fanbase are shit and overrated

 

[aweigh]

MOVE THREAD

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[Kahr]

The approach of Dark Souls is basically to train the greatest noobs in understanding how the combat works.
Therefore the constant repeats.
I kind of enjoyed Dark Souls for what it is; but i don't like that you get rewarded for fails.
It's like giving the retarded kid in school infinite tries for a test till he has achieved the same score with all attempts combined than a normal kid with one.
Also the setting is wacky and japanese:

Spoiler

Are the Japanese really so incapable to make a dark european medieval world?
I don't mind if a game has no real story. But at least it has to have some intention.
Diablo has a better intention than Dark Souls which is sad. I don't even understood what i was doing the whole time in DS.
They could've easily cut the whole npc interaction.
Overrated? The whole hype considered, of course. But it's still a enjoyable game.

 

[CptMace]

Diablo has a better intention than Dark Souls which is sad. I don't even understood what i was doing the whole time in DS.
They could've easily cut the whole npc interaction.

 

[aweigh]

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also not one person has mentioned king's field yet and how much From has declined. for shame.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Dark Souls is not overrated. It's just that the fanbase became unabashedly retarded with each release.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

This thread is another reason why GRPG is a cesspool while JRPG Discussion is a magical and exotic land where everyone gets along and is superior

 

[Doktor Best]

Well its by far the best action based dungeon crawler series, no more no less. The leveldesign is great and really goes hand in hand with enemy design and enemy placement. Every time you fight an enemy you also have to consider in which areas you fight, how much room you have to dodge your enemies, how hard they hit so you can block incoming damage without being staggered, if you are forced to outmaneuver them in order to pick off other threats like enemies shooting from a distance, if there are hazardous effects like heat or poison or simply muddy ground that hinders your movement etc.

That makes up for a very diversive and interesting encounter design, so saying that the game is repetitive is just pure bullshit, sorry. Repetitveness only kicks in if you suck at playing the game and die over and over again. The game is also never unfair. Yes the levels are filled with enviromental traps and "mean" enemy placement and it also often puts you under pressure to bait you into making fatal mistakes, but if you play smart and if you READ the enviroment well enough then you wont die, even if youre going through the level the first time.

And thats what makes the game so outstanding for me. It forces you to fucking pay attention, to the level layout, to enemy behaviour, to your supplies, to status effects and so on. The save system goes hand in hand with that because youre always under pressure to lose progress, because death does not only mean the annoyance of staring at a loading screen but because it actually has impact on the gameplay.

Its not the hardest game ive played, but its hard in an interesting way.

 

[aweigh]

i think DS games are in the exact same genre as River city Ransonm. no joke.

 

[Neanderthal]

Severance: Blade of Darkness.

Drops microphone.

 

[Akratus]

 

[tormund]

No, it isn't. DS is a pretty good game, and more people would agree with that if you opened this thread somewhere outside of cRPG discussion. What annoys most people is its fanbase, because game somehow manages to attract the most pretentious of hipsters and most meme-spewing of messageboard kids alike, combined with "Dark Souls like" or "Dark Souls clone" being a new "roguelike" among game journos and marketers (and it being just as meaningless).

 

[Multidirectional]

Story was always shit in Dark Souls.

Best thing about it is that it's kept to a minimum and doesn't get in the way of the actual game. There are a lot of games that have shittier stories that can't even give the player freedom to ignore them.
It's the atmosphere that is cool in DS, if we were to talk about good non game parts of it.

Dark Souls is not overrated. It's just that the fanbase became unabashedly retarded with each release.

You mean more people became aware of these games. More people = more idiots, nothing complicated about it.

 

[tormund]

Story was always shit in Dark Souls.

Best thing about it is that it's kept to a minimum and doesn't get in the way of the actual game. There are a lot of games that have shittier stories that can't even give the player freedom to ignore them.
.

It told much of its story trough environments, trough item descriptions and their very placement etc... That is something western devs knew how to do back in the day, but which is just another long lost art today.

 

[Hobo Elf]

You mean more people became aware of these games. More people = more idiots, nothing complicated about it.

It's not the amount, just the wrong kind of people.

 

[Grimlorn]

What do you guys mean when you talk about the fanbase being shit? The only fanbase I'm familiar with is on the Codex so I don't know what goes on other sites.

It's probably already been said but Souls games are good action RPGs. Maybe a bit overrated because everything else is shit. But they do the stats and character creation well for an action game. They do dungeon crawling thing pretty well. Pretty good with the art and aesthetics on world and mob design. Pretty good gameplay. Kind of getting stale though with DS 2 for me. I'm a little afraid DS 3 won't be very good either, but back when Demon's Souls and Dark Souls came out it was new and refreshing. I just wish they were more creative with the movesets on weapons, and there was more diversity in equipment stats, character builds. I wish they developed the story and curse a bit more in DS2 and DS3 has yet to be seen but they probably won't. It probably wouldn't be good if they did.

 

[Riskbreaker]

You should be able to at least appreciate significant portion of original Dark Souls as long as you are able to appreciate genuinely good game design. But ya can't expect that from the regular denizens of this particular part of this particular forum, can ya now?
For him for whom seven playthroughs of the latest Bioware/Obsidian title is a time well spent, as is the time spent on his gigantic ejaculation/criticism of said title and the following argument, game design and mechanical excellence are wholly alien qualities. As alien, in a way, as those same qualities are for those that glorify latest interactive movie or walking sim.

 

[CptMace]

mechanical excellence

Beware, someone might post a gif of the Souls' hitboxes.
Like this one :

Mechanical excellence.

 

[Lyric Suite]

99% of games nowadays just use the same regurgitated popamole mechanics with just different sort of fluff acting as window dressing. Dark Souls is the real deal, which doesn't necessarily mean it is perfect in every respect but then i don't know whether there even is such a thing as a perfect game. I personally never saw one.

 

[CptMace]

I do love Souls' games. But talking of mechanical excellence is straight out retarded. The hitboxes, which are a crucial element of this kind of games, are all fucked in Dark Souls 1 & 2 (not much in DeS, haven't played BB). How many bosses will miss their attack simply because you stick as close to them as you can. Ridiculous.

 

[Declinator]

the difficulty is cheap and the only thing required of you is to memorize patterns (both yours and A.I.'s). That's not difficult, just time consuming, depending on how fast you can memorize them.

You just have to memorize patterns. This is true. What of it?

Which action game of this type does not boil down to this in the end? Ninja Gaiden? Bosses are definitely just about memorizing patterns. DMC? Still just memorizing patterns. Gothic? Patterns.

What do you want from these sort of games then? Getting your reaction speed challenged? Difficult to perform techniques? I hope you don't just want long combos (which are just patterns after all).

Would you also say that racing games cannot be difficult because in the end they are just memorizing patterns (the race track and its timings)?

 

[Akratus]

The main thing that has me pining to come back to Dark Souls 1, and try out Demon's Souls in the future despite the fact that controllers are kryptonite to me, is the atmosphere. Not since the first two diablo games have I enjoyed a games setting, world, art design, atmosphere and music so much, where they worked in tandem to create the exact kind of immersion I want. There are plenty of games with good gameplay that I dropped kind of earleir than I liked because they were so visually unappealing. But Dark Souls 1 does it perfectly, and I'm just a fag for exactly that type of thing.

 

[Riskbreaker]

I do love Souls' games. But talking of mechanical excellence is straight out retarded. The hitboxes, which are a crucial element of this kind of games, are all fucked in Dark Souls 1 & 2 (not much in DeS, haven't played BB). How many bosses will miss their attack simply because you stick as close to them as you can. Ridiculous.

That is true for Dark Souls 2, which is why you selected a gif from that game to prove your point. Same point stands not for neither Demon's Souls NOR original Dark Souls. Observe: