Is Dark Souls overrated?

[burn_classic_rpgs_in_hell]

Inconsequential bullshit nitpicking plus it doesn't make the combat flawed, what the fuck. I can't even remember what you're trying to describe here. Besides, I played with KB and M so maybe don't control your games with a retarded children's toy, lolol.


You don't need to use the lock-on too much, later into the game I was too lazy to press the button and did just fine.


C&C meng, if you play with a shield your attack power is lower thus the fights are more tedious. It looks like you'd prefer to be able to spam attacks more often because "lol the enemies respawn and I don't wanna fight them all the time". That's why you have the option to not use the shield and two-hit any random enemy. I played DS for the first time without any shield and just lunge-attacked everything and there was no tedium. The game lets you choose your play-style.


Duh, the hitboxes aren't very good just like in practically any other game. Doesn't mean the combat is "very flawed" it just means sometimes you die to a shit hitbox. These arguments sound like something from a retarded 13 year old reddit poster.

 

[tormund]

Man, you really owned him with that picture. I can't see him ever coming back to this forum after that. You are so brutal and hardass, and yet witty at the same time. Mods, please lock this thread now, it can't go on after that.

 

[sullynathan]

Dark Souls hit detection/hitboxes being considered too big or buggy comes as a news for me. I won't pretend that I played a lot of Nippon action games or action JRPGs, but compared to third person melee action games I played on PC like Rune or Severance, DS hitboxes felt like they were as if not more precise. Not to mention that they are far more precise to those from TES and Gothic games, where it feels like character has one of those personal shields from Dune movie around him.

It definitely has better hitboxes than your average western arpg, I don't think it has better hitboxes than a pure action game though like DMC or God of war.

 

[Raghar]

Man, you really owned him with that picture. I can't see him ever coming back to this forum after that. You are so brutal and hardass, and yet witty at the same time. Mods, please lock this thread now, it can't go on after that.

Joined:
Aug 15, 2015
There are no mods on RPGcodex.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Honestly, the whole "pattern memorization" thing confuses me a bit. Souls bosses are generally quite slow and telegraph their attacks in very obvious ways, so beating them mostly comes down to timing, resource management, familiarity with your weapon moveset, and occasionally a bit of specific strategy. Most of them don't really have a lot of patterns to memorize, though obviously you'll eventually get better at one if you just keep grinding it, but that's true of literally anything you can do. Like, what bossfights are there in the series that actually demand a lot of memorization? Bed of Chaos?

 

[Excidium II]

Man, you really owned him with that picture. I can't see him ever coming back to this forum after that. You are so brutal and hardass, and yet witty at the same time. Mods, please lock this thread now, it can't go on after that.

Joined:
Aug 15, 2015
There are no mods on RPGcodex.

lol you wish

 

[Lyric Suite]

Honestly, the whole "pattern memorization" thing confuses me a bit. Souls bosses are generally quite slow and telegraph their attacks in very obvious ways, so beating them mostly comes down to timing, resource management, familiarity with your weapon moveset, and occasionally a bit of specific strategy. Most of them don't really have a lot of patterns to memorize, though obviously you'll eventually get better at one if you just keep grinding it, but that's true of literally anything you can do. Like, what bossfights are there in the series that actually demand a lot of memorization? Bed of Chaos?

It is your fingers who are memorizing the move set, so to speak. It is really the same concept behind learning to play an instrument, or something like that. It is related to the way shmups work, instead in this case you are learning how to move around enemies and their attacks instead of learning how to navigate through bullet patterns.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Honestly, the whole "pattern memorization" thing confuses me a bit. Souls bosses are generally quite slow and telegraph their attacks in very obvious ways, so beating them mostly comes down to timing, resource management, familiarity with your weapon moveset, and occasionally a bit of specific strategy. Most of them don't really have a lot of patterns to memorize, though obviously you'll eventually get better at one if you just keep grinding it, but that's true of literally anything you can do. Like, what bossfights are there in the series that actually demand a lot of memorization? Bed of Chaos?

It is your fingers who are memorizing the move set, so to speak. It is really the same concept behind learning to play an instrument, or something like that. It is related to the way shmups work, instead in this case you are learning how to move around enemies and their attacks instead of learning how to navigate through bullet patterns.

Yeah, but that's just learning to play the game in general, not memorizing specific boss attack patterns. You can generally memorize shmups quite well because they tend to be mostly static, while Souls enemy AI has a significant random element, and learning how to fight a boss has a lot to do with what the worst case scenarios are, rather than specifically memorizing every attack and how to deal with it - they're usually not that complicated and can be improvised through.

 

[Akratus]

If you don't like memorizing enemy attacks what are you doing playing videogames?

 

[Makabb]

Dark Souls is one of the better action rpgs, it's good for what it is and is not overrated.

I usualy cannot stand other Arpgs like gothic, risen etc. But DS must be bretty gud if i like it.

 

[Lacrymas]

It is your fingers who are memorizing the move set, so to speak. It is really the same concept behind learning to play an instrument, or something like that. It is related to the way shmups work, instead in this case you are learning how to move around enemies and their attacks instead of learning how to navigate through bullet patterns.

That's just the technique though, there's a lot more to playing an instrument than just moving your fingers fast. The muscle memory is just your very first fundamental. The mind state you are in while playing an engaging video game is mostly the same as when you are playing an instrument btw, this is a thing I've noticed for a while now and it's fascinating.

Most (if not all) of the bosses in DS just have a predetermined pattern they go through, which is impossible to be known on your first go, unless you looked up videos. You are just going through certain maneuvers in response to that pattern once you know it, that's all. I don't think that even constitutes a tactic, it's very passive on your part actually. A few people have commented that that is what the action genre is about, and I'm on two minds about that. The already mentioned Severence: Blade of Darkness isn't like that at all, it relies very heavily on your own personal "skill", the mobs kinda react to you rather than the other way around, though that may be a false impression on my part. The question this raises is "are we satisfied with the action genre being what it is or do we want something more?", some people would probably say they are satisfied, and that's fine, but is it worth festering in the same mindset and design decisions for eternity? DS can be used as a jump-off point to try to find a different solution to the "action game question" and that's what I've been saying. You all complain about how the gaming industry is just stagnating and you want something good - that can only be brought in by change of the status quo (obviously the current one isn't working), but when we start discussing something seriously the threads devolve into flame wars, ad hominem attacks and name-calling. DS is overrated because people proclaim it's one of the best games ever made, but that's not true. It's simply good for what it is, elevated by the fact that it raises questions about the genre. Even though I'm not particularly drawn to action games, I care because this doesn't apply only to its own genre, questions about RPG design are also raised with DS and the current stream of indie and AA RPGs (some of them are on the right track) and we should be ready to answer them. It's either that or this industry and medium continues to stagnate until there's nothing meaningful left. And if you (general you) say that you don't care about any of this, then why are you on a forum dedicated to discussing video games and video game-related topics?

 

[sullynathan]

Dark Souls is one of the better action rpgs, it's good for what it is and is not overrated.

I usualy cannot stand other Arpgs like gothic, risen etc. But DS must be bretty gud if i like it.

That's because those games have bad combat, gothic will be better if it played like dark souls.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Honestly, the whole "pattern memorization" thing confuses me a bit. Souls bosses are generally quite slow and telegraph their attacks in very obvious ways, so beating them mostly comes down to timing, resource management, familiarity with your weapon moveset, and occasionally a bit of specific strategy. Most of them don't really have a lot of patterns to memorize, though obviously you'll eventually get better at one if you just keep grinding it, but that's true of literally anything you can do. Like, what bossfights are there in the series that actually demand a lot of memorization? Bed of Chaos?

It is your fingers who are memorizing the move set, so to speak. It is really the same concept behind learning to play an instrument, or something like that. It is related to the way shmups work, instead in this case you are learning how to move around enemies and their attacks instead of learning how to navigate through bullet patterns.

Yeah, but that's just learning to play the game in general, not memorizing specific boss attack patterns. You can generally memorize shmups quite well because they tend to be mostly static, while Souls enemy AI has a significant random element, and learning how to fight a boss has a lot to do with what the worst case scenarios are, rather than specifically memorizing every attack and how to deal with it - they're usually not that complicated and can be improvised through.

Well, you can just say that shmups are like a puzzle, where as Dark Souls is like music with lot's of room for improvisation. The point is that getting good at the game isn't just about having mad twitch skills, and the game is able to maintain a consistent degree of challenge because every time you encounter something different you have to learn new things. Being able to master one boss doesn't necessarily mean you are going to steam roll on the next and so forth.

 

[Akratus]

I wonder what games DO do it right according to Lacrymas.

 

[sullynathan]

answer would be 0

 

[Sothpaw]

All the Souls games are great and anyone who says they don't like them are just butthurt that the game made them ragequit.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't get the significance of this question. Would something change if I were to truly say "none" or give specific examples of games I think do "it" (I don't know what "it" refers to) right? Why is this even about me?

 

[sullynathan]

If you said none, then everyone (or at least most of us) will think your criticisms are invalid because you would paint the picture that the genre is not for you.

 

[Lacrymas]

Why would they be invalid? My personal feelings or preferences don't have anything to do with the arguments I posed, so even if it were none and you dismissed them because of that, it would still be a veiled ad hominem that would ignore them rather than invalidate them. I see this thread won't go anywhere since you are just fishing for reasons to ignore the raised points, sooo so much for that, maybe the next one.

 

[sullynathan]

I took your criticisms seriously, that's why I didn't reply to the ones that I thought were sound. You still seem like someone who doesn't like the genre so I am sensing a lot of bias there plus you brought up story making me believe you're an undercover storyfag.

 

[Lacrymas]

Ah, k. I brought up everything that people praise about the game and I explicitly said that the narrative is not my main gripe. I said there is no plot, and that's true, but I also mentioned that this isn't always a bad thing. The only weird thing, like I remarked previously, is the choice you have to make at the end (just the fact that there is a choice presented, not the specific choice you are given), it clashes with the overall "style" of storytelling and is meaningless, but that's a minor thing and not worth dwelling on (although we could, but that would be a discussion for another thread and it would involve talking about coherence in style and logical leading of plot elements).

 

[Kutulu]

Souls is completly based around melee combat, if you are a caster, or so shit that you have to farm or block all the time
you cannot into Souls. Show me a single a game with melee combat remotely as good as DS, you cant, because it does
not exist.

The reason ds gets mentioned everywhere is because, swinging swords is fun but its shitty single button repetetive shit
in 90% of all games that offer it....

Ds is just an action game yes, its the best melee action game there is.

 

[Sothpaw]

Souls is completly based around melee combat, if you are a caster, or so shit that you have to farm or block all the time
you cannot into Souls. Show me a single a game with melee combat remotely as good as DS, you cant, because it does
not exist.

The reason ds gets mentioned everywhere is because, swinging swords is fun but its shitty single button repetetive shit
in 90% of all games that offer it....

Ds is just an action game yes, its the best melee action game there is.

Calling it just an action game is selling it short. The exploration is pretty top tier in the Souls games as well.

 

[burn_classic_rpgs_in_hell]

Show me a single a game with melee combat remotely as good as DS, you cant, because it does
not exist.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic has an (almost?) excellent combat system.

 

[Dark Matter]

While Dark Souls' popularity was artificially inflated by a sudden fascination over hard games as if they were uncommon, I still think it has a lot of legitimate qualities and I'm really curious about your full opinion. You should make a thread about it if it's too long, I"ll definitely read it.

I don't really have a desire to literally write an essay about why it's ...poorly designed are maybe the better words. Suffice it to say it's a J-action-RPG in sheep's clothing. The respawning mobs? They are literally a different version of random encounters in any JRPG. The difficulty? Amateurish understanding of it. You just have to memorize the A.I patterns (mostly bosses) while trying to not gnaw your wrist veins out of boredom from the constant respawns that I already covered. Let's get back to the respawns actually - there's a reason people stopped designing games with such frustrating respawns, it's because arcade games were made to gobble up your coins as much as possible. With the advent of the PC and save systems you simply don't need such a cheap way to lengthen playtime, and this is what it ultimately is, artificially lengthening playtime. When you've already conquered a challenge you don't learn anything from doing it again, it just wastes time you could spend mastering the next one. This is my main problem with the game, it's just an archaic JRPG-like arcade game that is masquerading as a serious attempt at game design. And people go into fervor-infused catatonic trance from proclaiming this outdated mechanic as intentional genius. It's a Skinner's Box in a different context. The combat is also simplistic to a fault and is the same from start to finish, you just need to memorize different patterns. I think that's just part of the genre as a whole and I don't know how much I can fault the developers for it. They should've chosen another genre maybe, but I digress.

The good part of Dark Souls is the exploration and how well it gels with the narrative, it mirrors your character's knowledge about his/her surroundings and that's good. I do think that was an unintentional consequence from implementing the markers left by other players though, they just decided it could be left as vague as possible to accommodate this feature. I guess it turned out alright in the end for them, but that doesn't mean it was intentional. It's on a trial and error basis and not discovery through journey and this could use some improvement. The setting is some person's very loose understanding of medieval European society. It doesn't have anything going for it other than "everyone is dead/dying", OK, but so what? This is just the premise, where do we go from here? It's a "save the world" story and YOU are the ONLY ONE who can DO IT. It doesn't have any serious exploration of the questions the premise raises. Since the story doesn't go anywhere it's a more elaborate version of those pretentious hipster bullshit walking simulators, like Dear Esther and the like, in terms of the ongoing narrative. It's like a static painting that takes hours to observe. Not to mention that the respawning enemies are a ludo-narrative dissonance, because everything else is fading away but the enemies just keep coming back for an endless parade. It would be far more effective and in tune with the narrative if they stayed dead and your actions somehow contribute to the deserted and death-like state the world is in. The game just got popular because people confuse meaningful difficulty with repetition and archaic game design.

Forget an essay, atleast try to muster up a two paragraph criticism that isn't filled with meaningless fluff that reeks of trying too hard.
"Suffice it to say it's a J-action-RPG in sheep's clothing"
"The difficulty? Amateurish understanding of it."
"This is my main problem with the game, it's just an archaic JRPG-like arcade game that is masquerading as a serious attempt at game design."
"And people go into fervor-infused catatonic trance from proclaiming this outdated mechanic as intentional genius. It's a Skinner's Box in a different context. "
"Since the story doesn't go anywhere it's a more elaborate version of those pretentious hipster bullshit walking simulators, like Dear Esther and the like, in terms of the ongoing narrative."
"It's like a static painting that takes hours to observe."
"The game just got popular because people confuse meaningful difficulty with repetition and archaic game design."



And then there are the reductionisms that are equally meaningless:

"The combat is also simplistic to a fault and is the same from start to finish, you just need to memorize different patterns."

You've effectively said a whole lot of nothing and I don't think your post merits a serious reponse, but I'll try to address the few comments that resemble actual arguments:

When you've already conquered a challenge you don't learn anything from doing it again, it just wastes time you could spend mastering the next one.

Except the challenge is not about simply overcoming one encounter, the challenge is about being able to overcome a series of encounters with a fixed set of resources. The challenge of beating a few hollows is not about making it out alive, but the point is to overcome that encounter without losing much health so that you can save your estus flasks for the more difficult encounters, or, if you fuck up in the easy encounters, to try and overcome the more difficult encounters from a disadvantage (fewer estus).

In a sense, the entire run from one bonfire to the next is just one encounter. When understood this way, your complaint that you shouldn't have to go through an encounter you already beat once is akin to saying that if you took half of a boss' health before dying, the game should just reload with half of the boss' health already gone. After all, you already proved that you're good enough to take out half of the boss' health bar, so making you do it again is just a cheap way to lengthen playtime right?

By the sound of it, you're the type of person who saves between every single combat encounter in a RPG, since you seem to think each encounter should stand on its own, which in itself is not an unreasonable stance, but when you consider that most games are not actually balanced around this approach to encounter design, all you're really doing is savescumming your way through the game and effectively trivializing all but the most difficult encounters in the process.

I'd say the proper way to play most games is to find a balance between doing a full on Ironman playthrough vs. savescumming after every encounter, like maybe only saving at the start of each level in a dungeon.

The devs of Dark Souls seem to agree because this is the how the game plays due to the bonfire system and the encounters are balanced around this approach. The difference with Dark Souls is that the game imposes this playstyle on the player, instead of being an optional self-imposed challenge from the player. So ofcourse all the retards who are not used to playing games this way and who rely on save-scumming their way through games are gonna whine about it.

Regarding the comparison of this system to arcade games, well first of all there is a key difference that makes this not an entirely valid comparison. The fact that you have limited lives was always the frustrating and unforgiving part of arcade games, not the use of checkpoints over an option to save anywhere. Even then, Dark Souls is a lot more forgiving because if you keep fucking up, as long as you can make it back and collect your souls, you'll atleast be able to keep accumulating souls so you can always go back and spend those souls to buff yourself to help you overcome the challenge.

But even ignoring these differences, the notion that this is an inherently exploitative mechanic that has no value beyond its ability exploit the player to keep spending coins or to pad out game length is pure nonsense, and frankly triggers me just like all other instances of modern casualtards dismissing mechanics and game design choices from older games as "archaic" because they're too fucking stupid to understand or appreciate it.

After all, if the goal was simply exploitation, it's foolish to think that you can't accomplish that with a system that lets you save anywhere. The problem was not the system itself, it was always the fact that bad arcade games were clearly exploitative in how they used this system, like being filled with cheap deaths. Compared to a lot of arcade games, Dark Souls is a joke in terms of difficulty and there's really nothing unfair about it. The point of the sparing use of checkpoints in Dark Souls was simply about making you take dying more seriously than in other games, and that simple fact of making death have a more severe consequence adds so much to the overall experience. It makes the game more immersive by making you experience the game as your character would. It makes the game feel so much more tense even when doing something mundane like walking on a ledge or fighting a pair of hollows. It is essential to the pacing of the game. The tense feeling while navigating through the world, the eventual climax with a boss fight that tests your mastery of the mechanics, the feeling of relief and safety when you finally come across a bonfire....all of it is either cheapened or lost altogether without it.

Ofcourse, a big part of why it works in Dark Souls is because the controls feel tight and precise, and when you die, most of the time it's clear you fucked up. It wouldn't work in a game like Ass Creed or Witcher because of how shitty and imprecise the character movement feels in those games.

Anyways, the accusation that From Software used the bonfire checkpoint system to pad out the game length is absurd. Even if you never die once, Dark Souls is a much longer game than most other games of its type, without even considering the longevity and replayability it offers with its multiplayer and different builds.

From Software understands that you can't have a challenge that feels truly rewarding to overcome without accepting the possibility of experiencing great frustration in the process. So yeah, Dark Souls can be frustrating at times, but you don't seem to realize or appreciate what the game would lose if they attempted to minimize that frustration by letting you save anywhere. It is unquestionably one of the best design choices of the game and the fact that it's the one notable criticism you make of the game kinda leads me to believe that you have little interest or appreciation for the sort of experience Dark Souls tries to provide, especially in light of some of your other statements (like criticizing the game because it doesn't "seriously explore" its premise).

The good part of Dark Souls is the exploration and how well it gels with the narrative, it mirrors your character's knowledge about his/her surroundings and that's good. I do think that was an unintentional consequence from implementing the markers left by other players though, they just decided it could be left as vague as possible to accommodate this feature. I guess it turned out alright in the end for them, but that doesn't mean it was intentional. It's on a trial and error basis and not discovery through journey and this could use some improvement.

Are you saying the exploration is just trial and error? Unless you're a retard who blindly rushes from point A to B, there's no trial and error in exploring Dark Souls. Saying it's trial and error implies the game is full of hidden instant-death traps. If anything, I'd say the player messages and bloodstains sometimes makes things too easy and encourage a more careless playstyle.

This is just the premise, where do we go from here? It's a "save the world" story and YOU are the ONLY ONE who can DO IT.

Yes, you are the only one who can do it insofar as you are the player character and therefore the primary driving force of the game. So no, Solaire won't randomly finish the game for you. Is this actually supposed to be a legitimate criticism?

If instead you mean that you are the only one who can do it as in your character is canonically somehow special, well that's just plain false. According to the prophecy, any undead who escapes from the Undead Asylum (such as Oscar) could potentially fulfill the prophecy. It just so happens that you succeed where others failed by virtue of your skill and perseverance. Even then, the prophecy isn't something divinely predestined. It is simply a myth held by a particular culture. Just as one character tells you about the prophecy and suggests that you might be the chosen one to fulfill the prophecy, the very next character you meet (the Crestfallen warrior) dismisses the prophecy and mocks you as another naive fool thinking he's somehow special.

Ultimately, from your character's POV, fulfilling the prophecy simply represents a hope for salvation and a promise to a dying man who freed you. From the player's perspective, it is simply about giving you a rough sense of direction of what it is you're trying to achieve as you make your way through the world.