From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

[Black Angel]

It's much easier and better to make a good rewarding action game with good combat than an rpg that has good combat.

Easier obviously. Better? So what was the point of the Souls games? Might as well have ditched the RPG elements and gone full twitch action.

Neither Bloodborne nor Sekiro are 'Souls' games, although the former is still included in the 'Soulsborne' because the way it plays still feels like 'Souls' at the time.

Also, aren't you playing Dark Souls 2 right now? You should know by now that it's the only game in the series where the RPG mechanics are much more influencing of the action combat gameplay. But as you put it, it does can only go as far before it invalidates the way its action combat plays. Which is why I actually didn't like it as much because I never see Dark Souls as more RPG than Action, but hey it's cool enough they actually tried. Hopefully the experience with making DS2 would help them with Elden Ring.

 

[Curratum]

Wonder how you'll deal with them on the higher difficult settings, where your damage output plateaus and you can't cheese them anymore.

Anything past the first NG+ is for autists and you know it.

 

[The_Mask]

I think there's a flaw in the system somewhere in there. You want an action game that's based on twitch skill, muscle memory and trial and error and you also want an RPG and the latter can only go so far before it invalidates the first. I haven't played From's new games but it seems there's a push in there for a system that is all about timing and obviously that begs the question of where to put "traditional" RPG builds, like the tanks, or the spell casters etc.

What if I told you that you can beat Dark Souls without using a shield or rolling? You just sit there and hack away.

 

[Curratum]

I think there's a flaw in the system somewhere in there. You want an action game that's based on twitch skill, muscle memory and trial and error and you also want an RPG and the latter can only go so far before it invalidates the first. I haven't played From's new games but it seems there's a push in there for a system that is all about timing and obviously that begs the question of where to put "traditional" RPG builds, like the tanks, or the spell casters etc.

What if I told you that you can beat Dark Souls without using a shield or rolling? You just sit there and hack away.

What if I told you hardly anybody is autistic enough to play through every single encounter with even regular enemies dozens and dozens of times to be able to completely memorize each attack's range and exact amount of tracking?

 

[NJClaw]

I think there's a flaw in the system somewhere in there. You want an action game that's based on twitch skill, muscle memory and trial and error and you also want an RPG and the latter can only go so far before it invalidates the first. I haven't played From's new games but it seems there's a push in there for a system that is all about timing and obviously that begs the question of where to put "traditional" RPG builds, like the tanks, or the spell casters etc.

What if I told you that you can beat Dark Souls without using a shield or rolling? You just sit there and hack away.

What if I told you hardly anybody is autistic enough to play through every single encounter with even regular enemies dozens and dozens of times to be able to completely memorize each attack's range and exact amount of tracking?

Well, hardly anybody is autistic enough to create an account on a forum and discuss videogames with other people for years, but here we are.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

I think they should have buffed the last boss in lieu of the DLC

Gwyn is a husk, a shadow of his former self. He's not supposed to be super hard to kill.

No, sorry, i'm not buying this kind of rationalizations for a second.

It's not a rationalization, that was the actual intention from the devs.
Miyazaki is a bit of a storyfag - i.e. the whole reason he joined the industry was because he was super impressed by ICO and how that game had awaken him to the potential of videogames as an artform.
And the lore for Gwyin confirms what Wunderbard said. When the Fire started to fade, causing the undead curse and his kingdom to degenerate, Gwyin decided to sacrifice himself by using his Lord Soul to prolong the Fire, until someone else (the Choosen Undead) with enough power could Link the Fire and usher in a new Golden Age.

That's why when you kill him you're doing him a favor. I mean listen to his OST:



You could use this music in "Putting down Old Yeller".

It's much easier and better to make a good rewarding action game with good combat than an rpg that has good combat.

Actually it's much harder to do a complex action combat system than to make an RPG system.

You want an action game that's based on twitch skill, muscle memory and trial and error and you also want an RPG and the latter can only go so far before it invalidates the first.

Only the bad action games are about those things.

Reactions aren't a problem because devs barely ever ask you to perform actions above the average human reaction time - Godhand which is one of the "twitchiest" crazy action games out there, always has a telegraph to the enemies attacks and it's never anything lower than the 10 frame mark. So if you can't do that you should do everyone, including yourself, a favor and stop driving.
Even a nutless monkey can develop muscle memory, shit even handicaps. So that too doesn't bear much impact and besides the learning curve is always part of the fun.
Finally action games that heaviliy rely on memorization and trial and error to teach the player and provide their difficulty/challenge, is a telling sign shit design and a shit game really.

Action are all about knowing what tool/action to use, when to use it and how to use. How to read your oponents and continuously making the best judgments under pressure.

And it's because of that I don't think applying action principles to an RPG is necessarily incompatible, because a big part of an RPG's challenge is making the best choices based on the tools/builds at your disposal.
It's just that From's action systems aren't particularly good.

Also I hope you didn't derive that conclusion from DS2, as that is the game in series where the RPG mechanics have a higher impact and are overall better designed.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It's not a rationalization, that was the actual intention from the devs.

Bullshit.

Gwyn was obviously meant to be very difficult. His move set is all over the place, hard to track at first and super aggressive. The fact you can cheese it with rocks was probably not intended either and was just a mistake on their part.

You are also barking off the wrong tree here because the argument wasn't that Gwyn is easy but that he is easy compared to the DLC bosses. What we were discussing here was the perennial problem of adding content to a game that wasn't designed with that content in mind originally. Dark Souls is not unique in this this is an issue with a lot of RPGs. I've recently replayed Baldur's Gate and it's the same issue there. By the time you are done with Durlag's Tower you not only forgot the main story but Saverok ends up being easier than he would have been had the expansion not been there to add extra XP and new items.

If you look at Gwyn in relation to the bosses of the base game, he is very much a challenge, but once you factor in the DLC bosses the final showdown with him becomes very anti-climatic, which why i suggested he should have been redesigned to factor in for the DLCs or else the DLCs should have been placed after him.

Actually it's much harder to do a complex action combat system than to make an RPG system.

First, that's like, your opinion man, second, it has nothing to do with the argument. It's obviously harder to do an RPG/combat game hybrid than to do a combat game. What i was asking originally is whether they were ditching the RPG part with their new games because they found it too teh hard to balance it with the combat system, or whether they are making pure combat games out of variety in order to avoid making the same game over and over, OR because they think combat games are just better to begin with which means eventually we'll never get anything RPG oriented from them.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Neither Bloodborne nor Sekiro are 'Souls' games, although the former is still included in the 'Soulsborne' because the way it plays still feels like 'Souls' at the time.

Fair enough but again i have to ask. Are they making those games for the sake of variety, or because they want to shelf the Souls formula to focus on twitch combat exclusively? Because if it's the latter i'd be rather disappointed. I like RPGs. I know, crazy to say this on an RPG forum.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I think there's a flaw in the system somewhere in there. You want an action game that's based on twitch skill, muscle memory and trial and error and you also want an RPG and the latter can only go so far before it invalidates the first. I haven't played From's new games but it seems there's a push in there for a system that is all about timing and obviously that begs the question of where to put "traditional" RPG builds, like the tanks, or the spell casters etc.

It's much easier and better to make a good rewarding action game with good combat than an rpg that has good combat. FROM understood this and has been going far more into the actio route (BB, DS3, Sekiro) that Sekiro is an action game, no rpg elements.

So, how many decent to great bosses are we left with, exactly, because I'm sure that's at least half the game's named healthbar bosses...

• Chaos Witch Quelaag
• Ornstein and Smough
• Artorias the Abysswalker
• Manus, Father of the Abyss
• Sanctuary Guardian
• Bell Gargoyles
• Black Dragon Kalameet

Which is actually more than Souls 2 when Souls 2 has a far larger boss count

I think we need to point out one thing. Dark Souls is an open RPG. This creates a problem in that bosses that a lot of people end up doing later on were probably meant to be done very early. Pinwheel is a good example i'm pretty sure From expected people to do the Catacombs earlier just because it is there from the start. Turns out a lot of people don't go there until they are actually ready to tackle the Tomb of Giants by which point Pinwheel becomes a joke.

Another issue with this open ended design is that whichever boss you decide to do first ends up being the hardest. On my first playthrough years ago i did Nito last of the four big bosses and by that point he was a joke. On my last playthrough i did him first and he took me completely by surprise (i'd also forgot that the skellies stopped spawning if you kill them with a divine weapon which helped making him challenging, at least at first).

But this also brings up some questions about design. How do you deal with this issue? You can add level scaling maybe but that's easy to cheese. Or you can decide to make the game linear which cuts down on replayability. Or you can just accept things for what they are and let players experience bosses differently in different playthroughs. The first time i did the butterfly boss i found it to be very difficult. On my faith build it was a joke, since all i did is zap the thing with lighting bolts until it was dead. For all i know that may have been by design.

 

[NJClaw]

I don't think Gwyn was necessarily meant to be easy, but it was definitely meant to be easier than what the player expected. He is very aggressive and can overwhelm the player with his constant attacking, but there's one big factor that makes me think he is supposed to come of as "weak": he can be parried. He is the only boss in the entire game that can be parried and he always opens the encounter with an attack that screams "please, parry me!". Not only that, but the area you go through to reach him is full of black knights, enemies that make perfect parry training dummies.

What makes me certain that their intent was to have a relatively weak final boss is the fact that Gwyn is clearly the equivalent of Demon's Souls' Allant.

Neither Bloodborne nor Sekiro are 'Souls' games, although the former is still included in the 'Soulsborne' because the way it plays still feels like 'Souls' at the time.

Fair enough but again i have to ask. Are they making those games for the sake of variety, or because they want to shelf the Souls formula to focus on twitch combat exclusively? Because if it's the latter i'd be rather disappointed. I like RPGs. I know, crazy to say this on an RPG forum.

When they announced Sekiro was in development, they said they wanted to try something more action-oriented and focus less on the rpg elements. With Elden Ring, however, they stated immediately that they were going back to their roots.

 

[Lyric Suite]

If that's the case i'm fine with that then. I'm fine with variety, i just took issue with the "we doing twitch combat only nao 'cause gotta git gud" idea that i saw floating around.

 

[Black Angel]

Neither Bloodborne nor Sekiro are 'Souls' games, although the former is still included in the 'Soulsborne' because the way it plays still feels like 'Souls' at the time.

Fair enough but again i have to ask. Are they making those games for the sake of variety, or because they want to shelf the Souls formula to focus on twitch combat exclusively? Because if it's the latter i'd be rather disappointed. I like RPGs. I know, crazy to say this on an RPG forum.

I don't know, to be perfectly honest. All I know is that they said in an old interview that they aren't too keen on the idea of making sequels, no matter if it's to Demon's Souls, even Dark Souls, and so does Bloodborne, and of course Sekiro. I guess you can take that as their roundabout way of saying they want to shelf the Souls formula if taken to present time's context, and if you ask me From really is at their best when they're making completely new game with very little to no connection to the games they've made. Both Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 are good for what it is, but they didn't quite managed to reach height truly achieved by Dark Souls 1, imho. Dark Souls 2 felt like it would've been much, much better being its own game and not bearing Dark Souls name, and while Dark Souls 3 felt more like a proper sequel to Dark Souls 1 from narrative aspect and design, it still fails in everything else.

Also, I love RPGs, too. But if I want to play RPGs I won't be coming looking for it in the place that spawned Souls, and even its own little space created by Souls (Souls-like). But if what you're looking for in Souls is its own unique iteration of Action and RPG hybrid, where neither outweigh the other except for when players decided so, then like NJClaw said above allegedly Elden Ring would be returning to emphasize more on RPG mechanics. I would love to see how they're going to do that with the overall improved action gameplay of Sekiro, or at least learn how to apply its basics to emphasize more on RPG-action gameplay mechanics.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Well, i tried playing King's Field but i found it to be rather archaic. Maybe they could do something along those lines in a modern context. That would be interesting, especially if they keep it first person i'd be curious what they could do with that.

 

[Black Angel]

Bullshit.

Gwyn was obviously meant to be very difficult. His move set is all over the place, hard to track at first and super aggressive. The fact you can cheese it with rocks was probably not intended either and was just a mistake on their part.

I heard somewhere in an interview that Gwyn was meant to be a perfect finale; in that he was meant to be so adaptable that literally every build you can think of would find him challenging, no matter if you're going to dodge roll a lot, or shield-turtling, or cast magic/pyro/miracles, melee or ranged. Or was it that players would need to use every trick they can do to defeat him? I actually forgot, but that plan has been cut, as you can see.

lorefag interpretation ahead

What others like DJO and Wunderbar has been saying to you are actually true, though. If you look closely, Gwyn's skin are somewhat rotten and his eyes is hollow with a tiny little spark in the middle. It's as if he's..... hollow. And what are hollows, anyway? They're beings hollowed of souls. In case of humanity, they're hollowed of the Dark Soul (Humanity in-game item, and the soul which was found by the Furtive Pygmy). In case of Gwyn, he's been hollowed of his Lord Soul, now used to keep the First Flame going way past the prophecy which decreed that "Soon the flames will fade, and only dark will remain." If the lore and story in-game are anything to go by, the Flames represent the Gods of Anor Londo, that they 'will fade', and from various item description it's been said many, many gods had fled Lordran. While the Dark represent humanity, and with the gods going away because the First Flame is fading, only humanity who bear the Dark Souls will be all that remained.

Anyway, so what if Gwyn is a hollow? Well, have you paid attention how hollow enemies behave in this game? Do you notice how easily they are getting parried? Well, there you have it. This is the reason why Gwyn is parry-able, in my lorefag opinion. But what separates Gwyn from an average joe hollow is that his soul was so powerful, he kept his sword aflame and deal fire damage. The irony here is that he's actually weak to fire damage too, or rather his resistance to fire is much lower than the others, and he's still going strong against lightning despite his fall from grace (Lord of Sunlight to Lord of Cinder).

If you've played Dark Souls 3 and fought the Soul of Cinder, you'll know that he's somewhat what From planned for Gwyn to be; adaptable, using different moveset and different weapons, you have to deal with him in different ways instead of using the exact same tactic over and over again. Tbh I don't get that feel after defeating him for the first time, and I was only aware of this particular bossfight design after hearing about the interview regarding Gwyn's fight.

If you ask me, though, Sword Saint Isshin is the better iteration of that design decision; literally force you to use every trick the game offers you by throwing so many different movesets and behaviors across his 3 phases. Though those who finally mastered his flow would still find one or at least only two reliable ways of dealing with him in the end, but man it feels good to fight and defeat him.

 

[sullynathan]

If you've played Dark Souls 3 and fought the Soul of Cinder, you'll know that he's somewhat what From planned for Gwyn to be; adaptable, using different moveset and different weapons, you have to deal with him in different ways instead of using the exact same tactic over and over again. Tbh I don't get that feel after defeating him for the first time, and I was only aware of this particular bossfight design after hearing about the interview regarding Gwyn's fight.

If you ask me, though, Sword Saint Isshin is the better iteration of that design decision; literally force you to use every trick the game offers you by throwing so many different movesets and behaviors across his 3 phases. Though those who finally mastered his flow would still find one or at least only two reliable ways of dealing with him in the end, but man it feels good to fight and defeat him.

Well Sekiro is far more limited than Dark souls 3. Soul of cinder doesn't have enough health to force to constantly adapt to him as you keep on getting better at the game while Isshin has 3 health bars. In that sense, they can really force you to engage him in a specific manner without some of the varied play styles of dark souls.

I think there's a flaw in the system somewhere in there. You want an action game that's based on twitch skill, muscle memory and trial and error and you also want an RPG and the latter can only go so far before it invalidates the first. I haven't played From's new games but it seems there's a push in there for a system that is all about timing and obviously that begs the question of where to put "traditional" RPG builds, like the tanks, or the spell casters etc.

It's much easier and better to make a good rewarding action game with good combat than an rpg that has good combat. FROM understood this and has been going far more into the actio route (BB, DS3, Sekiro) that Sekiro is an action game, no rpg elements.

So, how many decent to great bosses are we left with, exactly, because I'm sure that's at least half the game's named healthbar bosses...

• Chaos Witch Quelaag
• Ornstein and Smough
• Artorias the Abysswalker
• Manus, Father of the Abyss
• Sanctuary Guardian
• Bell Gargoyles
• Black Dragon Kalameet

Which is actually more than Souls 2 when Souls 2 has a far larger boss count

I think we need to point out one thing. Dark Souls is an open RPG. This creates a problem in that bosses that a lot of people end up doing later on were probably meant to be done very early. Pinwheel is a good example i'm pretty sure From expected people to do the Catacombs earlier just because it is there from the start. Turns out a lot of people don't go there until they are actually ready to tackle the Tomb of Giants by which point Pinwheel becomes a joke.

Another issue with this open ended design is that whichever boss you decide to do first ends up being the hardest. On my first playthrough years ago i did Nito last of the four big bosses and by that point he was a joke. On my last playthrough i did him first and he took me completely by surprise (i'd also forgot that the skellies stopped spawning if you kill them with a divine weapon which helped making him challenging, at least at first).

But this also brings up some questions about design. How do you deal with this issue? You can add level scaling maybe but that's easy to cheese. Or you can decide to make the game linear which cuts down on replayability. Or you can just accept things for what they are and let players experience bosses differently in different playthroughs. The first time i did the butterfly boss i found it to be very difficult. On my faith build it was a joke, since all i did is zap the thing with lighting bolts until it was dead. For all i know that may have been by design.

Hmm, I can't really answer this without saying something must be cut somewhere to make other things work.

Taking other open ended games in mind like symphony of the night, the same logic still applies. Later game, side optional or alternate bosses will end up being easier because you explored heavily enough to get strong weapons and items. I remember stumbling upon a boss fight with three enemies and they beat me because I went there before another.

On the flip side,I certainly remember bloodborne maintaining a large level of difficulty regardless of how you tackled the levels. Same for demon's souls, though the latter was made with each level being completely separate in mind and less on physically dominating most bosses and instead finding weak points. That has the negative consequence on making a boss repetitive on repeat playthroughs.

 

[Silva]

Fair enough but again i have to ask. Are they making those games for the sake of variety, or because they want to shelf the Souls formula to focus on twitch combat exclusively?

I'd say it's a bit of both. DS3 shows the formula got stale. They needed fresh air. Bloodborne was the first breath, and Sekiro gave them more oxygen.

They will probably come back to the RPG mold with Elden Ring.

What makes me certain that their intent was to have a relatively weak final boss is the fact that Gwyn is clearly the equivalent of Demon's Souls' Allant.

You mean the same Allant that de-level players that I see in YT pkaythroughs? He doesn't look easy at all. Also: Gehrman in BB is supposedly in a weak state too according to lore. But he ends up as hard as any other.

I don't think any of these final bosses were intended to be easy. Except maybe Vendrick in DS2, but even he needed some gimmick item to hurt (what was it again?).

 

[mediocrepoet]

What makes me certain that their intent was to have a relatively weak final boss is the fact that Gwyn is clearly the equivalent of Demon's Souls' Allant.

You mean the same Allant that de-level players that I see in YT pkaythroughs? He doesn't look easy at all.

No, that's False King Allant who's the final boss of Boletaria. He's talking about the real King Allant which is the end boss of the entire game.

 

[Silva]

On the flip side,I certainly remember bloodborne maintaining a large level of difficulty regardless of how you tackled the levels.

True, but BB never opens too much right? I mean, aside from chalice dungeons it tries to keep it's options contained inside the phases of the day (dusk, night, blood sky). The couple options that persist between phases end up proving Lyric Suite point in a way: Hemwick is piss easy if engaged by night, and Cainhurst is obscenely difficult if visited early. Overall though, I agree BB is a great example of how to do it right.

Sekiro seems to do it well too. Well, at least so far. I reached Genichiro only now.

 

[Puukko]

Started Daughters of Ash. It's been years since I played the game so while I remember the big picture, the details of how each area interconnects are a bit fuzzy and this mod changes things enough to force you to re-explore everything. The burg bonfire has been moved closer to the boss, the Havel tower (lacking Havel) entrance to the hydra area now uses a master key (that breaks - was it always so?) while the taurus demon fight has a surprise element to it and the bridge dragon breathes fire much faster to the point where I don't think it's possible to run past fast enough to make it to the stairs. So I'm taking the back route to Andre, assuming I don't get blocked. I wonder what someone without the master key would do here to progress.

I also spied DSII SoFS on sale so I might grab that since I never did the dlc and I've forgotten most of it.

 

[NJClaw]

What makes me certain that their intent was to have a relatively weak final boss is the fact that Gwyn is clearly the equivalent of Demon's Souls' Allant.

You mean the same Allant that de-level players that I see in YT pkaythroughs? He doesn't look easy at all. Also: Gehrman in BB is supposedly in a weak state too according to lore. But he ends up as hard as any other.

I don't think any of these final bosses were intended to be easy. Except maybe Vendrick in DS2, but even he needed some gimmick item to hurt (what was it again?).

No, I mean the actual Allant Gwyn, king of Boletaria Anor Londo, who was consumed by the demons' souls flame he resorted to in order to strengthen his domain. This is the boss fight:

Spoiler

 

[NJClaw]

Started Daughters of Ash. It's been years since I played the game so while I remember the big picture, the details of how each area interconnects are a bit fuzzy and this mod changes things enough to force you to re-explore everything. The burg bonfire has been moved closer to the boss, the Havel tower (lacking Havel) entrance to the hydra area now uses a master key (that breaks - was it always so?) while the taurus demon fight has a surprise element to it and the bridge dragon breathes fire much faster to the point where I don't think it's possible to run past fast enough to make it to the stairs. So I'm taking the back route to Andre, assuming I don't get blocked. I wonder what someone without the master key would do here to progress.

I also spied DSII SoFS on sale so I might grab that since I never did the dlc and I've forgotten most of it.

That's a great mod, everyone who loves DS should give it a try after having mastered the entire game.

 

[Black Angel]

If you've played Dark Souls 3 and fought the Soul of Cinder, you'll know that he's somewhat what From planned for Gwyn to be; adaptable, using different moveset and different weapons, you have to deal with him in different ways instead of using the exact same tactic over and over again. Tbh I don't get that feel after defeating him for the first time, and I was only aware of this particular bossfight design after hearing about the interview regarding Gwyn's fight.

If you ask me, though, Sword Saint Isshin is the better iteration of that design decision; literally force you to use every trick the game offers you by throwing so many different movesets and behaviors across his 3 phases. Though those who finally mastered his flow would still find one or at least only two reliable ways of dealing with him in the end, but man it feels good to fight and defeat him.

Well Sekiro is far more limited than Dark souls 3. Soul of cinder doesn't have enough health to force to constantly adapt to him as you keep on getting better at the game while Isshin has 3 health bars. In that sense, they can really force you to engage him in a specific manner without some of the varied play styles of dark souls.

In what sense Sekiro is far more limited than Dark Souls 3? If you're talking in terms of RPG mechanics and character building, then yeah, because whatever vaguely resembling RPG mechanics in Sekiro are very trivial, in that you'd end up taking all the skills and the combat arts, and upgrading all the prosthetic tools in the end. But the amount of tricks and movesets the game throws at you, together with the tools and moves provided for you to deal with them? I'd say there are much, much more of that in Sekiro than any of an individual Soulsborne game. A boss fight can be quite tense because of how much tricks up their sleeve a single boss can pull against you, so you need to be constantly ready to deflect, step-dodge, jump-stomp, mikiri counter, maybe use tools or even combat arts to maximize damage output, either to vitality and/or posture. Compare it to an average boss fight in Soulsborne where you'll highly likely end up in a monotonic roll-roll-roll dodge/hide behind a shield for few seconds then occasionally poke in an attack/spell or two, then back at being defensive again. Sure Soulsborne had its moment-to-moment gameplay flow affected by RPG mechanics, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still monotone compared to Sekiro.

 

[Curratum]

If you've played Dark Souls 3 and fought the Soul of Cinder, you'll know that he's somewhat what From planned for Gwyn to be; adaptable, using different moveset and different weapons, you have to deal with him in different ways instead of using the exact same tactic over and over again. Tbh I don't get that feel after defeating him for the first time, and I was only aware of this particular bossfight design after hearing about the interview regarding Gwyn's fight.

If you ask me, though, Sword Saint Isshin is the better iteration of that design decision; literally force you to use every trick the game offers you by throwing so many different movesets and behaviors across his 3 phases. Though those who finally mastered his flow would still find one or at least only two reliable ways of dealing with him in the end, but man it feels good to fight and defeat him.

Well Sekiro is far more limited than Dark souls 3. Soul of cinder doesn't have enough health to force to constantly adapt to him as you keep on getting better at the game while Isshin has 3 health bars. In that sense, they can really force you to engage him in a specific manner without some of the varied play styles of dark souls.

In what sense Sekiro is far more limited than Dark Souls 3? If you're talking in terms of RPG mechanics and character building, then yeah, because whatever vaguely resembling RPG mechanics in Sekiro are very trivial, in that you'd end up taking all the skills and the combat arts, and upgrading all the prosthetic tools in the end. But the amount of tricks and movesets the game throws at you, together with the tools and moves provided for you to deal with them? I'd say there are much, much more of that in Sekiro than any of an individual Soulsborne game. A boss fight can be quite tense because of how much tricks up their sleeve a single boss can pull against you, so you need to be constantly ready to deflect, step-dodge, jump-stomp, mikiri counter, maybe use tools or even combat arts to maximize damage output, either to vitality and/or posture. Compare it to an average boss fight in Soulsborne where you'll highly likely end up in a monotonic roll-roll-roll dodge/hide behind a shield for few seconds then occasionally poke in an attack/spell or two, then back at being defensive again. Sure Soulsborne had its moment-to-moment gameplay flow affected by RPG mechanics, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still monotone compared to Sekiro.

I'd trade the monotony of soulsborne for the single-outfit, single-weapon bullshit of Sekiro any day of the week.

 

[Black Angel]

I'd trade the monotony of soulsborne for the single-outfit, single-weapon bullshit of Sekiro any day of the week.

Then be my guest. Sekiro still has the best action combat gameplay than all of Soulsborne games combined, though.

 

[sullynathan]

If you've played Dark Souls 3 and fought the Soul of Cinder, you'll know that he's somewhat what From planned for Gwyn to be; adaptable, using different moveset and different weapons, you have to deal with him in different ways instead of using the exact same tactic over and over again. Tbh I don't get that feel after defeating him for the first time, and I was only aware of this particular bossfight design after hearing about the interview regarding Gwyn's fight.

If you ask me, though, Sword Saint Isshin is the better iteration of that design decision; literally force you to use every trick the game offers you by throwing so many different movesets and behaviors across his 3 phases. Though those who finally mastered his flow would still find one or at least only two reliable ways of dealing with him in the end, but man it feels good to fight and defeat him.

Well Sekiro is far more limited than Dark souls 3. Soul of cinder doesn't have enough health to force to constantly adapt to him as you keep on getting better at the game while Isshin has 3 health bars. In that sense, they can really force you to engage him in a specific manner without some of the varied play styles of dark souls.

In what sense Sekiro is far more limited than Dark Souls 3? If you're talking in terms of RPG mechanics and character building, then yeah, because whatever vaguely resembling RPG mechanics in Sekiro are very trivial, in that you'd end up taking all the skills and the combat arts, and upgrading all the prosthetic tools in the end. But the amount of tricks and movesets the game throws at you, together with the tools and moves provided for you to deal with them? I'd say there are much, much more of that in Sekiro than any of an individual Soulsborne game. A boss fight can be quite tense because of how much tricks up their sleeve a single boss can pull against you, so you need to be constantly ready to deflect, step-dodge, jump-stomp, mikiri counter, maybe use tools or even combat arts to maximize damage output, either to vitality and/or posture. Compare it to an average boss fight in Soulsborne where you'll highly likely end up in a monotonic roll-roll-roll dodge/hide behind a shield for few seconds then occasionally poke in an attack/spell or two, then back at being defensive again. Sure Soulsborne had its moment-to-moment gameplay flow affected by RPG mechanics, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still monotone compared to Sekiro.

You answered your own question.