Hi folks,
I’m having a blast in this game and compared to more recent similar games (pinokeiro puppets lie twice, dark souls 3, elden ring, hellpoint etc) finding it much less difficult, more comparable to dark souls 1 or demons souls. I don’t consider myself hugely skilled at these games, I couldn’t finish ringed city or lies of p for example.
Reading though it seems there’s a rather polarised perception of difficulty. Some people, many claiming to be highly skilled players, are struggling and others like me seem to find it comfortable.
Discussion around these games is very difficult, as whether something is hard becomes a stand in for validity of opinion and moral character in the flame wars.
Beehaw might be the one place we can discuss this and learn what people are doing differently.
Explicit housekeeping: your feelings are real and valid, you cannot be wrong about finding something hard or easy. I don’t want anyone litigating that.
you don’t need to be particularly good at something to have a valid opinion on whether or not you like something either.
So how are people playing and how are they finding it?
I started as a bucket granny. I have been using short swords, I am currently using a fire/physical split damage Rusty cutter or something, most of my stats are in umbral magic which so far is not very good or useful (20/20 stats, 2 spells from dead eyeball man). I am a methodical slow player, drawing things out with range and baiting enemies into areas I have cleared. I am favouring dodge and parries over blocking. I tend to use mostly 2h hits and kicks with soul flaying big guys. I am at medium armour weight.
I have found the game to feel very similar to ds1 as mentioned, or older monster hunter. Slow inputs, deliberate spacing etc. I would say it feels quite approachable so far although ranged sniping has caused problems in a couple of places I have felt it fair aside from that.
How about you?
Been playing these games since DeS on the PS3 when it first came in 2009.
Overall, I’m enjoying it. Multiplayer that doesn’t require consumables and rituals like placing signs or ringing bells is such a QOL improvement. After 14 years of putting down summon signs and ringing bells and gaining insight, I just want to get to it these days. A few thoughts:
- Bosses initially seem challenging until you get a grip on their movesets and then realize you can defeat them with just a few moves. I beat one boss using nothing more than a running R2 attack over and over again.
- Perfect parry windows seem huge.
- A few control decisions and whatnot are bizarre. Someone else mentioned filling the quick items with apparently random items when you deplete another for instance. Most of the time I don’t even equip any other quick use items, just my estus/healing plants/flasks/whatever.
- visuals generally are good on PS5. Am playing in performance mode for the FPS.
- umbral mechanics are pretty neat.
- short cuts and area connections feel good and natural, DS1-like.
- only been invaded once and haven’t tried an invasion yet. Battle went back and forth until my invader went in for the coup de grace and I dodged while they went sailing over the edge of a cliff. They probably would’ve had me had it not been for that cliff.
- dodging feels like a mix of Souls and Bloodborne. Stamina meter might be a bit too forgiving, as it feels like you can dodge over and over through pretty much anything.
- weapons feel like they have weight to them. Movement is a tiny bit floaty but generally the weapon movesets and decent and feel like they have impact
- inexplicable missing sound in some instances. Sliding down ladders for instance happens in dead silence.
- being able to watch the host continue playing while you’re dead is nice. Nothing worse than helping someone almost defeat a boss and then not being able to watch the end result if you happen to bag it near the end.
Anyways, a few thoughts. Hope they continue to support the game with patches for a while to come and fix up a few odds and ends. I’m not all that far into it, but this feels like it has legs.
One thing I haven’t figured out is if perfect parry wither damage is variable.
Sometimes it feels like I take a lot of wither, othertimes not. I’m using a shield and 2hing a lot so I wonder if it’s a shield vs weapon parry thing? Or if it’s timing based like partial parry damage mitigation in ds3.
I was too engrossed to do testing so far, have you tried at all?
What weapons are you using btw? my wife uses a giant axe and seems to yeet herself a lot. Are the certain weapons with lots of lungy movements that might be tripping people up?
I haven’t been 2hing much and haven’t tested much on those sorts of things yet. I did notice that I don’t think you can die on a perfect parry even if you have no health left, though, as I seemed to be in that position during a boss earlier today.
Started with a ranger who starts with an axe, went to a spear, then a halberd, most recently using a hammer. The spear was quite lungy which caused some issues around open air vertical areas with a lot of narrow paths, while the halberd was just too slow. Hammer is feeling good, and has a good set of running attacks.
oh shit i didn’t realize it already dropped!! kinda keep an eye on it
Look I’m in love but it’s a very polarising game. If you enjoyed playing ds1 blind, and saw something to love in ds2 underneath the weirdness then I’d recommend it but it is not the fast and nippy ds3 onwards style. Levels are confusing if you don’t figure out what the map is telling you, umbral exploration is fascinating but tense and you have to rush sections which can make you miss what you picked up.
There’s a few baffling decisions like auto filling your quick bar with new consumables when empty, not marking new items in inventory, lore being state gated (it miiight be some arty you get the story from various perspectives thing but I’m unconvinced yet), and many people find the ranged pressure unpleasant. You’re often being shot at till you clear an area.
How are the runbacks? Are they using the tedious=difficult mentality? DS2 was terrible because of that but on the other hand the recent lies of p is a masterpiece.
I thought lies of p was an absurdly tedious game tbh with the bosses requiring lots of memorisation. I think a lot of this is subjective.
You can place temporary bonfires pretty close to bosses using a consumable you can buy or loot from certain enemies. Some people seem to be running out of them, I have more than I need and I feel like I’m using them liberally.
It’s a very similar game to ds1. It’s that sort of slower, easier game where you spend most of your time methodically exploring a large interconnected world. Once you know what you’re doing you can run through a lot.
If you thought ds1 was a bad game you probably won’t like this. If you thought it was fantastic you probably will.
To each their own 😀
Thanks for the detailed response! Temporary bonfires seem to be a real solution to my main concern about this game.
I liked ds1 when it was new, I’d hate it now for being grindy and the time wasting runbacks but the level design was top notch.
From your response I gather it has the good parts of DS1 with modern graphics and a solution to the bad part. I’ll probably like it then and will definitely try it
I actually love ds1 in its entirity. well until the Lord vessel then the game falls apart. I’m not one for fast paced games (arthritis) and really enjoy the exploration and navigation. Sometimes I just load up a save and run around for a bit to relax :p
I’m not sure my opinion is the one to listen to in your case, given it seems you prefer the later faster gameplay with more emphasis on bosses?
All I can really say is I haven’t enjoyed a souls game much since demons souls and dark souls (although sekiro was quite fun it’s very different) until now. I’m only about 10 hours in on my third area.
I do think many people’s complaints (but not all! there are some very idiosyncratic choices) are from not paying attention. Like recognising when you can pull out the lantern to do something, when you need to fully cross into death, making full use of all the tools (e.g. regenerating ranged ammunition, the map they give you, kicks, mid combo 1h 2h swapping, powerstancing), understanding how the level designers have set traps.
If you try play it like lies of P and just sprint in parrying everything you have a bad time and get swarmed. you also need to engage in the RPG parts more, swapping rings and armour for the current challenge and so on.
I don’t necessarily prefer the faster pace. It’s just that LoP happens to be the first game in the genre, that I’ve played, without major downsides, at least for me.
Everything else has either time wasting, lengthy runbacks or game breaking bosses to artificially increase the difficulty (see Malenia), or is Sekiro.
A modern DS1 like game without the tedium and with some new ideas is very much something that appeals to me. If it has RPG mechanics then all the better, I liked how LoP had perks on top of the traditional, simplistic attribute system and at least some choices.
Everything you say makes me want to play it more 😀
Did you play Lords of the Fallen 2014? I did play that one and it felt much easier than the Dark souls at the time. It made me wonder if this new Lords of the Fallen 2023 would also feel, or be, easier than the current gen of souls like titles.
no I didn’t. I think this about on par with ds1
