@Rheinmetall said:

I consider myself a veteran in Demon's Souls, yet after four days of non stop playing of Dark Souls, I still haven't figured out how I'm supposed to play this game. I feel totally lost and extremely weak whatever tactics I come up with. Also, no poison cloud for cheap boss wins, no 5.000 souls enemies (Ripper) to easily level up, and the Sorcerer class just doesn't work so well as Royalty. Shards are pretty rare, Humanities are rare, and the overall difficulty has been greatly increased. I see it as a challenge, as I saw Demon's Souls, but the frustration meter has reached red.

It's much more linear and much more melee oriented.

I think they ruined a bit of the fun with being able to go everywhere. In DS you went to places and quickly found out you had no business being there yet.

Dark Souls actually has closed off areas with keys you get from boss fights - so the progression becomes very straightforward. You simply can't go forward if you don't do this specific tast next.

Royalty used to be the easy way out early on in the game but now it seems melee is a very viable option most of the time. Spells are a lot slower so it's hard to just spam them at things and you're limited with their uses.

I think they made it a lot more methodical and a lot less freeballing type of Souls.

Your heals are limited so you explore a new area and find the boss fight and then you have the choice if you want to go back to replenish the flask and now knowing the way, slowly get to the fog without losing health - or brave the fog and learn the attack patterns maybe even winning on one flask the first try.

For Demons Souls players the biggest issue is that they slowed down the pace and that takes a bit of getting used to. If your main concern is that there are no real exploits to cheese most of the game yet then I dunno what to tell you.

I consider myself a veteran in Demon's Souls, yet after four days of non stop playing of Dark Souls, I still haven't figured out how I'm supposed to play this game. I feel totally lost and extremely weak whatever tactics I come up with. Also, no poison cloud for cheap boss wins, no 5.000 souls enemies (Ripper) to easily level up, and the Sorcerer class just doesn't work so well as Royalty. Shards are pretty rare, Humanities are rare, and the overall difficulty has been greatly increased. I see it as a challenge, as I saw Demon's Souls, but the frustration meter has reached red.