It wasn't long ago that I had played Dark Souls. My experience was very mixed.
I bought the game knowing that it was going to be a challenge and I remember telling the clerk at Gamespot "I'm ready to bang my head against a wall." Well, I was kind of ready. I went into the game without reading about any of the mechanics because I heard part of the experience was learning about that. At the creator screen I went for a pyromancer build because I was a firefighter at the time. Everything was going swell and then I got to the hub world. Where to go and what to do? I found an easy path that led to a graveyard with some simple looking skeletons. The progression of my thoughts went something like this.
"GREAT! This is it, let's get the game going."
"They sure are tough."
Get to pinwheel enemies.
"I'm done."
I brute forced my way pretty damn far into that area right from the get go and nothing seemed right. So I did something: I looked up the suggested path for beginners. I went around the cliff and found the other enemies and wow, everything seemed like a breeze after that past experience! And you know what, my experience was a ton better. Whether that was because the difficulty seemed scaled better to my progression into the game thus far or because I had experience under my belt, I can't say. I just know that I felt that I was able to learn from these new enemies and encouters on the fly and didn't have to die countless times to learn how to move past just a small portion.
Going off on a tangent here for a bit. I love games that encourage exploring and finding your own path but if that is going to be an option, the game needs to be designed with that in mind. If not done in this way, the option is a lie. Case in point: Divinity: Original Sin. The game does not make it very clear where the player should be going when they start off, and the player could wander deep into places that become very frustrating for them, and essentially become a wall. Dark Souls is a pretty different situation, because it is very much a skill based game, rather than pure statistical. An experienced player could get through the high level areas while naked, I'm sure. Still, I wish the game did more to point you in the proper direction. I'm remembering some post here in the forums that said an NPC kind of tells you but I must have missed that.
Getting back on track, I moved through the "proper" path relatively quickly (compared to the deathridden path of the graveyard) but at some point real life got in the way for a good while, to the point where I couldn't quite get back into the game.
Well I bought the Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition for my PC on some sale somewhere at some point and have had it sitting in my Steam library for a while. Now Dan has started streaming it and the everybody is up in arms.
"He's playing it wrong!"
''Don't do this, go do that!"
"Don't tell him how to play"
"This is cheating, this isn't."
Criticisms are being thrown around everywhere and at everyone, and that's not fun. If someone says they're going to play a certain way, let them play that way. Engage or don't, that's the only choice up to you as you likely won't change their mind. I have my own beliefs and values from my past Souls experience as well as just what I think would make the game fun. Either way, all of this talk about Dark Souls really makes we want to go back to go back to play the game. Yes, I was frustrated by a lot of it but it was also so rewarding. That sentence is something I think we can all agree on, and it really does challenge you. It is almost like a puzzle game got into my action-RPG. Putting all of this on top of the recent Bloodborne buzz and zeitgeist has made my itch large enough to jump back in and try to complete this game.
When it comes to Souls personally, and other games as well, there are obscurities that make the experience more enjoyable and obscurities that make it less so. Typically what it comes down to is commitment. If I'm making blind commitments, permanent in particular (but any long-term, really), I get a sort of gaming anxiety. I like to know that I'm making decisions for a reason. That reason doesn't have to reveal how my later game experience will be effected but I do want to have some semblance of understanding of why I'm making the decision right now. Knowing that Dark Souls includes covenants means I am going to look them up and what they mean because the last thing that I want is for my game to be drastically affected by a blind decision that could lock me off from future options. As mentioned earlier, the other thing I may or may not be doing is looking at a suggested path; I haven't decided yet. I know now where I should at least be starting, so I might not worry about this too much. But if I do decide to look for some guidance, I will only be looking for a general direction from the hub world, not specific paths/shortcuts/etc. Another thing I'm sure nobody likes having to do is restarting their games because they find that they've been specing their character in a bad way. Because of this I'll probably be going with a simple build that I don't think could go wrong.
Something else I saw in the forums was a lot of people mentioning how much they like to watch others play the Souls games. So instead of just playing for myself, I thought I'd stream my play-through of the game so others could enjoy it with me. I'll be starting sometime tomorrow night (or late afternoon) and will be doing so on Twitch with a link to the channel below. So join me if you want to go through the experience again! And thanks for reading this... rambling blog!
http://www.twitch.tv/flashflood_29
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