Where are you in the game?

Still didn't kill the church demon, however I have found that I have found a key to a door near the dragon bridge, and I have somehow managed to murderize one of the black knights so now I can strive to get my stats up to be able to use his sword. Also I have managed to kill a headless thing in front of the forest using a bow - extremely easy to do so, I just had to be quite patient to do that. Basically, a lot of new paths have opened up for me, so I have shit to explore now.

Have you killed the Bridge Wyvern (the one that's basically a red dragon) yet? You can get a cool sword from him if you take certain steps: it has a base damage of 200 and therefor it's pretty much the best weapon in the game until you find the embers you need to upgrade your weapons with magic/lightning/fire/etc. Reply if you want further instructions.

Ah! So you are in the undead parish/the entrance to the shaded woods! After killing the Gargoyles, you can ring the first of the two bells.

If you haven't acquired the Drake sword, it makes a good general use weapon with low stat requirements, that stays relevant for a good chunk of the game. It's not something most people would find on accident though, so if you are doing it without walk throughs, then you probably won't just happen across it.

I would recommend looking up how weapon upgrades work. There is some strategy of which kind of upgrade path you should follow for a type of character. Basically different kinds scale to different stats, so if you are investing in strength and think you want a magic weapon, then you are hurting your potential.

and if you haven't killed Havel, you are probably in a good place to start thinking about it (if you have access) as he drops one of the juiciest things in the game.

It always surprises me when people say that they don't understand the way the game works. The Souls games have always been very intuitive when I've played them. I think it's possible there are shared understandings for the Japanese audience who plays these games that overseas players don't necessarily have the experience for. I suppose I can only really compare it to the trouble I had understanding the concept of THAC0 when I first played Planescape: Torment. I really didn't need any more explanation than the game gave me to figure out its mechanics. I have a feeling there's a different assumption at work on what's "fair." I see this a lot when primarily PC gamers play complex Japanese games, where they complain about things that haven't been explained that seem rather obvious to me.

Though the Souls' series mechanics are rather unique, there are many, many similarities to stuff like old Japanese PC88 and Famicom RPGs, or 3rd person action games, or PSX and PS2 survival horror games, or a lot of original Japanese freeware RPGs, or less well-known Japanese RPGs like Shadow Tower or Baroque or Berwick Saga. If you grew up with an enthusiastic gaming diet of these games like I did, I very seriously doubt that the Souls games would come off as very obtuse to you. I don't think it feels unfair at all.

It's funny, because I often see the opposite reaction too. I've very rarely (in fact through all my years I can't recall one instance) where someone complained about long tutorials over here, and they don't bother me either, but I see this a lot on English forums. I think you might say there's a more common idea that whatever the amount the game explains is seen as part of the deal when you play it, and is just accepted as the design that was decided and you just deal with whatever hand you are dealt, or you buy the strategy guide, which is an extremely common thing to do for RPGs here.

I don't know if that helps, but I thought by explaining the common attitudes that I see, maybe you could see where the designers and players are coming from. *shrugs* I can't speak for the world, but I can at least represent what I've seen with my community.

Cool post, have some +1 reppage :)

Roll Roll Roll Roooooolllll Rooooooooooll rolll! roolll! do a barrel roll! roll! Chainmail roll! roll! roll! roll a joint roll!...roll roll. Thats my collection of tips. your almost to the cool parts!

I just finished Demon's Souls this night and I'm 50 hours into Dark Souls. I love both games but some times it feels like From is just trolling you, the player. Just when you begin to get the hang of it, you get cursed by frogs or you get ass-raped by mind flayers that will rip you in half. Then you move on and get further in and things begin to go well... until a dragon kills you or or you reach Blight-town or Valley of Defilement and you almost give up.

Prepare to die is not a threat, it is good advice! The game is very old-skool in that is puts a challenge in front of you and ask you to deal with it. "But it's too hard" says the gamer - "well, fuck you" says From Software. "I need help" says the gamer - "Fuck you" says From. We as gamers are used to frequent checkpoints, Easy Mode, hand holding etc. and Souls games just doesn't do any of that.

I usually don't really care for hard games or difficulty for difficulty's sake but Souls games are different. They don't require super Jedi reflexes but just patience and the willingness to learn from your mistakes and change strategy if what you do don't work. It's a nice change of pace, I think but not for everyone.

We play games for fun and entertainment - if a game is not fun for you then stop playing it and find one that is.

I actually think Dark Souls is almost more fun with keyboard and mouse once you get the damned thing all fixed up.

I think a lot of that can be attributed to many Japanese games. You're supposed to devote yourself to it, find the little bits of information and strategies. That's something they like doing. Every death you "learn" from it and adapt. I had to really work hard to get the game working optimally (or as close as it can come) on my machines. And I enjoyed the hours I put in but the grinding aspect of doing the same thing over and over and having to consult wiki's and guides to figure things out got on my nerves. But having played some more jRPG style games on Steam lately, they all seem to have that in common. You either spend forever trying to figure out some weird little quirk in the game or you look it up. No middle ground. It's like the exact opposite of American games where they hold your hand for the first ten hours of gameplay.

It really depends on your perspective if that's a load of BS or not. I'm on the fence. Deliberately hiding information (no mechanics are explained at all in DS) from the player and artificial difficulty jumps is lame. On the other hand, I do enjoy the fact that you have to earn everything in DS. I love the combat against normal enemies, where every little parry or mistake can kill you. But at the same time, the game does throw you situations you can't prepare for the first time through just to wreck you.

To get past the Gargoyles, I had to look up information. I'm sure it's totally doable on your own, but summoning Solaire (which requires learning the entire Humanity system which is not explained anywhere in game) made them a piece of cake. But if you don't know how any of that works, then you'll just keep throwing yourself at the things in frustration.


It's my knowledge that they've patched it so you cannot kill it from the bridge. It automatically regenerates health far faster then you can damage him. You can still get the Drake sword though.

All right, played like 4-5 hours in total of the game yesterday, and gave it a day's rest today. Right now, I have very little incentive to carry on. Can't find much story or lore to speak of, and most of the game is combat and exploration. Combat is fine, exploration is pretty good for the most part, but not enough to carry the game in spite of its bonkers difficulty curve - and I'm not the person to play games for difficulty alone.

I have started playing Banner Saga yesterday and as it turns out, that game's actually fun - so I suppose Dark Souls is jut not for me. At least I now have a better understanding of why people play it, so that's good.

Fair enough, game's not for everyone! And you get the sense of story and lore by either environment or item descriptions. Almost no one tells you anything.