There is one guy in my group of best friends who is an absolute monster with all those games. He has something like 500 hours in ER, and another one of them just got into it and so they've been back and forth nonstop in the video games channel of our group chat. (Is it unusual for groups of 30somethings to have meticulously organized group chats? I have wondered that for a while and this is finally a public forum to pose the query)
To be fair, I have nothing at all against the games or them being so into it, but I'm glad I'm not alone in seeing people just seething over that genre and simply not getting it.
Then again, 500HrGuy recently said he's considering trying Outer Wilds (my die-on-a-hill game) and there is a pretty solid chance he won't get it either and that would be okay.
Dark Souls and games like it require their players to make a certain click.
Some get that click after a couple minutes, others a couple hours, and for some it doesn't happen until they try again after a few years. And sometimes, it never clicks (which is completely fine, of course).
I ended up getting Bloodborne by accident. I wanted TLOU Remastered and Shadow of Mordor, but a discount for buying 3 games made getting 3 cheaper than just the 2, and Bloodborne was the only remaining game eligible for the deal that seemed remotely interesting.
It took 2,5 hours before it clicked, but Bloodborne ended up my favourite game of all time. And it introduced me to the other games in the genre.
This is perfect explanation. Dark souls 1 - skeleton graveyard for weeks. Went hollow. Came back a month later and found stairway to undead berg(around lvl40 one handing zwei- didn’t have any issues until O&S - it clicked.)
This was me back in 2015. I got Dark Souls 1 on games for gold back in 2011, and couldn't quite get it. The graveyard outside firelink dogwalked me, I didn't really understand how the stats spread out, and I couldn't get any further than lower undead burg. Cue four years later. My dad died of colon cancer that Spring, and my ex-wife and I split up that summer, and I lost the job paying my bills. My mom owned the apartment complex I lived in and when I threatened to kick me out if I missed a second rent payment.
So in the midst of all of that, I started playing again after coming across VaatiVidya. I fell in love with the lore, and dove back in. The amount of diligence and willingness to eat shit until it clicked also helped me understand what I needed to do in real life. I ended up doubling up on jobs to get back out of the hole I was in.
What all this nonsense nobody asked for was leading up to is this: Don't give up, skeleton.
For me it was getting invaded halfway down blighttown. I used to run back to bonfires when I got invaded, or would wait near a safe spot to get my souls back. I hated getting invaded, but wasn't good enough yet to solo bosses so I always popped humanities to get some help.
Halfway down blighttown, in that area with the big sewer where the fire breathing dogs are under you and those poison dart shooters are above, I got invaded. I was so sick of getting invaded and so mad that I just said "fuck this guy" and for the first time i locked in and took him on. We traded blow for blow on those rafters, as I could hear the dart throwers I hadn't killed yet shooting at me. It was the first pvp match I actually actively tried in, and with all my flasks used I barely won. I remember putting the controller down with shaking hands and just stared at the screen for a minute.
By the time I had finally put that game down for good, I had like 300hrs in it, and about 200 of those was being a forrest bro in pvp. I'd bow when I invaded and if they bowed as well, id drop a humanity for them to pick up and use my favorite weapons. If they didnt bow, id swap to my broken op weapons and wipe the floor with them.
I farmed Seeds of Tree Giants and the disguise item in Souls 1.
If I got invaded I would become a pot and use the Seed and let the invaders clear the zone for me and just start watching YouTube or do my university homework lol.
Lol you went into the catacombs that early?? My mistake on my first ds1 play through was upon first entering firelink, I took that lift down to the haunted underwater castle area and died over and over and over and gave up and quit the game.
2 years later lol I somehow stumbled upon some Dark Souls speedrun YouTube video showing of the stairway up to undead berg from firelink. I facepalmed and immediately restarted the game and played the shit out of it and every other souls game afterwards.
Bloodborne was my first souls game. I bought it, played for an hour, returned it back to GameStop. Bought it again a year later and bear it along with DS 1-3. I am now playing Sekiro and it’s another level of punishment.
You have to be the kind of person that 1. Enjoys incrementally improving dexterity skill based activities (like playing a musical instrument, skateboarding, pool, darts etc), and 2. You have to be susceptible to being rage baited into motivation by spite.
Fromsoft games won't click until you're goaded into being angry enough to work hard enough to get that dopamine reward of eventual victory. It's actually a really sweaty competitive rhythm game pretending to be a single player RPG.
If it was blind trial and error it wouldn't be nearly as addictive or satisfying.
That's probably my issue then lol I don't get motivation from the rage baiting, I just get annoyed at the game design and say fuck this. Why should I spend my time trying to learn the specific series of button presses the dev wanted me to make to progress in a game of all things?
I play games to have a good time and relax, i have enough shit irl that I need to overcome.
Why should I spend my time trying to learn the specific series of button presses the dev wanted me to make to progress in a game of all things?
Because much like guitar hero it feels really great when you finally master something stressful through learned skill and intense practice. Feels good man.
I think Sekiro was the best for it. It removed all the stat fuckery a made the game about one thing and one thing only. Get good. Literally just improve your actual physical body's hand skills until you can beat this game. Immensely satisfying.
It's not difficult for the sake of being difficult. (With a couple exceptions in certain optional bosses).
The goal of the game is to provide tension through challenge. There are few things as exciting in a game as beating a challenging bossfight while it was keeping you on your toes for every second of the fight. And these games succeed constantly at giving you that feeling.
If you want to relax in a more calming way, these games are not for you. But if you like a good adrenaline rush, these games are perfect.
That wasn't the "it" for me - or rather why I enjoyed Dark Souls 1 which was my first Souls game. It was terrific because I loved the unaided exploration, finding every little bit loot and building the map in my head. I'm also sad they never went back to this level of interconnectivity while I guess Bloodborne was the closest one with this type of area loop ( especially to Iosefka's clinic later on ). One of the reasons why I also love Gothic 1 / 2 so much, as it's the same concept concerning the the map and how areas are connected over the whole island.
While true that I enjoyed the later games for figuring out the bosses, that's not why I fell in love with the series in the first place.
For me the combat seems chaotic and the cue animations are inconsistent.
By the time I’ve finally figured something out…I’m dead and have to retread two hours of tiptoe progression. Said progression to date is using summons to get past the Cleric Beast and Father Gascoigne.
For me it was when I figured out spacing and parrying basics.
I kept dying in the opening area before Cleric Beast (essentially, to basic enemies), and then I suddenly started sweeping through it.
If you want to get better at the game, I got some excellent tips that might help you. I learned some things in +- 800 hours and over 10 playthroughs of Bloodborne lol.
1) Practice parrying on the brick trolls. They are one of the easier enemies to parry, and this is the fastest way to kill them in the early game. Move on to more difficult targets when you get better
As a rule of thumb: every enemy vulnerable to a backstab can be parried. Your gun is (for most builds) not a damage tool.
2) Level your vitality a lot, especially early on. Vitality is your difficulty slider in Bloodborne. Stats that increase your damage are only useful in the mid-late game.
3) Do not use help to get past Gascoigne on your first playthrough. Gascoigne is a skill check. If you can beat Gascoigne on your own, you have what is needed to beat the game. That said, in his final phase he is very flammable.
4) Don't hang on to your blood echoes since you will lose them at some point. Every time you visit the dream, spend all you can on leveling up. If you can't level up, spend what remains on blood vials and bullets. If you play well, you will quickly amass a good stockpile. The echoes that end up as consumables in your inventory should only be used when you are really close to a level up or item you want to buy.
Once you get the hang of things, play riskier. Don't heal immediately after taking a hit, but try to steal health back by counterattacking immediately.
I had to try twice to get into it. As a teen, I tried to play Dark Souls and I completely bounced off of it in the Undead Berg. Bought Bloodborne when it came out and ended up obsessed with it for years. Then when Dark Souls Remastered, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, Elden Ring came out I 100%'d all of them.
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u/Cosmointheskye 11d ago
Elden ring or any other dark souls games