Poll of the Day > In conclusion, Dark Souls III isn't a good game,

(+) Yeah! (+)

I should really revisit it one of these days. I got stuck on Sister Friede and drifted away, but I was generally quite enjoying it.

I thought it was just good.

It's the one that got me into the franchise, the first I fully beat. 10/10 game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71gG754VYlw

It is unquestionably the third game.

Blightzkrieg posted...

It is unquestionably the third game.

Not if you count Demon's Souls.

I can go back and play any of the 3 DS games and have a great time. They're all fun

It's a little too hard for my taste, but I get how some people like it.

hungrymike posted...

It's a little too hard for my taste, but I get how some people like it.

i have no shame in summoning people online to carry me tbh

didnt do that for the really big fights, but it was a nice crutch when i stalled out

also i just realized dks3 has my favorite boss fight of all time in anything ever

holy shit gael's cool. it's an essentially meaningless fight at the end of existence

adjl posted...

Not if you count Demon's Souls.

That's a great point! I fucking don't.

agesboy posted...

also i just realized dks3 has my favorite boss fight of all time in anything ever

holy shit gael's cool. it's an essentially meaningless fight at the end of existence

Yeah I really love that fight.

oh, after I beat iudex, i got walled by that npc samurai fuck outside the shrine

elden ring genuinely is way easier

I actually dont think Dark Souls or DS3 are all that difficult. Just gotta break through those mental barriers! Never played DS2, and what I know about it I dont think Id enjoy it.

papercup posted...

Never played DS2, and what I know about it I dont think Id enjoy it.

As much as it gets a bad rap, it's still a great game. Just don't go into it expecting to see zones arranged with consistent geometry and make sure you put a couple points into Adaptability to bring your roll back up to DS1 levels and you should be fine.

papercup posted...

I actually dont think Dark Souls or DS3 are all that difficult. Just gotta break through those mental barriers! Never played DS2, and what I know about it I dont think Id enjoy it.

Idk I don't really like this mentality. Im not saying Dark Souls is impossibly difficult or anything, I just don't know how many action RPGs would be considered hard if you don't consider Dark Souls hard. I'm sure there's something out there that's harder, but I'd comfortably say Dark Souls is more difficult than 90% of similar games.

At least when it came out. Now games are deliberately trying to be harder than Dark Souls so things are more skewed.

papercup posted...

I actually dont think Dark Souls or DS3 are all that difficult. Just gotta break through those mental barriers! Never played DS2, and what I know about it I dont think Id enjoy it.

i mean, i breeze through elden and bloodborne, i don't think it's a mental barrier so much as it's just fuckin hard for me for some reason

Blightzkrieg posted...

Idk I don't really like this mentality. Im not saying Dark Souls is impossibly difficult or anything, I just don't know how many action RPGs would be considered hard if you don't consider Dark Souls hard. I'm sure there's something out there that's harder, but I'd comfortably say Dark Souls is more difficult than 90% of similar games.

At least when it came out. Now games are deliberately trying to be harder than Dark Souls so things are more skewed.

And most of the games that are harder are harder because they just inflate numbers to excessively punish mistakes and/or have less frequent checkpoints so it takes longer to retry whatever you're struggling with, which is arguably not legitimate difficulty.

I also think being deliberately demoralizing can be considered a factor when evaluating difficulty.

When a game actively punishes you for failure, or failure is time consuming, or when failure isn't contributing to progress in a definite way, I'd argue all that can make a game more "difficult".

It's somewhat subjective. Dark Souls isn't like a fighting game where you need to master button inputs or reflexes. But it does require a fair amount of patience and timing. Watching multiple enemies at once. Management of your health and stamina. Bosses or areas often require trial and error to master. A lot of information is obfuscated, especially to newer players.

And as a major point of comparison, most AAA games can just be facerolled by anyone above the age of 12. Action RPG is the default now. Flipping from Assassin's Creed to Dark Souls is a massive difficulty spike despite both being the same genre of games.

Blightzkrieg posted...

I also think being deliberately demoralizing can be considered a factor when evaluating difficulty.

When a game actively punishes you for failure, or failure is time consuming, or when failure isn't contributing to progress in a definite way, I'd argue all that can make a game more "difficult".

That's a fair point, in that it satisfies the most basic metric of difficulty (that is, it makes it less likely that any given player will eventually succeed), but I'm not sure I'd call that *good* difficulty (though I could concede that it's "legitimate," which I guess is a terribly loaded word to use here). Discouraging the player from trying again just isn't enjoyable gameplay, since it turns success into more a matter of "how much frustration, disappointment, and tedium can you endure?" instead of "can you develop your skills enough to win?". It's a fine line, certainly, since what's frustrating and tedious to one player because they didn't learn enough from failing to feel like they're progressing is going to be perfectly fine to another player who felt like they learned more from that failure (PO's an example of somebody who doesn't like Soulslikes because he just can't be bothered to put in the time it takes to overcome "frustration-based gameplay," which is a perfectly fair opinion), but in general I would say that the aim with difficulty should not be to demoralize the player unless that demoralization plays a narrative role (e.g. the player character is also somehow depressed by the failure and the player's loss of morale is meant to mirror that). Difficulty should be something to be overcome, not endured, since that's what makes for gameplay that feels rewarding.

Though I guess the narrative point does actually apply to Dark Souls, in that the games present getting demoralized and giving up as a canon option in the form of going hollow. Still, though, overcoming "the game tried to beat me" is more satisfying than overcoming "the game tried to make me quit," even if the latter may have artistic merit.

Also, Dark Souls would be better if you could pause. Come at me.

Dark Souls would be better if every game didn't have the same narrative.

Dark Souls 3 is too linear and has way too many "hey remember Dark Souls?" moments, but otherwise is the best game in the series.
No wonder Miyazaki hates making sequels, he runs out of new ideas after one game.

well it's dark souls so that makes sense though

DS3 is actually my least favorite of the trilogy. That's not to say it's bad; it's still a very good game, worth playing, but it rehashes *so much* ground. It is so preoccupied with making references that the few very cool new things it adds often get overlooked. It just didn't do enough new for me. It's way too linear, which makes replaying it not very fun. Even the gameplay sometimes plodded a bit for me; I'm not sure if that was due to level design or mechanical tweaks or enemy design. And NG+ disappointed me after DS2's NG+, ngl. I wish they'd kept the bonfire ascetics, too, those were so cool. Adding an MP Estus flask was an interesting design choice.

As far as the story goes, I thought that the mainline content was actually some of the worst, with the "people who the flame consumed weren't actually consumed and the fire can completely go out and then be revived and somehow still the people who were previously consumed by the fire? They're actually back now and can be used to help feed the fire again... how? Who cares!" and "hollows don't actually have to go crazy anymore but we're not going to explain why even though hollows being crazy was a core component of both DS1 and DS2 and this is probably one of the most important things that people would want clarified that we're adding to the story" Characters just disappear after their quests are done; you don't even find them hollowed or anything because of the "hollows need not go mad" thing, you just find their stuff randomly lying around if you know where to look, so a lot of the NPC content feels very unsatisfying at the end.

Aldrich and Sulyvahn were cool, but the main story content barely talks about them (Pontiff is the bigger offender here easily, you learn nothing about him from basic story content), so unless you're digging into descriptions and stuff, you can easily miss what's going on with both of them. This is NOT the case for important figures in the previous two games, imo, which did a better job of having the world tell the story and then letting the descriptions fill in the spaces to help you out.

Yuria doesn't even tell you about the Age of Deep, which is apparently the big thing that the Sable Church is trying to stop above all else. But you never learn about it from her or from Yoel or Anri; they don't explain anything to you, they give your character NO REASON to do what they ask you to do. In the first game, Fraampt and Kaathe manipulate you, sure, but they still *tell* you things of importance and try to motivate you to heed their words, and similarly, in DS2, Shanalotte directs you towards powerful souls and the King, and while she doesn't say that it will help you find a way to save yourself, she doesn't say it *won't* either, so your addled self sort of takes it for granted that she is trying to help you find what you're looking for. But in DS3? It's really weird.

I didn't enjoy Ariandel much, but the Ringed City is easily the best part of the game for me. Lots of cool and fun stuff there.

Gaawa_chan posted...

so unless you're digging into descriptions and stuff, you can easily miss what's going on with both of them.

That's almost literally everything in every Souls game. Obviously there's a range but even without being one of those people that deliberately skips all story content it is very easy to play these games and not get much of an idea of what is actually going on with a lot of stuff. I don't think 3 is particularly bad in that respect.

SomeUsername529 posted...

That's almost literally everything in every Souls game. Obviously there's a range but even without being one of those people that deliberately skips all story content it is very easy to play these games and not get much of an idea of what is actually going on with a lot of stuff. I don't think 3 is particularly bad in that respect.

No I mean like the big main characters. Like the really important ones. Aldrich is actually really important to DS3's story but you can completely miss that because the game does such a poor job of conveying anything. I'm willing to bet that a not insignificant # of players don't even know about the "Age of Deep" and learned about it through the internet, if they learned about it at all, and therefore had no idea what was going on exactly with Anri and Horace being part of Yuria's group.

Like, DS1 tells you about the 4 lords in more than sufficient detail in lines you won't miss unless you're deliberately skipping through them. DS2 gives you a LOT of stuff on Vendrick, Aldia, Nashandra, and the war against the giants and the experiments that Aldia performed, and you don't just have to rely on items/spells for any of it; it's also in main dialogue. Aldrich's story is one that a huge part of the main plot actually revolves around, but you can completely miss it simply because it's never, ever pointed out at any point in major dialogue even by people who would have a vested interest in informing you. There's no indication otherwise that he's any more important than any of the other lords; in fact, one would be forgiven in assuming that the brothers were more important and a greater threat.

Sulyvahn gets about as much mainline story coverage as the freaking Demon of Song from DS2. That's ridiculous considering how important he is. Sirris is of the Darkmoon and she doesn't even talk about him. There's a bizarre disconnect between a few of the NPCs and their interests at times. From what I understand they were toying with the idea of making Sulyvahn the big bad of the game, so it's odd that there's basically nothing in the main story content about him at all. It's all buried under items and other enemy placement.

I feel like you can mostly get the stories of most creatures in DS1 and DS2 by playing the games and just paying a bit of attention to what characters say and boss names and what the bosses are doing. Sulyvahn? You can't do that with him. Aldrich? He eats people, and he's goop and people hate him or follow him, and that's all the dialogue you get basically. Because of that you have no understanding remotely of motivations. Whereas in DS1 and DS2, if nothing else, motivations can be understood even without having to dig through item descriptions and spell descriptions. Those things flesh everything out, but they aren't containing points that NPCs really should have wanted to have told you to begin with. It's very strange.

Like... can anyone think of a reason why Yuria, Yoel, or Anri would NOT talk about the threat of the Age of Deep? Why NO ONE would? Because it kind of seems like a big deal. But no one talks about it. It's weird. Everyone's freaking out about the fire fading, and they act like they have persuaded you to do what they want, but unlike the primordial serpents, they make no persuasive arguments. They don't plead their case. They don't tell you why you should do what they want. Like even Lautrec tells you, "hey, gimme souls and I'll give you a tip. Here's the tip. There's a cleric in a hole. Why am I telling you this? Clerics have lots of humanity. Get my drift?" Right? He's giving you motivations to do something. A "why" to do something.

"Whys" should not be in item and spell descriptions, they're too important for that. Players should not be spending the entire Lord of Hollows route being confused as to why they're doing anything Yuria says, why they're being given a spouse, why they're STABBING the spouse without being told to?! why why why.. and of course it all makes sense after you read a bunch of stuff after it's all over. But that's not exactly motivating is it? That's post-hoc motivation. And that's fine for like minor stuff, like manipulating events so that NPCs don't die or for minor bosses, but for major antagonists and endings? Eh.

TL:DR Item Descriptions should flesh out/provide additional context, rather than be THE story. At minimum, the main story needs to have the motivations for the major players of the story included. Have factions actually try to persuade the PC instead of "Hey, hello. We've never met before, but I'm glad you made the choice to side with us, chosen lord dude. Ur so cool."

i didn't like dks3 that much. parts of it were fun, but around twin princes I felt like I was just running from room to room fighting increasingly difficult bosses that were honestly pretty similar to each other, at least in the roll-punish loop sense. narratively I didn't really know what was going on or why I am even fighting them. it all just felt really game-y, like the whole purpose of the ingame world is to contain these bosses.

acesxhigh posted...

narratively I didn't really know what was going on or why I am even fighting them. it all just felt really game-y, like the whole purpose of the ingame world is to contain these bosses.

I never felt this way in the first 2 games. I struggled to not feel this way in the third at times. There were bosses that were clearly just references to DS1, and anything in their item descriptions felt like (very poor) post-hoc justifications for said references.

The Crystal Sage is-is-it's just Big Hat Logan. It's just Big Hat Logan. (No it's his fans!) Shut up no it's not it's fucking Big Hat Logan. And that's why the Crystal Sages are in DS3. Big Hat Logan. And that's FINE. Who doesn't like Big Hat Logan? DS2 had the Old Dragonslayer. But it's EVERYWHERE in DS3. Abyss Watchers. Artorias? (no it's his fans) Oceiros? Seath (FAN!). and on and on and on...

I get it. I liked Dark Souls 1 as well. I liked it a lot! But do I need this many repeats of DS1 characters/bosses? It's so weird coming off of DS1 and DS2, which, both did have references to previous games, no doubt about it, but like... DS3 feels like it's so focused on going "HEY, REMEMBER THIS?! SO DO I!" that it kind of forgets that we need to understand what we're doing now and that focusing on the new stuff you're adding is what is going to make the game compelling. If I want to play DS1 again, I'll just boot it up and play it again. Which I did two or three weeks ago (I forget exactly).

I still like it. I think it's solid. But I just wish it had focused more on its cool new stuff, and actually highlighted it, instead of hiding it. It feels like they put focus on the wrong things. I think there were a lot of missed opportunities in 3, especially when they had some really great ideas and setups... but then they shoved them into the shadows. Sulyvahn is easily the best example of this.

I don't think you're wrong about DS3 being almost a slavish reference to DS1 but at the same time I don't think they did it out of a total lack of ideas like modern Hollywood or anything so its not a big negative for me. If you asked me to explain the stories of DS1 or DS2 I don't think I could tell you much of anything without at least some refreshing and that's also why I don't think DS3's vagueness bugs me. I am plenty media literate and look for themes in almost everything I engage with but games that deliberately occlude themselves and require homework to get plot just don't entice me to follow. I play the Souls games because they're fun and atmospheric and I would enjoy one where there was more explicit story (like in Sekiro and even Armored Core) but as they are they functionally have no real story as far as I'm concerned.

this just in: third sequel to popular series has references to prior entries in the series