Dark Souls Difficulty

Hi everybody. I'm so glad to have found such a place to discuss with fellow souls. But, there is something that is giving me some concern. I'm waiting for the pc version of Dark Souls so I don't have a direct experience with the game, but one of the things that attracted me to it was its difficulty. Now, I've read stuff around the web that startled me: I'm not talking about the occasional pro gamer who says that it took him only a few tries to beat the game's bosses. I'm talking about player's recent reactions in relation to the release of Diablo 3 and its hardest mode, inferno: I've seen discussions deteriorate from arguments stating inferno's much more challenging environment in comparison to Dark Souls' into utter discredit of the latter's difficulty. Now, to listen that what is considered as one of the most difficult games of this generation is treated as some kind of hello kitty and friends adventure by the players of that button mashing fest that is Diablo 3 really amazed me. So, is this true, or it's simply a bunch of crap like the ones you can read everywhere on the net ? Thanks.

Diablo 3 Inferno mode isn't really hard - Dark souls is hard to an extent - at least until you have played a couple of playthroughs of it

Like anything, Dark Souls gets easier the more practice you get and the more you know ahead of time.

Try starting a game with no walkthroughs or wikis, and you'll see that what sets Dark Souls apart is that it is both incredibly difficult and punishing, but also fun. Many so-called "difficult" games simply put the player at a disadvantage with cheap tactics, randomness, and poor control schemes. In contrast, from the first fight in Dark Souls, the only thing standing between you and victory is your own skill and ingenuity.

While Diablo III on Inferno mode may be difficult, it is also mind-numbingly repetitive. It relies on the cheap, easy tactic of upping the numbers to add difficulty.

^^ Nahh - its not upping the numbers - its just multiplying their damage by like 100 from the original playthrough (bit of an exaggeration) but it is still easy af - you can kite the crap out of everything, jus' saiyan it takes basic MMO knowledge to win @

If you didn't play Demon's Souls endlessly, Dark Souls is extremely difficult. If you did play Demon's Souls endlessly, Dark Souls is pretty damned difficult. Many people claim otherwise -- there are some on this forum who claim to never have died to a boss in Dark Souls. These people are full of ****.

^^ woo I'm in your quotes section!

callipygias wrote:If you didn't play Demon's Souls endlessly, Dark Souls is extremely difficult. If you did play Demon's Souls endlessly, Dark Souls is pretty damned difficult. Many people claim otherwise -- there are some on this forum who claim to never have died to a boss in Dark Souls. These people are full of ****.

i have honestly never died to the asylum demon, or the gaping dragon. the gaping dragon is probably because i fought i on 2 different toons, after that i just skip it

I have played Demon's and Dark souls and can confidently say they're pretty dammed difficult and require skill and a great sense of timing to beat and unless Diablo makes you keep your guard against low level enemies then it doesn't have **** on Dark Souls.

@OP its a different kind of difficult.

Diablo 3 inferno may be difficult by pure numbers and by putting you at a disadvantage.

Dark Souls is difficult in the sense that you can't be lazy and make mistakes.

So comparing it is wholly a really stupid statement. Comparing a difficulty mode to an entire game is very shallow and ignorant.

dark souls will punish you, if you mess up just once your dead until you get used to it and figure out how to dodge properly

Spurgun wrote:

callipygias wrote:If you didn't play Demon's Souls endlessly, Dark Souls is extremely difficult. If you did play Demon's Souls endlessly, Dark Souls is pretty damned difficult. Many people claim otherwise -- there are some on this forum who claim to never have died to a boss in Dark Souls. These people are full of ****.

i have honestly never died to the asylum demon, or the gaping dragon. the gaping dragon is probably because i fought i on 2 different toons, after that i just skip it

Definitely credible. I meant to say there are some who claim to have never died to a single boss in Dark Souls. I remember asking if I was misunderstanding one of their posts but I'm not sure he saw my question.

Dark Souls isn't that hard. It just kicks you in the balls when your not looking. It punishes complacency and stupidity. You die not because the game is hard. You die because it's your fault. You'll only die from it's difficulty the first time.

Is your avatar rapporting blue? I must say, can it come in red?



They are two different kinds of games. Diablo Three follows ideals of a dice game of sorts, and is very 'automatic' you can not dodge an enemy, the games does it or does it not for you. The amount of damage and other forms also follow this. Their is very little manual work compared to dark souls, where in Diablo you click to attack, move, open, and other forms; you click different skills to attack enemies as well. It has more of a standard feel that RPGs like world of Warcraft, but the difference is smothered by easily massed similarities.

Dark Souls is more controlled, with the player being the fault of faliure. Less than Diablo series, where the fault could be a good amount of bad rolls and misses. Dark Souls is by definition a standard game. Their are very few automatic things within Dark Souls, which usually are mostly common to projectiles such as sorcery spears, arrows, and the standard arrow and bolt (as they curved at locked on enemies). Other than that, you are all alone. If the enemy swings at you, and you do not try to block or dodge, you will get hit in most cases; if they miss, it is usually because the range radius and the swing motion were probably not in their favour. Their is no random hit attack, rather it is fixed and stable.

Dark Souls is a standard game for the mist part, while Diablo is mostly an automatic game. While Diablo punishes the player if he picks the wrong attack, or in most cases the dice go to the favour of the enemy, then the difficulty of the game itself is a roll of the dice. Dark Souls is more punishing for those who pick the wrong actions themselves. Their are very little borders, and random actions and even dice actions are very uncommon in the game. In most cases, it is the absence of skill of the player, as well as the ill prepared player, who are at fault. Diablo is usually the case of the dice rolling from one favour to another, AS well as the ill prepared player.

Trying to define difficult to two different games of essence is not a very good way to define the two, as the essence of the two is indeed very different, with some similarities. I have respect for difficult games of standard, than difficult games of automatic.

There are players who dont have problems with dark souls. I know a guy who is the best video gamer i know. He's been kicked from MANY servers for being a hacker, and i know he isnt because he is a good friend of mine in real life. He haz only died a few times to bosses in dark souls and beat the game within a day solo, no co op. That being said, he's been offered a professional gaming job in seattle, but he's 15 and lives closer to portland oregon. He's definitely in the top one percent. Diablo three hardest difficulty can be beat with simpletarget based mmo strategies like kiting, like amos said. Dark souls doesnt have a few simple strategies and, boom, you're good. You have to understand enemy movement, character placement, character movement, etc. I could go on for a looong time about the different skills you need to be successful in dark souls. Most mmo's dont have this. I only know of one, which is tera, an mmoarpg.

Wow, thank you guys for the answers, I didn't expect such a friendliness.

I find dark souls has ths friendliest hardcore community. I looooove it and i hope i can grow within this community and be known as a part of it.

It is indeed the friendliest community. The hardcore players anyways. The core players not so much, however. The taste between the two, and their views, are quite different.

^^ Our Forum is just one happy orgy - I mean family - welcome to it :face:

Ulchishy wrote:Wow, thank you guys for the answers, I didn't expect such a friendliness.

To quote the great Michal Scott: "This is an area of welcoming and you should just get the *** outta here."

Don't you just love 'em? Fanboys/girls. They're always lurking in the wings to take a pop at this game or that console and most of the time it's just mindless ranting.

All I know is Dark Souls does it for me big time.

To me Ulch, there is a difference in the difficulty.

Diablo 3, was not meant to usually be played on Inferno, this difficulty is not natural, it's just the usual story of giving more health and power to your enemies.

However in Dark Souls, it's natural difficulty is just that. It is hard without you pressing a button to make it so. It's hard because the developers wanted it to always be challenging, that's why.

There's no compromise in difficulty in Dark Souls, and it is naturally hard. However to make Diablo difficult you must adjust a setting, which do you think then has the greatest inherent and most natural difficulty curve? It's an easy answer I must say

OP don't take this wrong but you don't understand Dark Souls until you play it. DkS doesn't fit the easy, medium, hard paradigm most games are stuck in. It's a hand crafted experience, difficulty doesn't come from mobs that cheat through inflated HP pools and insane damage. The game beats you by being better then you are, then it taunts you and challenges you to get better. The tutorial hardly even teaches you to play, the only real lesson it goes out of its way to teach you is that you're bad and you're gonna die. Then hopefully you stick with it and figure it out. Then you learn the game, get complacent, and run by X mob you've defeated a 100 times and he backstabs you to death and you're reminded that this isn't Diablo its Dark Souls.

The down side to this is the entire experience is hand crafted, so once you're through the game once you know where everything is. Though this hasn't hurt replayability for anyone here it does dramatically decrease the difficulty on successive play throughs. DkS is the closest thing to taking drugs you can do without actually taking drugs, trust me I'm a recovered addict lol, the first time through is such a rush you spend the rest of your time trying to achieve that again.

So do yourself a favor, stop listening to internet braggarts (funny tho that its a badge of honor to be good at DkS even though its supposedly easy), don't learn too much about game play so you dont spoil it, and experience Dark Souls in all its glory yourself when it comes out.

Ugh. Indeed dark souls is a game that is unique to itself. I just played amnesia with my friend, and I made him play about 7 hours. That game has it's own definition of difficulty, which is, even more unique than dark souls, a mental one. The only actually scary game, and I stopped at one point because of it... It was, however, hard not to laugh at my friends reaction of playing

That's basically what I was thinking too: Dark Souls is structured over the idea of challenge, the gameplay and the entire setting go hand in hand with this philosophy, while Diablo is built over other concepts and the challenge is achieved only via numerical ways, by raising the damage output of the enemies and lowering that of the player.

P.S. by the way, I played Amnesia too and I couldn't finish it, it was horrible, an unnerving experience.

To me, there is a distinct difference between calling a game 'hard' or 'difficult.' Obviously, this comes from a subjective point of view, and someone who absolutely adores the Souls series. Demon's/Dark Souls are not 'hard' games, in that the game does not treat the player unfairly (though there are occasional instances such as the anor londo archers and the capra demon), the player is for the most part always at an advantage, if he/she plays the game patiently and strategically (something you will learn within the first hour or two). Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts for the SNES on the other hand, is a hard game as were a lot of 16-bit platformers. The game utilized cheap tactics and very little opportunity for success. It required ridiculous repetition and memorization in order to get past levels.

Dark Souls is such a wonderfully designed game which scales its difficulty very appropriately. Yes, you will die and get frustrated, but you soon realize that the more self-conscious and cognizant you are of your surroundings and the general aura of the game, you will feel better prepared and more confident in your endeavors, making this game a truly rewarding and wonderful experience that few games, if any, offer. That was one hell of a run on sentence.

I will tell you what I tell every other person that asks me about Dark Souls, whether they play games 100 hours a week or 1 hour a week. While the Souls games may not be for everyone, every gamer should at least give it a shot.