which is harder

DMC wrote:Every single player claiming to not have had trouble with Flamelurker or that DeS 'was easy' is because they read wikis and looked at youtube videos beforehand. They will deny it but they're lying.

When I got DeS I wasn't aware of any wikis and I never even thought of looking up youtube. Arguing about a game's difficulty and then mentioning 'hyper mode' just proves my point. You READ ONLINE about hypermode just like you did about every other optimum set-up, strategy and glitch to beat the bosses.

Of course Flamelurker won't be hard if you're already aware of the gear you need, the strategy you should employ, how he moves, what his attacks and weaknesses are etc. Come on lol.

Some of us walked in to the bosses in Demon Souls without even knowing what was past the fog gate. If you actually did that you would NEVER claim that the bosses in Demon Souls are not hard. They are INCREDIBLY hard boss fights apart from the Dragon God (not a true boss fight) and the Old One.

Oh yeah sorry - 'just roll' lol. When you haven't memorised a bosses attacks from youtube videos you don't know the patterns and timing of the attacks yet, ergo, YOU DIE until you get to know them by ACTUALLY PLAYING, not reading and watching videos.

Of course the spoofers will claim they DID go in blind but they're just awesome players from beating Dark Souls or whatever. But that's simply BS.

I think that is making a rather harsh assumption - I wasn't even aware about youtube videos for the bosses or the wiki until the end of my first playthrough - I think its the people who read the item descriptions in depth that realized hyper mode would be effective...
Okay - I will list the easy bosses in DeS - Dirty Colossus, the zones with easy bosses were harder to get through... Leechmonger,well there are many more however I cba to list them. DeS bosses were simple if you took time on them and didn't rush the f**k out of them, you stood back dodging their attacks and worked out their move set - you went in there stocked up with some Spice and grass if you were a caster, or in world 4/5 you went in there stocked up on Turpentine/Black Turpentine. <-- that you worked out by your second playthrough - or first just by the appearances of the bosses in 5-1 and 5-2 being oily etc. Even playing blind some of the bosses were easy - I am not denying that, however after dying to them the first time you normally had learnt their moveset or tactics - you just had to be an observant player and take it slowly.

Anyway - lets not all make assumptions - as I said in one of my older posts - both games were hard, Dark Souls had a better structure, Demon's Souls had a better atmosphere. Lets leave it at that and not cause disrespectful debates out of these two games.

Sorry if I came across as disrespectful.

My main point is that no game, not even the Souls games are hard when people read wikis, guides and observe the levels and bosses being done beforehand on youtube etc. When it comes to a games difficulty the only relevant consideration (IMHO) should be your 1st playthrough done absolutely blind. I'd wager that 90% of players DON'T do these games blind and yet claim they did and what's more claim 'they're not that hard' lol.

I didn't mean to single anyone out and obviously not all people are lying so my comments were meant in a general sense.

FWIW I think they're pretty equal in terms of difficulty but it's hard to tell because whatever you play second should certainly be a somewhat easier experience. Souls freaks like us like to discuss the differences between these games but to a more casual observer they're very very similar at the end of the day.

ChizFreak wrote:
I'm very sure you played Demon's Souls blindly (not looked at the wiki), but you already played Dark Souls, IT'S NOT THE SAME EXPERIENCE.

That's the exact reason for why you don't see the difficulty of Dark Souls... That point is a complete impasse and one of the reasons why this debate is very difficult and no real true answer can be found easily to be fair.

Also DMC, trust me I found it easy on my first go without a guide, but I'd clocked a good 200 hours on Dark before so i found it easy as I was pretty good at Souls PvE by that point

Also I thought your first post was a little too extreme but we all do it sometimes to be fair

Serious,

Come on, man. Playing Dark Souls does not grant you clairvoyance.

So by playing Dark Souls you knew you had to kill the worshipper before Fool's Idol? Yeah sure, that's believable. You also knew that Adjudicator's weakness was his right side. Yeah of course. Dark Souls also taught you that the Old Hero was blind, that the Dirty Colossus's flies could be burned off by the torches, that there was a plague swamp in 5-3 with (*shudders*) fetuses that immediately trap and mob you. You knew from playing Dark Souls how Flamelurker's attacks would work and what he would be weak to, how to fight the Maneaters, how to manage the WT system (lol) how the upgrade paths worked, that you should kill Yurt ASAP, etc. etc.

You even mentioned on another thread how you heard/read so much about Flamelurker beforehand for example. Now you and I both know that whenever a boss is mentioned on threads someone (who wants to show how knowledgable and skillful they are) will jump in with 'oh he was easy you just do x,y and z to beat him'. So do you expect me to believe this was never the case in the countless times you read/heard about Flamelurker? No mention of a weakness to magic? Or maybe a certain Crescent Falchion in 4-1? No?

Here's a list of things I did/did not do on an actual blind playthrough of Demon Souls:

1. Put my stats all over the place. Officially the worst build ever made by a Souls player.

2. Never maxed out any weapon of any kind.

3. Got invaded twice ever and saw one blue sign ever. (SoEEs are very rare and you waste them when you don't know any better)

3. Didn't free Biorr (and obviously Yuria).

4. Never got PBWT, PWWT, or PBCT (no Mephistopheles). Did get PWCT.

5. Didn't kill Yurt until half of the Nexus was dead.

6. Got stuck in Latria for days (missing a key and then a doorway/stairs)

7. Was killed ablut 20 times by the Fool's Idol before remembering the question about killing the worshipper.

8. Was killed about 20 times by the Tower Knight before accidentally targetting his 'Achilles heal'

9. Don't even want to talk about Flamelurker (lol)

10.Want to talk even less about World 5-2 !!

That my friend is a BLIND playthrough. You or others might claim I simply suck but I will claim you have no idea what a truly blind playthrough of Demon Souls is.

I stand by my assertion that it does not matter how many hours you put in to Dark Souls or Demon Souls first the other game is ONLY going to EASY if you have read guides, wikis, discussion forums or viewed youtube videos etc.

Will the second game be less difficult? Yes of course. But easy? Not if you TRULY play blind. Never. For anyone.

That was the raison d'etre of these games and the developers succeeded magnificently.

Sounds like my 1st playthru of demons^

Demons is just a tiny bit harder.

To tell you the truth, I beat the Adjudicator my first time out. I just hit him with arrows, I didn't even know he had a special thing about his right side.

DMC wrote:Serious,

Come on, man. Playing Dark Souls does not grant you clairvoyance.

*SNIP*

Will the second game be less difficult? Yes of course. But easy? Not if you TRULY play blind. Never. For anyone.

That was the raison d'etre of these games and the developers succeeded magnificently.

I can comment on this as after 10+ play throughs of Dark I recently went into Demon's blind and purposely stayed that way until the end. Only then did I read about what I could have done and all the things that I missed.

Dark taught me patience, to study enemies, loosely how upgrade paths work, to be very careful about carrying unspent souls through an unknown fog gate et all. It changed the way I play and want to play games.

I chose Royalty solely because I wanted a level 1 character.. thanks to soul arrow and melee patience I turtled, studied and most bosses honestly weren't that hard. Played the game in order.

Flamelurker: 1 death thanks to running out of spice and rushing a melee attempt (was news to me that he is infamously hard...) Maneaters: 1 death (C'mon you think as soon as the second one showed that I didn't think of the bell gargoyles and adjust next time?) Old hero was obviously blind but I botched a dodge.. 1 death. Adjudicator & Tower knight: no deaths. Fools idol: no deaths.. Dark taught me that killing NPC's has almost zero consequence.. lucky on that one I guess. etc etc

I have no doubt whatsoever that had I not played Dark to platinum I would not be sitting here typing this after finishing Demon's reasonably casually in a week. I am in no way done with Demon's, nor am I a gaming god by any stretch but to even imply that becoming proficient at one will not make the other MUCH MUCH easier is absurd. Sure Demon's isn't easy by conventional standards, but *I* honestly didn't find it hard as Dark had shown me almost all of the tricks and to how to approach it.

So what other NPCs did you kill apart from the worshipper in Latria? Presumably all the others too? Did that not affect your game? Or were you really just THAT lucky?! :shock:

And tell me, what gear & weapons set up were you using by the end of your playthrough?

FWIW I'm not denying playing one makes the other less difficult. I've an issue with making the other 'easy'. Not if you play blind (which EVERYONE claims to do but very very very few actually do)

DMC wrote:So what other NPCs did you kill apart from the worshipper in Latria? Presumably all the others too? Did that not affect your game? Or were you really just THAT lucky?! :shock:

And tell me, what gear & weapons set up were you using by the end of your playthrough?

FWIW I'm not denying playing one makes the other less difficult. I've an issue with making the other 'easy'. Not if you play blind (which EVERYONE claims to do but very very very few actually do)

Man, it's obvious they don't simply "guess" who to kill in their first playthrough, they either, killed them because they looked at a guide, or left them alive enough to cause troubles.

But don't be mad with Serious, I trust he played a completely blind playtrough of Demon's Souls, he thinks it's less difficult because he played Dark Souls first.

They both share the same gameplay mechanics (dodge, block, backstabs, upgrade paths), so if you played 1 of them, you have an advantage when you play the other. That's why I said above that it's NOT the same experience.

I played Demon's First, and yeah, I was very familiriazed with dodges and tactics in Dark Souls, and yes I believe it gave less challenge than Demon's, but it's because I already had practice (with Demon's).

The problem is that, Dark Souls, added things to the gameplay which Demon's didn't had, that's why if you play Dark Souls>Demon's Souls, you think Dark Souls it's harder.

In the original way, Demon's Souls>Dark Souls, Dark souls was difficult too, but because of the surprises and new gameplay mechanics it include with it, not just because it's hard itself to kill things and easy to be killed (which was not a very important problem because I already played Demon's, I'm used to that). That's why I believe Demon's Souls was harder.

Now, if we speak boss wise, I have to stick with Flamelurker and Allant, in respective first playthroughs.

Most difficult boss in Dark Souls? I would say S&O if you're new, AND you don't summon anyone. Otherwise, I would say Four Kings for new players.

When my girlfriend bought me Demon's Souls day one I couldn't even get past 1-1 and fight Phalanx for almost a week. It was a really frustrating game back then, and I always got annoyed by having to do the whole level from the beginning if I died. I must admit, I PSN menu quit the game everytime a boss killed me or I died and was mid level. In DkS you get lots of bonfires so that you don't have to do the whole level again. And in a game about dying countless times, you have to admit DeS was so much difficult as well as annoying in those terms. As DMC has said, doing a blind playthrough is more difficult in DeS. I don't even knew you could have other players to help you kill bosses. This is because of the means to become human, the Stones of Ephemeral Eyes were few and you spent most of the time in Soul Form. In DkS, humanity is abundant, and the game invites you to be in human form through the obligation of kindling bonfires to get more estus, then you can see all those summon signs all over the bonfire. By that fact DkS is easier.

Both games share a lot of similarities gameplay wise so playing one would make you better prepared (but not completely prepared for the other). I found Dark Souls to be much easier because I understood the concept of equipment management much better after several hundred hours in Demons (I know they're not identical but similar was good enough for me). I also knew how every little mistake would end so I was much more careful than I was when I started Demons. I think the patience I learned in Demons helped keep frustration levels down and made me think clearer during defeat which led to easier learning for bosses. For instance, in Demons I would get frustrated when I died at first. In Dark it was an expectation that I would die from the get go. When I got to Taurus I had found the archers and killed them but never thought about the plunging attack. So I got jacked up good. Then I remembered the tower but not the plunging attack still. I calmly got out my bow and shot him once, then twice......then got jacked up again when I learned he can jump really high! THEN I remembered the plunging attack and I won. I only was able to adapt in three tries though since I had learned patience in Demons and to always watch your enemy, even if defeat is certain. Another tip from Demons, if you can't stop the damage, avoid it. I lost to Gaping a number of times because I couldn't avoid enough attacks. I got faster. I won. Another tip....speak softly and always carry an accurate bow. The second I found the short bow I equipped it and took off on mobs. So while the games are significantly different the lessons learned apply in either direction. That all being said......

I find Demons harder because of the Black Phantoms. I never got great with parries or avoiding attacks completely on humanoids so the Full Tendency crazy hard phantoms are extremely tough for me. The bosses in Demons? Only the False King gave me difficulty consistently across my playthroughs. In Dark.....O&S and Four Jerks give me consistent crap and I've been surprised into getting Two shotted by a freakin' butterfly! What the hell? As it's been said before they're difficult for different reasons so it all depends on what things are tougher for you. They're both definitely worth playing though.

DMC, I killed the fools idol twice before realising, and I already found the guy before (I explored every level except 5-2) and well then killed her... I don't get your point.

With flamelurker, I had a moon weapon yeah, there was a sign on the floor saying "Need Magic"... I then left and got myself one (a moon battle axe).. seriously is it a crime to look at messages?

How to fight maneaters? lol, it's just like fighting a two on one, dodge a lot and attack when you can. It's just the same as the gargoyles lol. Yurt I killed because he was the demons version of lautrec, frankly it was obvious he was bad news to me.

Bro you gotta remember though that I didn't play demons like you did, it was blind as possible, if you blame me for people mentioning that flamelurker was hard or that there's something beyond the tutorial boss the shoot me really.

I played Dark souls for 200 hours before even playing demon's souls, that's why it was easy I was already used to the whole game, I expect the same kind of experience when I get the DLC, killing the new bosses on 1st or 2nd try. I also got lucky stumbling across the meat cleaver upgrade for a club I had in my inventory.. I even played the game melee only for the most part (I used a bow for the manta rays and the 1st reaper)

For you to analyse, as you wish, there's nothing wrong with it lol so look away:

This is my character, he was around SL80, had like 20 vit/end, even str and dex and a bit of faith to use the meat cleaver. I had no spells...

I started with barbarian to make it fun, and i thought i'd get the tutorial boss and got one shotted by him lol, shame eh? I also killed every single magic seller when I encountered them, and I didn't even find yuria (found her 2nd playthrough, I now know why i missed her), didn't meet mephistopheles on first playthrough, and I let yurt out but I killed him because I thought lautrec when I was talking to him, never got his armour though I kicked him off the edge. I met the fat guy who then impeded on my penetrator boss fight, which really annoyed me. I also killed false king allant before dragon god and storm king. That's about all details i remember.

The amount of deaths... I didn't die on many levels, but then again I farmed grass, though world 3 I hated the magic guys, they were a ***** with their green light attack that stunned you. Against bosses I beat most first time, and if not second time. Flamelurker I got 1st time which was for me the funnest fight I've ever had on souls game.

My equips were cleaver, sword of searching (made from a scimitar i bought/upgraded, loved it because it looked so cool and was fast), an upgraded steel shield around +5 and a white bow +1/2

my armour was plate mail, top hat (before I wore nothing on my head), sage boots and leather gauntlets I think? (my armour set up was very random and not memorable really)

Look, if this somehow looks strange to you i dunno what to say.. I explored a lot, I went in shield up and failing that dodged with the stupidly good <50% dodge you get and went through cautiously. I finished the playthrough with a time of 32 hours. I'm not that great a player at all, I'm just used to the game, am cautious and the way I play looking for weaknesses in enemies, the quirk and weakness based bosses were simple for me, it was just lucky that how i play souls was one of the better ways to go about Demons.

I'm playing DeS now after playing about +600 hours in DkS. Looks more easier than back then (I have played much more DkS than DeS, only played DeS until platinum trophy, not PvP). If it weren't for the Crescent Falchion the game would be more difficult really. On my next playthrough I'm not going to use it, it ruins the PvE challenging experience, much like the Drake Sword from DkS.

And Serious I though you were a DeS veteran lol.

yeah wyrm I couldn't use the crescent falchion, guess I'm a good boy?

and no, how come you thought I'd be a demon's vet?

Never played DeS, but I had to repeatedly quit and take a break or mute because of the sound in the Duke's Prison. It still gives me bad headaches and so I've learned how to speedrun that part of the Archives. Also, the massive jump in difficulty from Blighttown to Sen's Fortress and the lack of a bonfire in the interior of the Fortress made me very ragey. At least I found the bonfire and didn't miss the drop.

Serious_Much wrote:DMC, I killed the fools idol twice before realising, and I already found the guy before (I explored every level except 5-2) and well then killed her... I don't get your point.

With flamelurker, I had a moon weapon yeah, there was a sign on the floor saying "Need Magic"... I then left and got myself one (a moon battle axe).. seriously is it a crime to look at messages?

How to fight maneaters? lol, it's just like fighting a two on one, dodge a lot and attack when you can. It's just the same as the gargoyles lol. Yurt I killed because he was the demons version of lautrec, frankly it was obvious he was bad news to me.

Bro you gotta remember though that I didn't play demons like you did, it was blind as possible, if you blame me for people mentioning that flamelurker was hard or that there's something beyond the tutorial boss the shoot me really.

I played Dark souls for 200 hours before even playing demon's souls, that's why it was easy I was already used to the whole game, I expect the same kind of experience when I get the DLC, killing the new bosses on 1st or 2nd try. I also got lucky stumbling across the meat cleaver upgrade for a club I had in my inventory.. I even played the game melee only for the most part (I used a bow for the manta rays and the 1st reaper)

For you to analyse, as you wish, there's nothing wrong with it lol so look away:

This is my character, he was around SL80, had like 20 vit/end, even str and dex and a bit of faith to use the meat cleaver. I had no spells...

I started with barbarian to make it fun, and i thought i'd get the tutorial boss and got one shotted by him lol, shame eh? I also killed every single magic seller when I encountered them, and I didn't even find yuria (found her 2nd playthrough, I now know why i missed her), didn't meet mephistopheles on first playthrough, and I let yurt out but I killed him because I thought lautrec when I was talking to him, never got his armour though I kicked him off the edge. I met the fat guy who then impeded on my penetrator boss fight, which really annoyed me. I also killed false king allant before dragon god and storm king. That's about all details i remember.

The amount of deaths... I didn't die on many levels, but then again I farmed grass, though world 3 I hated the magic guys, they were a ***** with their green light attack that stunned you. Against bosses I beat most first time, and if not second time. Flamelurker I got 1st time which was for me the funnest fight I've ever had on souls game.

My equips were cleaver, sword of searching (made from a scimitar i bought/upgraded, loved it because it looked so cool and was fast), an upgraded steel shield around +5 and a white bow +1/2

my armour was plate mail, top hat (before I wore nothing on my head), sage boots and leather gauntlets I think? (my armour set up was very random and not memorable really)

Look, if this somehow looks strange to you i dunno what to say.. I explored a lot, I went in shield up and failing that dodged with the stupidly good <50% dodge you get and went through cautiously. I finished the playthrough with a time of 32 hours. I'm not that great a player at all, I'm just used to the game, am cautious and the way I play looking for weaknesses in enemies, the quirk and weakness based bosses were simple for me, it was just lucky that how i play souls was one of the better ways to go about Demons.

Quoting this onto this new page so that DMC will see it. I wanna show I was simply experienced at the style of gameplay, not a cheater.

Edit: Also to add something else, I never had a maxed out weapon beyond the 2 boss weapons I got. Another point was you said about the crescent falchion.. I couldn't use it, my magic was never high enough you see, but i did find it

Because you have so many posts I thought you were here from the good ol' days of DeS.

Nope, just had a year of having a bit too much time on my hands

Serious,

Fair enough, thanks for that.

Like I said I don't believe EVERYONE who claims they played blind and yet found the game easy is lying. So I'll take your word for it. But I stand by my claim that 90% are lying or have a very different definition of 'blind' and 'easy' to me.

The reason for my skepticism (apart from the given fact that in a relatively anonymous setting such as the internet humans boast, lie and deceive much more than usual) is as follows. I'm still playing DeS regularly. Just for fun and doing loads of co-op and looking to get invaded etc. As you know most of the players playing now are now guys who have come from Dark Souls. When I get summoned I message them (because I'm interested in this phenomenon lol) and ask them have they come from playing DkS etc. The conversation usually goes like this:

'Hey are you a DkS vet?'

'Oh yeah. I finished it x amount of times, logged up y amount of hours etc.

'Cool. How you finding DeS?'

'Not a problem. Like I said I've a good DkS player'

'As a matter of interest are you playing blind? Or using wikis etc.?'

'Oh no absolutely blind. Only way to play brah'

And yet they are SUMMONING me to help them beat the bosses. And some of them have Doran's armour at SL30 for God's sake lol. Yeah buddy you're playing blind lol. If you know the game well it's vey very easy to tell by a players gear (at a given point in the game) whether they are actually playing blind or not.

You can tell the DkS vets who are really playing blind because they don't have the optimum gear possible, they are excellent against mobs and human-type fighters (black phantoms etc) but they also get killed against the bosses because they in actual fact have no clue how they move, what their attack patterns are, what you can block, how to time your rolls etc. Usually they will hang back and watch me for a bit after dying once or twice. Then they get the strategy, wade in and we win pretty handily.



Anyway rant over. I obviously ruffled a feather or two but I didn't mean any personal offence to anyone. Sorry if I derailed the thread.

Umbasa and Praise the Sun

Yeah, pretty much I don't define easy as not dying, but for a Souls game ans by their standards to me it was easy because the levels and bosses didn't kill me as much as I thought they would, if you get what I mean.

and yeah, your skeptic attitude isn't surprising given you coop demons a lot still.

which version do you have? would like to play with you some time if you're on EU

i will admit a lot of people like to just fly through games using you tube or wikis,but theres a lot of people who have played rpgs for a very long time and a lot of stuff comes naturally. i have noticed the rpg genre is getting to be more mainstream and well known. things that you might not expect someone to know doing a blind play might actually be common knowledge(choosing best items/armor to fit your stats,figuring out weapons upgrades,exploring and finding not so obvious items).some of my friends who would look at me like this :| if i started to play an rpg on ps2 now are skyrim fanboys who "love" rpgs lol. its partially because action rpgs and more traditional rpgs have merged into a single genre(i guess...) i cant argue that the souls template is any less in depth then a more traditional turn based rpg, and although i love my turn based rpgs souls games and fallout3 have convinced me that action rpgs can be just as deep and more fun(imo).

more on topic, you can play demons souls blind and find some very good items early on. i didnt need a wiki to realize that picking royal was the easiest to start. then i found the crescent falchion w/o any guide. its not hidden or anything. i played through the whole game the first time with the crescent falchion,dark heater shield,and yuri's set. magic is what makes both games far to easy imo. i for one hope they tone down the amount of magic in the next game or make it much much weaker. i know its for variety so people can be pure mages,pyros,clerics ext. but they should make it so if you want to do that you have to invest pretty much ALL your stats to do so. making it so you cant wield weapons or useful shields ext. im sure others will agree but starting as a royal in demons souls or a pyro/sorcerer in dark souls will make the game far easier then it should be. i will stand by my opinion that they are both on par with each other difficulty wise. i also have trouble deciding which i enjoyed more. they both have their similarity and then their positive/negative aspects.

flameluker..........

billy_bayonet wrote:flameluker..........

beat him first time

....I really never get tired of saying that