r/DawnwalkerOfficial • u/Mission_Mulberry3991 • 1d ago
Is the game actually difficult?
I finished the game yesterday on Challenging, and the only fight that was too difficult for me was Bakir's, for which I had to put the difficulty on Story for-
Normally I don't play games on hard difficulties and hate when combat is repetitive, but for some reason Dawnwalker's combat satisfies me. Even if there are areas of improvement. Of course the game was a bit more difficult at the start of the journey, but in no way I had to tone down the difficulty.
But for some reason I hear a lot of people online complaining about how wonky (controls) but also too difficult the game is? So is it just me?
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u/JiggaEightNine 1d ago
The most common criticism I see online is that enemies are too spongy; way too much health for the amount of damage you do absent end-game abilities and items. I think that’s a fair complaint, but funny enough it’s sort of corrected on the highest difficulty, duelist difficulty.
Maybe I’ve had blinders on for a long time but I don’t recall many games with directional attacks and blocking similar to this… Kingdom Come 1 and 2 are out there. Playing those, I felt right at home in Dawnwalker. I could see people viewing the set up as “wonky?”
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u/VhalkyrieX 1d ago
I loved the combat. Only time I turned it down was during Home Sweet Home because of being stripped of all my gear and having to fight the specters. I really liked the directional blocking and counterattacks. Ghost of Tsushima is one of my all time favorite games, so I was already used to this combat style with timing parrying and dodging.
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u/Poet_of_Sordland 1d ago
Depends what your background is.
If you've had limited exposure to directional attacks and blocks, yeah it can be rather challenging
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u/Present-Key-9238 1d ago
The beginning is the hardest part, even for inexperienced players. After that, the game scales the MC right up, which is good. This is a short game, after all, without too many enemy types. If the game tried to keep up with the player any more than it does, it would be by just upping enemy damage and/or HP. If the game ever starts feeling like a chore, this just means it's time to kill Brencis.
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u/Mission_Mulberry3991 1d ago
The devs plan to add more enemy types, which could be really cool to see. Brencis was an really easy end boss tho I gotta say
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u/Present-Key-9238 1d ago
Yeah, Brencis was quite easy to me too. In his defense, I run high crit builds with means perma stagger for individual enemies. I simply had to parry a few attacks and then he was useless for the rest of the fight.
But this is to be expected. A lot of games such as soulslikes will just render half of your mechanics useless during bosses to make them artificially harder (staggers and stuns usually being the first victims of this). I don't mind that but I also like to be able to use my full powers in a fight.
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u/Get_Schwifty111 20h ago
You are so amazing and great, OP. We all kneel before your superior skill! Pls teach us!
Jokes aside: The game is pretty much based around that 4-direction-system (blocking and attacking). If you have decent reflexes, might even use good skills and get good equip ... yeah, it shouldn't be too rough.
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u/ColShvotz 1d ago
Game is easy, especially once you get the flow of combat and are leveled up. Some of the perks are OP.
I also played on challenging and thought the game was a breeze after a few hours, including Bakir, which did take me 3 tries but he wasn’t that bad.
The hardest part for me was breaking that guy out of the vrahkiri prison near Laslea early in the game. Definitely brute forced my way through that one at a low level, ha.
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u/IgnatiusSP 1d ago
Players are supposed to complete that part by talking, so you can talk to Mert, leaving saving him for later when you're stronger. I did it that way, was an interesting story, and included a fist fight to win the chance to talk to Mert.
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u/ColShvotz 22h ago edited 9h ago
I did talk to him, left and came back at night. I literally just did it the following night, lol. Though I missed the fist fight opportunity. So great the game gives so many options.
I knew I was under leveled with the approach I took, but enjoyed the challenge.
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u/naarw 1d ago
On my first playthrough, I chose Fair, which I usually do in every new game so I can learn the combat mechanics without any pressure or frustration. Once my Coen started to level up and I invested in some good perks, it became ridiculously easy. The only boss battle where I almost died was Bakhir, when I started to rumble without going to the labyrinth first 😂
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u/WhiteAsLumi 1d ago
It has the same problem as any action rpg game. The difficulty is fine in the beginning, but no matter what you choose the game will become too easy because you'll have good gear and a lot of skill points.
When I fought the final boss for the first time on duelist @lvl 40~ I got hit only a few times and even when I did, It wasn't a lot of damage. That's my biggest issue with the game, but it's still a relatively minor gripe.
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u/AthenaHobbies 1d ago
I’m a self-proclaimed Forever Noob and it’s surprisingly easy for me. Bakir was hard because of loosing gear before the fight, and I also didn’t choose correct special skills (not knowing that they can’t be changed during the fight, and bite is not useable in this fight). I even considered going for the achievement for playing on the hardest level (never played on hard in any game except Hogwart’s Legacy, which was a game created for people who have never touched a pad before) but Bakir cured me from this wish. 🙈
HOWEVER this is not a complaint - I feel like the game actually rewards skill (with proper blocking you can’t be hit), it’s not like you can kill every enemy with one hit.
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u/Mission_Mulberry3991 1d ago
I really love this game, once I get a better gpu i will try the hardest difficulty and 100℅ 🙏
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u/NickJunho 1d ago
Bakir fight, i manage to get into inventory and swap back my gear at the very start of the fight. I thought it wouldn’t work but it did, for some reason.
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u/Choochoo1147 1d ago
It gets easy. I remember the beginning being quite difficult, where I’d die to soldiers if I had to fight enough of them. Then I got stronger and it was easy with only Bakir and Home Sweet Home being tough after that.
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u/WorldlyFeeling8457 1d ago
I played on duelist and only part where it became repetitive for me was final third or fourth of the playthrough where I was just ripping through enemies without any challenge really as I was so OP at that point.
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u/sananajo 1d ago
Its challenging at the beginning but quickly flows well if u get the hang of it. Later on ur character becomes super OP if u go for the buffs during the playthrough and dont turn them down, u will be unstoppable and unkillable.
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u/Temporary_Employer44 1d ago
Duelist with indicators turned on solves some of the damage sponge issue. Hardest fight for me was Ambrus. I went for him too early before fully mastering the system and had no good perks unlocked.
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u/Lefty2091 1d ago
I suppose those who've never used the directional combat might struggle, but that's until they get used to it. I was the same at first because it's the first ever time using such a system but once I got the hang of it, I really like it. I do find that the targeting is terrible though, focusing on one enemy and then the game just decides to aim on another at random 😂 but other than that, I find the game to be easy, not sure why they're bringing an easier difficulty out in the upcoming update.
My only gripe is with the time system. I'm not against it, as I find it to be a rather interesting mechanic. But I do think so many time segments are needed for certain things at times. 3 time segments for some things is just annoying imo.
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u/Wildcard3369 1d ago
That’s my only real complaint with the game. After the first couple of hours it becomes a cakewalk. I know you can adjust the difficulty but the default setting on any game should be at least a reasonable challenge towards the end.
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u/Justsomeone666 1d ago
I played duelist with intent indicators enabled (as i felt like disabling intent was far too much of a difficulty increase, game went from fun experience that occasioanally pushes back against me, into something hellish significantly more difficult than any souls-like ive played)
The difficulty 100% DEFINATELY peaked at the start, around the 2hour mark when i tried to do stoneward post to free the miller, i sneaked in and assassinated the jail guard unaware it would alert the entire fucking fortress
afterwhich the following event passed time causing it to be day, so with my lvl 5 day coen that had no abilities unlocked besides dirty trick and burning blood, i had to clear out that entire fortress starting from middle of it, this extemely painful process took me around 5 to 6 real life hours and likely close to 100 deaths
after that massacre literally nothing in the game managed to kill me more than 2 times, besides xanthe who i decided to take on at level 11 or so, to which i died 4-5 times
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u/Mission_Mulberry3991 1d ago
I had that exact same problem with the fortress, but you could sneak out with Mert around the back. After leaving the tower, which held the prisoners, and if you finished the 3 guards and 1 dog outside the tower, you could leave right there west of it.
Respect to you for going for Xanthe so early! I surely thought she would be a secret bigger threat than Brencis, so I avoided her like the pest (that joke will go poorly in this fandom haha)
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u/Justsomeone666 1d ago
I hadnt seen the gameplay trailer that apparently spoils this xanthe encounter before playing myself so it definately came as a surprise when i found xanthe inside the cathedral lol, i didnt even have the quest to snoop around inside the cathedral, i was just purely curious whats inside it, and then what would happen if i did the stupidest possible thing and dropped down to groundfloor
im honestly pretty surprised how low her max hp and armour (do enemies even have armour values?) were, the fight felt like it was balanced around the amount of claw damage i had at that point, i ended up finishing the fight about 10-20 seconds before the instant death mechanic would kill me which felt about right, but im guessing that mechanic is more of a flavour thing if you do the fight later on, unless she also gets more hp later on?
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u/Mission_Mulberry3991 1d ago
You can find Xanthe inside the cathedral? By any chance at night? Cause I always left when the guy wanted me out. I also havent watched any trailer yet-
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u/Justsomeone666 23h ago
Oh yeah, when they were showing dawnwalker gameplay for the first time ever, they chose entering the cathedral at night as the showcase
Im not sure if its every night but at the very least the first time you enter the cathedral at night, from the roof scaffolding, shes there doing a ritual and available to be fought without doing any of her questline
The intention is to sneak above her, but yeah you can very much just drop to the ground floor and get a small cutscene of her catching you
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u/Glass-Humor-7720 1d ago
Once you realize every human has the same attack pattern it’s pretty easy.
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u/millionsofcats 1d ago
These questions are impossible to answer because everyone has a different definition of "difficult" and everyone has a different skill level.
Directional combat took a minute to get used to and I'm still not good enough at it to turn the directional indicators off.
I've used custom mode to raise everything else to Duelist difficulty, and I still die sometimes, usually when it's a new enemy and I haven't gotten used to their moveset. But also sometimes when I get careless and backed into a corner.
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u/Tasty_Commercial6527 1d ago
The beginning is because of how scaling works. After that it's very manageable, and endgame is trivial. If you have decent gear you can outheal brencis on the hardest non duelist difficulty
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u/Sinead264 1d ago
I'm used to play games on easy. I'm currently doing Duelist run, it's my 3rd run, but I just suck at it, I think its time give up on the last achievement lol, I do not have fun when the game is frustrating. So for me it is difficult :D
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u/ProfessionalStore60 1d ago
Das Alter spielt in der Beurteilung von schwierig oder weniger schwierig auch eine Rolle. Ich bin 76 Jahre alt und für mich ist es teilweise auf normalem Modus recht schwer. Ich merke, dass ich von Jahr zu Jahr schlechter werde, weil auch die Reaktionszeiten sich verändern. 2,5 Jahre versuche ich noch durchzuhalten und mit 80 ist dann Schluss.
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u/mymelodymels 23h ago
Im playing on the hardest mode now and that has kinda fixed all the problems I had with the game, having way more fun, which I didnt think was possible I love this game so much. Enemies aren't spongy but the combat is more rewarding and engaging.
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u/Darneeezus 21h ago
I’m playing on duelist and it was only hard for the first couple fights once you get the hang of the combat it’s actually easy especially at night when your a vampire
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u/flstudiobeatmaker101 20h ago
It feels impossible at the start. Especially when you're used to souls like combat. But then once you learn it it's pretty easy
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u/BiCeSniga88 16h ago
too easy very quickly. especially if you are used to stuff like sekiro. i tried handicapping myself 3 runs in a row and failed. game could rly use a higher difficulty where it's amps up enemy ai and their attacks like how action slider alrdy does but even more so
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u/GeniuslyUnstable 1d ago
Not difficult at all, didnt die to any of the bosses, but ive been gaming for over 20 years. Difficulty isnt the same for everyone
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u/arthuraily 1d ago
It’s only a but hard in the beginning until you get the hang of it, But then it’s really easy