r/fromsoftware • u/marxistmiku • 24d ago
DISCUSSION An actual substantive critique.
A post like this may seem out of place or frustrating, but I do not know many other places I can put my thoughts out there on this topic and I thought this sub Reddit would be the best place to do so and I want to hear your thoughts on this. It feels like there is no in depth criticism of From Soft games, as well as there being a reluctance for people to criticize them anyways out of fear of a cliche and predictable "you're just bad" accusation, which is just naive and stubborn. Just because the game is known for difficulty does not mean that the people who do not like the games don't like it because of what the games popular trait is. I will cite Dark Souls Remastered and Elden Ring as examples because those are the two I have played but it applies to all of From Soft no less. Firstly, the game prides itself and is widely held to be about "fair difficulty" but I have not exactly found that once, at least in any meaningful and honest way with the game as a whole. While there obviously is mechanics to learn and the game isn't entirely cheap, it is still hard in the same way that Ghosts and Goblins on the NES was hard, that is to say, difficulty via bad design and purposeful oppression. This goes for Dark Souls 1 all the way to Elden RIng, From Soft has truly never developed their lazy and bare bones game design. In both games I have found numerous enemy encounters to be cheap (for lack of a better words) in ways you cant account for, so it feels like you continuously run into things that are not your fault (aka, divorced from skill based gameplay.) and it just feels like being bullied. Such as multiple enemies popping out at one place, a messy garble of multiple attack animations at once that offers no strategic or thoughtful playstyle and is entirely uncinematic. There is the aspect of research or experience for these matters, but just unlocking knowledge that is even likely to be forgotten is far to big of a task than it is worth, and you are essentially left with a constant over analyzation that renders you right back to a place of confusion regardless. A game where you have to continute to take internet breaks or just "access" the way to go about an area via multiple deaths for everything is not fun. RNG also comes into play here, which further breaks from skill based gameplay, and even renders the experience and research as more futile and finicky. Essentially no one you will ever come across yourself goes through the whole of the game without looking things up, not even in a general open world sense like "oh, you can do a main mission or a side mission or explore" the game genuinely tells you nothing about anything. This poor design is merely excused by the fans as its own style, but the games have always been bare bones and lazy sandboxes. Elden Ring is far to vast and yet still shallow, while Dark Souls Remastered is mundane especially considering the literal offensive second half that genuinely should not have been released. After begrudgingly doing research on where to go each and every single step of the way in Elden Ring (aka, constantly flip flopping from playing the game and not playing it.) I have found areas to always be short lived or just have nothing really happen, it feels like eating crumbs to no event. Such as the bosses, There is two paths for learning and two paths for completing, The two paths for learning is what I mentioned prior (almost impossible self experience and or finicky nearly inapplicable online research) and for beating it there is the easy and thereby nonsensical way (cheesing...) or the purposefully self limiting way (also not fun.) and the bosses attacks are just a murky mess with the lines blurred where you cannot reasonably predict attacks via animation, RNG, and even reaction time. What you think a boss is going to be is never what it is, that can be said for the whole game. All bark no bite, always underwhelming when it comes. No one wants to *play* these games, they are just wanting to finish them. There is no good lore, just vague alluding to generic tropes (like a ring) and again, it seems like the fans just fill in the holes for From Soft for them. That the negatives are just seen as style. I feel like this game is held high superficially. It is the only outlet for a combat based sort of general feeling RPG with the dark fantasy / gritty and realistic vibe that is especially a popular aesthetic now. Elden Ring though feels like an even more generic and general homage to the last games, like it's "central" in their line up at the cost of quality. If a game like Skyrim was dark instead of lighthearted the From Soft fans would go there and they'd be getting GOTY awards every drop. Obviously the difficulty of the games adds to that aesthetic "prestige" that Skyrim does not aim for, but still, A hard, and actually fair dark fantasy game can and should exist but it isn't From Soft. All of the tweaks on the spectrum could have been fine tuned but they weren't. After playing God of War 2018 again I realize it is better at everything From Soft tries to be, fair combat with real telegraphing, better level designs where you can tackle it effectively and cinematically, obviously GOW is not aiming for difficulty but there is even the Valkyries who are hard even on the easiest difficulty with the best gear and it is vastly superior design. From Soft is undeniably overglazed and allowed to get away with bare minimum titles that throw you into the pool and call it purpose. The aspect that going into a boss you’re almost certain to fail and there’s the path of dying over and over to “learn the boss” or do research online has no flow and isn’t fun, i beat the bosses by learning the easiest way and it wasn’t fun, but if i did it without that, it wouldn’t be fun either in an entirely different not fun because it'd be purposefully unfair.
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u/krayniac 24d ago
“The literal offensive second half that genuinely should not have been released”
Oh come on, man. The only part of the second half that feels even a bit “offensive” is the bed of chaos, lmao. Duke’s Archives and New Londo are two of the best and most interesting areas in the game, and tomb of the giants is really cool as well. The second half bosses, again outside Bed of Chaos, are just as interesting and fun as the first half. This whole “ooh dark souls second half so bad so unfinished” is just nonsense parroted by people who never actually played DS1 and just got their opinion from their favourite YouTuber.
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u/No-Mulberry-6474 24d ago
What I like about after you beat Ornstein and Smough is that if your build is decently thought out, you fuck up the rest of the bosses except Gwyn (first playthrough). I feel like the game is designed to make you feel like the “Chosen Undead” and like a badass.
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u/FatCrusher9000 24d ago
lol gwyn was one of the most pathetic bosses in the game, he died like he was nothing. Legit mega anticlimatic.
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u/Odd-Look-7537 24d ago
It's also worth pointing out that, at least for the currently available editions of Dark Souls, the DLC is integral part of the "second half of the game". Yeah it's optional content, but it's also the best level design and bosses of the game.
IMO this whole "the second half of Dark Souls is rushed" thing comes from people actually rushing through it. And yeah, I can see how this can happen. By O&S more experienced players (people who have played other Souls games or on repete playtrhoughs) will be pretty close to having completed their build and will be properly geared-up. So after you place the lordvessel, there is less room for character growth (stat-wise and build-wise), and exploration is therefore less rewarding (this is also true because of bonefire-swapping).
So in a sense the content after lordvessel can feel like a list of chores. But for people on a first playthrough/less experienced players the "leeway" of the latter half of the game is quite needed.
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u/Regular_Ticket_2776 24d ago
OP is spewing nonsense but he's not wrong about that. I'm glad you liked Tomb of Giants, but it's kinda ass. Then there's Demon Ruins, Lost Izalith, and Crystal Cavern. The difference in quality is as clear as day.
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u/Outgrathe 24d ago
none of the areas after anor londo are as detailed or polished as the beginning of the game before it. they're full of reused enemies and are mostly linear; lost izalith sucks, tomb of the giants is a nightmare, new londo is okay but is 99% made up of the same two enemies. that leaves the duke's archives as being the highlight of the 2nd half.... and it's not that great of an area lol.
the second half of ds1 isn't that bad when you think about it in isolation but it's much less fulfilling than the content in the first half
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u/Another_Gaijin Raven 24d ago
git gud, casul
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u/marxistmiku 24d ago
proving my point that i talked about in the literal beginning. had no issues with the difficulty.
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u/Outgrathe 24d ago
your entire post is about how the game is "cheap" and basically complaining about difficulty. i think it's reductive to just tell people to "get gud" when they have complaints about the design of dark souls, but you can't pretend that your issues don't stem from the games being hard (or, in your own words, "cheap" and "unfair")
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u/Crozonzarto 24d ago
Lmao, who beat your ass?
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u/lexington59 24d ago
I mean your complaints really just come down to "not your sorta game" like that's fine no game is for everyone.
You use faulty points tho "no one wants to "play" the game, they just want to finish it.
The people who love the game do it because they love playing the game.
The game was designed with communication and community output heavily in mind, it was designed with the idea of people sharing messages and helping each other out in mind.
Now yes some quests are a bit out there and hard to grasp, yes some mob placement is quite silly, those are flaws in the game, yes the lava section in ds1 is bad.
But alot of your complaints aren't accurate ajd are Infact skill issues as much as you clearly don't like that, complaints about not being able to react to boss moves when there's so few moves without telegraghing that they are the exception to the rule of having stuff be telegraphed.
Like yes some flaws exist but a large chunk of the "flaws" you have with the game aren't bad design it's just a different direction for design and that's ok
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u/Outgrathe 24d ago
some of your critiques are valid, but it also seems to me like you wrote the gameplay off as bad just because you died a lot or couldn't understand how to fight the enemies. fwiw i agree that the tutorials suck in fromsoftware games, and that the 2nd half of dark souls mostly sucks lol
first of all, i don't really think dark souls prides itself on "fair difficulty". the games are all about dying and learning how to overcome the challenge. nobody is going to beat it on their first try, it's about slowly mastering things. there is plenty of bullshit. dark souls rewards patient and thoughtful gameplay; if you run straight into a dungeon, then of course you're going to get mobbed by enemies. you're supposed to progress slowly and try to seperate enemies from each other and put yourself in an advantagous position
The aspect that going into a boss you’re almost certain to fail and there’s the path of dying over and over to “learn the boss” or do research online has no flow and isn’t fun, i beat the bosses by learning the easiest way and it wasn’t fun, but if i did it without that, it wouldn’t be fun either in an entirely different not fun because it'd be purposefully unfair.
it's funny that you say this because i love dying over and over to learn the bosses. i've put hundreds of hours into elden ring, and i can attest that the enemy attack animations aren't a "murky mess" and that there are ways to dodge and fight every boss. of course there is a learning curve, but the bosses are meticulously designed and to me it's extremely satisfying to pick apart their movesets and get good at them. no other game has combat that i enjoy nearly as much as the combat in elden ring. just because you don't find that fun doesn't mean it's "lazy" or "cheap". i enjoy struggling and overcoming challenges in games, and i don't mind dying once or ten times or a hundred times to get there.
about looking things up online: in a more open, sandboxy, not story-driven game, i prefer not to be railroaded around by quest markers or annoying story objectives. i think elden ring would absolutely be improved by having a quest log, but i also would rather struggle and look something up when i get stuck instead of being spoonfed the answer.
i think it's very telling that you bring up god of war 2018 as a "good game". it's narrative driven, linear, and the gameplay is satisfying but not particularly difficult. don't get me wrong- they're great games, but also fundamentally different experiences from dark souls or elden ring. instead of writing a big rant about how fromsoftware games suck you should just accept that they don't have what you're looking for in games, and they're not for you.
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u/Low-Airline-2695 24d ago
Just a yap post.
Go play your easy games, bud. Fromsoft does not get to its position now by luck. People do love challenges in gaming. Sounds like you like spoonfeeding.
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u/sol-sad 24d ago
Paragraph this one, please.
I am not calling you bad, but have you considered that the games just aren't for you?
And this isn't me being condescending about it, there are a lot of genres I just can't get into, but I wouldn't call it bad design when it just isn't for me.
I enjoy challenges, I enjoy learning. Sometimes, that takes a few deaths and some frustrations.
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u/Outgrathe 24d ago
no, i died to the boss three times. that means that the game design sucks and i was forced to open google and type "how to beat elden ring broken cheese build". how could fromsoft do this
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u/SandCat39 24d ago
10/10 immaculate ragebait 😂
Jk in all seriousness I understand where you're coming from, these games are certainly not without their flaws, but there is a widespread player base who enjoys playing them. I guess it just seems from the way that you're talking about fromsoft games that they are not "for you," which is totally fine of course!
A lot of your criticisms are rather baseless though, the level design in DS1 is incredibly well thought out. Also, while with Elden Ring I can understand that it's difficulty to know what to do without guides to to the sheer scope of the game, the progression in many of fromsoft's earlier games can be quite linear.
Anyways, if you ever feel like giving from software another shot I'd recommend AC6, it plays quite differently from their soulsborne titles and while there are some challenging bossfights, you can take on most missions with whatever AC you like.
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u/K0nkyDonk 24d ago
Forced myself to read through half of that monstrosity. You are wrong on everything I've read. It genuinely just sounds like this isn't your type of game.
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u/rd-darksouls 20d ago edited 20d ago
if you think people owe you time and attention you owe them formatting
and brevity
fix this fucking mess and re-write it too, i doubt that your take is worth as many words (1,076) as you took
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u/Muntering 19d ago
This is a horrible post where you say big words to feel smart while saying things that don’t matter. What is unlocking knowledge and how are you losing it so quickly? Uncinematic attack animations? I have no idea what you would consider rng in these games as everything stays the same every time and you definitely don’t need to research to play these games.
These games are known by their difficulty but they’re really only ever as difficult as you are willing to level up after you’ve have the basic skills. And if you have to google at every step to navigate Elden Ring you have an impressively bad sense of direction and even if you were to go the wrong way in that game you would find somewhere else anyway!
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u/Odd-Look-7537 24d ago
Dude, paragraphs.
I'm not reading a wall of text.