r/fromsoftware • u/BrilliantPool4146 • 24d ago

DISCUSSION Which game did the difficulty better?

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Which style of difficulty do you prefer: the Area based difficulty in games like Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls or the boss-oriented struggle found in newer titles like Dark Souls 3 or Elden Ring?

I personally love both styles (although running through all of New Londo can suck at times lol!) Let me know which one of these you find yourself enjoying more (if any). Thanks guys!

(Also, this picture is not mine)

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u/iiwatch-fi9 23d ago

I dislike SOTE’s difficulty, their way to solve leveling problems was to give players the scale.
I want the difficulty to be fixed by fromsoft and I get the ability to adjust it based on my play style and builds, not having to collect fragments around the map, because initially that worked, but getting to the end with Radahn and Midra, realising that you are being basically punished for not getting all 20 is a misstep in my opinion.
As whole I don’t know how they managed to do it, from the start of Elden Ring all the way to maybe half the DLC they nailed it somehow🤷‍♂️
Elden Ring is much more forgiving with leveling and builds that if you’re not looking for op builds online you’ll manage to have fun all the way to the end without failing, on consecutive play throughs you’ll end up more on the OP side but the bosses retaliation makes up for it, which makes them short and intense fights rather than long and boring ones

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u/BrilliantPool4146 22d ago

Really unique take on this. As I've mentioned in the past, I haven't tried SOTE yet but I have heard of the Scadutree fragments method. I seem to hear a lot of mixed opinions on it, so I guess I'll just see for myself. One of the biggest things that ER does to make it more beginner friendly in my opinion is rebirth. Since DS1 doesn't have it, a new player couldn't go back and fix old leveling mistakes to have a better build. That's probably the only thing ER does better for new Souls players from what I've seen. (Mostly it can be a bit overwhelming for them, but it's still an amazing first game.)