Dark souls 2 is TOO HARD (maybe not)

Well would't know. It was harder for me beacue from the get go I picked the Champions Covenant wihtout knowing what it does. Well apparently it makes the game super hard. Just trun it off and what I killed before whit 6 hits I killed with 3.I did a lot less damage and took more damage with this covenant.

Oh man I played like that for 30 hours, trying to learn the game on even harder difficulty and kill many bosses but it was pure torcher. I'de be stuck on bosses for 3 hours asking myslef wtf is going on.Like DS2 isn't hard enough. It was pretty funny tho. So Im doing a tank build and I even got one of the best tank armors in (Havel) and bosses would still one shot me so I had to dodge...

Anyway I know this is very blogy so for you people that played it on the "normal" difficulty and didn't picked the champ covenant like a dumbass how hard is it ?

Made the same "mistake", was about to rage quit the game forever until I stumbled upon a thread that explained the Champions Covenant.

I've only had the game a day, I want to see what it's all about and it's as close as I can get to my Dragons Dogma fix. So far....

I'm very confused at the moment, lot of things baffle me. Let me bullet point this.

• Why has your character got a shrunken head? It looks ridiculous, I guess we have to ignore that.
• I thought pit fall deaths from narrow ledges was a bad thing in games. I got the idea, got to be careful not to fall off a ledge, but who likes that in their games?
• Why is the melee combat so sluggish? Even with what's suppose to be a light loaded fast dagger fighter, you still fight like your in treacle? Is that good? Is this the awesome melee combat people kept ranting about? So urm, do you unlock more attacks later, or do I have to play the game with the same 2 melee swings?
• I like the edge of the seat feeling you get while dodging and hitting those big fat baddies that litter the game, but the intensity isn't so much as respect to the creatures attacks, but fear of my own slug movements and worrying i'll press a wrong button and have a 5 second animation of me hitting thin air or using a health-stone.
• I get the feeling the bows on this game are weak on purpose to make up for the creatures bad pathing?

What's confused me most...

Why is this game a 9 out of 10?

I've only played up past the first big boss, I was thinking it will all click into play on my first major encounter since that's what this games all about, but it was just more rolling on the floor and slashing at thin air with my only 2 attacks.

I've spent 42 quid on it i'm going to give it a bit more time. Kevin's not a bad reviewer, there has got to be something i'm missing....

I almost proud actually. I killed two of the "big soul" bosses while in it. The sinner and the rotten dude. Have done like 10 bosses in total.Again played like 30 hours before I turn it off >< I almost want to stick to it at this point but TANK build doenst work at all.The damage they do to you is insane, Now on normal I'm tanking like a boss.

I'd see people doing way better then me on youtube and go "WTF is wrong with me, why I'm I sucking so bad... if only they tried to play like this :P.

Many of the fans admire the combat and find it to be deep due to the fact that you have to plan each attack or risk leaving yourself open. The stamina meter also forces the player to think about each action they take whether it be an attack, block, or roll. However, I feel the same way you do about combat. Well, my main problem is the lack of variety in the attacks. There are so many other RPGs that have combat that is full of spells and melee combat with more variety. I will note that none of them have the level of difficulty that the souls games have, but the souls games are difficult because of the slow combat. I believe that the combat could still have a lot more variety and still be challenging.

For example, it would be cool if the player could roll and parry during the animation. I thought that it would also be cool to be able to do charging strike to impale enemies. All these things could still use stamina and have their own speed to still maintain strategy. It is also important to not that a lot of enemies are limited in attacks to. I have noticed that the best thing to due is find a weapon that has the best animations. I feel like this is a good way to add excitement to the combat.

The difficulty is praised, but as i said earlier, I think that the slowness of the combat adds to that, but I do not think that the combat is made hard in the right way.

I quit the melee class to try out a mage type. I thought I will keep myself super light and use the spells to maxium advantage. It was going good until all of a sudden a random bug caused my character to have a pudding bowl haircut, she looks like Spok! I could not play on after that.

Yeah the game looks to be a lot tougher tha the first due to the number of bosses where you're fighting more than one guy at once. I watched a friend of mine play and yeah it's intimidating.

I can't think of a single RPG with real time combat that has anywhere close to the variety the Souls games have. Sure, turn based games ranging from Final Fantasy to Dragon Age have a large variety of stuff you can do, but half the time new skills exist to straight up replace an old one and total variety goes out the window.

What are we comparing the Souls games to? The Elder Scrolls? Where every weapon swings and hits the exact same way? Dragon's Dogma gave your character a move set but it was limited to those skills, not the weapons you come across.

The Souls games are about as varied and customizable as you can get. Not only does every weapon have several attacks - light, strong, jumping, strike after roll, strike after back stepping, and all those in a different form when two handing a weapon (and now dual wielding), but every weapon also has it's own unique move set. Plus, you have three options to critical an enemy now.

I have something like 40 weapons to choose from and I'm all giddy with the possibilities I wish I got in other RPGs.

@IndianaPwns39: Dragons Dogma.

You can slash, thrust, hack away, dodge, block, counter attack, imaple a creature then twist your blade, leap behind them and slash their throat, blade flurry, samasult into the air and plunge your daggers into a foe from a great height, climb onto them, gouge their weakpoints by sticking your dagger into them and holding on for dear life as the creature injures themselves more as they flay about in an attempt to knock you off. You got bows with multiple attacks and arrow type, homing arrows, flaming arrows, ice arrows, dark arrows, arrows that practically nuke things at the cost of your pawns life, charging blocks, sliding attacks, hooks, throwing knives....

I can double this list...

In Dark Souls you just run away and hope the monsters attack hits the floor, run back and attack it with your sword! Slash, slash.. RUN AWAY!

You got no ground to stand on if you say Dogma is limited to a move set, because Dark Souls combat is basically Dogma when you haven't even bothered to load any move sets! At least the basic X Square attacks in Dogma are more fluid and reactive.

@Evil_Saluki: Dragon's Dogma has fun combat but it's very rinse and repeat in it's design. Again, all those things are linked to your skill set. If I find a bigger, better sword, I have the same options I did with my previous sword. Plus there's little variety in enemy design, so almost all encounters play out the same way regardless if you're fighting a different monster.

The Souls games reward experimentation with your weapon set and tactics vary wildly depending on what weapon you're using. Use a sickle to move around shields, bash someone with a greatshield, use a finely crafted rapier to rip through armor, and so on. Hell, I'm using a Captain Hook claw just because people don't know how to react.

Of course if you find the combat slow that's cool too. I'm not going to try and convince you you're wrong for not enjoying the game. I'm just saying the weapon variety is unmatched, and as someone who sank over 80 hours and loved every minute of it yes, that includes Dragon's Dogma.

I've heard the wanderer class is screwed. Dodging and parrying is harder while blocking is easier. Someone please confirm.

the only thing that hit me as kind of jarring is that a good portion of the enemies have what appeared to be homing melee attacks. my timing in the souls games has always triggered once enemies start their animations and this throws it off. plus the character designs kind of encourage you to focus more on weapon movement as that's usually what is highlighted the most (a soldier raising a shining sword or an animal with glowing eyes right above it's snapping jaws). i've grown to accept it though because you can actually see their feet move as part of the animation. it feels more like enemies getting tricky than the artificial difficulty tweak it first felt like.

i'm only a few bosses in, but there hasn't been a new "From actually did that?!?!" moment. like (among tons of other examples) demons' souls had a level where you were always trudging through a swamp that made you slow and poisoned and dark souls had the curse status. i know i'm still early in the game, but dark souls wasted no time with some crazy level design decisions. i'm sure DSII will pick up though.

@alim298: Dodging is about the same. There are less invisibility frames while you're dodging though so you have to legitimately dodge an attack this time around instead of just magically flying through attack. You have a skill that determines agility now though and that seems to matter a lot in PVP.

Parrying is harder but pulling off a parry is much more rewarding. Critical hits this way are insanely devastating. Parrying itself just doesn't seem as tight as previous games and you really have to anticipate an attack before doing so.

Blocking is in no way easier. Unless a shield has the word "Great" before it, almost none of them soak 100% damage. You can still grab a greatshield and be a bad ass, but this time around there are "shield break criticals". Once you get an enemies endurance down they'll throw their shield back and you can go in for a nifty animation and punish them for being too reliant on their shields. Good dex weapons are hard to come by but the ones you get later in the game that are designed for armor piercing really puts tanks to shame.

Allright Princess ,let Lulu break it down for ya.

Damage does not determine the difficulty of an enemy. Only the length. Not unless it behaved differently or used new moves. But other than that, all stat tweeking does is make losing quicker and winning longer. Hardly Difficult. :p

ofcourse the Problem with Dark Souls is when you encounter something new, you'l only learn from it when it hits ya. You won't won't know if an attatck is unblockable if you're always dodging, then you make the mistake of trying to block when your not fully healed and Bam ! Instant death. And you probably won't realise what really happenened there, perhaps you'l assume your guard was broken because you were out stamina. It would take me 3 deaths to figure that much out.

Eithet way. Prepare to Die.... Hehehehe !

You are an idiot.

@ beganoo

How Do people still not no this ?

Am I not tryin Hard enough ?

Do I have to change my username to MassiveMoron (probably already taken) ?

Honestly I can understand some people saying "Its not as hard" as It all depends on what class you pick and any experience you've had on previous games. but as a gamer who only ever played the bare minimum of the first game, I have no shame in saying that, Yes this game is hard as hell! but its definitely not too hard, its the right kind of hard that keeps you on the ball. And so far I'am loving the shit out of its difficulty, most games actually make me rage when they're hard because its just unfair/stupidly hard, where as Dark Souls is at a nice medium. However in saying that, I've had small issues so far of which I will find that some attacks or actions come across a little unresponsive, therefore leading to my inevitable death, this can be frustrating.

Hey man! Look I think its very fair to say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, as is Kevin Vanord (GS reviewer of DS2) So I wouldn't get too worked up over another persons opinion. but I think the main reason why this game receives a-lot of praise is simply because it does it's outright best to strive away from many popular mediums and therefore kind of creates a self identity of its own. What I personally loved so much about this game, was the fact that it literally never holds your hand, ever! and yet at the same time you feel as though with enough concentration, the game actually isn't that hard. And hell without the burden of a main quest or marker on a map, the adventure just really feels like its your own! The game is far from perfect, and hell maybe a 9/10 perhaps is considered too high for some gamers such as yourself, but in the end you have to respect the idea that this game explores entirely new ideas and strives itself upon breaking the rules. How so you ask? in a day and age where gamers are used to playing through easy games, that require very little thought, its quite daring to say the least that From Software risks it all to still continue building games that stick to its original quality as oppose to laying down what they stand for and deciding to appeal to a broader audience inorder to receive a bigger check at the end of the week.

when i started playing Dark Souls 1, i had no idea how that game worked. after 2 hours, i was like "f*** this s***" and put it on hold. there was something about that game that made give it another spin, and once i got the hold of the mechanics, it was hard to put down.

the best thing about the combat is that you really need to study your enemies, and you can't just go at them using a same sick combo every time that you pull off by tapping X 20 times (hi there, Darksiders 2). landing single strikes succesfully is what this is about. once you learn the enemys behaviour and find a good strategy they become easy. the game will still punish you if you become reckless.

people who like this game REALLY like this game. people who don't would all propably rate it 1/10.

Ha! That's hilarious. I do remember the game asking me three times if I was sure I wanted to join because it was about to make my life very difficult. I didn't think the game was crazy hard but I suppose a few enemies were doing pretty massive damage if they managed to land an attack and some of the bosses could one-shot me. lol

I guess it's time to talk to the cat. :P

Oh, and ignore Lulu. He trolls all the Dark Souls threads even though he's never played any of the games.

-Byshop

I do have to ask, does this game have the same subtlety in its lore, world design and atmosphere as Dark Souls 1? Is the director change really noticeable or does this game feel like a legitimate successor to the first one?

The game starts off with some cinematic elements in which a group of women tell you why you're here and what you're doing. This had me worried, but it's the only time it happens in the game.

Otherwise, it's very subtle in it's design and feels like the perfect successor. I completed the game and there are a lot of mysterious that still have my attention and I'm finding more secretive levels tucked away that I completely missed the first time.

@Evil_Saluki:

• Why has your character got a shrunken head? It looks ridiculous, I guess we have to ignore that.

• I thought pit fall deaths from narrow ledges was a bad thing in games. I got the idea, got to be careful not to fall off a ledge, but who likes that in their games?

• Why is the melee combat so sluggish? Even with what's suppose to be a light loaded fast dagger fighter, you still fight like your in treacle? Is that good? Is this the awesome melee combat people kept ranting about? So urm, do you unlock more attacks later, or do I have to play the game with the same 2 melee swings?

• I like the edge of the seat feeling you get while dodging and hitting those big fat baddies that litter the game, but the intensity isn't so much as respect to the creatures attacks, but fear of my own slug movements and worrying i'll press a wrong button and have a 5 second animation of me hitting thin air or using a health-stone.

• I get the feeling the bows on this game are weak on purpose to make up for the creatures bad pathing?

yeah, shrunken head annoys me, too. It's like they didn't want to take the time to make male and female meshes for bodies or armor so they just made everything bulky.

To the melee combat, there's some fairly heavy input lag. Using a spear can be annoying as I find myself constantly ending up with the shield thrust when I don't want it because the game takes so long to read that I've dropped the shield. And plenty of times I've been hit even though I know I had my shield up by an attack that can usually be blocked harmlessly. And then the game likes to queue up your inputs, so if you pushed the dodge button again because it wasn't reacting quickly enough the first time (and no, wasn't in the middle of an animation), you'll end up with two rolls when the game catches up. You couldn't even play a decent action game under these conditions...DMC, Bayonetta. What saves it is that everything moves so damn slow, with extended recoveries and attack chains.

The bow mechanic is flawed. They made them weak because you can buy arrows and stockpile them and they don't want you to cheese your way through the difficulty. The better route would have been to treat the bow like they treat every other weapon and magic...that is, you prepare your two quivers at a bonfire (and maybe there are equipable quivers as static items and not consumables that vary with respect to what arrows they carry and how many...maybe blacksmithing increases arrow count), and you have a set number of uses which recharges when you revisit the bonfire. Then they could have scaled bow damage as they did with other weapons and allowed bow-wielding to become a primary option.

The thing that gets me about DS is that most would agree that increasing enemy health and damage is a poor way to ratchet up difficulty. And yet, that's DS's only trick. The AI is dumb as a rock and the variation is slim. I can only imagine what this game would look like with good collision where enemy blows hurt nearby enemies. You could just walk in a room, step back and let them kill each other with their 30 yard hitboxes. As it stands, they just attack through each other, which is cheap. Basic tactics in fighting while outnumbered involve using chokepoints and taking angles that prevent attacks by putting one enemy behind another...In DS that just makes it tougher...the guy in front serves as a human shield, eating up your blow, while the guy behind him attacks right through his friend's chest and nails you with a shot that shaves 50% off your bar. You can learn to deal with it, but if you prefer more realistic combat, maybe you don't want to.

There's a lot of shoddiness to the game, and it just comes down to what you're willing to put up with as the source of game difficulty. Some people will be okay with how DS generates it difficulty. I think it's annoying, but not frustrating... patience solves most problems. I appreciate the exploration and the way they just drop you in the world to figure out where to go and what's going on, so I put up with everything else. Dragon's Dogma is more fun though, and I think playing that has made DS2 harder for me to enjoy than DS1.