@strangersz: Whether they 2 shot you or 2 shot you is not the point.
The point is all these Souls type games are is old school action fighters with enemies that have boosted stats and heroes that have nerfed stats. That's it.,
You technically beat any game ever made without taking a single hit of damage if you have no life.
What's your point? The idea of making a fun game is so you don't have to beat it without taking a single hit of damage, most people have lives outside of blindly memorizing flowcharts and enemy placements.
Nioh is using the exact same backwards formula as FromSoftware.
All FS did was change the old rules of action rpg game design, by giving the main character lower stats than the average enemy, That's it.
As soon as you are overleveled in any Souls game aka the moment you can deal and take more damage than the enemies in the game, all Souls games become a cake walk.
All Souls ever did was change the stats around giving you the stats of what would have been a random encounter enemy, and give the random encounter enemy the stats of what would have been the hero.
News flash the difficulty is artificial, its all just boosted stats. Don't believe me, use any soul duplication trick in any Souls game and outlevel your character and watch how Souls becomes the same as any Onimusha game.
@jdlok: Not really, I found the lore and world infinitely more interesting in the old Onimusha games. I prefer not to walk around reading notes left in buckets to tell me a story. How about old school dialogue and cutscenes.
FromSoft simply took an old Onimusha style mechanic and changed the stats around, gave the enemies your stats and gave you the enemies stats. Forcing you to take longer to get from point A to point B due to the fact that you are now weaker than the average enemy, which was always considered bad game design in the past.
All it does is make you waste more time running back and forth to the bonfire to level up. Making the game feel less fluid as a whole.
@dmblum1799: There was a time when good game design was allowing you to take 10 hits and allowing the enemy to take 2 hits, its called the Onimusha era, was considered the golden era of action fighters.
Raising the enemies health and attack strength doesn't mean making a great game. It just means making an artificial grind out of a rather mediocre game.
Sucking and not sucking has nothing to do with it. I beat Fume in DS2, but don't feel any more rewarded then when I beat Onimusha.
And honestly most grown ups have better things to do with their lives than remember every single enemy placement and flowchart so they can take zero damage. How about just having fun and enjoying the story aka Witcher 3.
@Raphy_Turtle: I get your point. Not arguing that action rpgs are bad, I love them, loved The Witcher 3 and loved all the Mass Effect games. What I don't like is the extreme version of these games in the Soul franchise, only being able to take 2 hits from enemies and hiding behind a rock once every 2 slashes to recover your stamina doesn't always make a good game.
I fact I prefer The Witcher games over the Soul games anyday of the week.
@Raphy_Turtle: You make some good points here. But what I'm referring to is the BS difficulty applied to Souls games and Souls games ripoffs.
I loved The Witcher 3, in that they did not feel the need to over inflate enemy stats to make the game enjoyable. If you wanted you can make the game more difficult by playing at a higher settings which naturally boosts enemy stats, but that was your decision.
What I find annoying about Souls games is that they take what is a rather enjoyable game and boost the enemies to stats to such a high level that you are left grinding half the game, which essentially stretches an medium length game into something that is much longer.
I finished The Witcher 3 without ever grinding once, and still enjoyed beating every single boss and collecting every single secret gear diagram.
What I find annoying is the so called HARDCORE fad that is taking action rpg by storm, where there is this arbitrary need to over level enemies in games just because.
For example NiOh is only hard cause enemies can kill you in 2 hits and you run out of breath in a few slashes. But does that really make the game better? I don't think it does.
There's my problem. By the success of Souls, every game designer is trying to cash in on the so called "hardcore" action rpg franchise. When in fact its nothing more than a game with enemies permanently set on ultra high stats. Its like forcing everyone to play The Witcher 3 on deathmarch, there is no point in it. Cause these games would be enjoyable without the artificial difficulty.
@baral-o: Yeah I was also hoping it would be like Onimusha rather than a Soul game. The whole over leveled enemy trend in modern action games is annoying as hell. Sometimes you just wanna spend 20hrs on a action game, and not have to grind for 100hrs so you can take 5 hits of damage before you die.
I really miss the old days of action fighters, when the story and overall enjoyment of the game was key.
Soul games kind of ruined it for everyone. Now everybody wants to make games where your character dies in 2 hits and you can only slash the sword twice before you have to take a rest behind a rock.
How I wish for the heydays of action fighters again.
@masterkushh: No Bushido Blade was very unique, never done before and never done again mechanics. It was one slash kill, just like in real life. You have no health bar in Bushido Blade just like in real life, you have one slash to kill your enemy and when you get hit in body parts, you lose the function of the limb that is damaged just like in real life.
So, no, this is nothing like Bushido Blade, no game is like Bushido Blade, it was a genuine masterpiece
I beat Fume and Dragon Aries in DS 2, which are by most account the most difficult bosses in the series. Fume was tough because he had 2 flowcharts that he switches mid fight, and Aries was difficult because he can do 1 hit kill. Every other boss in all DS games can be easily out leveled, once you outlevel any area, or boss, the games becomes as easy as Onimusha, Gaiden, or any other previous action game.
Just to test my theory, I used the blood duplication trick in Bloodborne to level up my character, once my charater was beefed up, the game played like any other action fighter.
Which means, the difficulty in the Souls games and these new Souls wannabe games is all artificial, the game designers haven't found some magical gameplay mechanics that makes games hard. They simply made the enemies stronger than the previous gen action games.
You take any action game and place random enemies that are by default stronger than the main character both in damage output and health the game becomes instantly harder.
The fact that there is nothing in any Souls game that cannot be out leveled, shows that the games difficulty is more or less artificial, its just a matter of grinding.
@masterkushh: There is a reason why I mentioned this, since I played DS 1 and 2 vanilla, no cheats, no walkthroughs, just straight play through. There were two bosses that gave me trouble, Fume and Dragon Aries, Fume being that it switches flowchart mid fight and becomes a different bosses, and Dragon Aries because it can do 1 hit kill fire breath. But having played both DS games, I came to realize that there is no boss in the game that cannot be outpaced by simply levelling up your character. Every single boss, every single stage can be made simpler simply by levelling up, which means that any difficulty rendered on the game is artificial.
There is no difficulty in any of the DS games, other than the fact that the enemies are stronger than you, and that the bosses do more damage than previous action games.
In fact DS is no different from any previous gen action game, from Ninja Gaiden, to Onimusha. The ONLY difference is that the enemies are severely over levelled, which renders any difficulty artificial.
As soon as you use a soul farming trick, and level your character up so that they become on par with other action games, then DS becomes the same as every action game that came before it.
So in the end DS has no magical difficulty mechanics, it's just enemies do more damage and take more damage. If you made the changes to Onimush, Ninja Gaiden, etc, they all become equally difficult.
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