The doll’s dialogue in BB is pretty obviously talking directly to the player; “may you find your worth in the waking world…” and Villhelm’s speech in 3s Painted world; “I’ve seen your kind, time and time again, every fleeing man must be caught, every secret must be unearthed…” etc.
Oh in case anyone didn’t know, you don’t have to beat the painted world to get to the ringed city if you don’t want to. There’s a warp bonfire just before soul of cinder.
I’ve probably played DS3 the most number of times but more often than not see my enthusiasm die a thousand deaths over the Twin Gargoyles (or whatever they are) in The Ringed City after clearing everything else without much bother, and my stubbornness towards avoiding projectile magics will always define my playstyle.
I’m really feeling my experience with Dark Souls as a reflection of my ability to cope with and lessen my own anxiety.
I started playing Dark Souls at the absolute peak of my anxiety, before I’d seen a therapist or had any sort of medication, or even really acknowledged it. I felt paralyzed by the decisions and every time i leveled up I felt like I must have done it wrong. Losing a fight was some sort of blow to me, the human, for fucking up real bad. I never changed weapons or armor because what I had on had worked in the past. Experimentation made me feel terrible, somehow. I just beat my head against walls until I gave up. I only played out of a sense of obligation that this is “a good game.”
The second time I tried was post-medication, I think. I went in with the attitude of “yeah I’m gonna beat this game, I’m good at shit like this” but that goal-oriented mindset just bored me. I was trying to find some guide online that would tell me the optimal way of playing so I could just blaze through it, but also not get any specific hints or spoilers so I could “figure it out myself.” It wasn’t me.
This time I’m reading all sorts of shit online, changing weapons constantly to see what I like, leveling up just to put on armor I think looks cool. Maybe it will bite me in the ass but I’m having way too much fun to care. I even summoned Beatrice for the Moon Butterfly because I was not going to give a rat’s ass about doing that on my own!! It’s annoying, so fuck it.
I’ve also started grinding out souls (before I somehow thought this was cheating??) mostly because it’s super satisfying. And I’m giving myself mini-goals: get to endurance X, fight boss Y a few times, go down path Z I haven’t explored before. Instead of “beat the game and do everything perfectly and never die.”
Anyway, I think it’s an interesting reflection of how I act in real life as well. I’m a lot less worried about what other people might think of me, I judge myself less, and I just care less in general about things that don’t matter. It’s nice!!
also this game is way easier than sekiro, holy shit, that game is so fucking hard, and don’t @ me about how to play that game i extremely do not care, i just think it’s an interesting contrast
Dark Souls 1 feels like the hardest game in the series while actually being the easiest, and that’s why it’s my favorite
i think lots of little things about it that get flattened into quality of life improvements in the later games are what make it sing: there’s a whole medium weight class for dodging/moving that you have to consider while wearing armor, heavy weapons are completely unusable if you’re not strong enough, bonfires don’t let you warp straight away and you’re limited even when you can warp, ailments like curse and egg-burden outright cripple your ability to complete the game… it’s hostile in ways that are creative instead of purely mechanical
As much as the level design in Dark Souls 1 is my least favorite in the series, they never bettered the interesting stories that came out of status effects or level gimmicks (gimmicks as a word I use with love, I will always accept radical reinterpretations of game mechanics over flattening into ‘best practices’)
tbh i’ve never understood the “i don’t summon help for bosses, ever” crowd. even the AI summons are helpful in learning bosses because imo it’s easier to learn their patterns when you don’t have constant pressure on you?
plus the whole “lose resources when you die” thing highly encourages players to drop a summon sign down and practice bosses by helping other people, as you can die over and over without any real repercussions, unlike when you’re fighting the boss for real
I think I personally have this issue in the same way that listening to an album with two tracks out of the proper order is like nails on a chalkboard to me. There’s an “intended” experience that I feel like I must experience for it to be “correct.” That said, this is a goofy-ass attitude to have towards a game. The intended experience is playing the game!! The designers added these features and it’s real wacky to say that these are not the intended experience!!!
The multiplayer is so confidently woven into Demon’s Souls’s mechanics, i don’t think From ever topped it. You can ignore them completely offline; online you are always running the risk:reward of having more HP and being able to summon help vs being attacked by other players. If you participate in that you get the advantage of becoming one of those high HP online players, and learning the boss ahead of time. It inserts co-op and pvp into the already pretty tight loop of a tough action rpg, and then just sits back and lets them interact
The covenants in Dark Souls are thematically rich, but most of them are just a variant on co-op or plain don’t work. And every subsequent game tries to balance the increasingly popular multiplayer more fairly, so the covenants divide into typical pvp/co-op arrangements, and MP concerns bleed into the SP game, which is why after DkS1 you can’t just find and put on a magic ring that grants +40 poise, and suddenly render dagger blows meaningless to your naked ass
this reply finally got me to try sekiro again and I just got up to juzou and the headless in like 90 minutes after never beating the shinobi hunter before
stupid question incoming: as a sorcerer, is upgrading non-weapon equipment generally worth the resources? just expended a decent amount of souls and titanite raising my starting set to +3 and am now having second thoughts.
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