>>718644549
>You could do anything, but most didnt play with the big sheild in anything but 2
That's where you are wrong. Back before everyone though they were dodge masters and parry kings, the mantra to new players was always "keep your shield up". Not "git gud". People were encouraged to play cautiously and remain vigilant. Hell, you don't even need a big shield for most situations. Just get yourself a nice 100% physical resist shield with 55 or more points of stability, and you can block most things in these games.

There was a great shift after Dark Souls 1 was out for a year or two. After people had time to replay the game. They started putting down their shields on subsequent playthroughs.(Or putting grass crest on their backs to be more precise)

Feeling emboldened by experience, they started practicing dodging more, and getting better at the game that way. So yeah, by the time Dark Souls 3 came out, you had a lot of people far more proficient at dodging and parrying in these games, and they appreciated the faster rolling playstyle Dark Souls 3 offered. But Demon's, Dark 1, and Dark 2 were populated with players who didn't rely on rollslop playstyles all the time, or relied on shields.


>I see us saying the same thing here
Yeah. Similar conclusions, arrived via slightly different paths.

>>714151250
In those games that you described, you can quick save so you can savescum your way to the boss to preserve your resources. In Soul series, your resources are tied to resetting everything and if you want to keep the currency you gain in a run, before you kill the boss of the area, you need to sacrifice your progress and fight your way through again.
It's designed to make it so that you can't trade lives for progress and you need to avoid making mistakes to progress instead of just reloading constantly at each step.