I like to think of myself as a live and let live kind of guy. There’s lots of games and movies I don’t like, that everyone else seems to, and vice versa, but I am perfectly capable of accepting that as personal preference. But for some reason I cannot seem to get over my deep-seated hatred of everything FromSoftware does.
Needlessly frustrating games with no story, sky-high difficulty, a terrible interface, bad animation, and janky combat. What’s most annoying though is that I want to love them and I just can’t.
I first tried Dark Souls when it became famous and I’d heard a lot about it being a super challenging game that was a fight back against bland ‘press X to win’ style games that were all the rage at the time, from companies like EA and Activision.
Then I played it and it seemed kind of… amateurish? I distinctly remember trying to get a feel for the controls and being very unimpressed by the animation and movement, and particularly the weedy little jump.
What annoys me about this is that it hasn’t really changed at all in later games. Not only these problems but the bad camera, the fiddly menu interface (which is even worse because it doesn’t pause the game), and the combat which is mostly based on hitting someone once or twice, retreating and waiting to do it again and again.
I thought it was just me, but I watched YouTube videos to see more skilled players and their defeat of most bosses still seemed to be based on cheesing their way past and basically breaking the game to beat them, rather than having a stand-up fight.
I’ve never seen any good argument for why it needs to be this difficult. Trial and error and rote learning is not you being more skilled. You don’t ‘git gud’ you just try and memorise everything and follow the pattern like clockwork.
Like I said, I have tried to enjoy these games. I’ve played Dark Souls 1 and 2, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, and I can’t see that they’ve improved on the formula in any significant way.
Needlessly frustrating games with no story, sky-high difficulty, a terrible interface, bad animation, and janky combat. What’s most annoying though is that I want to love them and I just can’t.
I first tried Dark Souls when it became famous and I’d heard a lot about it being a super challenging game that was a fight back against bland ‘press X to win’ style games that were all the rage at the time, from companies like EA and Activision.
Then I played it and it seemed kind of… amateurish? I distinctly remember trying to get a feel for the controls and being very unimpressed by the animation and movement, and particularly the weedy little jump.
What annoys me about this is that it hasn’t really changed at all in later games. Not only these problems but the bad camera, the fiddly menu interface (which is even worse because it doesn’t pause the game), and the combat which is mostly based on hitting someone once or twice, retreating and waiting to do it again and again.
I thought it was just me, but I watched YouTube videos to see more skilled players and their defeat of most bosses still seemed to be based on cheesing their way past and basically breaking the game to beat them, rather than having a stand-up fight.
I’ve never seen any good argument for why it needs to be this difficult. Trial and error and rote learning is not you being more skilled. You don’t ‘git gud’ you just try and memorise everything and follow the pattern like clockwork.
Like I said, I have tried to enjoy these games. I’ve played Dark Souls 1 and 2, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, and I can’t see that they’ve improved on the formula in any significant way.
