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Was getting destroyed by the boss of Farrons Keep (you all know the one). I could get through his first phase fine but I would get annihilated during the second. So I called in a sunbro and my god, the coordination we used to beat the poor bastard was magnificent.

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That boss is really hard. Prior to the one I was talking about on the first page, that fight took me a solid two hours, I think. But that's because I have no ranged offense and I wanna beat everything by myself first time around. :lol: It's an epic fight though. I love the concept of it. It's so... I dunno... graceful, almost.

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Managed to absolutely breeze through the first 2 bosses first time round but soon got my arse handed to me by the Crystal Sage. Not an overly difficult boss but I kept getting caught out by the ranged attacks.

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Managed to absolutely breeze through the first 2 bosses first time round but soon got my arse handed to me by the Crystal Sage. Not an overly difficult boss but I kept getting caught out by the ranged attacks.

 

An important way to tell which is fake and which is real is the color of his attacks..

 

 

And I happen to be color blind. Needless to say, that fight *censored*ed me up.

These catacombs are bullshit, first real fake difficulty i've found in the game.

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They went overboard with the tracking on the knights in Anor Londo, they're ridiculous in that regard and are really killing the nostalgia of the area for me.

 

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Managed to absolutely breeze through the first 2 bosses first time round but soon got my arse handed to me by the Crystal Sage. Not an overly difficult boss but I kept getting caught out by the ranged attacks.

 

Same here. Just got passed the Crystal Sage, and it was definitely the most difficult fight so far.

 

Honestly, it just came off as a bit RNG-ish, in the sense that once you reach the second phase, it just boiled down to a matter of, "Well, I hope that the real one just happens to pop up relatively near me, otherwise, I'm just gonna get f***ed up trying to reach him."

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Managed to absolutely breeze through the first 2 bosses first time round but soon got my arse handed to me by the Crystal Sage. Not an overly difficult boss but I kept getting caught out by the ranged attacks.

 

Same here. Just got passed the Crystal Sage, and it was definitely the most difficult fight so far.

 

Honestly, it just came off as a bit RNG-ish, in the sense that once you reach the second phase, it just boiled down to a matter of, "Well, I hope that the real one just happens to pop up relatively near me, otherwise, I'm just gonna get f***ed up trying to reach him."

 

 

Throwing knifes, bro. Makes the fight easy as hell. :)

 

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I will say that the boss of a certain place, Aldrich, has really broken hitboxes.

 

Broken how? I found it ridiculously easy to be honest. Just kite till you're behind it, hit the "tail" and it registers everytime.

 

 

The hitbox on some of his attacks is way larger than they're supposed to be, his ground teleportation and his second phase arrows for instance both have larger hitboxes than the visual attack which is a problem the series has had harkening all the way back to demon souls.

 

Luckily the hitboxes for the most part in this game are good, so I feel its important to point out the bad ones so those that don't know don't get screwed over.

Mercenary has been perfect for me. Beat the first boss on my first attempt but the High Wall is a nightmare. I also keep forgetting that I can't regain health during a counter-attack.

 

Not to spoil anything for you but uhh.. there's a ring that adds that system back in to the game. :cool:

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I love the bosses in this game, but I have to admit they have way to many of them use homing missiles as a crutch. it comes across as a bit lazy.


... Lorian is *censored*ing bullshit. No, seriously, *Censored* this boss. This is *censored*ing bullshit. I think it's a very lazy boss, difficult not because its a "difficult" boss, but because its practically a marathon without aid. And if you're using a greatsword or some other weapon with a long recovery between swings, you're screwed because he recovers faster than you and thus you're going to get hit nearly every time you swing your sword. Had to switch to a lightning longsword to get the job done.

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Not to spoil anything for you but uhh.. there's a ring that adds that system back in to the game. :cool:

 

 

 

That's awesome, although I am getting used to the absence of that mechanic. Being a first time Souls player, I'm also discovering the usefulness of the shield. I emphatically avoided using it in the initial stages in favor of the twin scimitars. I'm using the Uchigatana now.

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Not to spoil anything for you but uhh.. there's a ring that adds that system back in to the game. :cool:

 

 

 

That's awesome, although I am getting used to the absence of that mechanic. Being a first time Souls player, I'm also discovering the usefulness of the shield. I emphatically avoided using it in the initial stages in favor of the twin scimitars. I'm using the Uchigatana now.

 

 

Great weapon, its stance R1 attack is far better than you'd think, because the lunge is fast and your hitbox is smaller during it.

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And if you're using a greatsword or some other weapon with a long recovery between swings, you're screwed because he recovers faster than you and thus you're going to get hit nearly every time you swing your sword.

 

I ran into that problem a lot while using the Farron Greatsword (not necessarily against bosses, specifically, but just in general). It's so stylish and fun, but it's a pain in the ass against fast enemies that recover quickly/can't be stun-locked. In DS2, for example, the benefit of weapons like that was being able to stun-lock damn-near anything (to obviously compensate for the fact that they're really slow and clunky/deal a lot of damage). Stun-locking seems a lot less common this time around. Like, for the most part, it really only seems to apply to the little/standard enemy types. It's just a lot more practical to use a smaller, faster weapon. A lot less punishable.

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I believe your damage output weighs into stunning as well. I never stunlocked the Pontiff knights or the Fire Irithyl guys in my first playthrough with a low level Artorias Sword, but now I stunlock them even with the small curved sword.

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So I'm going to give an opinion that I think a lot of people here will disagree with. Before I do I just want to reiterate that I love the souls series. All of them (except for Demons).

 

I feel like these games aren't hard because they're meant to be half the time. I feel they're hard half the time because Miyazaki and co. have no idea how to balance things. They don't understand when something is too much. Enemies with no weaknesses, bosses that go overkill on certain things, etc.

A lot of the difficulty comes from the games not bothering to balance every enemy, ESPECIALLY for all playstyles, and the "its hard" motif allows them to get away with it

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Tbh that's more or less just incorrect. Like, I don't want to try and belittle you, but given that there are a ton of players who finish these games with base level and do so with no damage (I'm doing really well myself, too, and I'm not particularly good. I'm average.) taken in the process - That would not be possible if stuff is so poorly balanced or required a certain build. And there's literally not a single boss you can't beat fairly with any certain build... aside from fatrolling ladle healer... maybe. And, afterall, there's summons. They even put them there, so you can utilize them when you're offline and don't have access to players. I mean, it took me like six hours to beat Abyss Watchers and Pontiff Sullywahn (together. I think two for Watchers and four for Sully.) but that's because I simply wasn't good enough at dodging and parrying, both things that absolutely CAN be trained, and are a legitimate requirement. Stuff like Bed of Chaos, I understand, because it was genuinely glitchy back then. When there's RNG opponents like the Squallid Queen, I understand that as well. But this argument about balance or - and this is the absolute worst thing ever - "artifical difficulty" (I genuinely wanna slap everyone who uses this for DS) is just, to put it short, inaccurate.

 

Like, I'm currently getting *censored*ed sideways by the Nameless King, and as of now I feel completely overwhelmed, because I don't know wether or not he can be parried, his moveset is erratic, both motion as well as speed wise and he seems to resist pretty much all elements. But... With patience and skill, I can beat him. It's just obvious. And I will, eventually.

 

In conclusion, I wanna say something a few select outlets have written about before. Dark Souls isn't hard. Dark Souls is punishing. If you learn and observe. And REALLY learn and observe, most fights become trivial. And please don't mistake that as me seeing it through blindly biased eyes. There are definitely issues with the series. From weapons, to PVP, to how magic usually becomes either awfully powerful or useless and so on. But the sheer difficulty in itself? Nah.

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I don't mean that the game is impossible because of imbalance, I just mean that I feel like a lot of the games difficulty comes because they don't bother to do any balancing. They like to stack a lot of stuff on one enemy or boss, and sometimes they do tend to go overboard. The princes being a fine example, there are ways they could have done that boss battle better in terms of balance and it still would've been challenging.

 

I do have to say, DS3 has the easiest early game I think i've seen from a souls game though, save for maybe bloodborne.

 

Also just want to point out, its not necessarily a criticism as most developers don't think about it, but DS3 is very non-user friendly when it comes to the color blind. Specifically the crystal sage battle.

 

Also, while its definitely over exaggerated by the games critics, lets be fair here. There are some cases of artificial difficulty in the DS series. It's not super prominent no, but there are some cases here and there. Especially in DS2 Scholar Of The First Sin, which is the game I despise in this series because it was difficult for all the wrong reasons and felt almost like a farce to the other games within the series.

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The... Princes? They were honestly the biggest pushovers in the entire game for me, save for the tutorial boss, Yhorm and the Ancient Wyvern. The first phase is absolute laughable and with even a tiny bit of timing you shouldn't even get hit once, and the second phase... Well, you gotte figure it out, which probably everyone does after killing Lordran the first time and going "Shit..." and from there on it's just roll - poke - roll - poke, until Lothric is dead.

 

Honestly, them going overboard is just not true. it's just not It's a valid feeling to have, and you can have that, and you can believe the game is too hard (which, overall, I don't think, nor do I really get the feeling you think that, haha.) But it's just incorrect to say it's too hard because the balancing isn't there. It is there. It's just made so that the game is challenging. Ultimately, it's insanely hard to achieve difficulty without having the bosses become predictable or unfair. And Dark Souls definitely becomes predictable.

 

Is it difficult for the first few times? Certainly. But it's not unfair. I genuinely can't recall a single bossfight throughout the entire series that was unfair due to the game's mechanics. Sif comes to mind because he literally ignored by stamina and my 100% def shield, but since the framerate was so bad on that and he kept glitching outside the arena, I imagine the game was just broken on the 360, and it wasn't supposed to be like that, so I don't count that.

 

Also I'd love to hear what you thought was "artificial difficulty". I genuinely think that term doesn't even make sense in this context, so I just find it very hard to take serious, but I'm absolutely willing to hear anyone out about it.

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The... Princes? They were honestly the biggest pushovers in the entire game for me, save for the tutorial boss, Yhorm and the Ancient Wyvern. The first phase is absolute laughable and with even a tiny bit of timing you shouldn't even get hit once, and the second phase... Well, you gotte figure it out, which probably everyone does after killing Lordran the first time and going "Shit..." and from there on it's just roll - poke - roll - poke, until Lothric is dead.

 

Honestly, them going overboard is just not true. it's just not It's a valid feeling to have, and you can have that, and you can believe the game is too hard (which, overall, I don't think, nor do I really get the feeling you think that, haha.) But it's just incorrect to say it's too hard because the balancing isn't there. It is there. It's just made so that the game is challenging. Ultimately, it's insanely hard to achieve difficulty without having the bosses become predictable or unfair. And Dark Souls definitely becomes predictable.

 

Is it difficult for the first few times? Certainly. But it's not unfair. I genuinely can't recall a single bossfight throughout the entire series that was unfair due to the game's mechanics. Sif comes to mind because he literally ignored by stamina and my 100% def shield, but since the framerate was so bad on that and he kept glitching outside the arena, I imagine the game was just broken on the 360, and it wasn't supposed to be like that, so I don't count that.

 

Also I'd love to hear what you thought was "artificial difficulty". I genuinely think that term doesn't even make sense in this context, so I just find it very hard to take serious, but I'm absolutely willing to hear anyone out about it.

 

My problem with the princes isn't how strong they are, its that they're given too much. It could be better built in a number of ways. For instance giving a single estus refill the first time you beat the older prince would make the marathon like run of the boss feel a bit more bearable, or starting off with both at the same time and simply allowing the younger prince to resurrect the older one quicker, instead of forcing you to finish off the older prince first who annoyingly often stopped your lock-on when he teleported, and ended up getting a free hit because of the disorientation of the camera.

 

Artificial difficulty is what occurs when the difficulty from a part comes not from a mistake made by a person but either because the game changed stuff up on its own, or withheld information from the player. A few examples would be the broken hitboxes in the earlier games that would allow enemies and bosses to hit you even when their attacks clearly missed, or when you are suddenly faced with a situation where you could not have known what was coming (a few ambush points throughout the game count here as while they're certainly survivable, a player on their first run through won't be aware of them and thus are almost guaranteed to get hit).

 

An example of a boss with fake difficulty (well, not a "boss" but boss calibur) would probably be the hellkite dragon. On a new run the player will be one shotted by it, and its AI can be quite annoying to get it to attack in the right way so that the player can make it past. It can be skipped by, but that costs the player a rather important bonfire. A better barrier in my opinion would be an enemy that while difficult, isn't such an insurmountable challenge such as to cause one hit kills so early.

 

Of course there's also examples of artificial easiness in the game as well, which are often a nice way to balance out the issues where the player is getting screwed like a medieval whore. Pinwheel being a breather boss for instance, and of course the good ol' jolly cooperation.

 

That said, I get the distinct impression you and I simply won't agree on this, which I already said i'm sure would happen, and i'm fine with you not agreeing with me. Contrary to popular opinion, artificial vs non-artificial isn't always objective and i'm sure there are plenty of spots I find easy vs you find hard, as any souls player experiences. I always found Gascoigne easy as hell for instance, whereas plenty of other players dread taking him on, on new characters, The Souls series for all its positives and faults is a series where anyone can get in to it in some way or another, whether it be for stat porn, fashion souls, the challenge, or the unique and very well-made combat.

 

I`d like to reiterate again that while I think the Souls series does have its cases of balance issues and artificial difficulty at times, I still love them to pieces and next to the elder scrolls, is currently my favourite game series at the moment. Makes me sad honestly that Miyazaki has said that Dark Souls 3 will be the last game in the main series (though i`m sure we`ll see a Bloodborne 2).

 

Also please keep in mind that most of my opinions here are as if I was looking at the series from a newbies perspective, rather than as series regular like myself. I wouldn`t be saying this if DS3 weren`t pulling in so many new players.

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My problem with the princes isn't how strong they are, its that they're given too much. It could be better built in a number of ways. For instance giving a single estus refill the first time you beat the older prince would make the marathon like run of the boss feel a bit more bearable, or starting off with both at the same time and simply allowing the younger prince to resurrect the older one quicker, instead of forcing you to finish off the older prince first who annoyingly often stopped your lock-on when he teleported, and ended up getting a free hit because of the disorientation of the camera.

 

An estus refill would honestly trivialize the boss even further. The first stage is awfully easy. His attacks are HEAVILY eluded to. People complain about the camera a lot, and that is often justified, but it's not like you cannot evade his attacks because of the out-of-frame teleport. It's ALWAYS directly behind you, just roll as you would blindly and you don't get hit. The second phase is a little crammed in my opinion, so I agree on a personal level, but that doesn't make him too hard or unbalanced. He's still not hard if you know what you're doing and then there's, of course, summons, which honestly trivialize him.

 

Artificial difficulty is what occurs when the difficulty from a part comes not from a mistake made by a person but either because the game changed stuff up on its own, or withheld information from the player. A few examples would be the broken hitboxes in the earlier games that would allow enemies and bosses to hit you even when their attacks clearly missed, or when you are suddenly faced with a situation where you could not have known what was coming (a few ambush points throughout the game count here as while they're certainly survivable, a player on their first run through won't be aware of them and thus are almost guaranteed to get hit).

 

Okay, that I mostly agree with. Though I disagree about ambushes. Maybe for the very first case, in the first playthrough, for a first time player. But once you know what Dark Souls is about, you know you need to be careful Observant. When I played through DS3 for the first time I looked behind me and checked the ceilings so much because DS1 and Bloodborne loved ambushes and dropping enemies, so I adjusted to it. I get what you're saying, and to an extent I agree, but not fully. Legitametly broken content (like hitboxes) are no doubt correct, though I would simply class that as the game not working properly. I know it comes out as the same, but the connotations, imo, is different. I don't wanna get hung up on semantics though.

 

An example of a boss with fake difficulty (well, not a "boss" but boss calibur) would probably be the hellkite dragon. On a new run the player will be one shotted by it, and its AI can be quite annoying to get it to attack in the right way so that the player can make it past. It can be skipped by, but that costs the player a rather important bonfire. A better barrier in my opinion would be an enemy that while difficult, isn't such an insurmountable challenge such as to cause one hit kills so early.

 

I know at least three people (and myself, too) who didn't die to the wyvern because we immediately ran back when it sounded and took cover. I don't want to use anecdotal experiences to go like "YOU'RE WRONG!" but what I can use it to justify is that the game isn't unfairly balanced. It's partially about exploration, afterall. That's their course on gameplay and narrative alike, and that's a valid route. And you're not even forced to fight it, either. You can just run down or run past it if you want to get the bonfire behind it. That's what I did, actually, though in that case it disappeared, which bummed me out.

 

That said, I get the distinct impression you and I simply won't agree on this, which I already said i'm sure would happen, and i'm fine with you not agreeing with me. Contrary to popular opinion, artificial vs non-artificial isn't always objective and i'm sure there are plenty of spots I find easy vs you find hard, as any souls player experiences. I always found Gascoigne easy as hell for instance, whereas plenty of other players dread taking him on, on new characters, The Souls series for all its positives and faults is a series where anyone can get in to it in some way or another, whether it be for stat porn, fashion souls, the challenge, or the unique and very well-made combat.

 

It's not so much about agreement, to me, to be honest. I'm completely fine with opinions, and if I didn't miscount I already agreed with you twice or so on certain things. I just personally have an issue when genuine facts are ignored. Which, mind you, maybe be a bit bitchy of me, and I'm sorry if it is. I just believe it is important to distinguish in such cases and also ask for reasons of opinions, not to go "derp, what a dumb dumb" but rather to ensure every side understands one another and the dialogue makes sense, cause otherwise small things can cause a huge misunderstading, which is a shame. Like, the whole "talk out of a newbie's perspective" is a huge factor, because now I can say "Well, the game really doesn't explain beyond basic controls, and at least once, people have to run into it." So while I COULD say "Well, it's Dark Souls, that's what this is about." this is just an opinion, and I'm not any more right or wrong than you are, so I don't wanna force some sort of agreement here.

 

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Damn, that got wordy... Sorry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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