The use of DLSS makes it look like a fugly, smudged mess unless you’re totally motionless. The combat is inconsistent; hit a monster, it gets stunned but then jankily cancels the stun animation to grab you or attack through your attack so it hits you but you don’t hit it.
Not sure what is better than the original other than the graphics when standing still. Even the voice acting is the same not good delivery as the OG, despite having been re-done.
EDIT: I seem to have upset the try hards. I’m sorry, but playing the the same part of a game over and over again and then beating it doesn’t make you special or give you any real life accolades… It’s a fuckin’ game. People play games to relax.
Games are supposed to be fun. End of conversation. There shouldn’t be a game that some people can’t beat just because they have slower reaction times or have a disability that prevents them from playing something such as Dark Souls. Dark Souls is a great game, but dying to some of the lower level enemies because they kept hit stunning me isn’t fun or cool in the slightest. It’s just fucking annoying. I can’t even imagine what someone who has disabilities or slower reaction times would feel.
Also, quit fucking gatekeeping games people. Jesus.
Games are supposed to be fun, but they’re not supposed to be fun for everyone.
So, some people will not enjoy dark souls, because the main gameplay - learning movesets until you’re able to not die to them - is not fun for some people. On the other hand, learning movesets at a really slow pace because the run back to the boss takes ages, or a boss that you can learn quite well but takes ages to kill because it leaves very few openings, or a boss that you would be able to learn except it’s in a tiny arena and the camera always fucks up… these are all areas in which dark souls games sometimes let down players who are geared to enjoy them.
Eh, fun isn’t the only thing people want from entertainment but even if that were always true there isn’t any reason niche games shouldn’t exist. Who am I to tell someone what kind of game they should play. Lots of games out there that I won’t play because I know it’s not for me - sometimes that sucks cause I like the art or the concept and wish the mechanics were what I want but they aren’t and I move on.
Catering to “most” also results in games that tend to be homogeneous in some way and that sucks for those that want niche. Also sucks when niche exists and gets ruined to appeal to “most” but that’s just how it goes.
Deep breaths, it’s gonna be OK. You are saying that all games should include a toggle/slider. I don’t agree. Devs should make games they want to make and I’ll play them if they appeal to me and you should too. But don’t get bent when they don’t have a feature you want.
Ugh. You people just don’t get it. You’re essentially saying that people who can’t physically interact with the game like you and I can are just shit out of luck. It’s literally not about me in anyway whatsoever. I can play them just fine.
I love video games, and I just think that they should be accessible to everyone. Whether that be a difficulty slider or just some accessibility options for those who need them. I want everyone to be able to play some of the games I love, so that I can have more people to talk about it with.
Thats the difference between me and most of the other people like you here in these comments. I’m not asking for them for me, I don’t need them. I’m asking them for people who would love to be able to play some of these big franchises but physically can’t.
Again, gatekeeping is such a fucking weird thing to do.
It’s not gate keeping, and the demand is unreasonable. Not all modes of transportation require accommodation for everyone. A paraplegic is not riding a motorcycle. That’s not a dig at them. And despite your frustration it doesn’t make your opinion more valid than a developer’s.
EDIT: Oh WAIT! I just realized I didn’t say anything about your motorcycle example. Get this. They have an attachment, a side car, that can go on the side of motorcycles that can allow a passenger. This passenger can be paraplegic! Amazing!
Ah yes. So unreasonable. I guess all the others games that include those kind of options just don’t exist!
Ah yes. Sticking up for others is a classic crybaby attitude. It’ll be okay! You can still be a “real” big gamer while allowing others to enjoy your favowite wittle games.
This is why it should be even easier for consumers to return games. Playing a game and deciding it’s not for you is one thing. Playing a game and realizing you just flushed $70 down the toilet is infuriating.
Let’s turn, “I deserve to get my money’s worth” into “I deserve to get my money back.”
Yeah they’re not great when it comes to some stuff for returns.
Last year I bought Assassins Creed 1 and 2 on sale. I played through 1 first, had a lovely time, then went to 2 and noticed some annoying graphical issues. Things that seemingly can’t be fixed after I tried with various mods and patches.
I had only played it for 30 minutes so i tried to get a refund and they declined me because I had bought it so long ago, even though I argued that the game was technically too broken for me to play.
I had to just suck it up and just play it on the PS4 with the Ezio Collection.
Yeah, it should be based on playtime though there’s probably a reason why it isn’t. There are times were I’d have a game in my library that I only get to many months after purchase only to find out its not what I was expecting.
I’ve beaten the Dark Souls trilogy and Elden Ring. I didn’t have fun when I was dying to the combat, I was having a BLAST with the exploration and the rest of the games mechanics. It’s almost like you can have both be fun…
What are the rest of the mechanics? It’s almost all combat and exploration (that leads to more combat). There’s no, like, base building or grand strategy or romance plots.
That said, I don’t think you can please everyone. I found the games enjoyable as they are.
The armor/weapon system is fantastic, the level up system is simplistic, but also super in depth, the level design and how everything connects is amazing, etc. etc.
You can though. You add a difficulty slider, or some options in an accessibility menu. God of War (2018), and God of War Ragnarok, the newer Spider-Man games, and probably some of the other Playstation exclusives ALL have options in game that allow people to play their games. I don’t want to hear that nonsense that it just can’t be done.
I consider the weapon system part of the combat. I guess the leveling system is its own mechanic, but it’s super shallow compared to many other games (eg: path of exile, or even Baldur’s gâte)
Some people wouldn’t be happy with a difficulty slider. Some people would use the slider to make themselves unhappy. Either by turning it too high due to hubris, or too low from lack of confidence. The unified difficulty of the souls games for many people is a plus, and creates a sense of shared struggle they enjoy.
And as I said elsewhere, I really don’t think meta game options are the only way to do difficulty.
Video games are art. Just like a movie can be sad or a painting can be distressing, video games are allowed to explore all kinds of emotions.
Sometimes a higher difficulty is part of the artist’s vision. They get to decide how they convey what they want to convey.
One of my favorite new games is UFO 50. It’s a collection of retro-style games where some of them are genuinely very difficult, and others are just do a great job of simulating difficulty. The difficulty drops off right around the time you start to get a handle on the mechanics, so it’s hard to tell if it’s the game getting easier or if you’re just getting better.
Don’t worry! We have actual letters to read, we have oral ways of explaining things to you, we can even do pictures! What are your needs? I’m sure we can find a way to accommodate you!
So, the fact that I can’t read braille isn’t stopping me from enjoying the medium of reading, just that there are some books that are meant for people other than me? Not all books are meant for me to enjoy and that doesn’t mean I’m being gatekept by braille? Is that the point you’re trying to make?
There are all types of people on this planet. Some of them have the same interests and wants as you, but something happened to them during or after birth that drastically lowered their quality of life. Just because you were born or ended up at this point in your life just fine doesn’t mean that their issues are any less important.
All the books you like, someone with disabilities might want to read. We have the tools to make that book into a form they can partake in the excitement of that book.
That is my argument. No matter what you may have to say, it does not mean others shouldn’t be able to partake in the same activity.
Basketball was probably thought to be a “normal” human thing to do, but instead of being bound by that, we have wheelchair basketball. I think that’s beautiful and a perfect example of being able to accommodate someone’s physical needs.
There is literally no other reason than being an asshole on why someone shouldn’t want more people to be able to play a video game.
Fine. You’re being purposely gatekept from videogames. You’re entirely right and entitled to everything. Have fun being mad about it. Everyone other than you is just an asshole. Have a good one.
Of course not! Only those who took the time to reply and try to defend their hardcore gamer feelings are assholes. Normal people would just say, “yeah. That makes a lot of sense actually. Everyone should be able to physically play my favorite games!” But you can’t do that for some weird reason. Sad.
You’re not really good at this, are you? I’m not a game developer. They have the power to do this, I do not. It was even stated in the OP photo that the director made the game harder, for no other reason than to be a dick. And you applaud that for some reason. It’s mind boggling.
Then develop your own game and do it. Nobody is obligated to make something that is intended for literally everybody to enjoy in the exact same way. That’s just life, not everything is for everyone, and not everyone who is developing a game has the time, budget, or focus to out that element into their game that has a specific need to be a specific thing. And people are allowed to make their game the way they choose, just like any other form of art.
Sometimes game design makes it physically impossible. Any foot based rhythm game (DDR, PIU. DRS) is not playable by wheelchair bound people. Most good vr games will give motion sickness to people. Those people can enjoy different games that are designed with them in mind
Movies “can be” made accessible to everyone but that would mean shaving off any theme or imagery that might trigger a trauma or phobia, cutting all content that may be inappropriate to children, avoiding any topic that could offend someone’s beliefs. Why are these unreasonable expectations but all video games have to pander to someone with poor reflexes or insufficient free time to learn the nuances of a mechanical system?
Because you’re trying to bring this back to people not being able to play video games? I can see why you’d think that’s a clever comeback, but I hate to break it to you, games can be developed to have accessibility options. I can’t magic you the understanding of what I’m trying to get across to you.
Nobody is obligated to make everything they make to be intended for literally everyone. That’s just a basic fact of life. Some things are the way they are because that is just the way they are. Not everybody gets to ride rollercoasters and if we were to reengineer them to be accessible to literally everyone then what you would have would simply not be a rollercoaster. Some things intended to be what they were made to be would be fundamentally different if they met your demands, you’re insisting there be mandatory limits and demands to art and intentionality.
Nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to play every game. Not every game has to be for everybody, and that’s ok. The exact same criticism can be made the other way around, that no game should be too easy because boredom is bad. And it’s exactly as stupid an argument in either direction.
Of course not. I do believe that gatekeeping gaming is a fucking stupid thing to do though. Not every game HAS to be for everyone, and that’s not even what I’m saying so bad argument to begin with.
What I AM saying though, is more people can play the same games and… GASP… actually be able to talk to their more hardcore friends about the game that their friend recommended! Man! What an idea!
There is nothing preventing YOU from playing on the highest, most hardcore gamer difficulty, so again, your point is moot.
My point is preventing people who aren’t able to function on the same level as a “normal” human from playing one of the biggest franchises in gaming history is stupid and there is nothing and no reason whatsoever to exempt them from being able to enjoy the games other than this stupid ass arbitrary gatekeeping bullshit a lot of so called gamers like to pull out.
You can still sit there and run around with no armor and do a no hit run. There is literally nothing stopping you from that… unless… you want to play on an easier difficulty and don’t want to admit it…?
actually be able to talk to their more hardcore friends about the game that their friend recommended!
The journey is often as important to the experience. It would be like your friend telling you about a great hike but then driving to the top just to talk about the view.
God, I wish I lived in a fantasy world. But, unfortunately, I have to exist alongside people who can’t think of anyone other than themselves. Like… most of the commenters here who kept trying to bring up what they believe to be valid points, but really just paint themselves as assholes who don’t want people to be able to enjoy their hardcore gamer games. Oh well. There plenty of people like you out there.
“People play games to relax, they’re supposed to be fun” your preference for relaxing is not universal, your inability to enjoy any particular game is your own problem, the mere existence of shit that was not made for you is not in any way gatekeeping
You have the option to play a different game or none at all, if you choose not to avail yourself of that option then you have voluntarily selected your difficulty
That’s such a lame ass rebuke. It can be done, has been done, and will continue to be done by developers who actually care about the medium and want more people to play their games. Did we not fucking invent braille so blind people can read???
Heh, it’s funny that you accuse people of gatekeeping when the only person doing gatekeeping here is you: “games are supposed to be fun”. No, games are supposed to be whatever the fuck their creators want them to be, and then you get to pick and choose which ones (out of the millions and millions of videogames being created, enough for several lifetimes) you want to spend your valuable time on. You trying to dictate how creators should create their creations is very rich. Get in the fucking ring and create something, then you’ll get to dictate to yourself as much as you want on how your game should be created.
Fallout 4. I could never bring myself to finish it. The furthest I ever got was just before the Mass Fusion mission between the Institute and the Brotherhood, with the Railroad already dead. I just couldn’t summon the will to continue. In every playthrough after that, I rush to Nuka World, finish a few parks there, and call it quits again.
I love city building games. They’re my genre of choice. This one is hyped up to 11 as this great agent based logistics chain focused city sim. It’s not. Like at all. The numbers are obfuscated to hell and back. It’s got the slowest tier one to tier 2 transition I’ve ever played in a game like this. Very little does what it’s reported to do. They added a useless tech tree to lock stuff up to get a sense of progression, when in reality it just adds a second layer of requirements and time to progress to the next stage of your city. They have a really frustrating combat system which is cool in thought, but poorly executed. The economy is fucked and barely makes any sense.
The most frustrating thing that’s the biggest deal breaker is that pops don’t move into the city upon building housing. You need extra people to fulfill basic laborer roles. I can fill up every job I’ve plopped and have 20 extra workers doing basic labor or nothing. Or I can have two extra workers and build more houses to increase the pop count. Problem is nobody moves in. One of the requirements to get to tier 3 is 200 pop. I can’t break the 64 barrier let alone 100 because for some awful reason the dev decided to use a desirability score and not move pops in upon building a house. I have a population cap of 140 people and there’s vacant houses everywhere. Yet shit don’t change. I don’t think peasants in the fucking 1400s gave a shit about market prices and luxury amenities when fucking bears and wolves attack every 5 minutes. Just move people in the houses when I build them.
The game is a looker. I’ll give it that. Everything else is frustratingly bad.
I’m going to make this point again because it went unnoticed due to the sheer amount of comments, but you wouldn’t complain about a Rubik’s cube or crossword puzzle being too hard or anything else designed to challenge you. I’d argue that without the difficulty of solving a Rubik’s cube that toy would be lost to time. The only reason it still exists today is because it was so hard to solve for children when it was released. Souls games are the same. The only reason we still talk about them and the only reason they gained the popularity that they did is because of the difficulty.
I remember distinctly picking up dark souls on sale on a whim before it started really entering mainstream discussion. The guy working at Gamestop warned me that people kept returning it because it was too hard. I took it home and played it and really learned the mechanics then I brought it to my friends to try. They learned the mechanics and since then we’ve had an unofficial race to see who can beat the newest FromSoft game fastest. It was the difficulty of the game that made it so addicting. Without that the game would be boring and no one would know what it was in 2025. If you don’t believe me install the easy mode mods and come back to let us know what your experience was like.
There’s nothing wrong with a difficult game, but there’s also nothing wrong with difficulty selection or easy games. Why does a game need to be remembered if the goal is to make something fun? The fun alone is what makes something memorable
I never said there is anything wrong with easy games. I play many easy games that were designed to be easy and accessible. Games can be memorable for different reasons. I play Souls games because I love the difficulty. I also play farm sims and VNs because I love story telling and other aspects. My point is that Souls games only exist and are only memorable because of the difficulty.
I’ll go back to the Rubik’s cube. It was released in the 70s. It’s a square puzzle that isn’t flashy or intricate. Do you think it would still be relevant over 50 years later if it wasn’t difficult? That doesn’t invalidate other games or puzzles that survived the test of time that are much easier. The Rubik’s cube was designed to be difficult as were Souls games. Without that difficulty they don’t have much else to offer.
Not sure how recent we’re talking but within the last year or so my 2 biggest disappointments have been once human and nightingale. I can usually work around jank and weird creative decisions, but unfortunately neither of these two were worth any of the time I’ve spent playing em since they felt like they didn’t seem to want you to progress.
Played once human for about 3 days, nightingale for around 3 hours and then refunded.
I was actually a beta tester on the discord. Played it for an hour gave my feedback in return they only replied with “yeah we already know those things” whiv i think is a weird reply… Anyway I always liked the art style and still have hope that this will be a good game. Maybe I try it next year again. Your review set up new hopes :)
As a game dev myself, I’ve had to learn to just quietly accept repeat feedback. I’m often already aware of most problems and bugs during some playtests, and I used to say “I know I gotta fix that” to some lower priority bugs, but it’s better to encourage any and all feedback for sure.
I don’t see what’s weird about it, if they are aware of it and possibly have other things that take priority what else could they say? They were just truthful and straight to the point. It’s extremely hard to handle all feedback and stuff from a community as solo/indie devs, it’s not easy on any level for that matter. If you took several seconds more and emotional effort to be super nice to every single person who interacts with your game we wouldn’t have any games releasing at all. It’s important to keep your responses to a minimum while also making it clear what the situation is. I think that was a good reply, not offensive at all and made you understand that they know and will fix it.
Short? The way they responded. I totally respect that but it felt like a 2 sentence reply to a long feedback I tried to give and it just felt like “yeah stop annoy us if ya dont got something New”
I know gamedev is hard and my previous comment shouldnt read like “what a bunch of jerks…” more like a… Was my first game testing and the reply felt a bit off 🤔
That’s my wife’s style. She did Exposition 33 the opposite way from me and we both enjoyed it in our own ways. It was way more fun to break the game by perfect dodging things I had no business fighting, lol.
It may be a difficult debate between accessibility, experience and artistic vision. Though considering how many games are made every year, I think we can have difficult games with no easy mode. People who don’t enjoy them or can’t play them can simply play the thousands of other games.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for accessibility. During my time in the video game industry, I personally paid great attention to options for colorblind people. Unfortunately, pretty much everything else was outside my scope. But it doesn’t make any sense to potentially ruin the entire work just so 3 more people on the planet will play it.
If a game is frustrating to play, but I enjoy the story - I watch a playthrough. If a game contains elements that I don’t like - it’s probably not a game for me, so I move on to other games. If I had some disability that made it very hard or impossible to play some games - okay, fair enough, that would genuinely suck. But again, I’d move on to other games.
Of course, it’s possible to add detailed difficulty settings, so that everyone can customize their experience. Mostly a great solution, if the team has the time and resources to implement it well, which isn’t always the case. However, it may still interfere with the artistic vision of the developers.
Some movies can cause epileptic seizures due to some of their scenes. Should the authors throw their vision and ideas out the window, because some people cannot safely watch the movie? I’d say no, because that would kind of ruin the whole point of artistic expression. I think we need to be able to depict and express all kinds and forms of art, even if some groups will be unable to experience them.
Maybe some time in the future we’ll be able to solve all of this easily and reliably (e.g., some kind of neuralink for people with various conditions). But as of right now, it seems to me that this is practically a non-issue. The impact is incredibly limited, while proposed solutions are either costly, unrealistic or straight up counterintuitive.
Really well put. In general, I find it frustrating how many people use the word “acccessibility” as a means to argue no games like Dark Souls (intentionally having only 1 difficulty for a single intended experience) should ever exist. But to me that’s conflating disability-accessibility with a more literal “accessible to more people” type of accessibility. I’d argue “approachable” would be a better word for the latter.
People with motor skill issues or whatever else beat Dark Souls all the time. Heck, fully abled people are intentionally giving themselves equivalent experiences by beating it with dance pads and guitar or drum controllers or whatever else all the time. So the difficulty isn’t an accessibility issue, the game is actually pretty slow paced (you can make a decent argument that more recent From Soft titles speed things up to an unreasonable degree for some motor disabilities, but I’m talking about the OG here).
What I hear instead, most of the time, is some version of “I’m a dad, I don’t have hours to throw at a boss every night”. And my instinctive response, most of the time is simply… I just don’t think you like this game? Getting your ass beat and needing hours and dozens of deaths to learn a boss or beat an area is the intended experience, and you’re having it, whether you put those hours in 1 or 12 at a time. If you don’t enjoy that, that’s just fine, there are millions of great games that don’t force you into such a punishing experience. It’s a little bit like complaining a puzzle game has too many puzzles in the way of the platforming.
Anyway, my point being, I think centering the From Software “accessibility” conversation around difficulty options, something the devs have determined is a pillar of the game’s design that they won’t change, prevents us from having a proper conversation about accessibility, in terms of actual disability accessibility. I think there’s really cool conversations we should be having about how we can make attack animations more readable to a visually impaired player without compromising on difficulty, for example. None of the Souls games even have so much as a colourblind mode, and we should be putting pressure on From Soft to add something as trivial as that as the franchise explodes in popularity, but “dark souls accessibility” is an entirely unrelated conversation instead, which kinda drowns out any other.
I think there’s really cool conversations we should be having about how we can make attack animations more readable to a visually impaired player without compromising on difficulty, for example.
Good post, I agree with you and the above poster.
This brings to mind the parry system in Metroid Dread. Enemies flashed yellow before a parryable attack signalling you should hit the button at that moment. It’s possible and it works.
So then why don’t all games do this? Because Metroid Dread was designed from the beginning to support this system. In Souls games, parrying is not just a matter of timing on attacks, but if the attack can even be parried at all given the specific attack (not all can)/player stats/equipped items, 3D positioning of hitboxes for both the attack and the player’s defensive parry, as well as variable parry windows based on the specific shield or weapon equipped. Now take into account that Souls enemies often have multiple attacks each and this becomes a very significant amount of developer work. Not to mention that given all these factors, timing a button press to a parry flash may not always result in 100% success rate. Imagine how frustrating a system like this would be if even when you did everything “right”, the physical placement of hitboxes only resulted in an 80% success rate on any given parry. Would players not find this frustrating? The point I’m trying to make is how complex this system would actually be and how much work it would take to implement.
However, it may still interfere with the artistic vision of the developers.
I’m going to be honest here, I did not end up caring for Metroid Dread much. For a number of reasons I won’t go into here, but partly because of this parry system. Parry windows were clearly telegraphed, did huge amounts of damage often resulting in one hit kills AND they guaranteed to drop health/ammo pickups. With the risk/reward system practically non-existent you were so highly incentivized to use them that it made combat feel much more defensive. Rather than attack enemies, it was often more beneficial to approach them, bait out an attack, and punish.
Now I do take some responsibility for my actions here. It was my choice to begin playing the game this way. But I do also think there’s something to be said for design elements that train or at least encourage players to engage with them in certain ways. Difficulty options are not just game design decisions but also attempts to understand how individual players may engage with those decisions. Expecting developers to have the ability or even foresight to anticipate all these different interactions is an extremely high, if not unreasonable barrier.
But in the end, I simply say that Dread was not a game to my liking. I know there are a lot of people who absolutely love it. Just not a game for me.
I’ve heard the same excuses about Souls games that I hear about learning an instrument. Many times it’s from the same people and no they aren’t disabled. They just say I don’t have the dexterity or it’s too hard I could never do this or that. To them I show them this amazing man: youtube.com/
This man has an obvious disability, but plays guitar better than like 90% of guitarists. The same argument can be made about paralympic athletes. They’re often in better shape and more talented than people who aren’t disabled and the reason obviously isn’t some natural talent they have. They’ve put in the work to be great. That’s what it takes to master anything. You have to practice, you have to try, you have to push yourself.
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