Its incredible how I can click on any Dark Souls critique of arbitrary length as if I had no brain

Best level design of all time! So much better than Elden Ring. This is simply undeniable, I don’t know about Sekiro as that’s the only Soulsborne I haven’t played. But I’d be surprised if it has better level design than DS1. It’s near perfect

My very first play through ended after Bell Gargoyles for the exact reason you detailed. I played the game near release day as well so there wasn’t much in the way of online forums to help. I absolutely love Dark Souls, but can’t deny that is a horrible part of the game without any guidance.

I absolutely agree that exploration is so important to Dark Souls, and I kinda hate how in discussions it so often gets overshadowed by the notion that FromSoft games are instead defined by their tough boss fights. The boss fights are the punction, but it's the level design, item locations, and placement of basic fodder enemies that are the sentences and paragraphs. Speaking of the difficulty, a common turn of phrase people use to describe this genre is, "challenging but fair," however, there's nothing all that fair about the damage output even basic enemies can do or the way they are positioned to ambush and outflank the player, especially not when that player is still new and inexperienced. Although conversely, there's really nothing all that challenging about how sluggish and exploitable the AI is to for an experienced player. My preferred way to describe the game is, "punishing but simple." As for spell casting, yeah, it does sort of break everything about the combat system, but it surprises me that anyone wouldn't already know that, because at least in my experience it is talked about commonly enough, albeit somewhat derisively as being the game's "easy mode". Although speaking of things that are "easy", I think you maybe missed the point when Taurus Demon fell off the ledge. You call it unsatisfying, but personally I find it very satisfying in how it demonstrates that bosses actually play by the same rules as the player. That same spatial awareness and positioning that the player has to be careful of lest they fall to their demise, can likewise be exploited to do the same to the boss. Then again that sorta loops back around to my original point, that I hate when Dark Souls is boiled down to just being a game with "hard" bosses, as if the only thing that mattered was the player proving their own skill against a seemingly insurmountable foe, when the real test is the ability to observe, improvise, and where possible, even think outside the box to find alternative solutions. That said, the situation with the dragon is obviously not at all intentional, and a bug I've never even seen before. Then again, I've also only ever played the Prepare to Die edition, never the remaster. Back to observational challenges though, Nito and his skeletons should be an absolutely fitting capstone to the mechanics faced to reach him, as the necromancers in the Catacombs do the exact same thing, endlessly revving the nearby skeletons unless the player uses holy damage. Nito is a final test who becomes easier when the player actually learns the lesson the preceding level was trying to teach. Likewise, you seem to be missing the point with Manus as well, which I find odd after you had previously held up exploration as such an important pillar of the game. The silver pendant isn't some lazy copout FromSoft included because they couldn't be bothered to properly balance a boss. Rather the boss is deliberately imbalanced to encourage and reward exploration with the solution. I also think you aren't quite looking at NPC invaders the right way either, because they aren't just placed randomly. For most of them the equipment they drop actually explains who they are and why they are encounter in specific locations. They very much are just as much part of the curated and intentional experience as any other enemy, albeit also an optional escalation in difficult tied to being good at the game, not dying and thus preserving the humanity which triggers them to appear. But moving onto the actual multiplayer features, you hit the nail on the head when you referred to it as something which builds a sense of community, because that's exactly what it's there for. It's all inspired by an incident Miyazaki had of being stuck driving in a snowstorm, where one by one the drives of each car helped push each other up and over a hill, but lest he get stuck in the snow again, he couldn't stop to thank these helpful strangers. The entire point is that you aren't really meant to figure everything out on your own, nor face every challenge alone. That's why the co-op works the way it does, that's why players can leave each other helpful messages. It's about fostering that feeling of strangers all struggling together to overcome a shared adversity, because after his experience that was what stuck with Miyazaki, how if he met those people from the snowstorm under other circumstances maybe they could have been friends... or maybe they'd have been enemies (hence also invaders). And on the final point about direction though the game, it's not like there is only a single path into Blighttown and the bell bellow. You mention yourself that before being pointed in the direction of using the basement key, you had considered going into Darkroot Garden. A location which connects to the Valay of Drakes, which in turn connects to a backdoor tunnel that leads down into Blight Town. It might have been more circuitous route, but you'd have it would have still gotten you where you needed to be. There is no single intentional path, because the most important point of the game, that you strongly seem to have forgotten halfway through making this video, is to EXPLORE. Even if you had gone the "wrong" way through the graveyard and into the Catacombs, there is still a reward to be gained in the Rite of Kindling. Just because you rarely saw fit to enhance Bonfires past 10 estus, doesn't mean the ability to do so is useless. Although seeing as you seem to of fallen into the trap of judging the game by how "satisfying" the bosses are to overcome, fighting Pinwheel at that earlier stage of the game can actually be a moderately challenging fight. Although admittedly, there probably should have been some kind of shortcut back out of the Tomb of the Giants, rather than the only option being a slow climb. ... Oh, and one more thing. At multiple points you say that death is so punishing, but it really isn't. Yes, the player drops all their souls, but they have a chance to recover them, and yes, if they die again before they can do that the souls are lost forever, but the player can always kill more enemies to get more souls. It's also not like there is any reason to horde souls. They can always be exchanged for level at any bonfire, and so a player really only ever has themself to blame if the die while carrying a large number of souls.

You've very accurately discerned problematic areas, but you're coming to the game with the wrong expectations. Dark Souls isn't about that feeling of accomplishment after beating a boss. It's about the communal effort to beat the game. The sense of community is more tangible at the launch, rather than a decade later when you're mostly only going to encounter invaders using twink builds. Unfortunately, the marketing of Prepare to Die didn't help with that, and the graveyard is actually a very common player quit point. Many of the online mechanics are recycled from Demon's Souls, where they make much more sense thematically. They were carried over to the later games because it was the experience Fromsoft wanted to keep making. Unfortunately, this iterative process with how they design their games has made them become somewhat change blind. A good example would be the invasion system, which has virtually no reason to exist in Elden Ring, a game with no tangible rewards for invading other than to troll inexperienced players. All the tools that create the experiences Fromsoft wants the players to have are there, but there's no reason to engage with any of them.

great video! 100% agree, currently at the archives, and i have to say: the second half is weak. the game peaked with ornstein and smough.

1:08:20 I'm so glad you got this on video of Taurus Demon just jumping off to his death. I had this happen to me during one of my follow up play thru's and I could not stop laughing at how absurd it was.

I went through graveyard first, when i eventually got through and made my way back up; i figured the more progress i made the more appreciative i was having that silver serpent ring.

the funniest thing about Pinwheel is that Lore-Wise he is stronger than Nito, he stole the Rite of Kindling from him leaving him vulnerable and weaker because of him and left him scared in some kind of way then Nito not wanting to confront him again just stayed down in his personal dark hell frustrated. I deffo think they could’ve made Pin a much harder fight with him having more powerful magic and summoning skeletons…… you know since he is a NECROMANCER haha , but i guess Pin forgot the one thing necromancers cant escape from: Mr. Mele Sword

The first time I tried to play DSR (I think it was 2020), I got stuck after the first bell. I did find the Capra demon and was just totally lost after that, spending several hours running around trying to figure out where to go. I gave up for two years and came back to it with a guide. Funnily enough, I couldn't find the graveyard when it came to that point either, even with the knowledge that winding up there was a common mistake by new players. When I started DS3, I decided to only use a guide to figure out the area to go to if I got stuck. But frankly haven't needed to use it much (I'm about 70% done and have hit a brick wall in Ariandel with the knights, I'm in parry bootcamp and might need to go do some other stuff first, I still have one main boss to do before the final one and some other side stuff). One thing that kind of sucks about playing these so late is that a lot is spoiled and you can't undo that. Knowing this before Elden Ring came out, I have made a huge effort to completely avoid anything but news before playing it. I played a few hours on launch, but wanted to go back and play the DS series first... which became just DS and DS3 after a few hours of pure rage in Scholars (I found out later that SotFS is basically hardcore mode and not a remaster and I have since picked up normal DS2 on sale and may go back and try that... or not, either way, I consider it a donation to FromSoft).

You're wrong about Dark Souls letting you visit every scenery you set your eyes upon. There are many backdrops that fall out of bounds. The ones that come to mind are 1. The Undead Burg -looking town below Firelink. 2. The forests surrounding Sen's Fortress. 3. The River in Darkroot Garden. 4. The mountain ranges around the Undead Asylum. 5. The mountain ranges around the Painted World. There may be more too, but those are the ones I can think of.

Ah shit, here we go again

spectacular job! Stoked to keep up with whatever you do next!

So as I also beat this game just like 2 weeks ago, here's my very short take. I REALLY loved combat and exploration, even though I used magic at times, the flow, the planning, the discovery, I loved it all. But everything else just...dragged it down. Platforming boss? Area without light? Small platforms while being shot at? Invasions when I just want to have humanity? None of them felt like they added or helped the game, they just felt annoying to outright bad depending.

When I first played the game I did become unsure of what to do at a couple points and looked up a let's play. But I'm not sure which, it may have been the basement key but I also struggled with the combat until I realised early enemies were stunned by hitting a shield Also I took a few restarts to finally finish it, ending my first successful playthrough with a strength/faith build

I almost broke my phone when he couldnt doge manus dark attack silver pendant

I disagree with sooo much of this video, but alas, it is lengthy video about Dark Souls, so I must watch it

Streamers dont deserve to make video essays. Sorry

I really do think your argument of "I got backseated and was fine, but this game is so horrible for the people who didn't get backseated (but would presumably not have played any differently than I have, ensured by the vague live-fed approval of my chat at any given point), I'm _sure_ they exist!" holds exactly zero water. Yes, Dark Souls has a horrible and misleading reputation of _just being difficult_. Yes, I'm also sure that people exist who soldiered on all the way to the bottom of Tomb just to be told "no". But I think you _vastly_ overestimate how many people did that, based on your assumption that world design and lore are things to be discarded by default, and looked at at your leisure when you want some light distraction. Same thing with Artorias' grave and the abyss ring, and same with Nito and divine damage. Most people who play Dark Souls do not have chat to guide them, but they have bloodstains, ghosts, messages of questionable trustworthiness, and the ability and willingness to extrapolate a bit from what NPCs literally tell you. Magic being OP is a tired trope in the Dark Souls 1 discussion space at this point and you, like many, many before you, have fallen into the same trap, as you tried to gauge the difficulty of a first-time magic playthrough on a second attempt through the game. Already knowing what timings are safe, what enemies can leap or are stuck in place for a while even when they have freedom to act as they wish, and most importantly, how much progress you have made towards the next bonfire compared to the resources you have expended. If you have all that knowledge, any of the Black Knight weapons will carry you just as hard as magic does, with no real downside or even resource restriction other than estus, which is easily mitigated by the now suddenly plentiful humanity since you know where to find it and into which bonfires you want to invest. I'd recommend watching a blind magic playthrough on youtube for context, but the pervasiveness of "magic op, don't play that" has made them a rare sight. I can point you to ArachCobra for a PTDE playthrough though the quality is kinda shit, or to CarlPlaying42 for a much more recent livestream playthrough of Remastered. I really wanted to like this critique based on some things you bring up in the first half that I hadn't seen in this light before, and I really do try to be open to criticism even if this comment definitely makes it seem otherwise, but honestly, the second half is less meaningful critique and more airing your immediate frustrations with your playthrough. "I refused to interact with Nito's boss mechanic even after understanding what it is, and even after the game tried its hardest to tell me to reconsider without outright making it impossible", truly, the game that you praise for not being entirely linear is at fault here.

The magic system in dark souls is not broken its the easy mode people always wish for. Like you make it out to be as if the devs were not aware that magic lets you circumvent many mechanics ... they knew ... its intentional. I also find you are reaching a lot about what the developer intention might have been ... like for manus example you are very sure that the pendant is like a bandaid fix because they could not make the attack right... where are you getting this from? Why could it not be that they decided to put an experimental boss in their dlc that is very hard to avoid unless you use a specific item? Its ok if you dont like this but I think its kinda disingenous to pretend that this is an obvious error/limitation of the devs. Fromsoft tried a lkot of stuff with their bosses over the series duration some of which recieved positive som enegative. I also dont understand why you say that invaders do not fit into the world when that is .... kind of their entire point? They are there because the Dark Souls world is not one fixed world its an overlap of multiple worlds. In the later games (especially 3) this will be more expanded upon with worlds overlapping and melting together especially towards the time the flame fades. Invaders are supposed to be just other undead just like you on their own path helping you (NPC and player summons) or trying to kill you (Invaders). Its supposed to communicate that the character you are playing isnt special ... its just another undead.

Great analysis. I think a proper video game analogy for Dark Souls would be the Prince of Persia sands of time trilogy (especially, Warrior Within), both in terms of its adventure-focused gameplay, and its mechanics. The two games are so similar when you dismantle its elements, that if you were to literally replace the "Souls" mechanic with Prince of Persia's "sands", you'd basically get the same gaming experience. Except that, narratively speaking, Prince of Persia is more straightforward. Thanks for the video again, and best wishes from Iran.

I say to my friends all the time that Dark Souls (like) and Nioh are like Mario games

Could not agree more with you on your sentiment that DS is at it's best as an adventure game. Far too many people completely ignore the brilliance of trekking around these worlds, seeing them only as great bosses separated by hallways that must be ran through. I think that kind of mindset misses out on the best aspects of these games. World/story development, and the magic of discovery is peak, particularly in the first half of DS1.

It was really funny when you called the messages on the ground "tweets from the nether"

I was SO infuriated by first ~5min of the video. It have nothing to do with video itself, or with author. I just can't stand how perspective of this series changed with time. "I heard this game was about difficulty..." "Difficulty was defining trait of this series for years... " "My friends told me how difficult it was..." "I read countless stories how people bwas broken by bosses..." This is something i was afraid from the very beginning, after first memes with Skyrim vs Dark Souls. This games never was ABOUT difficulty. (Illusion of) difficulty was artistic decision, and tool for a very specific purpose. EVERYTHING ELSE was important, and difficulty just amplified everything else and made it special.

1:38:10 I did a very similar thing on my first playthrough. New-Londo ruins was the first area I went to after the asylum. I died over 200 times to the ghosts, thinking that this was simply how the game was meant to be played and part of what earned it's infamous 'difficult' reputation Edit: I did quit, for around about 3 months. I came back and headed the right way, though I later got lost in the Catacombs, the depths, Blighttown (even heading to the very bottom bonfire in the great hollow), Anor Londo, The Duke's Archives and New-Londo ruins again I've since completed the game many, many times, but that first playthrough was unlike anything else, barring maybe fear & hunger 1 I struggled with many of the bosses, but found navigation the hardest part of my first playthrough by FAR

At the 21:00 minute mark when hes talking about Skyrim. I never thought it was to much freedom that stopped most people from finishing the main story of skyrim. I always thought it was how boring the main quest is in Bethesda games. Witcher 3,Cyberpunk even New vegas offer tons of freedom but people love their main quests. I dunno maybe im crazy.

Dude why the sudden influx of about 200 dark souls retrospectives

I disagree that the lore and story are an excuse/backdrop or not as important for most players as while it may seem as such in the beginning channels like vatti or smoughtown wouldn't be as popular today the lore hunting aspect of just every fromsoft game is an essential component of their game as in later entries just having items or finding new small areas with no gamepla value is used as rewards for exploration. The style of story telling is a direct result of miazaki's childhood experiences of reading books out of reading range and would have to fill in the gaps with his imagination to understand that is these stories sre so cryptic in the first place(also every game directed by miyazak,he personally writes every single item description and npc dialouge in the games to keep just the right amount of vaugness),he has stated the story and lore to be optional to amount degree they are in fromsoft games is because miyazaki belives in letting players choose to engage with them or not and not come in the way of the gameplay experience,But if you choose to dive in yourself without relying on youtube videos and just your own effort or watching lore videos you will realise fromsofts worlds are some of the most deep,unique and rich worlds in video game history, honestly if you search the internet you will realise pretty soon that the reason people came back to play future fromsoft titles is mostly for their world and level design with bosses and diffculty as a cherry on top

The online of these souls games are an unique experience.

I'm surprisingly not seeing this is the comments so I'll leave this myself. Your issues with Capra Demon and dodging Manus's magic both have a shared solution. Know when to drop your lock on. In both circumstances this is hurting way more than it's helping. In Capra's arena its limiting your movements more in an already restricted space. In the Manus fights when he casts the ring you can turn to face the ring and roll forward through it much more consistently than trying to back roll into something you can't see. Lock on can be a strong tool when it is helpful but leaning on it all the time is a detriment to your performance.

Some of your problems regarding exploration are solved through the online message system. You'd know you can and should go on top of the Anor Londo ledge thing to progress from other people trying to help you. You'd know you shouldn't jump into the abyss (even after completely missing all the dialogue regarding it) through messages like "need covenant" or "need item". Time in Lordran is convoluted. Legends appear and disappear left and right, and you are not meant to undertake this journey alone. Chat fulfilled that role for you though, so you didn't exactly play the game in an unintended way. Admittedly, the catacombs path is a problem, but the darkness after pinwheel is a huge deterrent for early levels, so the "strong enemy, turn back" rule still applies.

Dark Souls is a old now as Ocarina of Time was when Dark Souls released.

bloodborneeeeeeeeee nexxxxt

I just beat it this week after trying for off and on for 2 years. It’s literally a bucket list accomplishment for me. Moving on to 2 now and I am 😢

Only had true fun with DS1 after 10 years and after DS3 Bloodborne and Elden Ring specially because it was simpler and less convoluted, same can be said about demon souls for me.

In every game every save file is unavoidably a its own timeline, its own alternate reality -- possibly very similar, possibly completely different with a totally different dragonborn, pair of source hunters, family of sims, or even whole different world to mine. Like many other things usually written off as just being a game, Dark Souls works this into the lore with its stagnant and convoluted multi-dimensional time and parallel worlds, mixing in the rationale for its multiplayer aspects.

Dark souls is the gaming equivalent of a James Joyce novel. It’s the finnegans wake of videogames

2nd comment but oh well. I think given your opinions at the very end of the game, then i have to ask if youve played more than just the original dark souls and dark souls 2 which you mentioned in the video. Basically you seem like you played it, didnt like a lot of how things are presented or done (much of which is your own fault i.e. at lesst 3 characters tell you about the abyss and how to navigate it) and that means you dont like it. Im not going to spout "get gud" but in this case it's not a skill issue, it's a skill set issue. Not everyone is designed for every game as they dont have the inquisitive nature, attention to detail, and willingness to listen to what the game is telling you, coupled with perseverance and reaction and patern recognition, and thats fine. Overall, i disagree with many of your opinions.

I feel like a lot of your criticisms come from a personal preference, which you do state at some points. This mostly is about your opinions on the multi-player features, but i think the fact that ghosts, bloodstains, and messages are virtually unchanged to this day and are to many people (myself included) a fundamental part of the world, indicates that they are a good part of the game, and you "getting distracted" by ghosts is much more of a personal issue, and that is why offline mode is great. If you dont want the online features, they are optional, and very easy to turn off. To use those systems which are almost universally loved (at least in my experience, i have never heard anyone else voice the same opinion of dislike for them) as a criticism of the game feels more like a nitpick from a preference stance, not a game criticism. Overall i liked the video a lot, but it definitely does feel like a video from the side of someone who is on the periphery of the community yelling into the center, as most of what i agree with has been hashed out well before now by others, and a lot of your unique takes i would consider to fall under the "hot takes" category

also i think the "you were taken by the abyss" text WAS supposed to appear when you died while dropping into the 4 kings, but there's some bug in the code where the game treats it as fall damage because they wanted there to be a kill plane there so that you wouldn't get spoiled on the boss fight before you were actually able to fight them. it's silly to even need the ring without it being elaborated by anyone in the game, it would make more sense if the abyss just did constant damage or something. four kings and the covenant of artorias is DS1's version of DS2's "you need to burn the metal windmill to drain the poison from the boss room" of earthen peak and the medusa lady, or DS3's greirat getting killed in his trip to irithyll, like realistically there's just no way to know, you're probably not doing it without a guide. i think the games were 100% made with internet guides taken into account, they wanted it to be a communal experience for us, the proverbial "single player multiplayer game" similar to how pokemon was when we were kids, they wanted people to get stuck and ask their friends so they could have more people tapping into the community aspect and sharing the experience with their friends, because ain't no way they're expecting a grown man with a 9-5 job to be spending dozens of hours reading item descriptions until he figures out the one obscure item that lets him survive an otherwise lethal fall, after just intuiting that a mandatory boss fight is down there because of the fog gate, people talk about reaching the painted world being contrived, but at least crestfallen warrior tells you about the bird carrying someone, you came here on a bird, you can see the bird's nest, you can see the path to get there, and then again there's a whole room where everyone is called a "painting guardian" and there's a giant painting they're guarding, it's reasonable to not have been back to the asylum by that point, but even then, you know the painting is there when you get the doll and read about a "cold and lonely painted world", this must be the key, that's 100% reasonable for someone to find that organically. or even the DLC, people think that's obscure, there's a giant blue golem sitting in the corner on time out in the duke's archives, it's not particularly subtle, maybe freeing dusk is a little subtle? but again, if you turn your camera to see what part of the lake is walkable, it's pretty clear that there's a path going to the back, it's totally reasonable for someone to find the DLC by themselves. but the ring dropped by the dog in darkeoot garden, it was his covenant with the abyss, that must stop me from dying to this lethal drop, how does that even make sense, 100% of people were either told about it or just googled it. not cool to have a mandatory boss hidden behind a random lock and key that bear very little outward relation to each other

imo they should've either ditched the golden fog walls entirely and given you a "primal bonfire" like DS2 that just teleports you back to firelink at every lord soul, or just put the golden fog wall at the doorway just before the catacombs opens up, not in the entrance to the second area in tomb of giants, it is unreasonable to punish players with having to climb out of the tomb of giants without a light source, where if you die to a bonewheel, or at any point before reaching basically the top of the catacombs, you have to climb out of tomb of giants again (assuming you haven't found vamos's bonfire, or are playing the non-remaster where he doesn't even have a bonfire) that is just a ridiculously punishing consequence for the crime of exploration, can you imagine being cursed, misremembering what the dialogue said about a healer in new londo, and trying to find the cure in the catacombs only to get stuck in the tomb of the giants while still cursed, like just think about that for a second, it's something the game just lets you stumble into, i would not fault anyone for quitting the game at that point, and that just sucks

Regarding taking the wrong path at ~1:40:00... I got to the very end of Ash Lake before realizing I would have to drag myself back up the Great Hollow because I hadn't gotten the Lordvessel yet ("Thanks, Reddit. What the hell is a Lordvessel?"). It was a moment of deep disappointment, but I did it, and I felt proud. This was on probably my third attempt after getting overwhelmed by the game a couple times and needing a months-long break. Not a "good" experience, but from what I've seen online a fairly common one, and these are my favorite games by far now.

I didn't get stuck on the graveyard onwards, but I did get frustrated with the big painting in anor londo. I could see right away that it was important, but the steps required to make it usable are so eldritch that only someone using a guide or chat can actually access it. To a lesser degree fighting Black Kalameet as well - I didn't meet Gough until my 3rd playthrough

No critique needed, thanks though.

This is an excellent video. By far the strongest parts are when you talk about the aspects of the game you felt missed the mark, back them up with gameplay examples, and explain how changing them would affect the overall experience for the better, ESPECIALLY the instances when you give your own suggestions on how things could have been different (you should lean into this even more by more thoroughly explaining why you think your suggestions would work). I have close to 600hrs in Dark Souls 1, it's one of if not my favorite game of all time and so youtube recommends me lots of "Big Ol Dark Souls videos" and I give all of them a chance. Most tend to be lazy retrospectives basically reading wiki pages with no actual original critique or analysis, but yours is a cut above. I don't agree with all your opinions, but all of them are argued in good faith and backed up with reasoning. Thank YOU for bringing something fresh to the DS discourse your perspective as a relatively new player was refreshing!

Hooray time to watch my 26th dark souls 1 retrospective 😃

It’s a survivor adventure combat game. The difficulty in DS1 is not about the bosses but the minute to minute feeling of being a fly in the world of dragons through clever QOL adjustments and intentionally obscure game mechanics like 4 types of upgrade materials. It embraces complexity at the risk of turning away players. It makes me feel like the world is not catered for me personally which is something I can’t say for their later games.

This feels to me like a classic case of someone trying to bend the game after their will instead of actually adjusting yourself to it instead. You don't notice how the window is open in Anor Londo because you don't look, your own personal expectations are blatant in this critique as your abhorrently subjective opinion about what's flawed and what isn't is exclusively about what you personally like better. About online elements: again your own personal opinion about what you believe is their reasoning. They are all explained in-game with reasons, so the fact that you state that these mechanics don't play to the game's strength is nothing but a personal opinion out of ignorance. It's like you don't know anything about the lore, yet feel like you have a firm grasp of what's good and bad. You explain everything you don't like as artificial difficulty or flawed (without reasoning). About the manus fight: Cheesing a boss mechanic is not the same as avoiding damage by utilizing openings in their attack hitboxes, what are you on about? Do you think having a counter-mechanic AS WELL AS a way to avoid the dmg without it is them "phoning it in"?

I never made it all the way to Nito's molten cheese wall early, but I definitely did bash my head against the skeletons for a while, thinking "this must be the incredible difficulty everybody talks about". In fact, I've had many moments in later From games where I'd NOT turn back from an insurmountable enemy, only to later find out I had missed a crucial piece of info or item that would have made it much easier. I don't like this phenomenon at all, but it's also not really the game's fault, but more a result of the (in my opinion misguided) discourse around the series. The difficulty is THE one thing overshadowing everything else when this series gets talked about, when it can be so much more than that. As an aside, the idea that the skeletons are probably meant to convey, is that if some enemy is too hard, try somewhere else. Something like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy have used to guide their players. In those games that wipes you in a few hits is a clear message that you are wrong here, but Dark Souls, thanks to the stupid "prepare to die" marketing can't convey that message as clearly as it wants to. I also think it scares off people who would actually enjoy the games and breeds some very unhealthy discourse, but I could rant endlessly about this and its community, so I'd rather not. I love the first Dark Souls btw, which might not be clear from the above. The exploration and the looping world design is my favorite thing about itr, with the difficulty being largely an afterthought.