i like d* souls more than most zeldas if ur gonna make that comparison
what ben hurr is saying is fair enough and im trying to rein in my fanboy impulses a bit and make it clear that im only speaking for myself.
that said, to me most of the negative points i've heard are either subjectively wrong (level of punishment, presence of exploits being ruining the games) or they're just kinda insignificant compared to the massive enjoyment i got out of d* souls (generally any criticisms re: lack of polish).
the thing tho is, if i really like the good parts of a game i'm willing to endure a lot of bad shit, and the souls games don't even have a lot of that by my standards. i mean, i like dwarf fortress and stalker and gams like that, which are janky on a level d* souls can't even touch with a 50 foot pole. i can definitely understand if people are put off by the games' faults tho.
Oh thank goodness someone gets it.
And may god rest Zelda's soul.
But okay, the only thing I can kinda get behind from J-Snake is how earlier he mentioned that most of the games encounteres are set up like puzzles; because they are.
Take the Catacombs for example.
Depending on when and how you approach the place it can be excruciating. The main problem is that the skeletons are tough
and fast, and resurrect quickly if their necromancer masters are still alive, so chances are if you try to use the same approach you've been using for the rest of the game you'll be swamped and killed mercilessly over and over. So the puzzle is how to get through this despite enemies being lethal and not staying dead... and the game provides a surprising amount of options to you if you pay attention.
The straight-forward approach is to use any weapon with a divine property to ignore the skeletons regeneration in the first place. The game provides this clue in quite a few places.
You can be sneaky, and snipe most of the necromancers with regular/poison/magic projectiles, removing the skeletons regeneration.
You can be Solid Snake and slip by them; most of the skeletons seem to have trouble detecting you with both the Ring of Fog and Slumbering Dragoncrest Rings on, or using their equivalent spells.
You can also circumvent the skeletons regeneration directly without divine weapons; regeneration does no good if you kick or smash the them into places they can't get you, like in the many pits and cliffs throughout the area. It takes awhile to do, though.
Or you can try just skipping most of the level, since you can jump down to the 2nd bonfire after fighting to the first flippable bridge, and from there jump from the 2nd flippable bridge to the bottom.
Or, the most easy approach, simply come back when you're so powerful you can simply
overpower the skeletons and kill all the necromancers that way. Like with pyromancy.
And that is just one area, and only the strategies I've personally tried. There is probably more ways to do it!
yeah i think the thing is that people have a lot of different preferences so with a game like dark souls that hits a lot of different points in varying qualities, preferences are going to clash
Yeah I know, and it seems like when alot of D*s fans clash things get ugly really hard and really fast.
I can only feel bad for the developers, because no matter what they do in terms of a sequel or patches they're practically guaranteed to have a ton of fans jump down their throats.