this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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Mmm, I feel like under heavy time constraints like that, there are worse barriers than difficulty to a game's experience. For example, it's hard to appreciate a narrative and big reveals when you're spreading your play out so much that it's hard to remember who characters are. It's also hard to enjoy exploring a large space, and feeling like you've covered it well.
Elden Ring, for example, is a massive game. I soared through Elden Ring, as I played the whole franchise (besides what's locked to PlayStation) first, and happened to stumble into an extremely powerful build. The game still took me 140 hours, including the DLC.
I also still don't think it's an accessibility constraint. I'd totally understand why you don't want to commit to a 150hr experience when you're playing less than 3hrs a week, you'd be stuck on it for a whole year. But learning over time in little pieces is totally viable. Stuff like muscle memory and skill sticks with you, I could put down Souls for the next few years and when I came back I'd still be much better at it than when I first sat down.
Also, I actually find small time slots one of the best ways to conquer a tough challenge. When I get hard stuck, like I did on the final boss of the ER DLC, I chose to play like, 20 minutes of attempts a night, and then go to bed and sleep on it. We know from academia that studying something right before you sleep helps, since your brain can lock that fresh experience into memory better. You're also starting each attempt "fresh", in that you aren't already frustrated and annoyed by the boss. And this worked great, it took a boss that I couldn't beat with a whole free evening, and I beat it after only a few days. It's a technique I've used repeatedly.
All that to say, I don't think difficulty is the best reason to not play a Souls game while working 70+ hour weeks. And I don't think it's exclusive to Souls, I'd also avoid story-heavy JRPGs, and massive open worlds in general. Not that you couldn't sacrifice the time to play any of those things, but frankly, I'd recommend a game that's better consumed in bits and pieces, such as GotY nominee Balatro, a competitive multiplayer game with constrained matches, or a roguelike experience such as Hades. And that's not that odd, I also wouldn't recommend reading an epic novel like Dune, or trying to binge Game of Thrones or something.
My honest take on your story, is that I'm really glad Souls didn't have an easy mode for you at that time. As you say, you prefer games with high difficulty now. I would hate for you to have played a compromised version of what From Software carefully designed here, when the intended experience ultimately really worked for you. It's the same reason I avoid trailers for games I know I want to play, that is, if you would've even came back to replay a game you'd already "beaten".
In other comments, I've already talked about my friend who only played games on easy before playing Souls, which made him realize how much he enjoyed hard games and the rest of beating a tough challenge. He fell in love with the experience From Software set out to make. If DS1 had had an easy mode at that time, I'm not sure he would've ever learned that about himself, because he would've played it on easy. He might've enjoyed the art, and the visual design of the creatures, but it's only because From Software had the confidence to assert their intended vision that it's his favourite game and franchise ever made.
Your first point about spreading out the narrative in such a way... that is how most media worked until very recently. I grew up waiting upwards of months for the next installment, if those are large installments, years. Also, Elden ring came out after I stopped working those hours, I am mostly having this experience, in terms of Fromsoft games, with Demon's Souls - Sekiro, but that doesn't change the argument, just putting up my time frame.
I am more likely to not retain the patterns of attack, etc., when I have to break it up, in such a fashion, unlike the experience of seeing the new things, and partaking in the world, and its lore.
The reason I was unable to get through the souls games was that I had time to learn things like the attack patterns of the monsters, or time to experience the world and its lore in a way the memorization part was getting in the way of. When I learned something, and returned to it weeks later, I had to relearn a lot of the rote aspects of the game play. This blocks access to me experiencing the art, and lore, which is more important to me, in such games, than the mechanics of it. So, yes, I lost access.
Having now played the games, I do not wish it had this barrier back then, as I still would have preferred to experienced and easier version, so that I could participate in the larger zeitgeist, of the pop culture of the time, and then got to enjoy it how it is, now that I have time. Let me repeat that, I would have preferred to have had an easy mode, back when it was new, to experience my preferred part, when it was most culturally relevant. Now that I have played them, I STILL would have preferred that, even if I never got to experience it otherwise.
You are basically telling me how YOU would prefer to do something, and you are glad I had to conform to YOUR preferences. Meanwhile, having the option for and easier mode, would not have changed YOUR experience at all, unless YOU choose to. While my suggestion would not have affected your experience, it would have allowed me to have experienced the games when they was at their relevance peak. Meanwhile, what you ask for affects me in a negative way. To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you don't need to make, or experience?
Ok, hang on. I replied to this initially while annoyed, and blew past some of the key points. But I do actually want to talk about the whole "participating in the zeitgeist" thing.
A large part of the reasons Dark Souls doesn't have difficulties is to create that social element. Gonna stick with Elden Ring for my examples here, because I missed most of the online discussion around Sekiro. But from what I saw, the majority of the discussion online was about how hard certain bosses were, shared experiences like getting your ass kicked by Tree Sentinel, or Margit "putting your foolish ambitions to rest". If Elden Ring really did have an easy mode, that was easy enough for someone to beat the game without "learning the attack patterns of the monsters", and to keep up with the diehard playerbase while working 70+ hour work weeks, would they really have felt included in those conversations? Would they have been able to share the excitement at beating a boss that they struggled with for hours, without actually struggling for that time? There's an intentional design decision here. To quote Miyazaki from when Sekiro released:
If all you really wanted was to just... experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube let's play or something as well. The ultimate easy mode, with a defined length of how long it will take. But if you wanted to commiserate about tough challenges and the experience you went through, then you kinda need to actually have that experience.
I'll also add, that stuff doesn't go away. I was excited by the hype around Elden Ring too. It's what pushed me to start Dark Souls 1, and then play 2, 3, Sekiro, and finally Elden Ring. I missed the initial hype around all of those games, but that cultural stuff is still there. I built up a youtube playlist while playing each game and once I finished them I would catch up on Illusory Wall, Zullie the Witch, Vaati, and challenge runs and Lockout Bingos from the likes of Lil' Aggy or Ymfah. My friends were also excited to see me play the games. I may not have experienced the Anor Londo archers until years after they did, but it was still fun to talk to them about it, and they were excited to reminisce and replay the game alongside me.
I eventually did get to participate in the fun that was Shadow of the Erdtree releasing soon after I beat Elden Ring. And that was great, and special. It was fun to see that final boss get nerfed soon after I beat it, for example. I do feel sorry that you missed the moment of Sekiro releasing. But ultimately I don't think your anecdotal experience is more important than say, my friend who always picked easy and didn't realize how much he loved a tough challenge. Or any of the "Dark Souls saved my life" people, who might've picked easy if it was offered and not had that experience. Or the designers at From Software who worked hard to create something special and have the right to not offer a way to half-ass it and "fragment the user base".
Skill issue on FromSoft's part, and I say that as someone who has been a fan of their games longer than most people in this thread - more than a decade before even Demon's Souls. Their original talent was always in detailed, immersive world design. Their gameplay was unpolished and experimental, but that's something I liked about them. They got a smash hit with Demon's and Dark Souls and made a hard pivot towards iterating on that formula. They still embrace their roots as a studio focused on detailed world building, but they're trying to move more towards action and encounter design to cater to Souls fans. Where once they were highly experimental, now they seem afraid to try anything different.
A better studio could find a way for players to share that struggle and triumph while still allowing players of different skill levels to enjoy everything the game has to offer. That studio would be Supergiant with Hades' God Mode option, which slowly gives more damage resistance each time you die so the player still struggles and gets better until the handicap and their improving skill meet in the middle. In the context of Souls, this could be separate for each boss. Or another entirely different approach could be taken. The point is merely that there are ways for players of different skill levels to still share in the same struggles, FromSoft is just unwilling or incapable of finding them.
So as a longtime FromSoft fan, I think they're the ones who need to git gud.
Fair point! I actually love this suggestion, rethinking more ways to make the game easier without breaking the core experience.
I don't think From Soft is totally languishing in this department, the games include an increasing amount of ways to make the game easier, such as Elden Ring introducing summons, an open world you can tackle in any order (although this falls off post-Morgott, as does the game overall imo).
But you're right, I'd love to see them potentially dabble with things like dynamic difficulty to create something that simultaneously better challenges experienced veterans and eases the ride for newer players. Or at least something to keep bosses you missed in the open world format somewhat interesting when you find them later. I don't think they're done iterating here, and I expect them to continue to improve at accommodating more players, without violating their other design goals.
I also agree there's some worrying trends in the design, as From Soft struggles to find ways to challenge their most diehard fans. Malenia's waterfowl dance, for example, which requires odd specific movement to dodge that's impractical to learn organically. Or her moves where she simply cannot be staggered, breaking expectations in a confusing way. In general as well, the games have trended towards being faster and requiring more "reactionary" play, and I do miss the more methodical combat of DS1, when the game was much less twitchy and more about carefully planning your moves.
I'm not sure I agree that From Soft has stopped being experimental though, Sekiro was a complete departure right before Elden Ring, as was returning to Armored Core for the first time in a decade right after. Elden Ring also dabbles in an interesting blend of mechanics. Transitioning to an Open World is a massive and obvious one, but I'm also happy to see powerstancing back, interesting new weapon arts, the physick flask is a great new system, horseback combat on Torrent, and stuff like charged attacks and posture similar to Sekiro. Not perfect, by any means, I actually find the balancing of this wealth of mechanics and build options to be pretty shaky, but it's far from a boring +1 iteration that doesn't try anything.
I see why you'd say they're still experimenting - and they are within the confines of the souls formula. They definitely aren't making carbon copies of past games. But, compared to the crazy variety and wild mechanics in their back catalog, the souls formula is pretty narrow. They've got a card battler, an adventure game series, a co-op puzzle platformer, and more in their portfolio. Demon's Souls itself was a huge experiment: souls, messages, and invasions into a mostly single player experience were completely novel and even weird. Let's not forget about world tendency, (even if we want to).
FromSoft was always like that: a bunch of totally random ideas you'd never seen before with enough good, bad, and weird to go around. The changes they make today are comparatively tame. Imagine if the next soulslike game did away with the entire magic system and instead you craft your own spells from elements (Eternal Ring). Or if they did away with respawns and overhauled the entire leveling system in Bloodborne like they did when trying to give Shadow Tower its own identity separate from King's Field. They were wild, but that's what gave the world soulslikes in the first place.
I understand why they play it safe. Honestly, they don't have a choice. It comes with the budget. So I really don't begrudge them the lack of experimentation too much. But I do find it sad because it's our loss. They could do better, and who knows what other stuff they might have come up with if they were truly free to experiment the way they used to. What I really wish is for them and other devs to just make smaller games with smaller budgets. Still make the AAA games, just set aside a small amount to experiment with and try new things too. That way we keep learning, discovering, and innovating. We'd all have better games for it.