Bloodborne Is Genius, And Here's Why

[@laurenbastin8849]

Bloodborne is second only to muppets Christmas carol in its depiction of victorian dystopia

[@misteryA555]

You. You have big brain

[@biga9144]

Puppets x bloodborne?

[@eziospaghettiauditore8369]

I would say number one since it gets the accent range down perfectly

[@WorldsUnhealthiestFitPerson]

I think you just explained why someone I used to know was *OBSESSED* with both of these things. It was so irritating.

[@Lucifersfursona]

This is the best thing I’ve read all day thank you very much I wasn’t a muppets kid but guess who’s gonna be a muppets adult

[@Sigma-xb6kn]

You mentioned that the sound design is really good. I am happy to announce that it was personally made by Tommy Tallarico in collaboration with Hideo Miyazaki. In fact Tommy inspired the development of Bloodborne as well as Elden Ring. His mother is very proud.

[@matthewpinn4]

It was actually so cool tommy just sat down one day and started making sfx when George RR Martin burst into the room to beg to write a story about fingers

[@stalfithrildi5366]

​@@matthewpinn4its true I was three of the fingers

[@angusmcmillain]

He won an eigth Guiness world record for his work on the game. Also, he's the one who suggested the idea of a "hard sword game" to Hidetake Miyazaki in 2007, just after rewatching his MTV "Cribs" episode. Actually, well he was at it, he made the sword-swing sound effect--and therefore wants 100 Million Billion Trillion dollars from the game. Similar thing with Tony Hawks. The real Tony Hawks. Tommy made his skateboard grinding sound effect.

[@clam6254]

i heard he held hands with shigero miyamoto while making it, but the problem was that, at night, he needed to go to the bathroom

[@lime_cat13]

Tommys sources are just:trust me bro

[@dasninjastix]

What people seem to misinterpret about the blood vials is that they're intentionally inferior to the estus flasks as a means of communicating to the player what it (really) is to be a Hunter. Hunters are blood-addicted and they're continually driven to be more and more aggressive as they consume more blood. How do we (mainly) acquire blood vials in the game? You have to kill enemies. If you skip past them.. you aren't being very hunter-like are you? The game is imparting what it is to be a Hunter, a blood-craving killer. What's the other way we heal in the game? Rallying. How do we rally? We attack after taking damage.. like a blood addled lunatic that we're becoming. It's fine to dislike finite consumable healing, I understand that. But people discount the story-telling implications of the mechanic in relation to the narrative. This was an intentional choice to imprint upon the player what it is to be a Hunter. You're constantly scouring for blood and killing to do so because that's what a Hunter is - a violent addict. The more you fail the more you need to kill. The better you are the less blood you need, almost like you're one of the Hunters in the game that manages a modicum of self-control. So the better you can control your character (literally) the more "in control" you are of their addiction. You're not farming vials. You're murdering people for your drug. You're a Hunter. And Hunters "hunt".

[@Ruby-eq1qg]

Totally agree! The game is good at imbuing you with the hunter mentality. It did this to me another way that i thought was cool (SPOILER AHEAD). Don’t wanna spoil everything but essentially in the end, you have a choice between a final boss fight, or just end the game to get a “good” ending. By the end of the game, i thought the “good” ending was a cop out because there’s no fight involved. Why would i do that?? It’s not very hunter-like! It’s directly pointed out that you’ve gone mad but it wasn’t till a day after i beat the game where i realized how i became like the other crazed hunters in the game (that I even slayed sometimes). I really wanted to keep fighting! Escaping the nightmare didn’t call to me anymore; blood did. You’re dropped in a world where you fight beasts to rid them from a poor town and end the night, only to end it as a blood crazed hunter. You’re not fighting for anyone or anything but yourself. You’ve gone mad.

[@davejacob5208]

the need to farm healing-items (notably: NOT possible in every location, I constantly travel back to the first area - talking about how the first souls-games where bad due to backtracking...) totally ruined the experience for me, and even if it was not as bad, making a game less fun for the sake of narrative is at best a questionable choice, at least based on Hbomberguys argumentative framework where the "right way to play" is about how to have more fun with the game.

[@normalguycap]

A load of fanboy claptrap. Even Miyazaki is shaking his head going, it's not that deep.

[@lunabowman4881]

I have played this game over like 10 times and in lore sure, fine. In GAMEPLAY, no. Its a bad mechanic through and through, having to farm for blood viles is just tedious and an unrewarding experience. Estus flasks are a better gameplay mechanic by far. (and bloodborne is my favorite in the series by far not even close)

[@blicleak1101]

@@normalguycap These games are so deep you would have no idea my guy.

[@garretthaslam3869]

Darksouls takes the “let the kid touch the stove” approach to player teaching.

[@poprocks6576]

And the burn is your time and ego

[@finnorourke4861]

pop rocks dark souls got me to doubt my abilities so much, that I was scared to face pinwheel because I thought I would die to him. The amount of relief I got when I took about 1/8th of his health with every hit made my day.

[@deakkristof1818]

I did touch a stove, and clothing iron at one point in my life, and also love every souls game, so you might be onto something.

[@marygreenway485]

@@deakkristof1818 I was the kid who said, "I won't touch the stove, that sounds like a bad idea and the fact that nobody wants me to might be a sign" and I'm the kid who quit out on Dark Souls in the Undead Burg to just watch other people instead. So OP is definitely on to something.

[@nothajzl]

I think that might be the reason why i love it. I played DS3 for the first time (a year ago) without any knowledge as to how to play it. That resulted in spending a couple hours in first location (the high wall of Lothric) hahah, but i loved it non the less.

[@leof6482]

Giving gascoignes daughter her dead sisters bloody white bow is a moment I'll never forget, the way she started crying I genuinely felt so bad, I turn away to go about my travels and I start to hear her laughing saying how pretty it is and that it's all hers, i stood in disbelief for about 15 minutes. Sent chills up my spine

[@thejokercjdr]

That's one of the most unnerving encounters in the whole game. Worst of all is the fact that it doesn't activate until the Blood Moon is revealed, which causes the rest of the "normal" people in the city to basically vanish; it makes you wonder if that girl was really a person or something else. Something worse.

[@عمار-ج2خ]

@@thejokercjdr This is exactly why I don't play bloodborne much anymore. The world is too depressing to play in.

[@The.Reilly]

To make you more depressed, she gets eaten by the maneater boar in the sewer if you send her to Oeden Chapel.

[@Knight-Artorias]

"woeful child eventually beware of liar"

[@isaacckre741]

I felt the same, that's crazy actually.

[@bellewether4534]

I have a theory that bloodborne is more fun for newbies because the rally system engenders what i like to call "Mad Bastard Energy". Basically that insanely agressive "C'mon if you think you're 'ard enough" attitude you get in east London pubs on a match day. It' s seriously impressive.

[@mrsentencename7334]

This single comment just made me boot up my PS4

[@ahonyav6918]

This comment slaps

[@snrken]

you really did not have to explain it, but you did and that made it way funnier, thank you this was a great comment 🙏

[@shadowrosegaming3566]

YOU ARE SO RIGHT MY FRIEND

[@adxandrax4033]

Bruh, Bloodborne has way harder bosses than all Dark Souls and Sekiro.

[@alfred8936]

One time I was watching my friend play through this game for the first time, and he was fighting Ludwig. It was very difficult, but at one point Ludwig went for one of his big stage one forward attack sequences, and my friend just said "fuck it". He was pissed enough that he got aggressive and committed to a huge powered-up swing when he got an opening... And that's how he derailed Ludwig's whole attack and made him stagger by smacking him upside the face with a perfectly-timed Ludwig's Holy Blade. It was minor, but it may have been one of the coldest moments I've seen in a game in awhile. Bro really said "NUH UH" with a bigass sword.

[@zaidlacksalastname4905]

Playing these games with a strength build let's you do that all the time. It's really cool

[@AtelierMcMuttonArt]

A true "GOTCHA BITCH" moment straight out of Monster Hunter

[@rastas4766]

My favourite section of Bloodborne is when the Blood Moon rises, and you enter Yahar'gul. From the top of the area, you see all of the Amygdala's clutching to the buildings, and everything smeared with a red, bloody, hue. Arianna gives birth to a deformed celestial baby in the sewer, the old lady goes mad, Adella grins to herself creepily, the skeptical man grows silent, the Oeden Chapel Dweller wishes it to be over, the imposter Iosefka tries to ascend, and fails, the Yharnamites in their homes grow silent as the weight of the entire universe crushes their tiny minds. It's the part of the game, when you realise that it's all, much, much worse than you thought, and you're alone. It's the part of the game when I realised that everything was fucked.

[@MrKillerman47]

It was at that moment bloodborne transformed from Van Helsing with a dash of lovecraft to full Lovecraft.

[@orange-hatguy424]

Fuck

[@quantumtp5872]

That shit blew my mind after beating rom. Thought the game was over and i was like "Oh fuck this is just the tip" after seeing all the amygdalas EVERYWHERE

[@taitia8619]

Insight is one of the coolest mechanics of Bloodborne imo. Just that unadulterated fear of realizing that this entire time, you've been surrounded by monsters you couldn't see

[@julianpradarodriguez7336]

And you are the only chance of the town...

[@KonkaBass]

The irony of saying "what does a rhythm game have to do with a [Soulslike]" Then, a couple years later, in walks Sekiro

[@tsarXadam]

I've always felt that there were weird similarities between Souls and rhythym games, Sekiro is absolutely the most obvious expression of that. Both genres are all about flowing gameplay and pattern recognition.

[@bau9894]

soulsborne and other games that have similar combat has been always played like a rhythm game for me, its like a dance with how the flow of combat works

[@S_Vernhyde]

@@tsarXadam ah I can't remember the name of the video but there is a video about the study of the music of Souls games and shows that the music actually helps you time attacks and enemies (bosses specifically) move in time with their music and such and a very stand out boss feels so weird (the Dancer of the Boreal Valley) because they actually changed the pacing of the music. Most bosses have a normal 4 beat song but the dancer actually had a 3 beat song which is why it is so challenging, it fundamentally changes the pattern and timing you have built up

[@Nirual86]

@@S_Vernhyde and that is fully intentional, too. Its not like they randomly used that different beat like they forgot, you are fighting a Dancer, someone who is a master of rhythm. Otherwise I wouldn't even necessarily credit those games in particular for something that practically exists in every single game to some degree. Its also why I'd rather have a game playing at a steady 30 FPS than aiming for 60 with frequent dips. I might not be able to tell the difference just looking at the screen but I do notice if it throws off my timing.

[@therapturecorpsed5056]

@@Nirual86 In 2021 how are you struggling to hit 60 frames. I get mad when my computer drops below 144

[@iconic762]

The Yahar’gul area music is especially chilling when you realize it isn’t ambient, it gets louder when you get out of the Chapel and is coming from a certain direction, it is canonically what your character is hearing in game, there is a choir singing loudly somewhere in the village.

[@ASmartNameForMe]

When I realised that I shit myself. This game is terrifying

[@711_skiddlz]

Idk why but that place makes me actually panic, I always rush that part of the game

[@iconic762]

Bean Water probably because up until that point everything is a cakewalk but then all of the sudden everything bitch slaps you and then shoots blood spikes at you from a mile away or triple teams you with 3 different fighting styles.

[@711_skiddlz]

@@iconic762 No it isnt even that, ofc that sucks and I hate bell ringers with a passion, but the atmosphere is... unsettling to say the least. I was standing still and looking something up after clearing the area today, and idk why but I felt really uneasy and anxious.

[@iconic762]

Bean Water bell ringers are horrible, the only saving grace of the chalice dungeons is that their summons die when the woman dies. We don’t have that luxury in the main game.

[@tomyboy39]

I think something that doesn't get enough attention is how well Gascoigne is designed specifically to teach you how to use your tools properly. He has, until he turns into a monster, your weaponry, your move set, and he kicks the shit out of you cause he fights _super agressively_. He's a mirror image of what you have to be to win, until he turns monster.

[@nessie6899]

Gascoigne serves as a grim warning and introduction to your fate as a hunter. He’s a cautionary tale without telling you how to avoid it

[@plplplplplpl7336]

Or you can just cheese him by having him get stuck behind the gravestones and only need to dodge his bullets

[@themightymcb7310]

@@nessie6899 Not exactly. Hunters who dream can't succumb to beasthood. This is why the PC hunter can use things like beast blood pellets, the beast roar tool, the beast claw weapon, and beast's embrace rune without actually going feral. It's also why you can kill beasts all night long without so much as growing a single fang.

[@joaogomes9405]

I'd just like to know where the fuck he got his shotgun pistol that deals 50% of my hp in a single shot. Unless I have 50 bloodtinge and come packing bone marrow ash boosted heat, bullets tickle enemies and the blunderbuss pellets do even less, it's more like a soft massage to the enemies.

[@_holy__ghost]

@@joaogomes9405 your guns arent meant to do damage, theyre a parry tool

[@OldManGaribubee]

I think the part that you're missing is, in games like DMC, and even Zelda ocarina of time, you are not actually supposed to die. Death is a mechanic, but within the game universe u are not supposed to die, you are a hero fighting against death. Dark Souls games are different in that, you ARE supposed to die, its not just a game mechanic, but also part of the story. Death is part of ur story. I think this difference in philosophy illustrates the kind of games they are supposed to be and why dying in Dark Souls feels better than a game like DMC. I feel like if you died to the first enemy you encountered in DMC, you'd just drop the game lol.

[@aussiepuppet5250]

also just in general. The demographics are very different.

[@redwitch95]

Yeah, I think a game's attitudes towards death in gameplay are emblematic of three elements, 1) genre (horror games will kill you far more than action adventure games), 2) themes/atmosphere (a game about rebirth is a lot more likely to use literal or metaphorical death as part of its narrative), and 3) target demographic. LOZ is primarily targeted at kids, and kids need clear introductions to gameplay elements before you can go ham with it. I loved DQ9 and Pokemon Diamond/Pearl as a kid but I could never get past the final bosses because I hadn't quite grasped the gameplay. Both those games are cakewalks as an adult. But even in games targeted at adults, Uncharted isn't going to utilise death as a failure option the same way Fromsoft games will because their atmosphere, story, and power fantasies are so completely different.

[@shane8143]

😅 a mess I 3t.

[@snickleslovessosa]

idk i think dmc5 did that impossible first encounter really well with urien and it gives you a really cool reward if you actually beat him

[@billiecruz4399]

This is a cope post imo

[@maesenajera194]

As someone said in Steam: Dark Souls is about badass overpowered protagonists... except that you're no protagonist.

[@traehouston1141]

Pretty decent analogy right there if I say so my self.

[@Willie6785]

@El-ahrairah Yeah man, same. I always heard so much about how Dark Souls was "the hardest game ever" and stuff like that, only to finally get into the series (after playing bloodborne, no less) and realize they are challenging, yes, but the rules are pretty clear and it respects the player's intelligence and interest in exploring and reading info the game clearly provides. I could never compare it to those rage games like I Wanna Be The Guy and such. Even though DS doesn't do much hand-holding at all, it's not actively trying to frustrate and make a fool out of the player.

[@schonlingg.wunderbar2985]

What the fuck? Dude, words have fucking meaning.

[@kenjidev576]

Spammy action rpgs are not challenging? Nier Automata: Insane difficulty setting would like to disagree.

[@dragonheart967]

@El-ahrairah What he means is that no one really seems to understand what "protagonist" and "antagonist" even mean, and to quote a famous movie "I do not think that word means what you think it means". To explain further, the protagonist is the focusing character of a story. That is the person OR group that the story is focused on, as you are not limited to only one. An antagonist is the opposing force to the protagonist, and it can be either a person, a force, an obstacle to over come, or, really, anything. As an example, you can have the standard story, such as lets say, Superman, who is the protagonist, and whatever villain he's up against, the antagonist. You can have something like, lets say the newest thing out, FF7, because it's the freshest thing on my mind right now, in terms of a group being the protagonist, and Sephiroth the antagonist. Even Cast Away, Stars only a single man as the protagonist, and his struggle is survival, the antagonist is nature itself, or the struggle to survive. You could even have a story of a person struggling to overcome their own depression or any other mental illness one may suffer as a example as a single person being the protagonist and antagonist, struggling to fight themselves. So in that manner, the OPs comment comes of and just wrong, incorrect, because your character is the protagonist, you are the focus of the whole game, you are the central point in which the narrative follows. Same with midgetydeath, whose statement is also just incorrect, in that he literally gave the wrong description of what a protagonist and antagonist is, bringing it down to just "protagonists try to keep things the same, while the antagonist try to change things." So I guess the Fellowship in Lord of the Rings are the antagonist then because they are now trying to change the world by destroying the evil of Sauron? Does that make any sense? I apologize for the long post, but there was just a LOT wrong here.

[@crimsonbehemoth]

*Being handed a bowl of good soup* "This is missing something..." *Sticks gun into soup* "Now THIS is gourmet"

[@Pepper_Pip]

The best way to eat your soup :)

[@Malva597]

*slurps soup from gun*

[@whexgamer3780]

More like GOREmet amirite?

[@elderlybrunch4169]

Finally, some good fucking food

[@MrKeserian]

Now you're thinking like an American!

[@HJHunters]

That is such a brave way to pronounce “Gascoigne”

[@dickheadrecs]

HJHunters gascowagne: rhymes with lasagne

[@leavy]

gas-coin, the only way

[@MachineStalkerWolfie]

Gas-colone

[@TealWolf26]

Gas-qwaaaaah. It's the sound you make when you die to him over and over again.

[@namdupper]

He said it a weird way then said it the correct way 30 seconds later lol, he be trollin

[@redkingrauri3769]

Okay I know this is about Bloodborne but as an animator, that footage of Lords of the Fallen HURT ME. Every one of those swings was so methodical and slow but there was absolutely no weight behind them. The character standing upright and really only using the bare minimum of the rest of their body to take the swings, the fact the speed remained almost completely flat with little acceleration and no anticipation or overshoots. Good god. I HOPE that was the result of them having to rush the project before they could finish the attack animations because if someone thought that was acceptable then I do not want to see their portfolio.

[@cheezemonkeyeater]

The fact that Dark Souls kills you arbitrarily all the time also kinda rams home how only the undead - people who revive after dying - could do this job. It makes respawning - something that's always a non-diegetic thing in games - a core part of the story. This isn't something that makes the game great, it's just really interesting. "The developers didn't blame the player, they blamed the game. And then they fixed it." This design philosophy is something about this company that I really appreciate. Each game works to refine and improve upon the previous one. It doesn't say, "Well, we found something that works, let's stick with it.' It said, "Okay, we found something that works, how can we make it work better?" Not enough creators have this attitude.

[@ElijahFink]

“Bloodborne, the game about injecting yourself with increasing amounts of a dubious liquid, is itself a gateway drug” Just incredible

[@kayligillard2050]

How are there no comments

[@Nylspider]

Drink dat blood

[@ineedabetterpfp2485]

@@kayligillard2050 This is not a gateway comment.

[@kayligillard2050]

@@ineedabetterpfp2485 lmao im dead

[@kayligillard2050]

Bro you definitely win when it comes to the way to say that the comment wasn’t good enough to incline people to indulge more or do much more than give it a like, without saying so challenge.

[@Luraldir_Original]

"Any game that successfully makes you afraid of a quirky pavement is unquestionably a masterpiece".

[@alexsmith2910]

Yes. That is immersion and fear. l love it.

[@otoyoto7153]

Woah I read your comment literally as he said it

[@guntervanstraaten4562]

The item in front of the large gate with the troll on the other side banging it, you know you have truat issues when you go to get the item, hear the banging, be like yeah nope not falling for that😂

[@praiseit6848]

the dumbest thing said in the video!

[@augustwest5356]

Its brilliant and retarded all at once. Souls games are all about duality. Something can actually be great and awful at the same time in these games far more than any other. It sounds confused or confusing but it just works. Until it doesn't.

[@CardboardBungalow]

I never realized how you can tell mimics apart with the position of the chain on them in ds1 but I thought it was a really brilliant and subtle way to give you a chance to tell

[@cericat]

Yep and related, Demon's Souls always focused on studying your enemies to figure out the best way to deal with them especially the bosses (who usually have notable lacks in one area to work with ie Vanguard struggles to hit you if you're close enough so you can avoid a lot of its attacks easily or just incinerate it from a distance) while DS as a series seems more about learning the mechanics and how to work around them, more straight forward as a result but both games do reward observing things properly.

[@megapussi]

mimics also breathe lol theres a couple subtle differences

[@efu2046]

They also breathe if you look close enough

[@simmojosh71]

You can't just spam attack. *laughs in saw cleaver*

[@MediocritysMuse]

*Looks at every dark sword player in DS3* Hehe.

[@philippegagne9324]

Hermès From Quebec. But my french isn't why I messed up my spelling, I just casually screwed up one evening.

[@emmacoumbe8393]

Laughs in blades of mercy

[@geicogecko2048]

@@emmacoumbe8393 looking for this reply

[@brenofaria6968]

@the bathwater gave me hepatitis c q

[@snake4944]

'''Dodge the attack, hit them with the stick'' Thats it, this man just solved the entire souls series with one phrase, holy shit

[@deanersher4136]

Definitely doesn’t work in sekiro. As someone who took an actual year to leave the dark souls mindset, rolling in sekiro is rarely useful except for during the final boss

[@violetseren5169]

@@deanersher4136 That's why they said SOULS series. Sekiro is not a souls game, it doesn't even have stamina.

[@voicedrewxyz]

You can make everything sound this simple and bullshit if you word it like that

[@xdan-]

Sekiro says hi.

[@francescolombardi3438]

@@deanersher4136 "Block the attack, hit them with the stick"

[@SteamPaladin]

"Bloodborne is great, so lemme talk about other games for a half hour" I unironically love these videos

[@jejron8967]

Nightcoremoon lol yeah I completely forgot this was about bloodborne until about thirty minutes in when he finally started talking about shields and guns. Just a testament to how good the video was though

[@torqjustyn563]

The video was more about how blood borne affects the player and what it does to the player rather than being mostly about the game itself although he did extensively analyze this game just not a big in-depth review

[@dominicp9296]

Right I been skipping till the bloodborne parts lol

[@solomon9655]

This video essay is the Tim Rogers video essay of Bloodborne video essays.

[@joshuaDstarks]

it’s essentially the Abstract of the essay.

[@joshua.merrill]

One benefit I think blood vial farming has is that it pretty much forces you back to central Yarnham, where if you talk to NPCs, dialog changes as you progress through the story. But in general, I like the Estus mechanic more.

[@TheMrDewil]

And Elden Ring made it even better with defeating groups of enemies to get back charges, even though it only works in the overworld. But now that I think about it, I guess they just had to make it that way due to the open world nature of the game, otherwise it would've somewhat break the pace of exploration.

[@Zelyn]

every video i see about the mimics in dark souls they never mention that the mimics have a different look chain on the side showing that they are mimics, also if you look at them long enough they start to breath. I just feel like im going crazy when videos dont talk about the chain.

[@YTDariuS-my6dg]

You're fine. Unless there is another reason you might be insane.

[@Egalitariat-likesecretariat]

Don't worry dude, everyone is just stupid.

Thanks now I won’t die due to mimics

[@Zelyn]

@ yoooooooo thats yuuuup

[@Zelyn]

@@Egalitariat-likesecretariat TrUe OMEGALUL

[@aluminumcurtain]

I've had one game of bloodborne going since 2016 that I've been playing on and off over the years. Last time around I got right up to the final boss and stopped. Gonna have to get around to finishing it while I'm in quarantine. Edit: Finished it.

[@jimmu8689]

Terrence Eustache nice now do old hunters

[@aluminumcurtain]

@@jimmu8689 I already did actually. I got the goty edition so it came on disk.

[@SinHurr]

Bless

[@justindeyzel1543]

Now do it 22 more times

[@gametheus1306]

@@aluminumcurtain Awesome job! Now go for the chalices

[@jordanboyd1531]

“NPC’s can’t heal like you do” Bloody crow of Cainhurst: Evil laughing intensifies

[@lephoquebleu8302]

I hate that guy but I finally beat him I realized how good the battle was. It was so teeeense, and getting viscerals on him was so satisfying.

[@saiyaf5301]

@@lephoquebleu8302 I just spammed my blade of mercy and used old hunter's bone on him. It honestly felt like a DragonBall fight as we were teleporting everywhere XD

[@lephoquebleu8302]

@@saiyaf5301 I was fighting him to get the Blades of Mercy :( I just used Numbing Mist everytime I visceraled him hehe

[@saiyaf5301]

Le Phoque Bleu hahaha smart, first time I fought him was on NG+ (just beat him today), had to kill Eileen on NG :’)

[@justinfernandez3894]

Fuck that fight omg

[@nedus]

14 minutes into a 7 year old video, but the question “Is it possible to play a game wrong?” has a huge place in my heart. I always had a way of playing games, which was more of a grindy, slower, lore-focused playing method. My best friend was more of a middle-ground grinder-completionist-style player, which exacerbated my own style, and it caused us both to have a great time sharing RPG profiles with each other. However, when I met my wife, she was more of a “Story Games Only” type of player, and she preferred using walkthroughs. At the time, I could have died on the hill of “she isn’t struggling through the game enough, therefore she isn’t experiencing it correctly”, and we got into semi-fights about it where I felt like I was defending my whole way of living life. Eventually, though, we ended up playing Final Fantasy Lightning Returns together, which doesn’t really have a “grind” option to it, due to it being a completely timed game, and it kind of broke that habit for me. After that I had a much more profound appreciation for the amount of time that I had put into video games, but I was also kind of mad that I had even done it to begin with, and I realized that I was completely wrong about people “playing games incorrectly”. I give so much more respect to people who genuinely LIKE the games that they play, because I just want to be that person now. TL;DR: I don’t think there is any wrong way to play a game, even though I used to think that way.

[@Frogface91]

As someone with very limited time and a progressive muscle disorder, there's nothing I'm interested in less (from gaming) than challenging mechanics!

[@TimsGamesDoneHard]

This is a great point, but I would disagree a little bit. While I agree, if someone is having fun with a game, and other ways of playing the game isn't fun for them, then they are playing the game right. But I think this video brings up a good point about playing games wrong. There are times you may not be enjoying a game that much, but it could just be that you're approaching the game wrong and could be approaching it in a way that you enjoy. It really depends on the person

[@isenokami7810]

Wasn’t expecting Lightning Returns to come up in this comment section. Didn’t play beyond the opening myself: I was looking forward to it on a XIII marathon, but once I actually got there, that premise immediately gave me crippling time anxiety. I should give that another go someday. Then again, I’d probably want to replay XIII-2 first, and that is a very love-hate game for me. This is coming from someone who unironically enjoys XIII-1, but really, loving that game makes XIII-2 worse.

[@fortnight5677]

There IS a wrong way to play a game. It's not real life. They are designed and play tested, and the game is designed and tuned according to the feedback from the play tests. What is "wrong way?" anyways? We need to answer that first. A game is meant to be something, be it entertainment, thought provoking, challenging, to tell a story etc. If you are playing Dark Souls hiding behind your shield and sweating intensely as soon as you see a basic enemy, you are playing it the wrong way. Especially if you keep insisting on playing it the same way all the way through the end. At some point, you should naturally realize you are one shotting these basic enemies as you get stronger, so you naturally get bolder and more aggressive or more relaxed when confronted with normal enemies. Then you would start to dodge more and know what attacks stagger you etc. and start to trade blows when you feel like it. Same goes if you are playing Pyromancer and sitting far away and just locking on and hitting left click on your enemies. What the fuck are you playing? You are just playing a quick time event game at that point. Another example is Skyrim and sheer amount of people playing Sneak Archer. No, seriously. There are wrong ways to play games and average people is fucking stupid and toxic positivity is all over the place and we have tons of gamer dads who suck at games so they keep playing games like pussies. Mfers spam quick save on Skyrim and still afraid of dying so they play Sneak Archer, on normal difficulty. And sit on top of thousands of potions, not using or selling them but keeping them in case they need it until they fucking beat the game, and they repeat the same for 50 more playthroughs. There are wrong ways to play games, and tons of people play the games wrong. They do keep playing because we are in an era where "completionism," is encouraged both in game and by achievements and trophy hunting. People play some games literally to farm achievements and trophy hunting and it's literally a fucking chore. I have a friend who lost his shit trying to 100% achievement a game and his goal was to have 100% achievement on all of his Steam games. Why the fuck? He was raging and literally crying while trying to get an achievement in some random rogue like top-down game. He was not having fun at all, you can ask his desk which he smashed by his hands repeatedly, out of sheer hatred for the game while trying to get that achievement. A couple days later he gave up. He played the game the wrong way and got frustrated for no fucking reason. It's obsession with completionism and hoarding, and fear that you will die in a fucking video game. These issues alone make people wrong tons of multiple wrong ways. Even competition cause people to play the games the wrong way. I don't think Half Life is meant to be played like a speedrun competition where in any of speedrun video you don't even fucking understand what's going on while the speedrunner goes through walls and saves repeatedly to break some shit in the game and abuse mechanics or physics. Would you say it's okay to play Half Life like that? Would you say Half Life singleplayer story mode was created and designed with speedrunning competitions in mind? Are these speedrunners even playing the game? They are simply performing shit ton of pre-studied and pre-worked out and precisely calculated speedrun tricks to achieve faster times. This is basically the core of speedrunning, in order to achieve faster times you literally have to play the game the wrong way by breaking and abusing it. Compare it to shield-spear-slow-afraid players and sneak archers. They are not playing the game let alone playing it the wrong way, they are solely focused on beating the game as safely as possible rather than just having fun using all the other shit the game provided them. There is not a right way to play a game, but there are definetly wrong ways to play a game... It's like a game which presents you with good choices, with morally and ethically questionable / gray choices and bad choices. Right ways are all the good and gray choices. And the wrong ways are just fucking wrong. And then there are players choosing the gray options for all the wrong reasons.

[@redwitch95]

@@TimsGamesDoneHard I think using "right"/"wrong" isn't quite the right language here, though. It's more what approaches the game was *designed* for, what approaches the game can accommodate (but might occasionally clash with mechanics), and what approaches the game cannot accommodate.

[@terrab7835]

Bloodborne: Let's teach 'em how to dodge Sekiro: Bitches gotta parry.

[@vagg0065]

dark souls:use your shield!

[@indigocarrott5917]

Cringe bruh

[@vagg0065]

@@indigocarrott5917 its a joke dude

[@indigocarrott5917]

I know but it doesn’t work like that

[@vagg0065]

@@indigocarrott5917 i know that it doesnt work like that i just wanted to make a joke ok? can we end it here?

[@AnimeUmbreon]

I love how the Rally system feeds into the themes and story of Bloodborne. You are a hunter being consumed by the beast inside. Literally he who fights monsters becoming the monster. And the game encourages you to lash out at those who hurt you, to be more brutal and feral than the monsters you fight.

[@MrVoyeurific]

Funni gun

[@cjmars822]

I’ve never actually thought about it like that. Lash out at those who hurt you, be more feral than they are … simple and brilliant

[@jeremylayman3684]

There's also beast blood pellets to grow on that analogy. A medicine to bring out your beast even more.

[@firelightning5018]

I kind of had a similar impression, "bathed in the blood of your enemies". As in the hunter feeds of the blood both literally (he is literally cover in the blood and consumes it) and metaphorical (he enjoys the scent/taste/feel of blood).

[@Nanook128]

​@freedomofspeechenjoyer5443I hope you grow into a better person

[@hydrophobic5851]

"In souls games you develop a natural feeling for when to attack" Margit the fell omen "hold my cane"

[@user-iz2ik3gh2n]

What's really great is that the delay on those attacks is another attempt by the devs to build on the gameplay from previous games. Margit's delayed attacks are all tests of positioning and confidence. His big overhead cane will always allow 1-2 fully charged heavies and not even hit you if you're on his left leg. Even if you don't have him memorized, you're encouraged to just poke him a few times and roll when he starts moving. There's no window to attack him after the big attack specifically because the attack itself was the window for attack.

[@teiyaga4811]

He does hold it indeed

[@MiorAkif]

@@teiyaga4811 Indefinitely even, at times

[@skepticpunk_]

Maliketh: lol, lmao

[@QuilloManar]

More like, Margit the Fell Omen: "Hold my... ... ... CANE!"

[@bass-dc9175]

On many points I agree, but the core part of the more "Fun" way to play previous Souls games: I vehemently disagree. For example the part where you introduce how Dark Souls gives you the shield and the play conditioning linked to it. That isn't really an objective lesson the game teaches you. One could rearange the narrative to do this. Here let me try: _"First you get a very crappy weapon and fight some zombies. Okay, then you enter a room and a huge boss shows up with your main option being to run away. Shortly afterwards you get a shield with a ranged opponent, teaching you that against smallfry and ranged opponents: The shield is a good way to go."_ So far so similar. But now watch this: _"So the game taught you that if you pick something up, it is generally more usefull than what you previously had. And afterwards you encounter many enemies and find your weapon. This is introduced as an upgrade to your shield. It is introduced to be better than the shield. It even teaches you to two-hand the weapon for more power! And to emphasise this: You mow down the enemies and perform a plunging attack that carves out a huge chunk of the bosses health, thus showing that the weapon is better than the shield."_ See how this narrative got turned around? And I want to emphasise: My made up lesson also is not correct. Dark Souls neither teaches you to hide behind the shield, nor to go agressive. It gives you both, shows the uses of it and then lets you decide. Not just that: There are more than one ways to use a shield. To give an example of my first souls game run in Dark Souls (No prior experience): I finished the tutorial and equiped a sword and board. My strategy was to be agressive, but with a shield. I kept the shield down and swung, only shortly blocking to stay in range to follow up on attacks. I did not hide behind a shield: I used it to be more agressive. Later on, I started using dodges more often and twohanding my weapon, while only switching to the shield when I was not familiar with the enemy attack pattern. I naturally switched from one handed sword and shield, to dodge-combat with a shield as a backup and a one handed sword, to a Zweihander + shield on back combo. Meanwhile a friend of mine used shields which increase parry frames. And another friend went full Klonk with the heaviest weapon he could find, using blocks and parries to get openings and smash the enemies head in. He even switched from shield to two handed weapon just for the reposte. There was no need for bloodborne to show us to be more agressive. We did it from the start, but used shields to do so previously. Only difference was that now: We have a gun. And bloodborne was a nice game for my friend aswell, since the attack-parry style was allready his playstyle. I mainly focused on dodge-combat. But our Klonk friend? He was dismayed that bloodborne is so limited. Don't get me wrong: He played well. He got agressive, dodged, parried, the works. But he quit midway through the game saying that he would skip that one, since it is just not his playstyle. And that is the main point of disagreement: Fun can mean different things for different people. I agree with you on many things, but it really seems to me as if you projected your own personal experience in these games onto everyone else.

[@lightsideofsin8969]

Thank you. I never liked any Dark Souls but I love Bloodborne and it's not because I played Dark Souls "wrong", I finished the first Dark Souls and was still turned off mostly by the narrative, the aesthetic and the unpredictable bullshit. Bloodborne spoke more to my aesthetic, my preferred narrative style and I felt less cheated by things killing me out of nowhere with no way to predict it. He compares them like they are the same game that only differs in what they teach the player and that's just not true. We all come to videogames for different reasons and there is no wrong way to enjoy them.

[@GeneralPretzle]

Bloodborne was the first game I enjoyed after I stopped gaming in like 2010. I genuinely tell people who don't even play videogames about the removal of shields and the rally mechanic and how it changed the game in such an amazing way by encouraging aggressive, rhythmic gameplay. I wonder how many of them were just waiting for me to shut up about something as esoteric gameplay mechanics.

[@dragonfire7965]

Their loss 🤷

[@reunionreunion2386]

Me. I was.

[@idlemindedmage6925]

Have you tried Sekiro or Elden Ring? I think they also captured and iterated a lot of the magic of bloodbourne

[@sneakiestsnek3150]

that depends! I for one love hearing people talk about things they enjoy, regardless of my knowledge on the topic

[@mwezi4193]

you're ignoring the fact that "shift to a more aggressive playstyle" toned down the complexity of the combat in a big way and since then fromsofts games have been entirely reaction based fast paced button mashers. that doesn't make BB inarguably better, it just means you prefer that type of game. In ds1 and 2 positioning used to be really important, you always had to think about where you are and where you'll go next. you can't just rollspam into infinite s because there's no recovery times and it costs like a 1/10th as much stamina. the weapons and bosses are so intricately designed you can consistently dodge specific attacks with well placed swings and get an extra hit in at the same time. All of this has been missing since BB, and it's only gotten worse with ER where you get punished for getting behind bosses and the backstab is so nerfed to shit it just isn't viable.

[@blessonbeats]

Regarding the healing mechanics in bloodborne, it's worth noteing that the system ties into the story. If you run out of vials, you are FORCED to hunt for more. You become the bloodthirsty monster you claim to be hunting This game is a masterpiece

[@sathlasdalaraynidridlendar6875]

kinda like estus being fire in dark souls.

[@blueripper1558]

Don't forget dark souls your drinking fire

[@sathlasdalaraynidridlendar6875]

tbh bloodborne is just dark souls with guns.

[@blueripper1558]

@@sathlasdalaraynidridlendar6875 eh crappy guns

[@doolenny9458]

charlie hart yeah but I hope if we get a bloodborne 2 they get rid of that as it’s my least favorite part of the game espeacially when fighting bosses

[@emperman]

When you start bloodborne you sign a contract. You'll never be the same

[@gabrielcanuel5108]

I’ve sold my soul to the chalice dungeons

[@Radkins1990]

Will we ever be freed from this terrible dream? Hope not.

[@kingroberto4776]

Jokes on you I got scared after killing the wolf and uninstalled the game

[@jfelton3583]

Yeah nah the moment he said the difficulty is the draw of the game that makes you feel accomplished i was like nah no thanks navigating life is difficult enough. Smashing different women is difficult enough y'all can have this. Praising "unfairness" in a game and dying multiple times to figure something out? Lmao who has this kinda time?

[@EdenHolder]

@@jfelton3583 who has the kinda time to first click on a 1 hour 26 minute long video essay about why people love a video game, go down in the comment section, cherry pick one comment to reply to, think of a comment to write about how you don't like the game, post the comment, read the comment then realise you want to edit it, edit the comment, then post it and feel the cold dark empty inside you knowing you'll never have gotten gud enough to appreciate a FromSoft title? would rather fight Orphan of Kos again

[@MJ-pu5lf]

the idea that there are right and wrong ways to play a game, makes no sense if the way your playing to game is using what the developer gave you. On top of that, using sorceries isn't not having to engage with the game, if its in the game its engaging with it. You still have to dodge attacks, figure out the right time to attack and heal, you still have to explore the world to find items or to just to where you want to be. You still have to find items. You can still get ambushed. Does he think that because you have ranged options, that gives you superpowers and makes you invincible?

[@TweedsGuide]

Hey! I went to university for game design. The term you coin as 'play conditioning' does actually already exist - it's called affordances, which is a byproduct of immersion. People think immersion is just people getting into a game and believing it's real, but in game design it also refers to players responding to the rules of a world by making choices based on how they have experienced the game and want to experience more of it. There is indeed a massive body of work on the subject, and it's all really interesting. I dunno why I'm banking on you seeing this but if you do, hit me up and I'd be glad to share with you a lot of the articles my professors recommended to me! Cool video, I just figured you'd wanna know so you can make more analysis videos and stuff. If this made you mope in the corner I'm sorry. EDIT: Originally, my comment omitted the term 'affordances;' a commentor Mel pointed out the term. The term honestly slipped my mind, I'm def. not perfect at this either. My bad!

[@echks]

Do you know where one would generally access this massive body of work? Is there, like, a "game design" section in places you'd normally search for academic literature (e.g. google scholar), or is it somewhere else by virtue of being game design?

[@TweedsGuide]

@@echks This is awesome, thanks for showing interest! So, a lot of it were just pdfs of peer-reviewed articles and I can't re-gather them here in a youtube comment, but there are some really good websites out there that I can totally recommend as a starting point. Gamasutra (dot com) is a good starting point although the website can be a bit hard to navigate at times. As well, FirstPersonScholar (dot com) has been a great resource lately, I totally recommend them too. Also, when learning a new game design term, googling "game design essay " nets you a few winners. In terms of immersion specifically, I got started with that concept by reading "Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience" (Cziksentmihalyi, 1990) and "Immersion and Identity in Video Games" (Terzioglu, 2015). I hope these work for you. :)

[@echks]

@@TweedsGuide Thank you, I appreciate it!

[@bmore3319]

That's really interesting! It seems that the word "immersion" quite often is interpreted as "realism". But I rather think that adding hunger mechanics for example, just to make it more immersive, is often just a cheap substitute. Just because you'd expect to get hungry in the real world doesn't translate to immersion in video games, unless it comes with meaningful mechanics. So talking about immersion in the context of the psychological phenomenon "the flow" make a lot of sense to me. The flow and immersion both happening when striking a balance of familiarity/competence and unfamiliarity/challenge. Obviously the act of learning from a game also follows much of the same processes of learning things in school (which there is also a tone of studies in). So didactic methods (which a high school teachers would use) does also explain a lot how a game presents and teaches the rules of mechanics to the player. It's actually a lot like telling a story and how you'd do that to make it interesting and exciting. Do you tell the most exciting parts first or space it out? Do you tell the story chronologically? Do you withhold information until the very end? Either way it's all the same content just delivered in different ways, but it has huge impacts on how it's interpreted or whether the content is received at all.

[@TweedsGuide]

@@bmore3319 As I alluded to before, 'immersive' doesn't mean 'like the real world' as much as it means 'a world I can exist in.' If a game adds a hunger mechanic and you're trained to go "oops, gone 6 hours without eating, I'm hungry" and you're talking about your character in that way, you're more immersed even if hunger didn't exist in the real world. Often times game designers are looking for that player-character empathy with mechanics like hunger more than they're looking for realism, because as soon as you're attached to the character, you're more immersed since you care about them and want to maintain their progression even if it means a game mechanic you as a person like less (like hunger, weapon durability, etc).

[@Seoul_Soldier]

This game is still brimming with people to play with to this day, I stand around boss arenas ringing my resonant bell just to help people through them with my broccoli squid powers. The longevity of this game is beautiful.

[@mustafao09008]

Especially if you are in the bloodborne reddit discord.

[@IsThatDonnieDiddle]

A. Cooper I redownloaded the game 4 days ago I played through it 2 times before the first time I did a playthrough of the game I never really played dark souls games before I played dark souls a little bit but it was very little so I was very new blood borne was my first real jump into the world of dark souls my first run of the game I made it to cainhurst and beat the boss then quit I think other stuff came out and I stopped playing I also didn’t care to learn about the world or the characters later I decided to pick it up again for my second playthrough I made it to about the same place but fell off and stopped again after a long time and many more dark souls style of games played and beaten I’ve really started to appreciate these types of game so I wanted to go back to bloodborne for my third and current playthough I’ve decided to put forth the effort to actually experience and research more into the lore and the world and truly see what the game has to offer in its characters environments and storytelling after beating the story getting the true ending maximizing my character doing every optional bosses exploring all the chalice dungeons listening to all the dialogue pretty much doing everything I can safely say this I my favorite souls style game and easily one of my top 5 games everything about this game is amazing

[@akshayrao1988]

A. Cooper i just got the game today. Having so much fun

[@IsThatDonnieDiddle]

Akshay rao good luck with the game it’s incredibly fun if you enjoy it enough check out some lore videos to really appreciate the game and maybe even do a second play through

[@kristianj.8798]

One person, who summoned me, let me fight Ludwig all by myself (I tried countless rematches with him this way, rather than going through all the hoobs in my own saves), and that was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me in this game, completely disregarding that their intent had nothing to do with my satisfaction in actuality, but still I got it!

[@pacolibre5411]

12:36 “119 hours played in Dark Souls 2” Congrats on beating DS2 exactly once!

[@notinghere2190]

@fAppIicationof SeIf lmao, he's a fucking tool

[@uhoh7545]

@@notinghere2190 but hes our fucking tool

[@daylilyanimation8939]

Really? That seems entirely innaccurate. According to this survey that would be around the length of a completionist run. Or around as long as two runs of the main story plus extras. Probably shorter if you've played a lot of DS1 beforehand. I've seen normal playthroughs of DS2 that were like 30 hours with the optional content. The survey comes up if you search "average time to beat ds2"

[@BungiChungie]

your not even wrong i still am on ng and ive played it for like 100 hrs or so

[@blizzardgaming7070]

You mean beat the tutorial boss

[@BansheeKing22]

Too be fair going slow in dark souls isn't necessarily a bad thing. Especially in new areas. Take your time, observe the environment and play strategic. Even in bloodborne I did that so I wouldn't end up in situations where I'd had more deaths then was necessary. Its fine to play aggressive or action rpg like but you also need to play with patience and thought. Play smarter not harder.

[@josephbulkin9222]

what do you expect form the Bloodborne crowd? they were taught that using shields and playing slowly is bad, and it did irreversible damage to the fanbase.

[@quinnmarchese6313]

monster hunter gets away with every one of its flaws as a series because before you go on a hunt, you can have a cat cook you a meal. its 10/10 game design honestly

[@fourmoyle]

Not just cook you a meal but cook you the GREATEST meal you have ever had until the next time it cooks for you.

[@ossiehalvorson7702]

@@fourmoyle Getting to collect your own special ingredients and find the best formulae for different stats is really cool too.

[@falfires]

Dante: I'm fighting for an S score! Chosen Undead: I'm fighting for my fuckin' life!

[@julianpradarodriguez7336]

The Hunter "im fighting to eat umbilical cords

[@davecullins1606]

Or what's left of it.

[@demonicloaf2100]

@@julianpradarodriguez7336 Mmmm, umbilicalicious

[@kingdomcome3914]

@@demonicloaf2100 Serve with sauteed onions, spinach, and chopped lamb.

[@kevinhixson1586]

@@kingdomcome3914 the other camp is eat it raw/ swallow it whole.

[@foxjones3204]

the whole "shields make the game less fun because it's easier" reminds me of a point a game designer made once that I thought was really interesting. Humans will generally not do things the fun way, they'll optimise the fun out of things. Games often have to protect your from your own boring tendencies because you're avoiding failure a lot. It was an interesting thought because you'd assume people play games for fun so they'd TRY to have fun but you're actually trying to WIN and that can mean hanging back and playing as safely as possible. Zelda makes this ok because it's never hard enough for you to be hanging back 99% of the game but souls games are hard enough for you to end up doing that. I've never gotten into a souls game but I don't have anything against the style, I'm just not into this kind of commitment right now. Maybe someday lol.

[@krimvanastrea]

Should try bloodborne as your first if you master it the other games will be almost a cake walk the game makes it so hanging back isnt much of an option if you want to get anywhere you get pushed and it’ll teach you to push back

[@hughquigley5337]

YES!!!! This reminds me of the Last Wish raid in Destiny 2. For the final boss of the raid, Riven, you are able to just skip most of the boss fight if your entire team just runs to a specific corner at a specific time. I was really happy to have completed the raid for the first time ever, but in all honesty I kinda felt cheated out of the experience... even if the bugged method was faster and easier.

[@koseorhun]

Exactly. Another souls-like combat game, VAMPYR, has a mechanic where if you want to get some stat boosts, you need to drain innocents in the city. You can not do it and just play optimally, but it is incentivised to show that even good vampires kill people. I still see people ranting about game's difficulty trying to get a perfect run when they can just play it normally and feel the rpg element.

[@foxjones3204]

@@krimvanastrea I would if I had a PS4!

[@theburgerking1236]

I definitely did that and honestly it’s influenced how I play games to this day, I always go the out tanking route if possible.

[@seanmoore9808]

Mostly agree with this, but I do think the analysis of DMC is a bit misinformed. The challenge doesn't necessarily come from sheer difficulty of "beating" an encounter, but from the very high skill ceiling of beating any given encounter in a very stylish way. It's not an experience made for everyone, just like how the soul series is not made for everybody.

[@Rancid_mayonnasie]

and he just had to use the reboot out of all the games

[@JakobTheCenturion]

The first time I saw a chest in Bloodborne, I whacked it just in case. 😂

[@thecolonel1294]

I did that the entire game :(

[@spacepooakabigbadapple6677]

im on my 5th playthrou but i still do it for good measure

[@Dogodddd]

i didnt, cuz of Dark Souls 2

[@tonys.5029]

First time? I STILL do that!

[@allhandsondik7803]

I did that for a while

[@vermillionbird3243]

My boyfriend introduced my to Dark Souls as my first ever videogame. I was turned off of video games entirely for years after that.

[@joshy-noha]

who does that??!!

[@blake.1312]

I showed my ex gaming with the first title, Journey, and then Dark Souls. Her favourite games I bet.

[@joshy-noha]

@@blake.1312 Journey is a nice pick for first timers

[@blake.1312]

@@joshy-noha I know. Any game without a difficulty setting that just exists to be experienced is a good pick, tbh

[@Obsrange5176]

@@joshy-noha abzu as well. Same vein as Journey

[@FirstLast-cg2nk]

In your Play Conditioning discussion, I feel I understand what it was the developers were trying to teach with giving you the shield. The lesson wasn't "You're going to die a lot, turtle behind your shield and pray you'll survive", but rather "You're going to encounter situations where enemies attack from a distance, so use a shield so you can close the distance and get in their face." It was meant to teach you that there are scenarios where dodging was not optimal, so a shield is useful.

[@freindmaker4473]

this is true, but it still has an unintentional effect

[@WeskAlber]

Big issue I feel is when the game does it again later in the game with the Anor Londo Snipers... shields will just get you killed

[@FirstLast-cg2nk]

@@WeskAlber Dodging wasn't much better in that scenario, though, once you were on the ledges with the knights and trying to get past that one that was right in your way.

[@WeskAlber]

@@FirstLast-cg2nk Can dodge through the arrows. Shield you'd often just get sent off anyway

[@FirstLast-cg2nk]

@@WeskAlber But there's still that one knight sitting on a narrow ledge you have to go past, and dodging is perilous, being much more likely to cause you to go over by accident.

[@TheBlessingo]

I played dark souls 1 as a tank with a huge shield, and I had a blast! I was so afraid, and therefore it was so exhilarating to conquer my fear. I pretty much agree with most of what you're saying, especially a point you made yourself about lords of the fallen (the game is like dark souls but all of the sliders controlling player interaction are off by a lot). But I don't agree with your argument that shields and magic/ranged combat is almost 100% bad. Different people have different tastes, I finished Elden Ring with a dual wielding strength build in my first playthrough, and right now I am having an absolute blast as a ranged shield using battlemage. My point is that in game design there is a a 'fourfold path' or 'golden mean', and by this I mean that shields can be fun if the 'game design sliders' are positioned correctly. And by omitting shields in bloodborne From Software retroactively showed people a different amazing or very very much more amazing way of enjoying their portfolio of games.

[@lrminer2024]

Keep in mind with OoT, it was one of the very first 3d adventure games, so it actually did need to explain a lot

[@jupitersnoot4915]

Not to mention it's intended to be played mainly by young kids.

[@Lamentationsofapoory]

This is a Great point

[@featherycoffee1401]

ZELDA STAN ALERT I REPEAT ZELDA STAN IS ON THE PREMISES, PLEASE EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY

[@Florescentia02]

@@featherycoffee1401 what do you mean? Its game discussion, and they are right

[@lethaltoconcrete2194]

@@Florescentia02 I think they were joking

[@Infurno924]

The voice acting on this game is just 👌👌. Never heard as much maniacal laughing and people going crazy on anything than Bloodborne hahah. This game has one of the best atmospheres in all of gaming, I swear.

[@katchupp5067]

voice acting is basically a given in souls games but UGHH bloodborne just hits different

[@Infurno924]

@@katchupp5067 Yeah, I've noticed this is a common theme in FromSoft games lol. But like you said, Bloodborne just does it best. I absolutely adore the insanity lol.

[@katchupp5067]

@@Infurno924 “ahh kos, or some say kosm” *moans*

[@Infurno924]

@@katchupp5067 Lmaoo, Micolash. 😂 "Do you hear our prayersss??" *AWOOOOOOOOOO* *OOOOOOOOOOOOO*

[@riku988]

Fr most of the npc laughs at the end of the conversation. It’s quite unnerving and funny at the same time😂

[@metagreen1931]

I'd like to see what souls fans think of this in terms of Elden Ring, cause I've seen lots of people enjoying Elden Ring with shields, magic, and other ways to play and massively enjoying themselves. What Elden Ring might do better is kind of the opposite of play conditioning, where instead of making the player do the fun thing, it makes everything fun in the first place

[@jacobkilborn1738]

I agree completely. It seems the design principle in Elden Ring was to elevate all playstyles to a point where theyre all viable. And the kind of experience youll have is more up to player choice than anything else.

[@kielduffy]

Elden Ring seems to have adopted the modern warfare 2 philosophy of making everything slightly broken and overpowered.

[@lkocon13]

The "good player" version is knowing what weapon you want, and rushing there to get it. A friend found the twinned blades because he knew where to find it and it can be the first thing to do. That is a significat edge over the Souls games and especially Bloodborne. I wanted to redo my Chikage build, and that means playing without the Chikage for half the time before you can beat Logarius

[@grimtarot]

A flawed masterpiece. The world is the greatest fantasy world ever created, it’s enchanting to run around in. The gameplay however can be frustrating, mainly balance and enemy design. I did a quality build with some faith, didn’t realise it was a shitty build till I fought the first two bosses, I basically did no damage too them and would have to do over 100hits or more to kill them. Also they build the enemies with an extra long whined up to attacks to make it different to the other games. In theory that’s fine, but it just feels cheap. Not that you can’t learn and play around it, just that it’s not fun to do so when the attack feels so artificially extended. Picked up Bloodbourne for the first time yesterday, felt way more fun then Elden Ring for me.

[@joaogarcia6170]

Dark souls has always had an "easy mode", there's always a way to cheese the game and make it easier. As someone who always plays souls games with two handed weapons, no long distance damage and no summoning other players or npcs i don't care if someone is going to use all the resources to make it easier, they're in the game after all, i play the game that way because i like the challenge and find it satisfactory. But there is an argument to make a game hard, to feel exclusive to the group of people who beat it, to create a community around that, of people who like challenge. Whenever a group gets too big or diverse it averages out the people who belong to it and it might not be as interesting or too unpredictable.

[@asad9414]

The saw spear also has a second R2 after the fully charged one and it's pretty cool Massive knockback

[@Deschmarquezproducti]

3:52 "I've had to put so much thought into defeating a certain type of enemy" ***Circles for Backstab***

[@charlesquinton9127]

It's amazing how far "Shank this motherfucker in the back" gets you in a Souls game.

[@KasumiRINA]

Main thing that puts me off. Even the simplest beatemups have varied combos and ways to kill someone. And here you just circle and backstab everything. It's even worse in Dark Souls 1 PVP, some on! People talk about how slow and strategic these games are when it all comes down to people rolling around for genital jousting and who can stick it in the pooper first wins.

[@vojtechstepanek7145]

That moment when "Stab it in the ass" is considered more involving than any single Vergil bossfight in DMC3, let alone all of them across the series. Hbomb kinda lost me there.

[@profeseurchemical]

its the levels, bosses, and group encounters that make souls alot to thik about and to strategize. its all about spacing, its no fighting game meta tho. hbomb is also super hyperbolic, fuck u mean the "psychology" of an enemy?

[@arlopullman4926]

@@KasumiRINA that's why DS3 is the best game in the series. Just try that shit on enemies whose attacks track you instead of turning into mannequins the second their attack animations start.

[@erkicman]

It's incredible how he specifically attacks everything I love about Souls games as bad (Shields, lots of weapons to experiment with), and yet we both still love souls games

[@darrenfleming7901]

yeah idk, I think hes conflating the fact that people tend to play in boring ways because its easier/less risky with saying that everyone enjoys the same way of playing, which is just wrong. Telling everyone to just "suck it up and jump in with a sword" is the best way to shame people into playing in ways they don't even enjoy, and making them not enjoy the games in the end.

[@DraganAlves]

Yep. He's just spouting off his own biased opinion as fact. And took an hour and a half to do it.

[@darrenfleming7901]

@[NonExistant] MolecularCandy ok but for 99% of people they choose not to feel those sensations because they dislike it, only exceptions are when players just don't know about certain mechanics (for example people who don't realize you can parry in BB). A lot of people dislike the bloodrush feeling in these games, and if they play it slowly and still enjoy themselves then more power to them, who the hell are we to tell them how to play. And more importantly the community is gatekeeping these games by pressuring people into playing in ways they don't enjoy. If you want the game to prosper and grow you should let people play however the hell they want, no matter how cheesy or boring you think it is.

[@darrenfleming7901]

@[NonExistant] MolecularCandy it is ABSOLUTELY about pressuring people, the whole fucking community is saying that if you don’t play in this arbitrarily decided way you’re “doing it wrong” and he was basically echoing the exact same thing by saying that playing carefully ruins the game. You’re basically deciding what people are supposed to enjoy for them which is so narcissistic and tone-deaf, and its a big part of what makes this fanbase so unapproachable.

[@darrenfleming7901]

@[NonExistant] MolecularCandy "There's this unique sensation" for fucks sake that's your experience with the game it doesn't mean every person who tries it will have the exact same sensation as you how dense do you have to be to think that? How can you possibly not understand that different people can get different sensations from the same thing, leading certain people to dislike it and others to like it. You're just taking your opinion on the game and the sensation you got playing it as fact, when that varies immensely from player to player.

[@knowthyself6981]

The shield in dark souls isn't a villain. It can lower your experience of the game but I played the first one like that most of the time and I had fun. Then I played without it in ds 2 and ds 3 and I've probably enjoyed them even a bit more but in my eyes, it's the dark souls journey. You begin defensevely in an extremely hostile world before gaining more confidence with time. It feels kinda natural and let you try the different style. Again, people often call the gameplay of the ds1 and 2 kinda weaker because it's slow and heavy but it's actually one of my favorite part. It's tactical and feels realist in this context, plus it's very rare in gaming industry.

[@jgkitarel]

Dark Souls 2 is actually where Bloodborne got the idea of why relying on a shield can be a bad idea. Seriously, look at the classes and look at their starting equipment. Only one has a shield, and his weapon is literally a broken sword. All the others have no shield and you are encouraged to play in a way the emphasizes dodging over blocking and parrying. It also helps that the parry mechanic in DSII is simply bad, meaning you learn to not even make use of it. Bloodborne's parry mechanic, using guns, could be more accurately described as a stagger mechanic that you can induce, either with a gun, or simply doing enough damage quick enough that the bad guy stumbles and is stuned for a brief moment, allowing you to do a visceral attack for massive damage (and the losing the target lock when you do makes the risk/reward aspect clear, even if it is easy to lock back on most times) or to whale on the poor bastard and do a similar or greater amount of damage but potentially leave yourself open for their own attacks. The fact that there are much fewer weapon and armor choices, and the armor's defenses against physical attacks is much less due to not actually being armor, but its their resistance against non-physical attacks and ailments which is why you equip them and eventually learn when to wear a different outfit, also means you don't have to scroll through a massive inventory to find the right weapon or armor for the job, or learn how to do and master switching on the fly through menus.

[@utlandsk]

@@jgkitarel DS2 has 70 shields, 3 of which are available for every class before entering the first area. One of those 3 even blocks 95% damage. Shields are just as good if not better than shields in 1. Dodging also isn’t encouraged bc of ADP and how I-frames tie into it. You start off with really bad I-frames, because of this new players will fail at dodging and resort to a shield. The Bloodborne and DS2 videos by Harris aren’t that good. Mauler even has a 10 hour long video series on why it’s not good (watch it when you have the time it’s a great series). You’re just trusting Harris’s backless claims and then spreading them as if they are true. Also it’s most likely not true that DS2 inspired Bloodborne in many ways. 2 different dev teams were working on them at the same time, Bloodborne came out only a year after 2. Not much time to be inspired as heavily as you say Bloodborne was

[@kcbsuiejd]

I agree, I liked the slow and methodic play the first time. its just one more playstyle that can help getting into the game. Later I ran around 2 handing a big scythe, but I wouldnt have never gotten there without the initial savety net letting my explore the game

[@SpoonyBard88]

@@utlandsk Fuck that useless edgelord pedant. Idiots in 2022 still salty about Dark Souls 2, a sequel that is still better than 90 percent of all games.

[@ELPRES1DENTE45]

Acting like shields make or break the experience is quite possibly the dumbest take that I've ever heard on a FromSoft game. Everyone knows that the REAL way to play is on Donkey Kong bongos, blindfolded, whilst being hung upside-down by your toes, and on fire. Goddamn casuals. 🙄😏😒

[@sneakiestsnek3150]

This video lays out so many of the reasons why, in retrospect, I am incredibly thankful for this game being my entry point into the series. I start new files in this game almost on the regular now, just to run back through and giggle joyfully throughout the entire experience. Absolutely my favorite game, and possibly the most entertainingly disturbing comfort aesthetic that I have.

[@sobaquer]

"dealing with them require thought and is much more engaging" as he circles a black knight for a backstab

[@duveysgamingacademia6587]

So much "depth" in the combat when i can circle around the enemies for easy backstab cheese. Riiiiiiiight 🤣

[@duveysgamingacademia6587]

@Calcium Bicarbonate Cuz that lazy ass rinse and repeat method is barely even a tactic. Strafe around, do the same attack 🤷🏽‍♂️. Shit is lazy imo but everybody got their own taste in combat

[@duveysgamingacademia6587]

@Carlub Nahh i play REAL action games like DMC3 and Bayonetta. Games that are the ultimate test of skill and combat depth

[@recordingtutorials6613]

@Carlub So basically his point is valid.

[@yeehaw4307]

@@duveysgamingacademia6587 "REAL action games" compared to fake ones? Theyre labelled action for a reason, just because you like gatekeeping doesnt make other action games less valid

[@Equineballista]

8:18 “a sense of paranoia” what no that’s not true *goes on to stab every chest before trying to open it*

[@Jhon-hy6xk]

The chain of the chest tells if it is a trap, where is the paranoia hehe?

[@Johnny-Silverhand-V-Arasaka]

I´ve played through ds3 a few times already and I know every mimic chest but I still stab every single normal one.

[@_doop8257]

>rubbish

[@urskn.7985]

ye i even stabbed all the chests in bloodborne just to conclude after i beat it that there arent any mimics in that game

[@patrickbone5993]

Ayo FUCK chests

[@obblivionkr]

Lovely video! Just one thing, though. 1:30 I’d say the point of DMC series wasn’t to overcome challenges, or simply kill your enemies, but to kill your enemies in the most fabulous ways possible. The Style meter is a proof - you can’t just keep spamming the same attack that works to get a high style point. You need to have variation. But I guess it also depends on each and every person as to how or why they’d play the game.

[@MachineStalkerWolfie]

Tell that to DmC reboot

[@Ashamedofmypast]

For sure! DMCV is arguably the deepest combat in a game to date and enemies are insanely well designed to influence a skilled players moment to moment decision making. DMC3 is also insane. Not to forget DMC4 pioneering the ideal upgrade system of adding to your options as your skill grows and the terrifying micromechanics (probably unfixed oddities in the code due to the cut development time) of distortion and inertia. Seriously Google DMC4 distortion and inertia if you are not aware that has to be one of the highest skill ceilings in video games it's as deep as a street fighter game but Dante is like 8 characters in one.

[@robynthethird4776]

In a way, that feeling a Devil May Cry fan would get at seeing him describe it wrong and dislike it accidentally sets up how a game is affected by how you approach playing it. Pretty interesting.

[@casperaaron5530]

Yeah that really bothered me. He's criticizing a game that's supposed to be fun and look cool for... being fun and looking cool. It's just such a bad point to make.

[@KSkrode]

I can sympathize with your friend. I tried Bloodborne because it had the greatest setting and lore of any game I'd ever even heard of but it was so frustrating and unforgiving that I tried and quit it probably 6 times. It wasn't until Elden Ring came out and I learned that DEATH IS A MECHANIC that the souls philosophy finally clicked. the game teaches you, very patiently in fact, how to get good, you just have to learn how to UNlearn the anti-death impulse ingrained from every non-soulslike game ever. I now have around a thousand hours in ER in two playthroughs, including about 30% of the DLC. after becoming freshly obsessed with Bloodborne's lore for what must be the fourth time (I could genuinely explain the entire thing, including the DLC, without ever having played more than an hour) I decided to give it one more go. And it went. I got it. I learned to farm upgrades in Elden Ring so that's what I did in Bloodborne. I learned to kite enemies in Sekiro, so that's what I did in Bloodborne. I carried over my parrying skills from those games to a game with the most hilariously unique parrying mechanic I've ever played and now I barely get touched by enemies. i beat the Cleric Beast on my 4th try, cruised through Father Gasgcoine in one, and beat the Blood Starved Beast the second time I tried. I made it to Hypogean Jail at level 37 and am getting my ass thoroughly kicked and having the absolute time of my life Once I finish the game and The Old Hunters I think I'll give Dark Souls a try, if I don't end up simply replaying Bloodborne immediately

[@michaelbernardi1453]

Just so you know, mimic chests have a different chain that hangs off the side of it, so theres actually a visible difference that exists to tell you whether a chest is safe or not

[@_doop8257]

And in DS2 they have some type of lock or something (?)

[@Spo8]

And in DS3 don't they straight up breathe if you watch closely enough?

[@aguafria9003]

@@Spo8 ds3 mimics are literally ds1 mimics and yes they both breathe

[@victoriousf.i.g.3311]

I always just read the 3-4 messages telling me the chest is a mimic.

[@masterofthelag8414]

You can also see the teeth if you adjust the camera right, though it's a bit tricky to do so

[@times7171]

Came for Bloodbourne - got mainly demon / dark souls

[@Sm0k3turt]

Sir. Albion71 DS3 and Bloodborne are my favorite souls. I’m trying DS1 but I can’t get into it in terms of gameplay. I fucking love DS1 don’t get me wrong but. It just doesn’t click like BB and DS3 did. Love all the games for the story though. Especially the more love craft stuff in BB.

[@times7171]

@@Sm0k3turt Totally agree. I love games with a rich lore, and BB is simply great in terms of that.

[@Velourium]

@@Sm0k3turt really has a lot to do with playing the others first

[@amisfitpuivk]

Always play a game series in order. If you haven't, try Mass Effect 1 2 then 3. The DLC is pretty mandatory like Souls too. And tbh, those games are probably harder than Souls if you play on high difficulty. Trying to take down a Krogan charging at you is no joke. And now that I think about it, the combat reminds me of Soulsborne, in that you dodge at the right time to not get annihilated, and you don't need cover (shield) if you chose an aggressive playstyle/class. I mention Mass Effect because it's my other favorite series and it's just as amazing as Souls, especially played in order.

[@lexort4204]

@@amisfitpuivk Mass Effect games are best on Insanity difficulty for sure, it can feel super fulfilling.

[@pedroscoponi4905]

You know, the part of the video that is weirding me out the most so far is this assumption that slow, careful play is "the least fun" A big part of why I loved the souls series was it being an action rpg that broke action rpg tropes, specially the "fast and flashy" stuff I had to pay attention to my surroundings, observe enemies carefully and if I died, it wasn't because my reflexes were bad or I didn't "git gud", it's cause I hadn't found a good strategy. Now, that in and of itself is no surprise - that someone enjoys this kind of gameplay, that's obvious. What I'm wondering here is, how common is this? Am I one of the few weirdoes who actually thinks breathing a sight of relief after a boss *IS* part of the fun, or is this perfectly normal?

[@elgamer3003]

Yes, it is part of the fun. You feel accomplished and actually victorious when a boss was hard and you had to take your time to actually beat him.

[@brubz5471]

yess it's the best part

[@trop7736]

I believe by slow and careful, he was referring to combat. Holding up your shield the entire time and poking from a distance generally feels a lot less rewarding than ducking and weaving through attacks. If you mean the exploration though I agree, the use of the environment and enemies making you slow down and spend more time in an area was definitely a favorite part of mine

[@sl0pe363]

Heavy gang! Grind for that VIT my friends. May your shields be towering and your blades humongous.

[@muonantineutrino]

It's a radically different life philosophy. If you feel that the game is, let's say, "dangerous", then caution is your strategy and safety your reward. On the other hand, if you feel that the game is, well, a game, then playfulness is your strategy and excitement your reward. Now replace "the game" with "life".

[@casperes0912]

I like my shield. I still mainly rely on rolling, I don't just hide behind the shield. I use it for parrying, and I use it for situations where I'm cornered, quickly raise it to avoid a lot of damage, and then get out of the positions. Shields don't have to be the slow hiding thing. They can be the emergency button

[@LukeSchiefelbein]

Made me realize i was conditioned into playing life in the least fun way

[@shevankaseneviratne1724]

Hahha yeah it was quite the epiphany for me too lol. This is basically like early childhood psychology but applied in games, its wild

[@spencerfoote6977]

@@shevankaseneviratne1724 Ones reality is another’s illusion

[@MrLemonsplash]

no, no, no. Just click on all the ads, get all the products and you will find salvation.

[@guchierrez]

bro..

[@Findecommie]

I mean... yeah. Like in some ways that's completely unavoidable, there is no respawn irl and some things that would be very fun are just not survivable enough to be worth it, but also we have a society where all the mechanics are there for everyone to have their needs met with very little actual drudgery and then get on with things they find personally fulfilling and enjoyable, but for some godforsaken reason we've decided that most people have to spend most their lives metaphorically farming for souls just to scrape by for another day.

[@ConfettiCasket]

"you're never going to feel like an unbeatable badass" Me: *laughs in 99 arcane whilst spamming a call beyond*

[@jasenunn]

ah yes using something that takes no skill “badass”

[@YTDariuS-my6dg]

Well yeah, fair. FromSoft games, as I've noticed, tend to give you a easier time if you know how to over-specialise with certain builds. Arcane, as you mentioned, works very well. Relying on Beasthood also can make you feel like a badass, because besides having to dodge all attack lest you die immediately, your damage with a full Beasthood meter is Insane (yes, capital i).

[@ConfettiCasket]

@@jasenunn Keyword is *feel like* never said it took skill man. Plus, you're acting like it's impossible to have more than one character. Don't be a gatekeeper and just let people have fun with the game. 😂

[@jasenunn]

SpixiCafé tf did i say that makes me a gatekeeper tf i said using call beyond doesn’t make you badass come on fam

[@jasenunn]

SpixiCafé also how am i acting like it’s impossible to have more than one character tf now your just saying shit

[@alholz7836]

I tried Bloodborne a while back because I loved the dark souls series so much, and bounced off of it because I was far too methodical with the combat. I took things too slow and didn't have very much fun. This video inspired me to come back to it and try again with a different perspective, and to play more aggressive. All I can say is thank you. You are the reason I got to truly experience such a work of art. I have never fallen in love with a world more so than this game.

[@brain_xiv]

DID YOU BEAT IT?!?

[@alholz7836]

@@brain_xiv not yet. I don't have much time nowadays, but a little a day.

[@brain_xiv]

@@alholz7836 ah that's completely fine, masterpieces shouldn't be rushed. I hope you get to finish it!

[@alholz7836]

@@brain_xiv update: making my way through still. made it to upper cathedral ward.

[@alholz7836]

@@brain_xiv I just finished it. What a game.

[@lebucket9769]

Here in 2023, I can admit. Elden Ring got me started, Bloodborne made me realize OH FUCK I DO LIKE THESE. Going back and playing the other now!

[@Oops-All-Ghosts]

One of the main points of the Dark Souls games is that their world _isn't_ worth saving, though. The curse of undeath isn't just something the player has to deal with; it applies just as well to the setting as a whole. As early as the first game you are told, explicitly, that if you choose to link the fire, you're just perpetuating a system that really, _really_ doesn't work. A lot of the stories about the kingdoms that came before are there as much to show you that it isn't the setting itself but the people in it who made anything good happen. And those same stories make it clear that those people would still exist in a world without Gwynn's flame. It's just a matter of being brave enough to refuse to sacrifice yourself for what a few people keep telling you is the Greater Good.

[@Oops-All-Ghosts]

I'm sorry; I know I sound pretentious. I've jumped between attempting to major in English and attempting to major in History for like five years now I'm virtually incapable of not sounding that way at this point.

[@riccardoolivieri1159]

Can you actually refuse to link the flame?

[@juancarloshernandez2333]

@@riccardoolivieri1159 Yes, you can

[@Lucivius27]

@@riccardoolivieri1159 Yes but it is not the canon ending.

[@Markmix123]

@@Oops-All-Ghosts it's ok it reads nicely

[@eternal_hangnail]

I didn't understand the effect of mimics until i started attacking chests in Sekiro

[@Regufyz]

Lol i never did than and i played every soulsgame till i could no more

[@hamdiatasoy2456]

I hit chests in Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4

[@robynthethird4776]

Not even just mechanically though - if it killed you then and there it wouldn't have the same effect as watching the fucker demolish your corpse. It's kind of gratuitous, but it makes you remember.

[@cirlu_bd]

@Daniel Jairala you're missing a word bro.

[@eternal_hangnail]

@@cirlu_bd fixed lmao ty

[@cthulhluftagn3812]

The shield had the opposite effect on me in dark souls, it emboldened me to charge into situations cause I could tank the suprise hits and respond.

[@NycolasPedro]

Exactly!! I feel the same! Bloodborne was my first Soulsborne game and later after playing DS I loved the Shield and I felt way more confident and I had much more fun playing with it! :)

[@gonb5434]

Yeah, from reading other comments about how people had fun with shields I don’t think it’s the shield alone that’s the problem, it’s just that one overly cautious play style some people use it for

[@spellbound1875]

It really depends on how you decided to utilize shields. Aggressive play with a shield is quite rewarding but it's a coin flip whether a player gets this intuitively, which is Harris' point. Bloodborne makes it nearly impossible to learn wrong, which is a clear improvement over other games in the series.

[@cthulhluftagn3812]

@@spellbound1875 the alteration to the parrying mechanic also made a huge difference, it was significantly easier to learn how to party in Bloodborne due to the gun bieng almost instant. Even then 90% of the time I just dodged, I loathed the parry mechanic in all the games and even Bloodbornes improvement couldn't save it for me. It's the main reason I just couldn't enjoy sekiro..

[@spellbound1875]

@@cthulhluftagn3812 I also never really got into the parry mechanic, though in bloodborne the ability to parry while out of an attacks range made it much less risky to experiment with. In Dark Souls 3 I quite enjoyed mixing a greatshield and a hand axe so I could easily absorb attacks and then time my own counters. I found it substantially more enjoyable to practice timing my shield blocks to minimize stamina loss rather than just focus on parrying which makes a simple but deep combat system into a simple binary of successful or unsuccessful parry. Both dodging and blocking don't interrupt the flow of combat and are to my mind more enjoyable to play. Sekiro leaning hard into the timing focus of parrying was definitely a shift and while I finished the game it is easily my least favorite out of the series. To the devs credit Sekiro did make parrying more engaging but the shift towards responding to an opponents rhythm rather than making your own was a real drag.

[@DatBrasss]

I know Hbomberguy doesn't really cover games much anymore, but I want to see his take on Armored Core VI.

[@harrisonchambers29]

"When we grapple with why we enjoy something, we're ultimately interrogating our own feelings." Brilliant

[@PinkWytchBytch]

That’s how it went for me, I tried Dark Souls and really did try but it was only when I played Bloodborne than something just clicked, and it specifically clicked when I took a step back and thought to myself “ Alright, this is supposed to be Lovecraftian. Instead of acting like a player, let’s act like a Lovecraftian character. Expect nothing to make sense on purpose and for the nonsense to become the only sense your going to find” it somehow made the game so much more understandable when I stopped treating it like a game and more like a fear induced fever dream

[@nextaros]

9:40 that trap literally blew my mind. shit myself and dodged at the last second. "heh, nice try. you think I haven't played aSouls game before?" *spiky log of death flies off and sends me plummeting to my doom*

[@amadeodante]

next-aros Well I just got slapped when I triggered it

[@MrTigracho]

Miyazaki has a talent for screwing with players in one way or another.

[@danielbowen4550]

*cue Dave Chappelle* GOTCHA BITCH

[@cmcshane2740]

I really love having proper closed captions on such long-form content ❤

[@fluorescentalien5204]

im extremely bad at video games, too easily frustrated by them. but I love their potential for storytelling, and videos like these and your one on pathologic really let me experience this medium of art in a way I just wouldnt otherwise.

[@number1enemyoftheuseless985]

Never say it's hard you just need practice anyone can play soul's games.

[@hshocker98]

@@number1enemyoftheuseless985 it can be hard to some, not everyone has the time in this world to work their asses off to be better in some game. Those who do have the time are the privileged ones.

[@vetreas366]

@@number1enemyoftheuseless985 There are also people who literally can't get better due to issues they may have. Note that people with medical issues and disorders may also want to play these games but due to how technical they can be and how demanding on the mechanical side, they may be impenetrable. Not anyone can play Souls games. The fact that you believe so means that you, like myself are lucky enough to not be one of the people denied entry. Lucky us, but let's try to keep in mind not everyone is as lucky.

[@chiwhiner]

I am also pretty bad at games and don’t like dying over and over. I get through the Soulsborne games by taking it very slow, constantly scanning my surroundings to find ways to cheese enemy encounters, looking up what weapons people consider the most over-powered, summoning strangers & npcs to help me, and finding good farming spots where I can over-level my character to get past any boss that kills me more than a couple times. A lot of people will say that’s not the “right” way to play these games, but I still find it extremely satisfying. If you know how to play a modern 3D game where you are moving the character & camera at the same time, you can probably play these games.

[@emilyemily9831]

@@chiwhiner I don’t think the commenter’s point was “I want advice.” I think it was “I enjoy these videos so I can enjoy games I wouldn’t ordinarily be able to play.” The reason why they aren’t able to play isn’t important.

[@matthewisabella8145]

Doom Eternal devs used a term called the 'fun zone' while reflecting on what went wrong with Doom 2016. This is where players are playing the game correctly, switching to the most optimal weapons, and using good strategy instead of just spamming the Super Shotgun until they beat the game, which was very possible in Doom 2016. This sounds very similar to what you're taking about with Play Conditioning.

[@superness56]

I guess this worked for most people. But I really disliked how doom eternal worked because of this change precisely.

[@warteyeguy]

@@superness56 agreed. I hated how they made ways to play the game into "wrong ways". I used the assault rifle and normal shotgun in the first game, and it really sucked being told that my style was wrong. making FPS into puzzles doesn't always work so well either

[@BetaBreaking]

@@warteyeguy I'm the sort of person who's completed 2016 on Ultra Nightmare and I can say with ease that that game definitely could be cheesed very easily just by using the Super shotgun and Railgun, same could be said for Eternal but I honestly prefer the management mechanic that you have to deal with while playing. Like you can still use your weapon setup. It's just that you have to be more wary of your player placement and ammo count. Like I just finished the entirety of Doom Eternal and it's DLCs on Ultra Nightmare a month or two back. And while it can be difficult, simply creating space and using whatever setup that you want can be effective. I play console so comboing isn't something that can easily be done, especially with more than two weapons but I found the resource management, weakpoints and enemy hierarchy very engaging. You can't just play it as mindlessly as you could with 2016 which is okay, I think the developers stated that both games are supposed to be widely different. They changed all the things they saw as weaknesses from 2016. I was able to get into that fun zone with both games but that may be entirely due to my ADHD gluing me to the screen lmao.

[@DarkSpartanFTW]

@@warteyeguy Doom Eternal doesn’t constrict anyone into a singular playstyle lol. That’s why each weapon has 2 variations. Even for the regular basic shotgun, you got grenades that break weakpoints, and you got the strength of the auto shotgun. And if you treat weaponry like a big toy box(like you’re supposed to), you can find that the upgrade for the auto shotgun lets you get ammo to use for the super shotgun. I could mention examples like that for every weapon, but I won’t since the game encourages a bit of imagination and I think you should try to think outside the box if you were to play the game again.

[@drakep.5857]

@@superness56 yeah I know using a shotgun all the time isn't technically the most unique way to play the game, but I do think it's fun in a cathartic way, and games like blood 1997 I love even more because you use alot of the same weapons all the time and enmeies die quickly and easily, but the game still manages to be difficult through level design, while still allowing a more free-form and wacky playstyle of playing how you'd like I like doom 2016 and bloodborne because they're hard but also allow you to do almost whatever you'd like, and I didn't click as much with doom eternal because it feels less like a desperate unfair clawing from all sides to kill with whatever they vcan grab and want to do and more like a puzzle or constant test of routines and memory

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

Elden Ring's guard counter seems like a capstone on the slow development of fun-shielding. By giving you an attack that looks very powerful and does more damage that you only get by successfully blocking, it is actively baiting every shield-user into attacking immediately instead of waiting for obvious safe openings. You are being drawn into taking risks, with the prize of crisp AV feedback and obviously more damage, and eventually start seeing the posture-break counters which are hugely damaging and very satisfying. That way even if you're playing defensively, you're actively engaged with the enemy.

[@DarkDragon2344]

And secretly it's also baiting you to fall for the 70000 attacks that look shieldable but aren't so you die for trying to do something that seems logical and fun instead of memorizing the correct answer.

[@Haka-f3k-u]

@@DarkDragon2344 People who wank ER's combat typically don't play games with actually great combat. ER's combat is fine overall, but it is full of "We designed it to be counter intuitive because Miyazaki-san thinks its good" design, combined with "The game got rushed out, but we're FROMSOFT, so all the missing stuff will get played up as a feature." I'm just glad that AC6 came out as a complete game and isn't rife with cut content, and is also getting updates.

[@d_fendr6222]

​@hakageryu-hz7jz what is counter intuitive about ER's gameplay?

[@DarkDragon2344]

@@d_fendr6222 Brother I don't know what to tell you but intentionally skewing and hanging attack timings and having inconsistent tells as to what defensive options will work on a given attack is dictionary definition counter intuitive. It is designed so you can't intuit it, it is counter-intuitive.

[@d_fendr6222]

@DarkDragon2344 I gotcha, I was just curious that's all.

[@castielffboi]

The part about Patrick’s reaction to different bosses depending on how he plays is a bit misleading. I’ve beaten Orphan of Kos and sighed in relief, your reaction can just be based on how you’re feeling that day or how long you’ve been fighting an enemy, or how much you enjoy a boss encounter.

[@drew3911]

Me: *watches any video ever on youtube Up Next: Bloodborne is Genius, And Here's Why

[@emrey5745]

also me: well, I guess I'm gonna watch it for the 5th time

[@dmas7749]

watching it for the first time because i never played a souls game

[@maggienewson8859]

Right? it's tried to play it four times today alone. So y'know, gotta watch it again!

[@Kiwii156]

I've got like 250 hours in Dark Souls 3 and beaten it with pretty much every build you can think of, I can't say that fighting with a shield was "playing it wrong." Some people really enjoy that deliberate playstyle.

[@VladiMatt]

I enjoyed Dark Souls 1 & 2 with shields, but in 3 I felt like I was playing the game wrong; it felt like after Bloodborne Miyazaki said "everybody who enjoys playing my games carefully is wrong and stupid and I hate them" (which when you look at Sekiro, yeah it definitely still feels like that).

[@Divinemakyr]

Are you a speedrunner? Beating the game multiple times in only 250 hours is impressive.

[@Kiwii156]

@@Divinemakyr It took me like 60 hours or so the first time, but after that, when you've learned the bosses/know the routes inside out, you'd be surprised at how quickly you can beat a DS game. I wouldn't call myself a speedrunner, or say I was even particularly trying to get through it fast, I was just dying a lot less

[@Divinemakyr]

@@Kiwii156 I guess I just got used to my own style of play. I mean, a boss rush is fun, I imagine, but I prefer to take things slow and get every item.

[@KianOntong13]

To each their own I guess. In dark souls 3 I immediately two handed once I learned I could and never used a shield again

[@cameronatkinson2795]

'I have to put more thought into killing a red or black knight than every enemy in other similar games put together!' *footage of a person strafing around a black knight for a backstab, repeat*

[@hbomberguy]

you can't even backstab enemies in dmc

[@cameronatkinson2795]

Yeah but strafing hard left or right to do one move each time isn't really what I would consider to be deep thought, is all. I agree with everything else, just that one bit of footage made me laugh because I thought it was a bad example.

[@LN.2233]

Cameron Atkinson backstab is arguably the worst thing about the souls games because it doesn't take skill and shows how circle strafing is used to exploit the overwhelming majority of enemies in dark souls

[@LN.2233]

Ali Khamenei Actually the devs saw the error of their ways, that's why enemies in Souls 3 have attacks that guard their back and circle strafing isn't as useful. Also, on the part of the easy parrying mechanic. Souls 2 & Souls 3 fixed that.

[@hisholiness4537]

LN2233 Only Lothric and Cathedral knights have anti-backstab measures. Lothric knights have literally 0 poise, so BS isn't needed at all. Cathedral knights are poise monsters, they're one of the few really challenging mobs. Black knights are STILL begging to get backstabbed. Silver knights have gotten better, but still easily BSed.

[@sullivanko1902]

I have no idea if you’ll see this. You’re massively popular and this is an older video, so probably not. But I just have to say: Thank you. I’m not even through the whole video and you’ve convinced me to buy a PS4. Not just Bloodborn and the Souls games. The console itself. Just for these games. The first real 1st person battle game I ever played Kingdom Hearts on PS2. I’ve never been a “gamer” but learned in KH that my preferred attack style was a hit-and-run, swing around from their blind side type of thing. Plus I genuinely enjoy grinding to build skill sets and exp. Then KH2 happened with its timed battles and I crash and burned *hard* due to my fighting style - and gave up. Didn’t have money for better games, didn’t want to chance disappointment again. That was in ninth grade. Yet here I am, literal decades later, listening to you describe game mechanics that *exactly match* my preferred fighting style in that one game I finished back in high school. You say game mechanics can’t sell a game but damn you just called yourself a liar. I’m already invested in the lore, I’m a Lovecraftian fanatic. It’s why I watch these type videos at all despite not playing the games. But I never planned to play due to the “too hard” reputation it has - only to find out the difficulty in question is that it *doesn’t* expect you to run full tilt against enemies while key smashing and/or memorizing combos. Instead expecting intelligent, observant, and patient gameplay while getting to explore an incredibly rich world. I’m an adult now and I can buy myself Christmas presents early if I want to. Genuinely, thank you.

[@radicalmars]

I used a shield all the way through dark souls 1 and fell in love with the series, I don't think there's anything wrong with using shields as long as you don't rely on them entirely, they should be a backup. For the most part I like to dodge but sometimes I hold up my shield if I'm not sure what an enemy is going to do or when walking around in case of an ambush.

[@darrenhoughton1515]

Agree, it doesn’t mean your not having fun if you use a shield.

[@chironthecuddley6144]

I always play DS1 with the Grass Shield because of the passive stamina regen buff and to parry on Black Knights and smaller enemies, but I primarily run around with a Great Sword or Ultra Great Sword in both hands.

[@radicalmars]

ChironTheCuddley yeah, I always use the grass crest shield, also I basically always use great swords or ultra great swords but I one hand them

[@NinjaRodent]

Yeah I always keep a shield for back up too. Both Demon's and Dark Souls 1 have a few sections where I swear using a shield almost seems mandatory. Hell Demon's Souls has a swamp that you literally can't roll in.

[@DuelJ007]

Grass sheild + katana all the way

[@lewispritchard-r4x]

Another example of bloodborne making you fear something, is when I did the chalice dungeons (to get the platinum I'm not a masochist) the spiders that drop down from the ceiling are quite a regular enemy in the later dungeons. After the first time I got jumped by those leggy fuckers I never walked into a room without looking at the ceiling again.

[@percyvile]

Not to mention that for some horrid reason they use the patches model for enemies

[@onyourleft9273]

those spiders that jump you in the main game (forgot where but you probably know which one i’m talking about) scared me shitless i put down the game for a solid 4 days after that

[@WritingOnGames]

I've just started playing Bloodborne and I love it so far in a way that I didn't think I could love another Souls game. I got pretty burned out after the DLC for 3 - I've just played SO. MUCH. SOULS. I adore the series - the first Dark Souls near enough saved my life when I was at my most suicidal - but there's only so much time you can spend in that type of world. Bloodborne really clicked with me because it feels like a horror game first and a Souls game second. Its aesthetic fits the combat model so well - unrelenting dread, terror and the knowledge that if you fuck up at all, you will be punished harshly. It's fascinating to me how that combat system can be used to so effectively represent a celebration of life and self-betterment in Dark Souls, but can be used to almost opposite means in Bloodborne. Miyazaki really is a genius. Also, I tend to find when videos go over fifteen minutes that it's unnecessary because most KZbinrs are just spewing words into a microphone with no editing process, but people like you, Joseph Anderson and ShayMay completely buck that for me. It's possible to be longform whilst remaining consistently compelling, and people like yourself prove that. Bravo.

[@elmerson10]

Writing on Games Dark souls save you from suicide? Its the game that almost made me want to commit suicide.XD JK. However live longer so you could play the next from software game😜

[@Crazy_2100]

Why would you play a dark souls game when your suicidal?

[@28set215]

I think u r underselling urself.U played dark souls wen u were most suicidal which means u have More in you wat takes to survive than to die.u r a fighter.Hope u always remember that

[@iansmith9201]

Writing on Games q

[@sLAyZY760]

Well said 28set215 👍 Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem

[@aria83308]

Bloodborne is the only game that made me actively scared to progress, more than any horror game ever has. I basically went into every area scared as shit and I loved it. My friend and I keep saying that the next souls game better have more eldritch horrors or else we aren't buying it.

[@ActingNT]

"Play conditioning" seems like a very useful term. An example I thought of while watching (an example of bad conditioning) comes from Magic: The Gathering, which featured a mechanic in a goofy joke expansion which punishes your opponent for saying specific words. The obvious countermeasure, for a player trying to win the game, is to stop joking, laughing, and having fun, and play the game in total silence instead. This mechanic is cited as the reason that expansion is the least liked of all the joke expansions.

[@rettwoods]

Acting NT Also known as a tutorial.

[@AXel2169]

Where I'm from, there's a rather common version of Daifugo (called Trouduc in French) where not only does the loser of each game start the next game with a handicap (which is the whole point of the game), but also people like to add a rule where if the loser asks a question and someone else answers, then that person gets the handicap instead. It's supposed to be a fun way to use your wit to get rid of your handicap, but most times it only makes the other players refuse to talk to the loser AT ALL. I hate this rule because if you play with competitive people and you lose, you basically get shunned, which makes you want to stop playing rather than to try winning.

[@Willie6785]

@@rettwoods You mean that for "play conditioning"? I'd argue they have differences.

[@Xayify]

@@rettwoods that would be Conveyance, as he mentioned literally one second after introducing his term

[@bisectbrain]

i think calling the shield and magic aspects of souls games "the not fun and boring way to play" is kind of unfair. it's basically like saying the RPG part of the souls games (which involves like 40-50% of all the games' mechanics) is useless and wrong, which just doesn't make sense to me. giving the player the choice to build characters around things other than strength and dex, to me, actually adds a lot of enjoyment and variation to playthroughs and the games themselves instead of taking it away from them. just my thoughts on it

[@spookzer16]

Absolutely! Couldn't have said it better myself! I just recently started a fat rolling tank build in DS1. It takes an entirely different play style to succeed like that. It makes the playthrough feel so fresh and rewarding.

[@boonsaplenty3924]

It also kinda ignores that the kinds of builds that Bloodborne encourages, in other Souls games, require a higher familiarity with the game's mechanics and enemy types. Like yeah it's awesome to never get hit on the third playthrough and rip through everything like a tornado, but that doesn't mean it's not equally fun to be a new player hiding behind a tower shield hoping that new big scary monster or menacing dude in armor isn't going to rip you apart with a glance

[@fluffynator6222]

He made it pretty clear that spending your time waiting behind a shield isn't fun. To anybody.

[@spookzer16]

@@fluffynator6222 Bad bait try harder.

[@Dorsidwarf]

The problem isnt that "Shield bad" or "Magic bad" its that "The shield's mechanics teach new and intimidated players to cower statically and move slowly rather than learning that active and mobile play will reward them to learn"

[@jmerranko77]

I agree with all of this except the blood vials being a great healing system. Everyone has had to farm blood vials at some point, and that is a horrendous time tax.

[@bruederlichesgesetzbuch]

Don‘t even talking about the stupid „heals 40% of HP“ mechanic. It‘s just awful in a Blood Level 4 run, if you habe to heal 3 times just to survive a few attacks. I don‘t know what they intended with this mechanic.

[@ds4251]

Blood Vials drop *just* enough that you don't really notice it until you have trouble with a boss or a section and start to run out.

[@bruederlichesgesetzbuch]

I know that but my problem is the following 1.: Why? It‘s just punishing unexperienced players by forcing them to farm. In my first playthrough I had to farm vials once but boredom is a realy dumb punishment, is it not? 2.: I realy like no Level runs, but if I were forced to go farming vials I would have stopped emediantly. Luckily I don‘t had to but I just can‘t see any advantage in this system.

[@Eyecyou64]

Not me

[@marshmallowallen5677]

Just kill a few of the fat guys. They’re almost guaranteed to drop two blood vials

[@LGreymark]

Came back to this video years later for review. There's a couple of major issues I have with it, especially with half a decade of hindsight and experience, but mostly I disagree with the variety of weapons point. Having played all of these games many... _many_ times, using the same few weapons over and over again (bloodborne) gets old... fast. Really fast. I have my highest playtime in the games in this series which have the greatest weapon variety.

[@bigdsweet]

And now we have sekiro which is the “parry or die” game. I love fromsoft.

[@Nylspider]

I feel like Sekiro really shouldn't be compared to the souls series. There are some similarities but the generally different combat system makes me feel like it's best to treat Sekiro as its own thing People who try to play Sekiro as a souls game have a bad time because, as you said, parrying is waaaayyyyy more important compared to dodging, which is only a worthwhile strategy in a few bosses.

[@bigdsweet]

@@Nylspider Sekiro is the evolution of the souls game. It is some of the most rewarding combat i have ever played. I will compare it even if you don't want me too.

[@bigdsweet]

@@Nylspider k

[@theburgerking1236]

@@bigdsweet Your quite right to compare them to the souls series, each of the games in a sense build on each other in some ways, like blood borne from dark souls. Blood borne I’d say is a more apt comparison given how the combat works as in the souls games you can in fact beat the games without parrying and I did just this even on Pontiff yes he was a pain, but the parrying in blood borne because it rewards you for being aggressive by recovering health it behooves you to be parrying and thus get a guaranteed recovery to your health. And in Sekiro you have to actually parry to beat things because more often than not they’ll beat you.

[@Alexander-nr5tt]

@@bigdsweet Calling Sekiro an evolution of the series is a bit much when the games combat removes a lot of the depth and choice that was present in the previous games.

[@UltimaN3rd]

All this with the caveat that some people enjoy slow, careful, tense gameplay. I played Demon's Souls by slowly creeping around with my shield up and I loved it! As a result of this play-style I didn't die to the tricks, traps and hidden enemies most of the time.

[@xdan-]

No you didn't enjoy it because the creator of the video says so.

[@Grevivk007]

It was a illusion, the best way to enjoy is the way of the fanboys, the true and only fun way in the series.

[@nicholaswoodson4664]

I feel like this has to be right in someway though. I feel like there has to be an objectively right and proper way to play a game and t hat there are objectively and right opinions on things.

[@Mandaeus]

I think the scariness lasts only so long. I now two hand weapons all the time which I'd never have dared to when I started out. Feels more 'balletic' almost meditative.

[@paulhogarth6765]

Ehhh, but at the same time I kind of click with the argument andstory about how hisfriend got into Souls by using Bloodborne as that gateway drug. So much so that DS3 almost feels Bloodborne-ish. And there's way too many hints in BB that, yes, the game creators themselves kind of think shields are shit. No one is saying that you can't have funwith shields. But then again, no one can convince me that playing a non-errata'd Hexblade in my old 3.5 gaming group is going to lead me to having a goodtime.

[@DeepVoicedDude]

I think there's something you missed in your analysis of the play conditioning of the Dark Souls tutorial. One of the main things that the Asylum Demon is supposed to teach you is that sometimes you're going to run into something that you're not ready for, and it's okay to run away and come back when you're better equipped to deal with it. This was most likely done because of the way Dark Souls starts once you're out of the Asylum. You're able to go straight into several areas that you *are not ready for*. I've chatted with several people over the years who said that the reason they dropped Dark Souls was because they got to Firelink, explored around, and then the first enemies absolutely wrecked them over and over until they quit. What were those first enemies? The *fucking skeletons in the graveyard*. New players are not supposed to start there, but it's so easy for them to stumble across. The skeletons are highly resistant to slashing weapons, they move quickly and somewhat erratically compared to other earlier enemies and they can *parry your fucking attacks*. No wonder people got frustrated at that point. They hadn't taken to heart what the Asylum Demon was trying to teach them: That they weren't ready for that shit. They'd been conditioned by marketing and what other people had told them that Dark Souls was really really hard, so they kept running face-first into a challenge they just weren't equipped to deal with.

[@lettuceprime4922]

What's funny is that you'll never run _through_ a bossfight again though. Maybe the first Seath encounter would have been less absurd if you somehow could.

[@alanritchie7850]

I don’t get why people quit. I cannot help but explore a level thoroughly. If I run into a place I can’t pass I make a mental note and look for another way

[@86Fallowcp]

In my defense, the little staircase to undead burg was barely visible and I had to see a video to know that it was there.

[@zakealifa6294]

I had a similar issue, but with the ghosts 🤣

[@RenMomoDotPog]

I know there's like, 16,832 comments as of writing this, but this has convinced me to shake the dust off my ps4, download bloodborne again, and try it because I actually have more skill in video games than when I was a teenager. I can appreciate games more, and maybe I'll enjoy this

[@danbull]

This was good

[@Didact13]

The elusive Dan Bull can be found in a variety of environments, generally being cool about everything. When backed into a corner, it tends to rap at its foes until they are forced into submission.

[@S.A.O.D.A]

Dan Bull Eyy, I found a Dan Bull! Good fortune for a week!

[@seduceme1093]

Dan Bull Ah! 'Tis the Lord of Flows!

[@dabossman5650]

Dan Bull its u lol!!!!do u play dark souls?Do a playthrough on ur gaming channel!!!!

[@fiddlerfiddle5761]

Dan Bull, Oh my.

[@Mantonization]

I think your argument is great and I'm very much following your reasoning, but the phrase "You're now forced to play the game the Fun way" just sits wrong with me for some reason This may just make me weirder than most, but I LIKED playing slow and methodical with a shield,. I felt in control at all times. I could dodge when I wanted to, but I occasionally made a clumsy mistake, and I literally don't have the reaction speed to parry consistently. So being forced to use solely both of those things would be / is incredibly frustrating for me I dunno. I'm probably just being petty about this but it feels like I'm being told that I'm not actually having fun, and if I say otherwise then I'm lying?

[@BARMN89]

totally agree, I kind of feel like that point brings the rest of the video down.

[@MouseyCommander]

I was initially a bit miffed at this too, however I think his point is more in regards to new players being told to use it when its something you really have to build a character around to do effectively. Now his point about spears is much more annoying, especially when he shows them being used ins Sen's Fortress which is one of the best places to use them.

[@rickybindahoose6193]

Don't forget though, this guy speaks like his opinion is fact and he's very arrogant.. They introduced shields into the game so that there were multiply play styles thus giving replay-ability.. he lost all credibility when he pronounced Gascoigne "Gascognee" cause I think he was actually being serious lol.

[@Kamian65]

He's saying that he doesn't find that play-style fun, and that many others don't find that play-style fun. Thus he makes the case for that being why people often have trouble getting into these style of games. You did not have trouble getting into them, and therefore the argument does not concern you in the slightest.

[@w1mark275]

His entire argument is pretty much that shields are a "crutch" to newer players and to a point I agree. Whenever a game hands you a crutch, players are given a means to progress through the game despite their skill in the game staying somewhat static. This causes a problem because soon or later, that crutch won't be enough, and the player will either have to adapt (which they could have been doing instead of relying on the crutch the whole game) or quit. Depending on how long the player has being using the crutch, the more likely he will want to quit because he's had to endure playing the game the exact same way over and over again. The shield is not the only crutch in dark souls though. Even the UI, the ability to lock-on to enemies is arguably a crutch. Players who learned to use the lock-on exclusively in a dark souls game will have a difficult time facing encounters with multiple enemies since it severely hampers your maneuverability and the ability to hit multiple enemies at the same time. A crutch clouds the player's judgement that there is only one way to approach some or all encounters that they face, despite that there may more effective means to encounter the scenario without the crutch. In extreme circumstances, this may force the player to believe that their problems rely on not effectively utilizing the crutch, causing frustration as despite their toughest efforts, they yield zero or insignificant dividends.

[@nimrodthewise836]

"Fun" is subjective, I found playing with a shield precisely as fun as I liked.. Bloodborne works because of how different the dodging is, you move with celerity like a vampire..

[@TurdFurgeson571]

One like for using celerity correctly.

[@123pa1n]

you just dodge around like an idiot, like in every fucking action shlashing nonsense game

[@MiorAkif]

@@123pa1n dodging around like an idiot gets you killed tho

[@xBurzurkurx]

Yeah I had to disagree there as well. I've always built tank/shield types in any game with rpg elements to it, it has always been my thing and it still is in Dark Souls and I had a hell of a fun time. In fact, I usually find myself complaining that Dark Souls favors the dodge mechanic over shields. Everyone seems to understand and flock toward the cookie cutter dex and damage builds with very light gear.

[@Sm0k3turt]

Nimrod the Wise Vampyr much?

[@AxionZetaOne]

Hearing the first section of the video explain in detail how the mechanics differ from other games in the same loose "type" is actually really helpful. It lets people like me know right from the get-go that this is not a series for us, that the gameplay is irrevocably built around a set of functions and designs that are at complete odds with how i want to play games. Sticking around for the story bits though. Because i can appreciate a well-crafted story even if its bolted to mechanics i will never want to touch.