Hi folks,
I’m having a blast in this game and compared to more recent similar games (pinokeiro puppets lie twice, dark souls 3, elden ring, hellpoint etc) finding it much less difficult, more comparable to dark souls 1 or demons souls. I don’t consider myself hugely skilled at these games, I couldn’t finish ringed city or lies of p for example.
Reading though it seems there’s a rather polarised perception of difficulty. Some people, many claiming to be highly skilled players, are struggling and others like me seem to find it comfortable.
Discussion around these games is very difficult, as whether something is hard becomes a stand in for validity of opinion and moral character in the flame wars.
Beehaw might be the one place we can discuss this and learn what people are doing differently.
Explicit housekeeping: your feelings are real and valid, you cannot be wrong about finding something hard or easy. I don’t want anyone litigating that.
you don’t need to be particularly good at something to have a valid opinion on whether or not you like something either.
So how are people playing and how are they finding it?
I started as a bucket granny. I have been using short swords, I am currently using a fire/physical split damage Rusty cutter or something, most of my stats are in umbral magic which so far is not very good or useful (20/20 stats, 2 spells from dead eyeball man). I am a methodical slow player, drawing things out with range and baiting enemies into areas I have cleared. I am favouring dodge and parries over blocking. I tend to use mostly 2h hits and kicks with soul flaying big guys. I am at medium armour weight.
I have found the game to feel very similar to ds1 as mentioned, or older monster hunter. Slow inputs, deliberate spacing etc. I would say it feels quite approachable so far although ranged sniping has caused problems in a couple of places I have felt it fair aside from that.
How about you?
One thing I haven’t figured out is if perfect parry wither damage is variable.
Sometimes it feels like I take a lot of wither, othertimes not. I’m using a shield and 2hing a lot so I wonder if it’s a shield vs weapon parry thing? Or if it’s timing based like partial parry damage mitigation in ds3.
I was too engrossed to do testing so far, have you tried at all?
What weapons are you using btw? my wife uses a giant axe and seems to yeet herself a lot. Are the certain weapons with lots of lungy movements that might be tripping people up?
I haven’t been 2hing much and haven’t tested much on those sorts of things yet. I did notice that I don’t think you can die on a perfect parry even if you have no health left, though, as I seemed to be in that position during a boss earlier today.
Started with a ranger who starts with an axe, went to a spear, then a halberd, most recently using a hammer. The spear was quite lungy which caused some issues around open air vertical areas with a lot of narrow paths, while the halberd was just too slow. Hammer is feeling good, and has a good set of running attacks.