Not sure, if it´s not because of the encoding or something, but aliasing is really visible in this trailer. But the game looks great anyway.

I know I'm in the very small minority here, but I never got the love for these games. Is it just that they make them really difficult, or is there some amazing story I am missing, because the gameplay just doesn't seem special at all. I tried a few and got bored really quickly.

The world just feels so empty and pointless (I realize that is kind of the point but it doesn't make it interesting imo). All the enemies have terribly outdated slow motion animations and no physics to speak of. The combat lacks any feel of impact as weapons just phase through everything and you see the same 2 death animations 1000 times in the first hour. Pretty much boils down to memorizing attack patterns and getting out of the way to slice through them 50 times until they fall down. Not hating on anyone who loves the games - to each their own, I'm just curious what the huge draw is here.

It does like pretty nice though, and I definitely appreciate the enemy designs and variety.

Everyone has the same experience with their first Souls game though. It's SHIT at first. Then, at some point, something in your brain goes "click" and you just sort of get it. You start playing the game the way it's SUPPOSED to be played, and not like it's God of War. That's when the game stops feeling unfair, and the game sort of opens up.

Yeah, the Souls games have a lots of interesting story elements. The actual plot of Dark Souls is very simple and straight forward, but the lore of the world is quite deep and interesting. But you have to really search for it to get it. Read item descriptions, think about item placements in the world, tie together what little NPC dialogue there is with the other scraps of lore you find and so forth. But hey, that's why we have people like ENB and Vaati to help us sort that shit out :P

As for the empty world, well they are all basically based in a medieval post apocalypse. And it's also a good way, i think, of keeping production cost down while also leaving a lot of room for conveying lore bits with visual story telling. I think the solitude adds nicely to the hopeless feel of the world, personally. I think that's a pretty big theme in the Souls games overall.

As for the combat, it's the big draw of the game for me. I'm not sure i get your complaints though. Weapons clang off of walls and shields, can have stagger animations on whiffs and so forth. In Demon's and Dark 2 we even had speciffic hitboxes on weapons, ie hit with the sharp bit or don't do full damage. Add in the poise mechanic and status effects and you've got a pretty interesting game. So far as third person action RPGs go, i'd say Dark Souls probably has one of the deepest and most satisfying combat systems.

Just feels like you didn't give the games a chance. Though obviously, Souls isn't for everyone either. They are a bit niche, and that's why they have such a hard core following.

Demon's Souls clicked with me within the first few minutes :). I was just so happy to get a more tactical based fighting system, and getting killed from 2 blows by some knight in a secluded pathway 5 minutes into the game was what made me a believer.

The series lack of "forced" narrative is, i guess, a love it or hate it thing. People who's into games like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus or even Another World will love the vagueness of the souls-games.

Sounds it's just not for you, usually i play it for the lore and satisfaction from beating the bosses.

Obviously there are exceptions, but everyone i've ever gotten to play tha game has a similar story. I do as well. Bashed my head against Demon's 1-1 for a few hours, threw the controller in frustration and stopped playing. Returned a few weeks later and tried again. Stuck with it for a bit and then i got it. Became the most fun i'd had with a game in years.

I think you're being way harsh on the game. There's a lot more to the combat, for example. It just takes time to open up those systems especially if you play without guides and the like.

The big draws to me are: punishing combat; complex environments with lots of secrets to discover, vistas to admire, and spaces to explore; a wide range of builds that all make the combat completely different; intense, mechanically interesting bosses; diverse enemy design.
I can understand not appreciating the atmosphere, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have value. A lot of people really enjoy the cold, empty spaces of Dark Souls, and there are a lot of visually striking zones in the games as well. There are moments in DSII that had my jaw on the floor the first time I saw them.
I've played the games both dozens of times and each time I run a different kind of character. Sometimes I did a coop run with challenge builds to mix things up, sometimes I tried something I wasn't any good at and made that the focus of my build so I could learn how to do it better.
I hated Dark Souls 1 for a while, but I kept pushing through it because overcoming the challenges it presented were really appealing. Now I regularly go back to both of the Dark Souls games, and I'm waiting for a more convenient way to play Demon's Souls as I've never touched it.

It took me awhile to understand the mechanics of the game, then I soldiered through it. The multiplayer/co-op or whatever you want to call it really made me dislike the game, though. the idea that you can only get by a certain boss with a specific setup (min/maxing) drove me batty, then you couple that with co-oping and being randomly one shotted, or pvp murdered, due to shit netcode when all you were trying to do was get help, left a bad taste.

You can get by any boss with any setup. I've beaten the game without leveling up at all, so to claim that minmaxing is in any way necessary is complete BS :P

Also summoning is for nerds. You don't summon. You deserve to get rekt by an invader if you try to summon.

Did the game without leveling? That's hardcore! My problem is with the Soul series is that whenever i beat a boss i'd get lost and don't no where to go. I would literally stop playing for awhile, then come back to it find a way to somewhere else and then i get lost again :p

Sl1 runs are pretty basic challenge runs though. Took a few hours, but it's very doable at level 1. Well, so long as you know the right gear to get and such. Thats the big challenge with SL1 imo, you are so limited in whatvweapons you have stats for. Speedruns are more fun though. Im down to 1 hour and 21 minutes, without any glitches.

Huh, i love the exploration in the Souls games. To me, it always feels like there is somewhere to go, and something new to find. Well, in the forst few playthroughs at least.

It's been awhile since I beat the first, and I never bought the second. The game simply requires too much time for you to be decent enough to beat, let alone the type of time it takes to master. I'm talking no-life status, *cough* Megido. :)

You have to have no life to beat a 20-40 hour game? Git gud.

When you don't ACTUALLY PLAY a videogame you are MISSING OUT on if it's good or not or appealing to you.

Also when your skills don't improve because you don't mind learing the gameplay then you also MISS OUT on what could be an awesome experience.

You have not played this game for only that amount of time. And it is in no way a 40 hour game if you read nothing about it and don't look up strategy on the internet (cheating). Don't try to bullshit me I can see steam times, sucka.

I think it's pretty reasonable to expect a player that doesn't try to find EVERYTHING or that doesn't waste 50 hours grinding to take more than 20-40 hours beating Dark Souls. It's not that long of a game really. When did i ever say that i played the game for 40 hours only? I beat the game in 1 hour and 20 minutes now. My total play time, since release, is about 1000 hours. That doesn't change that a regular playthrough should take most players about 20-40 hours, depending on skill and how thorough they are.

But also some of the patches and balancing has reduced playtime as well. Vanilla Dark Souls was kinda tough to beat without grinding, since you got very few souls from bosses. Current patch though? You'll have more souls than you need from just progressing through the game.

But i'm guessing that your approach to a hard boss in a Souls game is not to take a bit of time to learn patterns and moves, then beat the boss, but rather add another 40 levels so that you can just derp through.

Grift: there is an easy mode. Summoning. Makes even the hardest bosses trivial as the encounters are usually set up for you vs the boss and not Solaire tanking while you go on DPS duty.

I tried playing dark souls 2 again in the hope it would trigger some sort of excitement for this. But nope. Its so unbelievably naff. Even down to the way it moves is so broken and twitchy. The design isn't as tight either. Especially in terms of the world and enemy design and placement. I don't know what happened with dark souls 2 but they seriously fucked it up. I don't know if it's that which has killed any and all interest in this one. Or if it's just me being tired of the formula in general after playing 4 versions of what is largely the exact same game. This might be a day 365 purchase, if it's lucky.

Dark Souls 2, i'd say is mechanically better in a lot of ways, but the overall feel of the game is nowhere near as good as Dark Souls 1. It's great for PvP, but the game fails massively when it comes to how they've balanced regular PvE encounters. Usually it just ends up feeling unfair and/or cheesy, and things that they can't possibly have done on purpose, like crushing/blunt damage being massively OP (ie half of the enemies in the game are weak to it, none weak against it and most crushing weapons just stunlock enemies infinitely). Then Scholar came and just made it worse. The PvE experience in Scholar is a joke, imo.

I loved Demon's Souls as it was so new and unique, Dark Souls was fun too if a little more bland and I didn't really enjoy DS2 much. Bloodborne felt like a cheap go bot to the DS transformers due to the much more cheesy atmosphere (IMO) and overall bland theme. I'm not nearly as excited for DS3 I thought I'd be a couple years ago but I'm hoping some rave reviews and cool new ideas might surprise me.

I'm getting DS3, but they really do need to take a break from releasing anymore installments, or run the risk of making it stale.

Miyazaki has said that Dark Souls 3 is the last Souls game. So i'm guegssing that isn't going to be much of a problem :P

That said, we might still get a Bloodborne 2, who knows.

Still up for a souls-style game with sci-fi/cyberpunk setting. Like in the style of tsutomu nihei.

Personally, i'm kinda hoping for a new King's Field. But i don't think that's coming. Would be nice though.