[zombieman000]

Man I should stop looking at this thread, it's torture. Did anybody catch any King's Field/Eternal Ring references in this? Maybe some from other From games? I wonder if anyone who worked on King's Field had a hand in this.

Oh.

[Talbain]

[CubaLibre]

Yeah, it's a shame that a game is challenging and even has a whole built-in mechanic to make dying a lesson rather than a mere penalty. The nerve! It must be some kind of sick sexual fetish. All those sickos who say they like LEGO Star Wars are probably pedophiles, too.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[another god]

If you want your DUNGEON CRAWL to be full of BALL PITS, SAFETY BUMPERS, and FOAM SPIKES go right ahead.

Hey Cuba, you should get this game, too.
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interdimensional

[Talbain]

[schild]

[gooktime]

[negativedge]

[Talbain]

[schild]

Any gamer very much should enjoy it. It's a masterful game. If they don't they're just pussies. <-- clarified this at the bottom.

[Talbain]

Well, maybe I'll get some cash together and borrow my brother's PS3. He uses it to play blu-ray DVDs.
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[CubaLibre]

[negativedge]

Yeah, this thread is quickly getting retarded.

And dungeon crawlers are largely a western genre anyway.

[Sketch]

Talbain raised an interesting point.

I bought a decent arcade stick and SFIV, and I quickly ended up hating it. I mean seriously hating the game and the whole fucking genre, despite having loved it at first.

I could beat easiest and very easy modes, but easy mode absolutely destroyed me. And online play always pitted me against hopelessly inept players or people who trashed me in seconds. Anyway, I realised it would take too much effort to practice to get good, so I dropped it in favour or replaying Valkyria Chronicles - which is brutally tough in HARD mode, but after I make a mistake once with my troops I replay the level and A-rank it because I've learned my lesson.

SFIV was like musical instrument practice. I could see the guitar in the corner, but I knew that if I sat for 4 hours I'd still be shit at the end of my Saturday, and if you're not good you won;t have any fun, so I'd rather go off and drink beer with friends or play Yakuza 3, which is instant gratification. And in the end I'd come up with excuses to not play SFIV, until eventually I just put it back on the shelf and boxed the stick, deciding that I simply didn't have the motivation to improve and wasn't going to make myself feel guilty about it. $120 in total, and I spent maybe 5 hours on SFIV?

Hmm... Suddenly I'm afraid that Demon's Souls is the same thing. I'm failing to see how you can die 200 times at the same section - if I try to cross a bridge for example, and something kills me, I'll do it twice, maybe three time, and then give up and attempt another route. Is this a thinking man's kind of difficult, or is it a dextrous joystick waggler's kind of difficult?

[negativedge]

If it makes you feel any better, you can probably recoup your loses by reselling the stick.

[gooktime]

Yeah I don't know where this 200 number came from, but I've never died more than a couple of times on any given section.

[schild]

I don't remember saying I died 200 times in the same section.

I died roughly 200 times over the course of my first game. And a total of 4 times through my second (thus far).

[Sketch]

Well, it intrigues me enough to have bought it, so I will reserve judgement until I've played it. The fact the game is pre-designed also helps (as opposed to the randomness of beat-em-ups).

[Bennett]

Well, you've finally broken me - I'm getting a PS3. :(

Maybe now I can finally stop playing through Tower of Doom.

[Pijaibros]

[gooktime]

This game is incredibly atmospheric, that hasn't been said enough.

[Red_venom]

Still want this game like crazy but i wish i could just find someone selling a PS3 for a reasonable price.

[Toptube]

I watched a trailer for this the other day linked, uh, somewhere. Really liked what I saw but had no idea a full english version was available.

I just bought it from yesasia.com $67 + free shipping
http://www.yesasia.com/us/demons-souls-asian-version/1014023935-0-0-0-en/info.html


*If they bothered to make the game in full english though, I really don't understand why they can't shit out a manual and do a run for North America and Europe.

[Cossix]

Man I should've just ordered it from there I guess. I bought it last week and it still hasn't shipped yet. Stupid eBay is so slow sometimes. :(

[another god]

[analogos]

[another god]

The messages left behind are translated in the game. So in English it'll say, "Amush to the right", and in Japanese it'll say that there's an ambush to the right. In Japanese.
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interdimensional

[gooktime]

you write messages with preset vocab chosen from a menu, so language isn't an issue.

[Sketch]

[another god]

The dramatic dance that happens a lot in any versus game owes a lot to SFII. Even if it doesn't feel like it on the surface, deep down there's a lot owed.

Btw, Go read some Sirlin. Seriously. Learn about playing to win. Just doing what it takes to get that V. It'll probably help you enjoy difficult games in general.
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interdimensional

[Talbain]

[another god]

Talbain, you are being pretty shallow about the topics of difficulty and competitiveness. Sure, a lot of games treat difficulty like that, but to use them as the basis for difficulty is like taking a coloring book picture and criticizing painting.

There are difficult and competitive games that expand the depth of a game many times over without being a routine.

For example, a game like Mirror's Edge opens up new paths when you get better. Speed running the game is both a challenge and a unique perspective to what the game ultimately tries to teach you: how to navigate the familiar with something unfamiliar. The difficult optional bosses in many Final Fantasy games either make you power level to beat them, or they make you figure out the system and exploit it. It's totally possible to low level beat all of the bosses, so a lot of people who are into figuring it out do it. The Yamat Dragon boss in FFXII is a great example because unless you want to spend days coddling your characters, you have to figure out how to set up your gambits just right. That's pretty fucking genius, really.

As far as competitive games and their depth, well, I don't think you touched on it much. Though from your "add more damage, critical, take away health" attitude, I don't think you look at competitive games with any depth, either.

Competitive games are all about winning conditions and resources to get to those conditions. Sure, losing health is how you CAN lose a fighting game, and if you're impatient that's how you make the other person lose, but there's a lot more to fighting games.

A lot of people talk about fighting game tiers and high level play, but it's pretty fucking silly to talk about Kara-Canceling when you have difficulties with bread & butter combos. The bottom line is that given your options you want to restrict your opponent's options for reaching the end of the match. If that means keeping your opponent in the corner so he can't attack, or mixing him up so he can't block, so be it.

The basic rock/papper/scissors what-beats-what mentality of gamers only goes so far. Fighting games have difficult execution so that mentality gets obscured and becomes vague. When a player messes up his super-combo-cancel, is the other player smart enough to know if he'll connect it next time? Is he baiting a wakeup dragon punch? Or is he coming in for the throw?

Yeah I got into a lot here, but that's part of the point. There's a lot more depth to games than people seem to realize. A lot of gamers want games to teach them how to be good right away. Those are the gamers that can't figure out the licensing in Gran Turismo games. They're the ones that won't figure out how to play a sports game. Apparently competition isn't interesting, and being a tourist in Final Fantasy-land is all they want.

To bring this full-circle to Demons's Souls and why it seems so important for games is because, well, shit this game is all about being balls-to-the-wall difficult yet providing you with more resources than necessary to overcome these odds. Death lurks around the corner, and there are multiple ways to prepare, identify, and defend against it. Being harsh and unforgiving brings back the hardcore to, well, hardcore games. Fuck spawn points less than a minute back.

If DS makes me feel BAD about sucking, then GOOD. If it doesn't, well, schild's a jerk for telling us how awesome it is. And if it's not difficult at all, well, schild's a jerk again.
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interdimensional

[gooktime]

backstabbed Yurt and he went flying off the tower so I couldn't get his armour :(

[schild]

[gooktime]

Ah... I did a quit game; it had auto-saved about five seconds earlier. As cool looking as it is, don't think it's quite so suitable for my Royal yet.

[schild]

[gooktime]

Is Endurance/Equip the stat I should be boosting there? I'm pretty mobile in it already, just rolls are kind of wooden.

I tell y'all, schild's mega-froth for this game is totally warranted. Just wish I had more time at the moment.

[internisus]

I finally wanted a PS3 when Valkyria Chronicles came out.

Because of this game and schild's write-up thereof, I now need one.

[schild]

[v84j3gs2uc7ns4]

[gooktime]