If you read a few of my prior blog posts, then you know that I have been playing quite a bit of Dark Souls 3. The Souls games are widely praised for their interconnected and ingenious level design. You wind your way through varied and intricate castles, sewers, and ruins, opening secret passages and shortcuts along the way. The entire world is vastly interconnected, compact and a joy to navigate.
However, I feel that Dark Souls 3 is slightly lacking in this regard. I do enjoy how half the time, you open a shortcut instead of a checkpoint. I think that that's a nice feature. But it feels that almost every location is just a variation on a sort of castle or cathedral. It all gets a bit bland. Sure, there's the occasional shantytown or grand library, or perhaps a swamp, but for half the game, you'll just be navigating a run-down palace of some sort.
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I recently bought Dark Souls 3 for $25 on a Steam Weekend Sale, and I've been playing it a lot. Over the course of my playthrough, which I still haven't completed, I've realized something. The Dark Souls series is known for its intense, brutalizing difficulty, for youtubers screaming into the mic after they die to a horde of undead. However, after spending quite a while playing the game, I saw that Dark Souls is not difficult- Or at least Dark Souls 3, which I have heard is objectively the easiest of the trilogy. But regardless, I don't find myself believing it's a terribly difficult game. I've died countless times, lost hundreds of thousands of souls, but I've always pushed through after a few more tries. I have also realized why the Souls series is considered so hard- You die so much. But to me, death is not difficulty. It's just learning.
Difficulty to me is looking at a sprawling, complex level, seeing it as a whole, looking at it thinking "How am I supposed to do this? It's so intricate, so complicated." But then you try it again and again, and realize that the level is made up of little pieces that you know how to do easily, and then you do it. Once you see the level not as the sum of its parts, but its parts themselves, when that realization hits you that you know how to do it, you might fail a few more times, based on your skill, but you still beat the level. The point of this is that part of what makes a game difficult is that you can't push through a game through brute force and button mashing alone- A hard game requires deep, complex thought and strategy. Dead Cells to me is hard, because you can't memorize the levels. You die quickly, but so do your enemies. You die and die hundreds of times, but eventually, something clicks. You instinctively see recognizable parts from previous playthroughs, (If you don't know, Dead Cells is a roguelike- It generates its levels randomly) and it makes the level feel more familiar, but you also realize yet another thing. You also get an instinctive sense of enemy behaviors and patterns, and it helps you get better and better, learning something new from your deaths. Difficulty to me implies serious, complex planning, paired with the need for instinctive knowledge and memorization of mechanics and enemy behaviors. Death is not just a setback in difficult games. It is valuable, in fact, and it should be almost required. You should gain something from each death- knowledge. You cannot brute force your way through a difficult game by specing into a particularly strong build. No, each playstyle that the game supports is equal in it's difficulty. Difficulty requires you to engage in nearly all, if not every one of the game's mechanics. If it's a game focused on combat, the player is forced (In a good way) into a dance with the enemy. The player treats every single enemy like a major threat, which they are. They regard the enemy as equals, having been bested so many times. The two engage, and the player enters the zone- dodging and weaving through enemy attacks, yes, but still taking a few hits themselves. The player emerges victorious, feeling a sense of accomplishment, as if this common enemy was the final boss because it had killed them so many times. They emerged battered, yes- but victorious nonetheless. Difficult games do not require mastery- In fact, mastery of a difficult game is nigh on impossible. Instead, difficult games simply require proficiency. Yes, Dark Souls 3 is a hard game- Close to difficulty, but it falls just short, for one reason alone. Yes, it requires planning, and critical thinking. Memorization of enemy patterns is intrinsic to beating the game. But for one reason, and one reason only, I do not consider it a difficult game. You can simply brute force your way through. On my first playthrough, I was terrified of fighting this infamously hard boss- The Dancer of the Boreal Valley- and when the time came to fight it, I was surprised. I nearly beat it on my first try. I succeeded easily on my second. No guide, nothing. I just held up my shield, and rolled through like, one attack. I believe that I succeeded where others failed because of my build. I had a ton of health and strength, which allowed me to tank through hits while still dealing moderate damage myself. Now I can see how a light armored, low-health mage, a popular build in the Dark Souls games, could have struggled. That's where I don't see Dark Souls as a hard game. It all depends on your playstyle. Difficult games should be difficult throughout- I'm sure that I struggled where others succeeded. But really, it's all objective. For a guy like me, who enjoys really digging into all a game has to offer, while not becoming to emotionally attached to losing or dying, Souls games and Dead Cells (That's what I consider a difficult game) can be downright relaxing at times. For other, more serious involved people, it's just a frustratingly addictive game, which has a lot of struggles for a relatively small payoff. While some scream into the mic after lose 20,000 souls, I barely let out a sigh when I did. Thanks for reading; sorry for the long post. |
AuthorHi! I'm Thomas MacDougall, a sophomore at DSA. Here you can check out my thoughts and recent activities. Please note that the views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools. Archives
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