I love how all the comments insist on discussing the difficulty, despite OP literally pointing it out as bait.
That's good bait.
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I love how all the comments insist on discussing the difficulty, despite OP literally pointing it out as bait.
That's good bait.
I know it's bait. I'm just looking for an opportunity to unload.
The circle of "just want to feel something" wraps round and round.
As a man who has never played Elden Ring and really knows nothing about it beyond it being the name of a game, the people getting all het up in these comments are very amusing. I think you guys proved her point.
All difficult games should have an easy mode for accessibility.
Signed, a Dark Souls enjoyer.
For mechanically difficult games, definitely agree. Celeste is an example I usually bring up - it's a platformer that can get pretty tough at times, especially in the after-story optional levels. But it also has one of the most flexible and useful accessibility modes I've ever seen. It allows you to adjust basically every aspect of the game a player might struggle with (game speed, additional jumps, timed mechanics, you name it). And the game itself is very good as well.
Honestly... I disagree. What is accessibility? Every souls game has been beaten with dance pads, rock band drum kits and guitars. They're also frequently beaten by people with serious disabilities using specialized controllers. Input speed is not an issue here, Souls has always been about carefully choosing your moves to manage the end lag and stamina cost of your actions. It's about making the right move, not about moving quickly or pressing a lot of buttons at once.
IMHO, accessibility is frequently cited as an excuse for lower difficulties here, when in reality the difficulty isn't a serious part of the barrier for disabled players. It could use better accessibility options, like configurable colourblind modes, audio indicators, more configurable text size, some kind of clear colour indicators on attacks for low vision, but difficulty? No.
There are also lots of good reasons not to add explicit difficulty options, which is y'know, why From Soft haven't done it yet.
Accessibility isn't just a case of 'accessible to the handicapped', man.
I never understood the obsession with stupid difficult games at all. It's like, let me bang my head on a coffee table for 3 hours trying to make 5 minutes of progress. No thanks
Edit: Wow, this blew up, quite a controversial take, and not a hint of irony from all the people commenting about how I don't get it.
Edit 2: For what it's worth, I have played Dark Souls 1 all the way through, some of Dark Souls 2, got to the end of Bloodborne, played about 3 hours of Elden Ring, and a bit of Lies of P. These games just aren't for me. I played them bcz my friend loves them, and I was trying to make a soulslike bcz that seems to be all the rage right now.
On the flip side, I don't understand why people like playing video games that just tell a story and pretty much spoon feed every victory to the player. It feels hollow and incredibly boring.
like movies?
You know there's a middle ground, right? There exist games that manage to balance difficulty in a way that gives players a consistent challenge that they're just able to overcome. The best games have these things called "difficulty settings" that let you customize that challenge so that you can decide how hard you want it to be
ER is not even difficult unless you specifically want it to be
I played it for 3 hours. Unless I'm missing something, it's incredibly difficult.
Here's 2 tips:
Level up Vigor. Health is how you make early game easier.
Skip bosses. There isn't a hard linear progression path and different builds struggle with different parts of the game.
Counter-point: No.
I rather play something fun.
Everyone experiences fun in their own ways. You're allowed to not want to play hard games just like other people are allowed to want to play hard games. It doesn't have to be an argument about which is "better."
I once made the mistake googling easy mode for Elden ring that someone gifted to me. Once I saw the gatekeeping on Reddit, I decided it's not a game for me and uninstalled. I'm sorry that I suck at video games
it gets much easier when you start treating it like a rhythm game where you get into dance offs with the enemies:)
and no need to interact with a game's community when it's shite, it's a single player game you can enjoy it however you want! (or don't, i'm not pressuring you, just don't want you to miss out on a good game because its fanbase is made of out assholes)
I don't want to redo the same thing a dozen times just to experience the story and world
I bought Rain World recently, having heard a lot of good things about it, and I found it hard to get into because I didn't really see a point to what I was doing, whether I was doing it right, etc, so I put "how to enjoy Rain World" into my search engine of choice and found an article with some beginner tips, one of which being that the bleak, helpless feel is intentional and part of the experience. I respect it as an artistic decision, but my private and work lives are stressful enough as it is, which is probably partly why I was bouncing off the game, so I just got a refund, and I'm fine with that decision.
I loved every bit of Rain World! But I ended up quitting it mid play through when it became too hard. I found a way to gather stacks of berries to have enough reattempts for the hard parts, but then got lost where I was even supposed to go and gave up after ~25 hours playtime
I dislike how people use game completion as a method to gloat
Like bro, don't we all play games to have fun?
I'm currently playing Elden Ring for the first time and I'm note sure if I'm not just doing it for self-flagellation instead of fun
I've never had vitriol spewed at me quite like when I argue in favor of easy mode for soulslike games. I'm at a point where I hate soulslike games, half because I don't want to spend ten hours on a boss that I can't beat, and half because I don't want to associate with soulsborne players
Easy mode ftw. I've only got so much free time. I wanna chill when I'm gaming.
You don't want to spend twenty hours trying to beat one boss, and being told to git gud whenever you ask for advice on the internet? But think of the sense of pride and accomplishment you'll feel when you finally beat it! The best part is you get to go through this like 10 times
/s
All of the Souls games kinda have an easy mode baked in. Ranged weapons/Sorceries generally provide an easier experience. Honestly though, I just find I don't really care if there is an easy mode or not. I enjoyed the challenge and if a difficulty slider was added, it would not have detracted from my experience in the slightest. I played through the games for the challenge and I enjoyed it immensely. If someone else doesn't enjoy the challenge, then that's okay. I'm not going to gatekeep them. We're all SunBro's at our core and I will always drop my Summon Sign for others in need to find
This is extra funny because Elden Ring's diverse player build options means that it has the most adjustable difficulty curve of any FromSoftware game. Holding up Elden Ring completion specifically as any kind of bar to surpass is laughably naive.
That's the key. If you:
You didn't beat the game.
I've never touched any game of this series. If I need to replay a section or fight in a game more than 3 times it annoys me so much, I need to take a break. This often led to me never playing that game again, because only thinking about being stuck at that spot again kills all the fun for me.
In Cyberpunk for example my car got stuck in the middle of nowhere by a glitch and I would have needed to walk for god knows how long to find another vehicle. Needless to say I never played that game again, even though I was not nearly even half way through and liked it up until that point.
I haven't played Eldin Ring, but if it's story driven, I would 100% support an easy mode for those that want the story and not a time sink.
I love that Nine Sols includes the option, although I haven't personally used it.