How Dark Souls (accidentally) Taught You Cowardice
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.พ. 2023
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As tough as its reputation may be, Dark Souls tries its best to give brand new players a helping hand as they find their barings in its hardcore world - unfortunately, the manner Dark Souls does this... accidentally tricks people into playing in a cowardly, risk averse way - meaning they have less fun, and are less willing to try and master the game's intricacies.
Entry Level Strategies are a powerful and crucial tool that allow videogames to ease in beginner players, but sometimes, they're too helpful for their own good, and end up ruining otherwise great games - how do they do this? and how did Elden Ring finally fix From Soft's most persistent design problem? One thing's for sure, in order to solve this particular conundrum, the Architect is going to need more than that 100% block shield they've been carrying around since the start of the game.
You Saw:
Dark Souls 2 - 2014
Dark Souls - 2012
Dark Souls 3 - 2016
Overwatch 1 - 2019
Super Smash Bros Ultimate - 2018
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - 2021
Dota 2 - 2013
Final Fantasy 7 Remake - 2020
XCOM 2 - 2016
Counter Strike: Global Offensive
Hitman: World Of Assasination - 2023
Bioshock - 2007
Pokemon: Fire Red - 2004
Hi Fi Rush - 2023
Elden Ring - 2022
Street Fighter 4 - 2008
Metal Gear Rising - 2012
Celeste - 2018
Monster Hunter: World - 2018
Resident Evil 8 - 2021
DOOM - 2016
Wonderful 101 Remastered - 2020
Apex Legends - 2019
Batman Arkham Asylum - 2009
XCOM: EU - 2012
Half Life Alyx - 2020
Halo: Master Chef Collection - 2014
Dead Space - 2008
Titanfall 2 - 2016
Factorio - 2016
Satisfactory - Early Access
Street Fighter 5 - 2016
Magic: The Gathering Arena - 2018
Sonic Mania - 2017
Dark and Darker - Early Access
Super Mario 3D world - 2013
Mario Kart 8 - 2014
Burnout Paradise Remastered - 2018
Descenders - 2018
F Zero GX - 2003
Spelunky 2 - 2020
Hades - 2020
THe Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - 2014
Duck Game - 2015
Bayonetta 2 - 2014
Rollerdrome - 2022
Pizza Tower - 2023
Darkest Dungeon - 2016
Marvel's Midnight Suns - 2022
DOOM Eternal - 2020
Hollow Knight - 2017
Persona 5 Royal - 2019
The Witness - 2016
Neon White - 2022
Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy - 2017
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - 2019
Bloodborne - 2015
Stardew Valley - 2016
Atomic Heart - 2023 - เกม
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I have it on good authority that the "donating to good causes" challenge run has a really rare achivement associated with it, just trust me www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
The Entry Level Strategy on twitter is to post vague, ragebaiting comments that inspire arguments, but gamers aren't ready for that conversation 💅 twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Love the videos. I was wondering if you were going to go over Immersive Sims games like Deus Ex , and Arcane games like Dishonored 1/2 and System Shock?
This is what cryptic language is like but I really like it. Doesn't work too well in text form to be shamefully honest.
Considering the amount of work it takes to make a video, I'll understand if it isn't done. Still, It be nice if you could put a little card with the title of the game that's on the background, although some of these are well known, there are still titles that happen to be outside our radar at the moment but still look attractive when they show up.
I Made a new Intro for your Channel. Do you Like it?
Is "Entry Level Strategy" the same as "First Order Optimal Strategy"?
"Not to call you a coward Master, but sometimes, cowards do survive..." - Starscream.
Starscream is the goat. Behind sound wave ofc
Starscream is the best transformer, no question.
Peak cinema referenced
That movie isn't that great, but that line is the pure essence of Starscream right there!
I'm unashamedly a defensive player that uses safe beginner strategies, often times if the game requires me to play risky in order to proceed I'll lose all motivation to play, my strengths are in patience and preparation, I'd much rather spend 20 hours farming resources and level ups, or exploring the map for secrets and security bonuses than learn how to get good enough at the game where you can win with starter equipment and abilities
That being said I don't dislike all games of skill, I grew up on games like donkey Kong country 1 and other janky NES and SNES games that I've gotten good at with practice, but the game has to be fun enough to justify getting good at it for me to bother
I beat dark souls 1 after exploring everything and maxing out pyromancy with a level 15 hand axe that I used block strats to great effect with
I beat smough and ornstein first try by backing away from them endlessly until they gave me openings, I even killed smough first because he was the bigger slower target for my fireballs to hit, after he was dead ornstein wasn't that bad because I had the patience to punish him
I see many players with great skill in risk taking, and I appreciate their skill but many of them lack patience, I think you need both skill and patience all games require some of both, I just happen to prefer to lean on patience
"And we all know that one guy with the Level 80 Charizard and nothing else"
Or...ya know...that player uh...didn't quite figure out you could rearrange the order of his pokemon, so his starter always came out first and...well...got all the xp.
Not that I know anything about that.
I know uhh... A friend that discovered he could rearrange them and still chose to use only one. But couldn't be me
I also uhh... know a friend who failed to figure out the clown puzzle in jubilife, and ended up grinding his turtwig to level 25...
It took me 3 years to find out what a box was ...
Now I know why the EXP Share item in recent games spreads the points to your entire party.
Well, many kids didn't even properly comprehend the concept of catching pokemon and using multiple ones when playing for the first time.
I also see a lot of sunk cost fallacy (maybe?) with a starting basic "one weapon, one magic spell" is by the time many players get to a new magic/spell, they've already likely dumped several levels worth of upgrades into the original fireball spell and the new magic does negligible damage in comparison.
(and it's almost always fireball, isn't it)
these other spells might overall be better fully leveled, but since trying out that new spell actually drops the power you have for several levels, so it's not worth it to branch off and experiment with other combinations. frustrating as a player (I want to use this new thing but I can't kill anything with it now so I guess I can't)
This is what happened to me in Elden Ring. I used the standard Halberd for over half the game until my friends convinced me to switch to what would become a better halberd after enough upgrades.
@@patrickporter4440 I actually think the weapon upgrade system goes against the developers' intent to hoard as many unique weapons and playstyles as your build will allow. I always use cheat engine (offline of course) to get ALL of my weapons to the general upgrade level of the area, so I can switch play-styles without much investment, and actually use the cool things I find.
I think even without upgrade systems, you still often see the same thing in that the time spent learning a particular weapon/build/whatever is itself the sunk cost and so people often stick to the simple, reliable stuff they got access to early in the game solely because they've already gotten used to it and don't want to have to relearn a new thing they've found halfway through the game when the baseline difficulty is much higher.
Something I'd like to add to this is that Dark Souls 2 went around this problem by generously giving you enough upgrade materials. By the time I got past the first Great Soul, I had two weapons upgraded to +4. But then of course the game slaps you back by reducing weapon durability so you are almost forced to have an extra upgraded weapon.
That's why I love Terraria. There's no such thing as levels in that game, so if you want to just change your build completely, you can just do it immediately if you have the items. Extremely flexible for experimentation.
I felt that DS1 taught me the shield had its limits pretty reliably, between the big enemies that don't recoil and chunk off stamina, enemies that grab, and magic/elemental damage. Elden Ring does it *better,* of course, but it's not like the lessons weren't there at all.
DS3's answer to it was to make the shield completely useless.
I know I felt it with Sif, especially the 720 degree swing. I could block the first hit, but the second always cut through and knocked me down.
@@Soumein That's interesting, that was the only boss where I dropped the shield, I actually even dropped most of my armor.
I grinded and got enough armor and stamina to shield or survive that hit, then estus. The shields strategy can be challenging sometimes with the kitting plus potions management.
I agree! Unless you are building your character for blocking (greatshields, stamina, equip load, etc) you probably learn the limits of using shields really quickly. I began using shield + sword or spear to make it through the early game but even capra demon is a tough boss to beat with the boring "block, attack" playstyle. I soon learned to swap between shield and 2 handed to deal more damage, mix up blocking and rolling, etc.
I think there was a nice balance between blocking, roll-dodging and parrying. Blocking and parrying let you keep your positioning while rolling often makes you move away from the boss and requires you to get back in range. blocking has a higher stamina cost while parrying is riskier but incredibly rewarding.
Elden ring did a lot to improve this with guard counters and jump-dodging giving even more options. If you learn to use all of them its really fluid. I remember jumping to dodge low horizontal attacks than turning that into a jumping attack only to block the incoming blow and guard counter the boss, breaking his stance.
Really tired of people making this blanket statement that 'playing with a shield is inherently less fun than other playstyles', like it's just a universal fact that applies to everyone.
I enjoy creating a dodgy curved sword(s) build in FromSoft games sometimes. Other times, particularly in DS1&2, I enjoy going the sword and board route. The slow back-and-forth pacing of 'block and attack' is just as fun and engaging to me as any other playstyle - it feels like the combat version of a chess game.
Just because you prefer one playstyle doesn't make the others objectively less fun.
Exactly, thank you. Some people are seeking the adrenaline rush kind of playstyle that comes with aggressive combat, while others will enjoy controlling the pace, coming in and out of enemy reach with the use of shields and dodging.
Some people are slower and calculative, others are fast and agile.
There are so many different tools and playstyles, how can someone claim that some are "wrong" or universally "less fun"?
@@BigBadWolframio I guess you could consider sustainable fun?
Perhaps both strategies start out equally fun but one becomes extremely rote and boring by the end??
@@MartinPurathur I never got bored of killing enemies with that strategy, I almost leave DS1 before I got a good shield because rolling or parrying is too hard for my reflexes and I hated the frustration I felt. Did two full playthrough with sword + shield and heavy armor.
@@BigBadWolframio Dodging was not part of the beginner strategy outlined in the video.
@@Puerco-Potter I would assume the same won't hold true if you took a study on a large section of dark souls players
For people who aren't competitive by nature, fun is not always related to the feeling of "conquering" something or being the best at doing certain task.
Some players will be motivated to master the harder mechanics, while others will still have fun using the safer ones, so it is pretty unfair to say that the "correct" way to play is the difficult, competitive style of playing. It's one of the reasons why so many people feel like not even trying the Souls games: the community keeps telling them that their fun is wrong, and that making things harder for yourself is the only respectable way to play.
The fact that one of the Dark Souls fun builds according to you is a "big dumb two-hander", which I find absolutely dull and boring, is an example of why is risky to tell others what is and isn't fun.
I'm focusing on the Souls games since they are the ones I've played from the ones that are mentioned in the video, but this applies to every title.
This interests me. If the big dumb two hander was boring for you in DarkSouls - which was the playstyle, if any, that did stay fresh and interesting for you?
This!
I get frustrated really easy, and won't invest time in a game I have to "get gud" in without a gentle learning curve. I like challenge, but never way over the challenges I had before. Also I don't play multiplayer games, I hate that I have to spend 500 hours in a game before having fun. I like to take stuff at my own pace and wining the minimum necessary in story move is enough for me to get my brain rewards chemicals flowing...
Exactly! I see people deeming only certain strategies worthy. If you use a shield, you're playing the game wrong. Use magic, wrong. Call in phantoms to help in bossfights, wrong. I've even seen people say that playing the game at soul level 1 (playing without leveling up at all) is the superior way to play Dark Souls. There was even a full essay video going around trying to prove that point. Great that people like it I guess, but I personally don't see the fun of having way less cool equipment options, doing less damage to enemies, having no health and being killed in one hit more.
@@Puerco-Potter In that case, Dark Souls isn't actually too bad with a sword and board play style, or as a mage.
@@tigerfestivals5137 is not, I finished 2 playthroughs like that already.
Periodic reminders of a game's skill ceiling are also key. As someone who gets maybe 10hrs/month to play games, there are so many times I've forgotten about a mechanic I learned in a tutorial six months ago.
Tips on loading screens, replayable tutorials, and NPCs that demonstrate advanced strats all help
A glossary of moves, with video, is really helpful with that, so a player can go refresh on what they're capable of on demand.
oh no not this again. shield is a totally valid way to experience the game, primarily on the first playthrough (the most important one) and the game would have a very different feel without it. sekiro and bloodborne work greatly without it but aren't the same game. it adds another layer on the opportunities dynamic and gives more weight to the moments where it doesn't work. also, it would make more harder to people to get into the game.
I honestly never disliked the shield strategy in Dark Souls. To me the game has the feeling of really fighting your way out of a really hostile world and I love playing it in a slow methodical way where I abuse every weakness or spatial advantage in my favor. I like that about the game. It's the fantasy of fighting for your life in a kind of post-apocalypse scenario that makes the games so good and turtling behind a shield is part of that fantasy for me. Also sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that has ever tried using the bow and firebombs and stuff..
True in a game known to throw alot of scripted bullshit your way its better to shield up
I don’t associate fighting with “slow and methodical”. That’s how you become a Mike Tyson quote
He's saying, try something new. You'll probably enjoy it. Probably more than what you are stuck with, that is, if you are able to learn it. Of course if you suck at it, you'll die over and over and go back in your shell
@@charlesoseigyawu6670 "Probably". Yeah, no. That's a stupid way of thinking.
@@cibo889 I don't know what world you live in, where everything is set. And there's no room for chance. Thinking without leaving room for opposite outcome? Right, that sure is smart
And then there's my friend, who builds his characters as what he calls the "glass tank" - he doesn't pump health except for what he absolutely needs to survive chip damage. Everything else goes into his encumbrance, stamina, and weapon stats.
You will break yourself on his shield and he will crush you beneath it. Or he'll misjudge an opening and get immediately obliterated by an attack as if he were me, the mage who can delete you with one good solid hit but who takes roughly ten generations to land it.
His strategy is to just sidestep and block and he's a right terror because of it. Mine is to hope you never get near me. Neither playstyle is "inherently" more fun because what makes his fun for him is the fact that if they could merely break his guard, they'd win...And mine is that I have an ocean of mana instead of HP and a really good sense of distance and timing on my spells. I don't enjoy his style, and he doesn't enjoy mine.
Your friend is an absolute psychopath. I have to try this.
glass cannons are the best playstyle! especially with fast builds
Reminds me of my DS1 Artoris cosplay way back when. Had to pump endurance in order to roll with both versions of his greatsword equipped.
your friend plays like me... why add hp when i could add more damage or stamina
I do this exact thing, I make endurance my primary stat up to the hard stamina cap, then all my accessories are to boost defense, stamina, and regen. lastly, my weapon is a heavy thrusting sword so it does poise damage, but is still quick. I often switch to 2 handing it when I need to attack tho so there's extra insult when they find out I spend most of my time dodging still but can become a brick wall in an instant
I've played all the Dark Souls games with every style of build imaginable, and using a medium shield is easily one of the most dynamic and aggressive build options available. It offers a method by which you can safely advance on and attack enemies that you would otherwise have to wait for them to make the opening move, and roll through to get in close, easy access to the parry mechanic, which is maybe the most advanced technique there is in souls, and a more varied move set switching between one and two handed stances, which you aren't really incentivized to do if you are only using a two handed weapon with no shield. This is specially in Elden Ring, where you have access to the shield counter attack. Choosing between 3 defensive options (parry, block and roll) instead of just one depending on what kind of attack you are dealing with is just more interesting inherently. It might be true that hiding behind a great shield and heavy armor and poking with a spear is the slowest, safest way to play these games, but the idea that using any shield at all is passive or boring doesn't hold up under any scrutiny.
Elden Ring made medium shields even better by giving access to a skill you can put on them that gives them a small shield's parry window, Carian Retaliation. It only uses FP when parrying magic projectiles.
I always used a great Shield because of the fact when they're fully upgraded they have the highest stability and reduce damage to almost nothing combine with your own high endurance and body armor your opponent was tickling you and rolling around while you're ripping them apart also magic killed any reason to fight especially in Dark Souls 1 one of the Invaders I fought ran all the way across Anor Londo just to get to me and I one shot him that was the whole battle
Positioning is the most advanced mechanic in souls games. It lets you get in extra hits when others would rather roll or block. This applies the most to ds1 where bosses telegraph their attacks more clearly. Parry is the high risk high reward mechanic that has been a thing since the Zelda games - it's just so uninteresting to me. Later souls games focused more on fast and hectic fights and you had to rely on rolls/parries more.
@@pramitpratimdas8198
By later you mean just DS3? Because Bloodborne is not comparable to the DS combat mechanics and Sekiro PUNISHES morons who try to dodge everything.
Sir, I actually disagree.
Dark Souls gives you a shield at the beginning, but quickly teaches you not to rely on it. By putting you up against bosses who will smash through your shield and stamina (Havel, Gaping Dragon) or by making the shield less effective (against magic, Moonlight Butterfly). Or by making attacking more tedious, because you lack the stamina after a block (Taurus Demon)
If you rely on your shield for too long, the game will punish you. Especially in the later areas.
So you agree?
Counterpoint, losing stamina and getting reduced damage from magic is still way better than getting full damage.
Punishing and teaching are not the same thing
If you want people to learn, you can't just say "all you were doing was wrong, go back and grind until you get good at this completely new thing you never used" and expect the vast majority to do it
If what you say is "all you are doing is wrong, go figure out something else" it's even worse
Here's a plate, you use it like this, it's good for this and it's bad used this way
@@AnterasPL No when u can just dodge and not only get 0 damage you also waste less stamina
@@roggonval But for the price of using more stamina, you get the assurance that you will not take damage or that it will be reduced. If you dodge, you still have a chance to take full damage.
As a lifelong board and sworder, Elden Ring gets a ton of credit for adding some depth to what is unironically my favorite playstyle. They get many points for that.
Yay! a fellow shield user, I absolutely love shields. Doesn't matter what my build is, I almost always integrate a shield either for parries, blocking, counters, buffs or actual dmg. Although my favorite is a great shield with a fast weapon or actual poker. Ironically in PVP I rarely block and usually try to combo all the different types of attacks with an occasional block instead of dodging to throw an opponent off.
I feel Elden Ring was a fantastic step in the right direction when it comes to Sword and Board in souls games. DS1 and Demons Souls Sword and Board (maybe with a bit of magic/pyromancy) was my absolutely favorite playstyle and I feel like its viability was kind of lost in the later games like DS3, but Elden Ring brought it up back.
Part of why I love the souls games so much is the slower, more methodical and cautious approach to the game where you can wait for the right moment to strike. I'm not the biggest fan of the more aggressive, reflex based style that games like Bloodborne and even DS3 focused on more. I have other action games I can play if I want that.
@@Crazymerc22 For what it's worth, Sword and Board was absolutely viable in DS 3. Sure it's a bit harder because attacks generally had more "guard damage", but if you mix blocking with dodging you got a very fun stamina management game where you have to balance green bar efficiency with how comfortable you feel about dodging any given attack...
And then you pickup the Dragonslayer Shield and just break the entire rest of the game in half.
I hate using shields in Dark Souls, but I used one for most of my first Elden Ring playthrough. They finally made shields fun. The flipside is they made dodging less fun with excessive use of delayed attacks. You win some you lose some I guess.
@@EllaKarhu yeah, that was a bit lame imo.
I played Persona 4 recently, and my party members almost never changed from Chie, Youske, and Yikiko. It was a solid healer/damage/support-ish trifecta that didn’t have any major weaknesses.
The one time I switched to another character I realized “oh there’s no ability like exp share, so I guess I’m sticking to the original three.” I beat the entire game then with the same 3 people
This was literally my exact experience and it was sort of frustrating. Whenever I wanted to use a different party member I always had to grind to make sure they were a decent level and it was just never worth it. Persona 5 definitely did way better with its party members.
Persona 4 also had the issue that your party members would only do their follow-up combos (e.g. "Twin Dragons" for Chie & Yukiko) if both of them were in your party. For that reason I always had Chie & Yukiko and rotated the third slot between the others.
In P5 (along with the great Exp sharing you could unlock) you only needed one of them.
wait until you see the persona Q games. No exp share and like 2-3 games worth of party members. Very cursed. And this is coming from someone whose favorite atlus game is Q2
Naoto is great but it feels like every time I want to change a party member I have to change my entire team comp or I'll have massive weak spots
Chie and yosuke also have the tarukaja and sukukaja skills so they're nice for the "buff the mc to oblivion" strat
Not sure I agree with your core hypothesis that a more "skilled" way to play is more fun. I played DS1 first as a noob with no real build and my points everywhere doing some magic and some fighting. It was crazy hard. I played through again as dex dual wield and for sure it was a more skilled way to play but it wasn't really that interesting. DS2 I did with an int build - kind of fun. DS3 was the first one I went through as "boring" sword and board and honestly I had a real blast.
Maybe I am just a bit jaded but some finicky build that is really "skillful" is not necessarily at all interesting to carry out in practice.
Agreed.
In my opinion, Adam's "analysis" here is a messy and inarticulate rehashing of Hbomberguy's analysis from years ago. He's not saying anything new, and he seems to misunderstand why others have spoken negatively about shield strategies.
Yeah the false assumption here is that everyone wants to play the universally accepted meta strategy. No, some players just like to play their own style and play at their own pace. I really disagree with a lot of the suggestions here:
1. Force players out of the sword and board style - This is exclusion. It makes no business sense to dump a huge chunk of the demographic who like a particular style.
2. XCOM 2 - Forcing a fast and risky style was a very controversial decision in the community. I don't know why he used this as a "good" example.
3. Difficulty spikes - I'm under the impression that is ideally avoided in game design, I don't know why he's suggesting to intentionally create one.
@@One.Zero.One101 Because he's repeating opinions he doesn't understand. His argument about Dark Souls is literally just a badly plagiarised version of Hbomberguy's video about Dark Souls 2, restated poorly, and with an air of objectivity that Hobomberguy didn't have as he was just stating his opinion.
I'm not really sure if I agree. You've got to manage stamina pretty well to constantly use a shield, which leaves you less to attack with, and you're already using a weapon that's less powerful. If anything, I kind of feel that big swords are the "easy" weapon. They outrange a ton of stuff, deal a ton of damage meaning you can usually kill dudes before they attack, and can hit and run more effectively because of the aforementioned increased range and damage. And if all else fails, you usually do enough damage to just eat hits and heal afterwards. The shield strat works against normal mooks, but often struggles with bosses because they don't flinch and are strong enough to stagger you. This is especially true once you get to boss fights with multiple bosses.
And of course, magic is just straight up busted in some of the games. Like Demon's Souls is straight up easy as a mage build.
As an ultragreatsword fan, yes big swords are absolutely the easy mode weapon. They're really fun, but there are so many enemies you can just stunlock rather than having to think about. Including more bosses than you'd think.
7:15 I have actually won a game of Apex with my entire team never damaging anyone. That's mostly because we never found anyone. I assume at the end the other teams where fighting outside the ring and ended up killing each other or something like that.
Dude, my first ever win in Apex involved me wandering around with my team across the entire match, right before we stumbled on the survivor of the last group fight, when my brother shot him to death.
I've done this too lmao, the last teams got trapped outside the ring on the opposite side of a giant wall
@@alexharvey7660 And remember Apex is a massively popular sport in-universe, so millions of people watched the match unfold on their TV as a couple Legends wandered around, going "Hey you want this scope? I've got the 3x already but if you don't I prefer the 2-4x.", bumbling around until they win by default as the actually exciting teams die to spicy air a couple hundred yards away.
@@Snickersnek this is so funny to me xD
I manage to win a game without teammates from the start and without damaging or killing anyone.
Hell I didn't even see the last enemy or enemies and its the last ring I just suddenly got the champion.
Fromsoft: Here're an RPG game. You can play however you want. The game is hard, but here a shield so you don't feel too overwhelm on your first playthrough. I'll give several weapon along the way. Try to use it if you want.
Dark soul isn't as elitist as people think. Only some fan are.
Going into any fromsoft game forum/subreddit with any kind of problem is just a waste of time because basically every time the response is just "git gud" while they're acting as if they said the most funny and logical thing in the world. 🙄
“Here’s a Role-Playing Game game.”
Precisely. The only "intended" way to play Dark Souls is "however you damn well please".
Adam is copying other, more famous youtubers in his analysis here, and doing a bad job of it.
> Celeste
> Gentle difficulty curve
Hahah, yes, definitely. Not difficult at all.. 😭
I guess compared to the optional content it isn't an understatement to say that the main story is gentle
He didn't mean that "the game is easy", he meant that the average difficulty of the game keeps rising very gradativelly from the beggining and onward
That's the bigger issue that can go unspoken. One person's "gentle difficulty curve" is easily another person's "this isn't fun anymore and I hate everything."
@Jaspertine that's why I gave up on elden ring after several playthroighs. The curve feels unnaturally fucking miserable and makes the game no fun. Besides the fact it's a bloated mess
@@Jaspertine Likewise, one person's "fair and balanced difficulty curve" can be another person's "this isn't fun anymore because it's too easy".
Difficulty is inherently subjective and no game will satisfy everyone, but no game has to.
Shields are fun, what's not fun are when some people try to force these arbitrary self imposed rules on others as the "correct" way to play.
its mostly sekiro and especially bloodborne clowns that do that since the game only has melee and are as deep as a puddle compared to elden souls rpg systems.
@@flamingmanure
Sekiro's combat system is a couple trillion times deeper than DS's shallow as a puddle combat mechanics but hey, you do you.
@@flamingmanure This mentality of "You're playing the wrong way" exists in all genres. RPG, FPS, turn-based strategy, I've been told I'm playing the wrong way because I'm not using the universally accepted meta strategy.
@@johnhighway7399not really tho. It's more fun, but way more simple. Like 1 defensive option, block/deflect, and the R1 as the primary offensive option.
In comparison souls have R1s, R2s, L2s on a weapon and general spell combos as offensive option, and Rolling and blocking as defensive option.
Sekiro is just more fun due to the simplicity.
I only have one issue with this video: the unstated assumption that higher skilled play or intended methods of play are more fun than beginner strats. I acknowledge that mastery does typically bring more enjoyment, and that playing in the intended manner is more likely to be more fun for most players. However, that isn't always the case. Just stating that that was the assumption you were working from at the beginning of the video would be appreciated. Anyone who's gone back and played a game again on easy after beating it on hard just to roffle stomp with starter weapons the parts that were so tough to beat with the best gear knows exactly what I mean.
1:17
I actually disagree with that take. I personally "sword and board" chessed it through Mmy forst playthrough, and it was still very viscerally satisfying. Being able to make yourself bigger and stronger, then even the most hardcore enemies is delicious; and doing so after researching, exploring, and finding, rare relics of power(with a smidge of grinding), releases *TONS* of reward chemicals *AS* you are fighting these big beasties.
Then you get *MORE* dopamine and seratonins from defeating the boss. The externalized progress of a Player's "character" matches one's knowledge of a gameworld and it's mechanical narrative. This is a wonderfully valid source of fun in games, and it makes even the most mundane of tasks(looking at you *Death Stranding)* exhilirating and mesmerizing. Besides, getting the proper visual acuity for spotting boss's tells, and becoming immersed in the game's controls, is enhanced by how much time you choose to engage with a system; and not all of us are gluttons for punishment(hundreds of death screens).
As I am designing a rudimentary old-school RPG, I have to know these things to make it fun for a modern audience.
True. It's not as though someone could measure fun and say with a straight face "this style of play is funnier, this style is less".
Based. This videos takes on souls games are terrible, seems like they don’t understand the aooeal of certain builds and playstyles at all (coming from a guy that never tried shield builds but understands that they can easily be very fun for others).
He is kinda right in that case. DS1 shield/sword playstyle is boring and kinda repetitive.
But sound design, animations and a fresh experience would make any first playthrough fun regardless of gameplay. Even like basic mage with the most basic gameplay lock on - press R1 to win, using the same 6 slot spells with the same animations.
Once you finish game, you start to realize how actually tedious, repetitive and boring to navigate through dark souls locations. The only thing, that keep things fresh is breaking intended level progression and build variety + pvp/coop.
Dont get me wrong, dark souls games are good. I just dont think they good in RPG aspects like character stats or enemy weaknesses.
@@Edgariki "boring" is not a factual category. Using 2 handed weapons and dodge is just as repetitive as any other play-style, but all games are repetitive (it's called "the game loop"). But boring? Can you really say what is boring and what is not, based on facts and not sentiment?
@@vagabundorkchaosmagick-use2898 Exactly.
I find this video fascinating because i basically don't have this perspective on games at all and it's funny to hear it spoken so matter-of-factly despite my experience being that none of this actually matters at all. It's weird to me how people assume that "getting good" is the point of absolutely every single game and seem either oblivious to or indifferent towards other motivations for play.
I'd argue that while getting good isn't the reason to play, what it _is_ is a tool that enables whatever else you're hoping to achieve in the game.
@@boobah5643 not... really? the way adam and I are referring to getting good as "adopting risky, advanced strategies for additional performance in lieu of stable but low-reward beginner strategies". if my goal doesn't require any additional reward to achieve it (or the time required to develop the technique isn't something i want to spend) then it serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. if you insist that it *does* then you're still not thinking about those other motivations for their own sake, which is what i want people to do. think about *why* someone plays but doesn't care to learn advanced styles of play and *still* has genuine fun with the game they play.
U got a hobby that involves learning something? If yes, r u happy being mid at it? Prolly notk
There can be many reasons for playing a game, but players collectively taking the path of least resistance is a known outcome. An easy strategy not having a path towards more diverse play is a problem in context of that overall tendency of players.
@@charlesoseigyawu6670 you people are exhausting. how many ways can you reword "gettin gud funn!" as if that's a valid response to "sometimes there are other reasons to play that people find more compelling" or even "good execution is not the only valid path to victory".
as for your question im mid at a lot of things i quite like(d) and its fine. i will never attain mastery over a lot of things and that's okay. there's no medal waiting for me if i flawlessly defeat whatever your favorite souls boss is with no shield or whatever.
I don't think I'll ever understand the take that dark souls 1 shield based play is bad when the main alternative is dodge rolling
like, it's so bizarre because my first playthrough had me do what any new player would do, immediately start trying to find different ways of playing. I picked up a great scythe and dodgerolled through the game while mowing through enemies.
It was only when I went back and tried the original playstyle, with a shield and armor, when the game got truly fun. Using a shield gives you real feedback, it lets you see what a boss is really doing to you. The various animations and the stamina-as-temporary-health nature of shields make it satisfying, fun, and way more interesting than just flipping around and killing everything with your only real feedback being just dying.
Also confused with the XCOM take because, like, XCOM 2 kinda sucks ass because it tries to force you into a more risky playstyle when XCOM isn't suited to a risky playstyle in the first place. It completely ruins the tone of you being this squad of paranoid soldiers trudging their way through enemy lines and basically turns it into a frustrating RNG-Fest of idiot suicidal soldiers.
Honestly I'd use Dark Souls and XCOM as examples of franchises that prove passive and defensive play is fun as hell and forcing players into an aggressive playstyle out of some sense that it's inherently better can just completely ruin the experience. I tend to hate being forced to play aggressive because it's usually just overwhelming, frustration inducing, and makes me wanna go play a different game.
I like games with tips on loading screens.
They can share knowledge and incentivize to try something different, become better and have more fun.
Too bad people don't want loading screens anymore
untill you get a computer that is too great, and you don't get the time to read the hints.
@@bibbobellaI like the loading screens with "proceed" button prompts, so you can read the last promt and continue when you're ready and also use loading screens to take a short break. I haven't seen one in a while, though
i love how interactive they were and informative like the FO4 loading screen
“Tilt the analog stick to move”
I disagree fundamentally that playing a sword and board style "robs you of the life or death tenseness" of the combat. Having played many other builds since, my first playthrough sword and board was still as tense and interesting as my other playthroughs. I still enjoy this kind of build today, as it's often more tactical and focused on careful stamina management.
My first playthrough was with a 2h Zwei and I got bored of it very fast. I don't know how he can claim with a straight face that it's the most fun build
@@pramitpratimdas8198 It appeals to our ape brains to whack bad guys with large sticks
Strength build is literally the "hah i win" build in souls lol (theres a reason Giant Dad was a popular build not just for its meme status). You get big damage, can wear heavy armor so you take less damage and you stagger enemys before they can even hit you and you dont need much strategy besides wacking things with big sticks
@@cherryrook8684 As if it was just that easy. Stop being one of those naked dudes only equipped with bonks.
@@pramitpratimdas8198I don't find using the ultra greatswords fun but just stressful for myself. I don't like how slow it is but I do like the bastard sword. It's almost like people have their own preferences or something and some youtubers can't understand that.
As a big fan of the sword and board + heavy armor in dark souls and the bunch of lands big dumb 10/10 dinosaur in Magic, I would say that just because it isn't fun or flashy for you doesn't mean it isn't fun for me. I love the simplicity of them as ideas and it allows me to focus on other areas of the games.
In dark souls I can just wander around without the fear of being jumped by a single dude and killed instantly due to having no armor. I take more risks when I know I am safe behind me wall of metal.
Then with Magic the Gathering I like my big dumb monsters and I play in a way that just brute forces through removal. "Oh no you removed my 20/20 trample death beast.... anyways I will play 3 more of it."
Mr youtuber probably hasn't heard of the spike Timmy and Johnny archetypes from Mark Rosewater's iconic blogpost. They do apply to other games, not just mtg. He seems to be a spike, they are historically known to be the most insensitive type.
@@pramitpratimdas8198 I feel like he is more of a Johnny. Spike is win focused and will do anything no matter how bland to get the win. Johnny is much more interested in devising their combos and set ups to try and win in a way that feels good to them. Timmy is just "I like big thing hear me smash" and doesn't care how many times they get their ass beat.
@@kid14346Everyone really does have their own unique personalities I believe. But people like this youtuber who doesn't understand that only rubs people the wrong way.
"monsoon, a bossfight in which parrying is basically mandatory" as someone who never got the hang of the parrying mechanic myself let me tell you that monsoon is 100% beatable (sundowner too) as long as you yourself become a more intense monsoon (of dodging/sidestepping in a circle)
Calls a fun and viable play style “entry level for noobs”
Yeah, alright buddy. You’re the gamer.
"I'm the gamer now"
I strongly disagree with the thesis of the video being that using shields is a more boring, noob way to play Dark Souls and that the game not pushing you out of that is a flaw.
When I first played DS3, I camped behind a shield pretty heavily, and for the most part it worked incredibly well, up until I got to Nameless King. He hits hard enough to break your guard very quickly, so at a certain point I tried just giving up on shields entirely and only rolling. But I was constantly getting two-shot, losing over and over for several days, and wasn't having any fun.
Until eventually, I learned there was a crucial aspect to shields I'd been completely ignoring: stability. Stability is the stat that determines how much stamina is taken off when your shield is hit, meaning at low stability your guard is constantly broken. But at high stability, you can safely block stronger attacks and retain stamina for countering.
So I got Yhorm's greatshield, beat Nameless in a few more tries, and started enjoying the game again. The game's difficulty actually forced me to learn something about its mechanics and changed how I approached the situation, but most players would say the "correct" solution would've been for me to grind against the boss for another week rather than "cheese" it with a "noob" strategy. And if I had, I honestly don't think I would be a fan of these games anymore.
I'd also mention (as someone else pointed out) that shields actually do punish you for camping by hurting stamina regen when not lowered. The game never explicitly tells you this (which I actually *do* think is bad design) but it's a mechanic that makes fights more engaging even when armed with a shield because you have to weigh the risk/reward of lowering the shield to get stamina back and potentially take a rough hit. If you actually *do* play Souls without ever lowering your shield, of course it'll feel miserable, because you're never getting your stamina back.
Don't know if it's really such a bad design not to give you a text prompt about the stamina regeneration with shield up with how easy it is to notice if you're monitoring your stamina bar, as I think that lessons you learn yourself by practice stay better in your head than what you read in a tutorial popup
I mean, Nameless King is effectively the game’s hidden super boss. If you didn’t have issues until him then I would assume you got through like 90% or more of the game. If your argument is that there is depth to the shield playstyle, then I’m not sure if like the last boss in the base game is a great example.
In Deep Rock Galactic, no matter the class or build, you can't solve all the problems you encounter just by yourself. As you play a particular build, the annoyance of something your build doesn't cover starts to accumulate, so, you change to a build that has an answer to THAT problem. Later, something else starts annoying you, and you switch to your third build. Later, the game reminds you why you've been playing your first build initially, and loop back to that.
For example, the stock Gunner (which is a class newcomers default to) has the annoying overheat mechanic, rather short range, and bad vertical mobility, but enough firepower to plow through the enemies and a get out of jail free card in the form of the Shield bubble. As players become skilled enough to not rely on these crutches, they WANT to explore other possibilities which cover the stuff a stock Gunner can't do.
Didn't think I'll ever see you in a comment section on a random Adam Millard's video. Nice to see you I guess!
Why would you start with gunner? It's lack of mobility options is absolutely crippling, I dropped that class after the tutorial level, and didn't look back
@@nillanapier1161 Just wait until you play at higher hazard levels and see what a lifesaver the shield is.
@@ad480p no, I know, the shield is a really great tool, and there are 1 or 2 level types where it makes playing soldier a decent choice, but for most levels, dies it really compare with the scout's grappling hook, the diggers's drills, or all the fun and creative stuff you can do with the engineer's platforms?
I decided that after promoting all classes at least once, I decided to stick with gunner, I just like using big guns. his whole specialty is being able to fight all types of bugs effectively. Driller can easily clear grunts but can struggle against bigger things, and the pistols are kinda weak when there's flying or ranged enemies that are out of reach of the flamethrower. Scout generally has weapons that can deal high burst damage making him great at decimating bigger bugs like the Praetorian. but they usually struggle against swarms of grunts.
Engineer can control very large areas with all the tools at his disposal, but he needs the room and time to set up a defensible position, and to me he feels like he doesn't have as much ammo to play with.
In Elden Ring, Margit taught me to be a badass, because I entered underleveled, and the only way I could deal decent damage to him was to parry his attacks. I got it done though
Counterpoint, the DS1 blow back somersault block animation using a medium 100% phys shield against the boss is actually pretty cool.
21:08 *"How good it feels to break through that wall of progression and climb to the peek of mastery"*
Where dose this feeling come from?! Like, I've beaten classically hard games before... I just felt bitter. I spent so much time and effort trying to finish this thing I fucking hated and you get to the end and... what? I can say I've beaten it... so what? So fucking what?! Where is this feeling your supposed to feel?! At the end I was just tired and bitter. I could have been doing anything else. Fuck man, I'm sick and tired of this fucking bullshit! Feels bad man :(
I think a mistake a lot of people make is not being able to identify when to drop a game. There is a real learning curve and sense of satisfaction that can come from mastering combat in the Souls games, but you’re probably not going to have that feeling if the process of getting there feels like a massive chore. There’s no shame in dropping a game if you don’t like its core feel; spend your time getting better at a game that isn’t just going to be work.
Hey! I'm one of those sword and board people you're talking about.
I'm pretty sure I did more than just block and poke. No way I would have made it through the game with just that. Parry and Backstab was something I learned pretty early on, because of the black knights and Havel. And You do have to roll from attacks that would just stomp you into the ground. I learned all that just in the undead asylum and the undead burg.
I definitely wasn't bored. It was very fun seeing how I needed to respond to each kind of foe. Attack, Block, Parry, Dodge Roll. There was even Pyromancy, which I would switch my sword out to from time to time for extra damage at a safe distance. I rocked that Elite Knight Set, Astora's Straight Sword, Crest Shield, and Pyromancy flame all the way to Gwyn from the moment I got it!
Try the "coward" style. Its pretty fun.
I likes those kind of playstyles. I tried a tower knight build using a greatshield. It's very satisfying to block the iron golem and Smoughs attacks.
There's a difference between being a coward and being careful. Re-doing the same boss walk until you're leveled up enough to reach that boss without taking a single hit- that's being careful and being prepared enough for the boss. Being a coward is when you run back because there's a crowd of 3 enemies and you're worried that you might get defeated
if those 3 enemies are dogs, however, that fear is justified.
I'm not sure how I feel about hiding the optional challenges entirely, I've personally experienced in one of the Mario games for the DS (I think it was 3D land but I can't remember) I found it way too easy and instantly uninstalled it upon beating it. Only to find out years later that it has tougher challenges that unlock after you beat the game. I would like at least some kind of hint that those harder optional challenges exist, after all there's no incentive to complete a challenge if you have no idea there even is one to begin with
Yeah this was something I was going to talk about but cut - if Celeste, for example, forced you to go all the way through the basegame before you could do the hard stuff, it might lose the interest of better players - I've certainly felt that with mario games! I think the key in the games that do this I've enjoyed the most is to make this "hidden" stuff not actually that hard to find if you're confident enough to go off the beaten path, making it really more of a psychological gate than a physical one.
@@ArchitectofGames Why was it cut?
my gripes from FO3 when the best side quest where hard to find, to stumbled with, or in the edge of the map, refering to hbomber take on FONV.
points of interest that has landmarks that piques players' curiosity w/ visual language or visual cues or more so the quest interconnects that leads you to that sidequest like Vault 22 in FONV
Nah that’s completely unnecessary, if you actually care dabout the game after beating it you could have easily soppeted the ability to change campaigns or searched if there are secret harder levels. Those are a thing in every mario game, from 2D to 3D and any in between. No game has any obligation to give you without effort the higher challenge you personally demand, coming from someone who prefers more challenging games/difficulties. 3D Land never owed you the harder challenges, nor did it obligate you to take the easiest route to the end. If you choose that and immediately deopped the game before even knowing it’s 100% your fault. And it’s not any big mystery at all, it’s not like you nedd to get a secret code exclusive to your cartridge to unlock it, just had to look at the menu or google if there was something else and you could have played one of the best experiences in platform gaming i’ve ever had. Like why did you ever assume the game was supposed to give you for free a secret hidden content? That defeats the meaning of secret and hidden completely! It isn’t a secret if almost everyone knows it is it?
@@minecraftgravityguyI don't see how it is wrong to ask for a hint that there might be more ,not a direct message telling you look this is where you need to go at least that's how you make it so it . And secret control usually isn't supposed to be secret for the most part after all it's out there to be found at some point defeating the idea of it ever being a secret.
my first playthrough of MGRR went exactly like you described. with one exception, Monsoon taught me how to parry. Once I figured it out the rest of the fight was really cool. I felt powerful for the first time
More or less the same for me but I had one of those Moments (TM) and decided to play on the highest available difficulty despite not having played the game before. Blade Wolf ground me down and built me back up from scratch, and when I reached Mistral, I had a great power fantasy experience kicking her ass first try with my new skills. My friends told me to quit throwing myself at Blade Wolf and lower the difficulty, but in taking him down, I learned skills that made the actual boss for that arc nearly trivial. Monsoon was still awful to fight. Fuck Monsoon and his memes.
Coolest boss fight in the game for that reason
I'm surprised you didn't mention the effect that equipment that you can level up individually has on this problem. Because it seems to me like if you're trying to combat complacency/encourage varying your strategy, removing that should be the very first thing you do.
Finding the zweihander before going to the undead burg made me ditch the shield immidiately. The sheer cooleness of this weapon alongside the fact that it's literally called the two hander made me run around with it through the whole game.
There are so many ways Dark Souls 1 encourages you to drop shield, saying it took until Elden Ring to get it right is flat out wrong.
1. You can't attack while shielding!?! Hello? A few weapons can, that's it.
2. Unless your shield has 100% rating, you take damage while blocking. Even if it does, you still take damage from other types.
3. You lose stamina when blocking, limiting how much return damage you deal.
4. You regain stamina slower while holding up your shield, creating risk-reward to recover faster but less safely.
5. You can press 1 button to swap to 2-hand mode, literally putting away your shield and doing more damage. Sometimes this is just enough to kill enemies in 1 hit instead of 2, or 2 instead of 3, which is a huge difference.
6. 2-handing also increases your strength value by 50%, allowing you to wield weapons you normally couldn't for many levels right away. I seriously can't think of a stronger motivation to drop the shield than wanting to try out that shiny new black knight greatsword that just dropped.
7. Blocking is a terrible strategy against some enemies. They can break through your guard and leave you vulnerable, either by hitting many times or because their attacks are huge and powerful. Getting flattened by a boss because you were blocking teaching you pretty quick to stop.
8. Grab attacks.
9. Groups of multiple enemies at once. Standing still and letting them wail on you gets you killed from the side/behind fast.
10. Rolling makes you invincible AND gets you away from danger. There's a good reason every dark souls player instinctively spams roll whenever they're cornered, rather than blocks.
I'm sorry, I know the example was chosen to illustrate a point, but it's so off-base that I had a hard time taking the rest of the video seriously.
Here's the thing tho, especially in Dark Souls 1:
1.Grabs were rarer
2. Alternate damage types are rare
3. You do drop shield to attack, but plenty of people never realise that having it up slows stamina recovery
4. People can pump Stamina to become an immovable object
5. The amount of first-playthrough players who use two-handing actively is depressingly low. Especially since the bonus strength you get isn't that obvious
It's also an objectively stupid statement because Elden Ring's shields are massively OP. You can and should block everything in Elden Ring. If you try to block anything in Dark Souls 1 your guard gets broken and you die.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 Yeah his point was, from what I gathered, that elden ring fixed the issue where noobs relied entirely on the noob trap of using a shield for every situation they came across and elden ring just enhanced that problem instead of fixing it. If anything the souls games did it better because shields were still useful throughout but you had to learn when not to use them. There is never a situation in elden ring where you shouldn't block except a grab and even then you can strafe most while blocking. The stamina cost is so much higher and riskier in souls games I really don't see his argument at all
@@Vifts Except they didn't fix anything in Elden Ring. Adding one or two alternative ways to attack doesn't matter one bit, because the combat system is fundamentally too simple for it.
You have three ways to defend yourself: dodge, block and parry.
Having ashes of war outright prevents you from being able to parry, because it's occupies the same exact action slot and if you don't use a shield, then you can't block either, so all you can do is dodge. And from there you're back to the old attack once or twice -> dodge -> attack once or twice -> dodge pattern.
And then the game gives you 100% damage resistant shields at the start of the game _(not as the starting equipment, but before the first major boss)._ I tried dual-wielding and two handing at first, but it was just so damn boring having to dodge every time somebody sneezed at me, I started using a shield in the offhand instead.
And in Dark Souls 2 I'd run around with a Claymore instead, so clearly something's not right.
It's almost as if the video is under researched. He probably didn't check other playstyles or ask other souls players with different builds. It's absolutely crazy to me that he thinks shields are for noobs only when it's probably the most preferred style. Hell why would fs add guard counter to shields instead of going the sekiro or bb route in ER?
I think monster hunter has a pretty great difficulty curve. You dont even hear about lots of the hardest challeneges until you've progressed far enough that its likely you'll be able to handle them. You can spend as much time as you want learning at every tier of progression, and the game really only gives you more as you're ready for it
Monster Hunter sucks. It is too easy. Dark Souls is harder. Period.
@@brojakmate9872 Difficulty is subjective, I find the opposite to be true for me to a certain extent
The only difficulty in Monster Hunter are the controls. It's like playing the first PC port of Dark Souls with a mouse and keyboard, except MH developers decided to make it their shtick, for some unfathomable reason.
Directionally-locked attacks, huge wind-up and wind-down on attacks, inability to run without suffering through a sheathing animation, etc.
Like, if you could at least change the direction of attacks mid-combo, that'd be something, because some weapon types basically don't function without combos and hoping a monster jumps back into your attack range so you won't have to restart the combo is not "difficulty".
Or you can just get a lance and poke down every monster while taking exactly zero damage.
@Lecherous Lizard the beauty of opinions is that they cant be right 😂 the controls might take a bit to get used to but i find them to be very comfortable. It just sounds like you're not getting into the intended groove of the combat, its not for everyone 🤷🏾♂️
@@Mhopson968 I played MHW up until Barioth in the Iceborne.
The combat before that point was a bit annoying, but doable, but when I had to kill Barioth... let's say that being stuck in an attack animation for like 5 seconds when the monster attacks once every 3 seconds, is not a pleasurable experience by any metric. So my options from that point onward was to either play coop or completely change my playstyle and switch to, say, lance, because none of the standard tricks did shit or were fast enough to do shit.
Hell, once I even got hit by Barioth's stupid shoulder bash when I was BEHIND him, so I ended up getting carted in a situation where I should've been able to get a combo off without any danger as the monster was recovering for a whiffed attack.
So, no, you'll have to excuse me, but this isn't a matter of "opinion".
I guess with Dark Souls it really depended on the type of player you are. Because the first time I beat Dark Souls it was with a tanky shield-focused build. But during that first playthrough I saw so many weapons and spells that looked interesting. So while using a shield remained a good reliable strategy to fall back on, it didn't stop me from exploring everything else the game had to offer (except parrying. Gwyn's slow attack is still the only thing in the game I can reliably parry).
Parrying in Dark Souls is a borderline glitch mechanic with how it's designed, so I can't blame you.
I personally love parrying mechanics in games, but in Dark Souls I just don't bother.
Unmakyr is actually good for the DLC, lets you kill more big demons with the same ammo.
nah, it's still outclassed by the BFG, which it shares extremely limited ammo with. It's good at single-target kills, but those are really easy anyway, while the BFG clears half the room, which is a lot better in DOOM: Eternal
@@legathar8558 The DLC has a lot more tight corridors so it's way harder to get the maximum value out of the BFG.
@@furgel7717 it doesn't really. It's tighter, sure, but there aren't any corridors.
You can no longer take out an entire arena with one BFG shot, but taking out half an arena is still extremely good and better than taking out a single enemy marginally quicker than you could otherwise
@@legathar8558 I specifically said that you get to kill more large ones, not that you will clear rooms any better.
Removing more bulletsponges from the same ammo is still very good.
11:13 it's funny that you (implicitly) referred to Hades's Chaos boons when talking about this. While it does make sense since you talked about the risk aspect to reward, I think that Hades does a better job at encouraging the players to try strategies above entry level with its weapon aspects; normally, it's perfectly fine to spam your normal attack, as that'll eventually net you a win. However, the game actually subtly proposes different playstyles through the weapons's aspects.
For example, the Nemesis aspect for the Stygian Sword actually encouraged me to use the sword's special because I was actually getting rewarded for using it, instead of getting punished for not using it. Same with Varatha's Achilles aspect. The bow usually is possibly the worst weapon ever, but its aspect of Chiron makes it one of the strongest. Aspect of Beowulf actively requires you to use the bull rush to even make use of the aspect's selling point. And so on.
All in all, I think mentioning weapon aspects would've been good for this video's idea, as the game does a great job at using them to subtly point towards the higher skill ceiling while not actively punishing those who'd rather stay in their comfort zone.
I like to start any souls game with a greatshield partly because nostalgia for my first souls build, and partly because I find being the immovable object quite enjoyable at least once.
DS3 was definitely the one where I felt they really tried to make shields unappealing. Basically every other enemy(and every single boss) has elemental damage or status effects(or both) which no shield fully blocks, blocks just eat more stamina while dodge use less, every other other enemy has grab attacks which just bypasses shields entirely, and of course, normal attacks, but from above/below so you can't block.
Guard counters definitely made shields more enjoyable in elden ring even if they mostly preformed the same as they did back in ds3.
Unrelated, but I would like to add that dropping your guard whenever you could was ALWAYS a part of optimal play when using shields unless you liked to turtle poke with a spear or something.
Sadly Guard Counter is mostly useless in Elden Ring. Even with perfect timing, bosses are so relentless sometimes that they start their next attack chain right after one ended, making it impossible for some weapons to guard counter without trading damage. But Elden Ring Bosses are an issue for another day.
@@BenedictVo nah block counters are pretty good.
Skill issue
@@BenedictVo you are not supposed to follow up on every attack. The biggest change ER brought with boss design are bs combos that you have to watch out for as they are difficult to just block/roll away from. Either jump to avoid horizontal attacks or just get a safe distance. This has been the case since Margit
Imagine picking up Moonveil early on and then walking into Raya Lucaria Academy and your friends watching you die to Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon, over and over again.
Until your 10th death or so they finally perk up: "Moonveil does Magic damage and Rennala is resistant to Magic damage."
Morale of the story is try different strategies. You don't have to bash your head against the wall without a hardhat.
Doesn't it also have bleed tho?
For the most part, like resists like.
Don't burn a Dragon, Don't poison a rot goddess and definitely don't try to bless God.
yea mastering the common knowledge, its the simple things. unless if, the player isnt widely exposed or familiar w/ rpg genre.
But if you pair it with another katana with a different damage type you can just do quick strikes in power stance. My second katana is a bleed uchigatana. As long as you aren’t just spamming transient moonlight and use other parts of your move set, you can make quick work of her.
Rennala isn't just resistant to magic damage, her magic resistance is the single highest resistance any enemy in the game has to any damage type. 86%. If your attack would deal 100 magic damage to her, she loses 14 hp.
There is no reason to be glass cannon with a magic build, if your investing in endurance than you have more stamina for dodging, more casts before resting, and heavier armor to wear. And it's faster and easier to farm out souls with magic builds
no reason other than…. Fun?
@@pasta-and-heroin is it really fun to do a glass cannon build if your using the safest combat method? It just seems like an easy way to get frustrated to me.
Tank mage is so much fun.
And then there's me that runs shield mage.
First Dark Souls didn’t let you waste stamina when casting spells, you could easily get to raise int to 30 early on (soft cap for the starting staff) and then focus on health, or dexterity/strength, if you needed poise, the wolf ring was a nice investment without being encumbered
The example of XCOM has some interesting play here, since Long War (the fan expansion mod to enemy within) requires you to actually play with a lot of the game's systems, that EU/EW never did. Giving you more soldiers will free up your action economy enough to actually find supression, flashbangs, smoke grenades, and psi panic to be indispensable tools. The greatly increased enemy health bars aren't just a difference of scale, but since they make it impossible to kill all enemies in a single turn, it makes for a difference of kind. This difference requires you to master controlling the enemy, in order to find advantages.
Shields are not just a beginner tool... it's standard part of the kit. It's blocking, sometime it's right sometimes it not.
Rolling is easy to use as well...
Beg to differ. DS1 was my very first souls game and I breezed through it holding a shield up the entire time until Ornstein and Smough repeatedly kicked my shit in. Very much felt like a beginner tool I was relying on until I was beaten over the head enough to learn how to roll.
@Cenfre no some of their attacks should be dodged and some should be blocked. Blocking is a part of the base kit. Standard tool, and to use it properly requires not holding it all the time and minding stamina management. Blocking is very much a core mechanic In ds1. It's the reason a lot of people didn't like ds3, because there is no nuance and rolling is so much stronger than every tool in the kit that there is no reason to use anything else.
@@asdfghjkllkjhgfdsa8725 Whether you consider rolling easy or not, blocking is easier than rolling, and every advantage it gives you(other than ease of use), can be replicated without a shield by being better at rolling, and when you don't need to block you can focus more on offense since you have a free hand, so veterans tend to gravitate to a dual-wielding or 2-handing style over using shields.
@@soleo2783 how is blocking easier but rolling gets every advantage that blocking does... and better offensive capabilities. your logic seems broken.
Truth is in ds1 they're both easy once you know the game and there are times when one has advantages over the other. They both require skill to use properly. Neither is more fun or appealing to me. They work together to form well made combat mechanics
@@asdfghjkllkjhgfdsa8725 Its simple, blocking is more forgiving in timing than rolling is, your punishment for blocking early is that you regen less stamina, your punishment for rolling early is getting hit, straight up.
Rolling making it possible to deal more damage is seperate to how easy it is to use.
Lets not pretend otherwise, theres a reason beginners tend to turtle behind shields at first, it's objectively easier mechanically than rolling, with less risk.
I've played these games multiple times with all kinds of different loadouts... and I really don't think the sword and shield method is inherently boring. It can be pretty dynamic! A lot of attacks are faster one-handed than two-handed , and you don't have to keep the shield up all the time. I tend to put it up early in an enemy attack, as a little extra insurance so that I can dodge at the last second and not worry too much about missing the dodge window.
Fat rolling is bad, though, never fat roll!
bloodborne fanboys cant really find anything fun other than melee, and choose to impose that laughable sentiment on everyone, same really for the sekiro fanboys but to a far less extent, both games are as deep as a puddle and only have melee weapons for the most part, which is why i hear the most bitching about souls' ocean level depth in rpg systems and mechanics from seki-borne fanboys, adam being one of the biggest of them.
@@flamingmanureIt's a shame because I like Bloodborne for its uniqueness and being different from DS. They're good for different reasons and shouldn't be the same.
I remember how I tanked and or spanked my way through DS1 and DS2 and it was Bloodborne that made something click in my head and I went to the other extreme never playing a shield build in any soulslike games anymore... that is before Elden Ring showed me the light once again and tankier/shield builds are one of my favorite things in it.
If anything, having a shield let's you play more aggressively, especially the ones that let you use a weapon art/AoW, while still being able to block. Simply the threat of being parried will change the way opponents approach you as well. I agree about greatshields at least. To a newer player, they might seem good, but in the long run most of them just aren't worth it, investment-wise.
I implore you, try playing Dark Souls 1 with very high vitality and using the twin eagle greatshield. That's the one that does not have 100 percent physical reduction. This setup will allow you flexible weapon choices, while also making you incredibly safe, such that a first time player could likely beat most bosses first try with it. When a skilled player uses it, they may as well actually be invincible.
When you have "graduated" from so-called entry level strategies, don't make the mistake of thinking that they are beneath you. I think "foundational strategies" is a better term, as they can often have lessons or nuances that you may not have picked up on before you outright left them behind. Chiefly here is this one: "blocking an enormous axe with your enormous shield can be just as satisfying as smashing the golem with your bigass sword."
this. one of the best aspects of the game are the many possible playstyles, it makes no sense to remove the one that isn't overpowered and is more accessible.
When a skilled player plays dark souls 1, they may as well actually be invincible. To the point that a common veteran strategy for runs is to use the master key to head straight to quelaag and kill her first. Then kill Ceaseless Discharge. Use the massive pile of souls from having killed 2 mid-game bosses to boost yourself straight into end-game stats within the first half hour of the game. If you're not satisfied from there, just go back to the asylum to kill the stray demon in the basement... point is, Dark Souls 1 is a game where builds only matter for those who don't know the game well enough to win without them. The methods you learn to defeat each boss are universal, every build can utilize them. Because the gameplay flow of Dark Souls is inherently defensive. You don't learn how to win. You learn how to avoid losing, because that guarantees you will win in the end.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 What a reductive viewpoint. Builds are only for people who don't know how to win without them? No, they're actually one of the most compelling parts of the game, as with any rpg. There are many who enjoy speeding right through the game with red tearstone and zweihander, as you would suggest. There's nothing wrong with playing that way. However, pretending that it is the only way an experienced player might enjoy the game is just silly.
@@noahduncan5998 You missed a very crucial word there. Builds only *matter* for people who don't know how to win without them. They're *for* everyone, but they don't affect everyone equally.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 Semantics. If a player values the build crafting aspect of the game, then it "matters" to them, whether or not they "need" their build to beat enemies.
I love that your example for an overpowered weapon just off the beaten path was moonveil and not the uchi, which can actually be found in the first zone.
Or you can outright start with it, if you're feeling a bit weeby. And then just dual wield it with the other one you find at the start of the game, because why the fuck not?
Or if you want to kill Yura, the Nagakiba.
While it might not be the best example, I like how it is in FTL. You start with a basic ship with some basic weapons that, with proper complementary weapons and upgrades, will last the entire game. Despite the game handing you things only after rolling dice, you can be reasonably sure you get some things that fit that strategy. It's not the most exciting strategy, but it works. However, throughout the game you also, most likely, get lots of chances to try something different, and once you unlock new ships, you start with other setups that naturally work better with other strategies, so there's a lot of variation to be found naturally.
I was never able to beat FTL, reached the final battle 5 times, then just give up. I can spend that amount of time on a game to not get any serotonin out of it. The only way I am playing again if it's ported to android, so I can play for 5 minutes every day to actually get good...
@@Puerco-Potter Yeah, it's a hard game where the final battle is even harder. Took me a few tries to beat it counting only actually reaching it. You can use a similar strategy against most enemy ships (except boarding against automated ships), but since the final battle is in three phases with distinct and unique dangers, you need to have a counter strategy for each phase. And if you fall behind at any point, you're dead.
FTL highlights a way that roguelikes have it easier here. The biggest switches in strategy come when you change ships (and most non-starter ships have glaring weaknesses), but whenever you switch ships you're starting over from level 1 with easy enemies and a low time investment if you fail. They also get to gate these ships behind challenges like he talked about.
@@davidbrickey8733 Yeah, roguelikes don't have those long investments in specific strategies since they usually base themselves on starting over from the beginning more or less frequently. That on its own encourages variation and trying new things.
Speaking of the challenges, I like that there are two ways to get the ships. Either by completing a run, or by doing the ship-specific quest, which can be rare to even encounter in the first place.
"you start with other setups that naturally work better with other strategies, so there's a lot of variation to be found naturally." same thoughts.
The way you level up and unlock jobs in Stranger of Paradise is a nice incentive to keep trying new strategies thata doesn't fit with any ideas on the video
oh likewise Dragons Dogma vocations are cool
Cowering behind a shield? Nah son, the Shield is our trusted partner, one half of THE classic weapon loadout: sword & shield. 🛡️ It's balance, it's beauty.
Respect the board.
"He who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day;
But he who is battle slain
Can never rise to fight again"
Oliver Goldsmith
I had literally the exact issue with Monsoon in my playthrough. Like it’s ridiculous they didn’t encourage parrying more earlier on, like I know it’s my fault but I didn’t even realise parrying would make him easy until I googled it
Yeah Monsoon is the fight that goes 'Have you learned how to parry yet? No? Well you're gonna"
And then you learn parry is spammable and suddenly you're smacking yourself because you never learned the move that makes the game waaaay easier.
I'm of the view that there's no playstyle that is invalid.
I really liked slowly building a brute pyromancer swinging a Demon Great Machete while using Power Within and the Red Tearstone Ring while wearing a mix of Armor of Thorns and Black Iron with a Boar Helm on top. Doing everything the game offers lets you curb stomp the late game, so why not do it in the way that works for you?
I find the high risk for failure in "souls" style games is just always gonna encourage careful and fearful playstyles, It doesn't matter what build you use, these type of games discourage careless experimentation by punishing every mistake you make. They are inefficient at teaching players how to fight and instead teach you to value your life.
Heya.
The "character creation" song is called "Souls of Fire (A Moment's Peace)" by Motoi Sakuraba (I guess, that's what Wikipedia says.)
To be honest, I enjoyed using shields even _when_ the games tried to make them redundant. Depending on the enemy, I either got the satisfaction of the "Hahaha! Yes, break yourselves upon me!" titan playstyle, or the pride of a "This boss/enemy is designed to be good against shields...so I'm going to beat them using one anyways just to _spite_ them" playstyle of overcoming adversity. It's why I never played bloodborne. I'm sure it's a great game, but it feels odd for them to explicitly insinuate shields as a coward's playstyle.
'My life has no value' - no warrior of any skill whatsoever. The whole point is to kill your opponent, not distract him for a few moments by shoving his sword through your chest.
The "problem" with shields is that most new players will just spend the entire game hiding behind them and never try anything new. You're actually the perfect exemple of this, you're so reliant on that playstyle that you literally refuse to play a game that doesn't have it. I'm totally not judging you or anything, but I feel like that probably goes against fromsoftware's vision for their games and I completely understand that they have somewhat nerfed that playstyle to encourage more build diversity and experimentation (not that the shield playstyle isn't viable or anything in ER or DS3, it can actually be one of the most broken builds if done correctly).
On a side note, if you have a PS4/5 I really recommend you at least try Bloodborne, I have a feeling you'd love it. And if not that's ok, but I feel like you're missing out if you don't even try just because it changes up the way you play.
@@davidantunes9900 Oh I should clarify, I didn't mean it to come across like 'How dare they, I'll never play Bloodborne for speaking ill of the shield', I more meant that because they went down that route it's lower on my list of games to play. It was more disappointment than anything, like if they made a new Monster Hunter game and decided to remove lance as a weapon entirely in place of weapons like dual blades.
It's not so much a matter of being reliant on a shield, it's just that I happen to find that style of gameplay to be the most entertaining to use. I don't do it because it's easy, I do it because it's fun, that's why I tend not to switch up when against an enemy strong to shields, I generally like the challenge of playing with that kind of disadvantage. It's not all I use either, I'll use rolls and ranged tools as needed to support whatever shield build I'm using.
I've done things with two-handers, with dex, I've dabbled with magic and bows and the sort, they're all neat tools to use, but the shield tends to be what brings me the most satisfaction, so I end up going back to it in the end. I also prefer to use things like swords and halberds over lances because using the 'poke behind a pike' strategy becomes a bit dull for me over time, and it's more fun using strategies where I have to lower the shield to do damage.
@@davidantunes9900 I enjoy shield play more than anything else. Am I not supposed to have fun?
@@Cellidor I totally get it, and don't get me wrong I was never trying to invalidate your playstyle, at the end of the day it's your free time and money that you spent on the game and you should enjoy it however you want, the only important thing is that you have fun.
I am no coward😡 you take that back😢 you take that back right now😭.
FromSoft vets call every build easy and honestly they’re right
That’s why branching out is advantageous
I'm not sure if I agree with a lot of these points
- Previous games had classes with no shields or extremely weak shields, or also had secondary weapons, just like Elden Ring
- Guard counters are so strong that I think they make shield builds stronger *and* easier, since a LOT of enemies will simply get staggered after a block, allowing for a perfectly safe guard counter
- Shields are also extremely good in Elden Ring AND Dark Souls 3 and 2, to the point of making the game easier if used alongside dodges
- Are spirit summons also not basically the same thing? They can completely solo a fair ammount of fights, and completely trivialize most of them
All of these things were stuff I considered during the writing process! - you might not agree but here are my thoughts (mostly pulled from my drafts so excuse any copy/paste errors):
- Dark Souls 2 notably was very stingy on shields for starter classes and big on giving them other strategies as a direct reaction to the homogeneity of 1 and this is great, but consequently DS2 has a fairly rough early game for first timers (dying to the big ogre at the start over and over again isn't too fun!) I think doing both, giving players that easy option but also encouraging them to abandon it is the thing that distinguishes Elden Ring's approach. ( you could, however, argue DS2 is intended to be played after 1 and so it can afford to be a bit less forgiving earlygame). Dark Souls 3 is generally a bit better on both fronts, though with the caveat that shields are across the board fairly bad and generally not worth using imo.
- Guard counters *are* strong, but I don't think they're any stronger than, say, sorceries or bleed builds or any of the other top-tier strategies in elden ring. What matters is that guard countering pushes more cautious, defensive players in the direction of more active play by virtue of how powerful they are. The problem with shields (in my opinion, of course) was never that they were too powerful - they weren't! It's that they promoted a style of play that wasn't really inline with the rest of the game, so guard countering offering an incentive to break out of that is all good to me.
- The key point here is "used alongside dodges", encouraging players to dodge is great - the problem is that in DS1, players had little to no incentive to dodge or parry because of how powerful blocking was and the relative abundance of 100% physical block shields. Making shields a little worse so as to make dodging a more efficient use of precious stamina was one of the things the dark souls sequels did really well! (DS2 nerfing stamina regen based on how encumbered you were, and DS3 nerfeing all stamina regen items are other key factors to consider)
- I can't think of many situations where a spirit summon can solo a boss you're at the correct level for - but I do agree they're pretty overpowered. I think the key example here though is that in order to make the most of them as a new player, you've got to try and get as much damage in on a boss before your summon dies, encouraging more aggressive, risky play rather than passivity.
Ultimately, the idea of "hey, a most powerful or at the very least most reliable strategy is always going to exist so you might as well ensure it's fun" is something I've covered in other vids but maybe it did deserve a mention here!
@@ArchitectofGames Oh, the right spirit summon can solo a LOT of bosses haha
Tiche, Omenkiller, Crystalian, Rot dog, Skellies, imps, etc. Level them up to your current gear level and they can basically win fights for you. Other than that tho, you can hang back and spam the boss with any sort of ranged attack for an easy time
I think everything you said is fair, but I still don't think the changes made in ER DS3 or DS2 nerfed shields that much. Not as good as DS1 obviously, but I'd say they can still be around that level of power or even passivity for new players
In Dark Souls I never had the shield issue because I pursued fashion and style over everything else.
So my issue instead was that I dodged everything and never learned how to parry until I played Sekiro in 2019 and went back to the older games
I honestly think it's mostly because it was more braver to use a shield then to constantly abuse the I windows since when the i windows are active you take no damage! While on the other hand your Shield could be knocked away and then you can be killed
Still in Doom: Eternal. I played both games without knowing the basic strategy for all pro boomer shooter players: swap weapons right after you shoot, swapping quicker and auto reloading.
I learned about it because in one of the challenges, where you must kill a Marauder and two or three smaller minions in, like, 10 seconds?, can't remember, and that is impossible without the swapping trick. It was just a challenge, many players just skipped it, but my pride made me try and discover this new ability, making me a better player...
Or my stubborness, that's more accurate.
PS4? It doesn't work on PS4, only on PC.
@@vagabundorkchaosmagick-use2898 You can Quickswap on console by quicktapping the Weapon Wheel button, but only between the last two equipped weapons (almost sure that came on an update)
In my first playthrough of DS1 I choose pyromancer class. It looked fun, after all not many games would allow you to play with such class, instead of usual warrior/thief/mage/cleric. Unfortunately, although I tried to use my pyromancy glove, it soon became obsolete. Reason was simple : I could not find pyromancy trainer. In fact, I did not have a clue you could upgrade your glove. I missed Fair Lady completely (hidden) and did not found Laurentius until very late in the game (when I did not need him any more) . Thus, all pyromancies were somewhat useless to me, even Power Within (after all, I wanted something to heal me, not to drain my HP 😁). I reverted to a classic sword/shield combo, with occasional dual wield against tougher bosses that could not be blocked effectively. I also used my attunement slots for healing miracles obtained from Petrus. For ranged attacks I simply used bow and arrows. Looking back at it, it is quite possible that Miyazaki deliberately designed the game like this. First playthrough would be "dumb warrior" playthrough because you simply had no other options, all other things being hidden. Only in your NG+, NG++ and so on, would you discover deeper secrets of the game. Unfortunately, lots of people simply do not have time or will to play same game all over again. Thus, DS1 became simple sword & shield game.
So the single most effective way to survive an attack not only in videogames but in historical warfare or sieges or whatever, and also the most sensible thing to do when fighting some bigass dude with a bigass sword, that being FUCKING BLOCK is considered cowardice, but going straight up naked being totally new and underleveled risking it all, being a glass cannon that dies 3425342553425342 times due to "skill issue" is the cool way to play this game? am I understanding this or am I stupid?
There’s also the the prospect of making the game tactics easy to learn, but hard to master. Like in almost every mainline Mario game. Of course you jump to solve almost every problem, but then there’s all positioning you have to do too to beat the optional postgame levels
When I first played Dark Souls 1, I think I remember going for the boring shield strat. Got me through the game well enough.
Then when I started Dark Souls 2, two main things happened that I gave the same solution:
1. I couldn't find a 100% block 1h shield to begin with, so I decided "Screw shields, I'mma just get good" and went with a heavy 2h weapon and focussed on dodging and learning attack patterns rather than any blocking. It was pretty fun.
2. I accidentally went the Heide's Tower of Flame path, not realising that Forest of the Fallen Giants was the intended path for low-level characters, and thinking that my repeated dying was just a skill issue. I applied the same solution, and killed the Lost Sinner before finding the Last Giant and wiping the floor with it.
This was a pretty good vid! Gave me some new perspective on the Souls games and similar difficulty-focused vidyas. One thing I do think helps contribute to "try new strategies" aspect in the Souls games I think is worth touching on is that because of the variety of options they give you, I find a lot of people try out new builds in subsequent runs. Sort of that "This thing looks interesting, but I'm not built for it. Maybe I'll try it out in a new game?"-type mindset.
I started out with a typical sword + board strategy for a while (though I did switch to a big bonk stick later on because it looked fun and ridiculous), but in later playthroughs I did stuff like magic builds, faith builds, dex builds, and stuff like that. It's not quite the same thing as trying new things out mid-game but I think new builds work a bit better in the Souls games since everything has level requirements and leveling gets more expensive as you do it, so it can be kinda tough to switch builds mid-game... Although they allowed for respecing your character in later games, like Dark Souls 2.
On the other hand, being a big tanky shield guy who takes no damage should also be a fantasy. I have a blast every time I get to tell my pathfinder GM "none of that goes through,"
Since Hitman was mentioned it's also worth noting how Freelancer mixes things up.
For Freelancer there are no guided story missions and your targets can be NPCs who don't have a routine that leaves them vulnerable or isolated.
Also you are heavily encouraged to accomplish additional objectives because those are what give you the majority of your money.
Sure it's easy to just headshot&run-like-crazy, but then you only end up earning a few hundred Merces (the currency), whereas completing the bonus objectives can give you thousands.
The objectives also encourage you to do stuff you otherwise wouldn't and the whole progression and loss of progession system encourages you to use items you normally wouldn't. For example at the start of Freelancer it's actually not that easy to get a silenced gun and when you finally get your hands on one you might lose it again, so you have to experiment with loud guns or melee/thrown weapons.
Not having a crowbar or lockpick easily available also forces players to actually find all these alternative ways to get from A to B.
Many players seem to only now discover what Hitman is all about now that their beginner strategies have been taken away or discouraged.
My Berenike Knight Character would like to have a word with you. That Towershield was the only reason i was able to beat Ornstein and Smough.
I personally loved the playstyle I adapted throughout my first darks souls 1 playthrough, which made me turn every corner and approach any unfamiliar place with my shield up, anticipating the worst. The anticipation and respect for the world's dangers made the experience for me. And throughout my later playthroughs of Dark souls 2 and 3, I always used shields and dodging in order to study an enemy's/boss' move set before engaging aggressively. Basically, for me, shields encouraged a very methodical playstyle.
Imo, what takes away from the combat experience, and is essentially easy mode in souls games way more than shields are heavy armor (i.e., fat rolling) and spells.
The shield is a friend, am I doing the big dumb str weapon build? Yes. Does a the sword and board hold a warm and untouchable place in my heart? Yes.
Whenever someone shits on shield in this manner HbomberGuys condesending voice pops up in my mind.
X-com enemy within did it better than 2; instead of punishing you it rewarded you play in a certain ways.
This man was destroyed by Fingerprint Stoneshield players and took it personally 😂
I love how using a shield to logically block some things at a cost is seen as "cowardly" by some in the DS community yet relying on an exploit with moments of invincibility through rolling and parrying is held up as some gold standard.
It's because dark souls gave every edgy rpg neckbeard the excuse to prove that they were better at imaginary problem solving.... but in reality was just a janky mess.
The community at large is pretty self-important and kinda cringey. Think about lore analysis. How many videos you scroll past with clickbait titles that you know will just tell you stuff you noticed on your own?
I like how Dead Cells mixes up the formula. The game, at its heart, is a roguelike metroidvania whether you're expected to die many, many times shortly building up the skills, knowledge, and optional upgrades to make it all the way through and beat the final boss.
But from the very first time you load up the game for your very first run and in every run after, the game gives you 3 options as soon as you leave the starting room: a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, and a shield. But (excluding the backpack upgrade), you're only allowed to pick 2 of the 3 options. You could go for the classic sword and board setup, and it's a tried and true strategy with the game encouraging you to learn shield parries with unique weapon "on parry" properties and well telegraphed and keyframed enemy attacks. Or you could go for a more cautious shield and ranged build to pick off enemies from afar and tank damage. Or you can double down on offense and take both the melee and ranged weapon, but then you opt out of the parry mechanic entirely and have to rely entirely on dodge rolling through enemy attacks. The game subtly encourages you to experiment with each run and try new things.
I had a somewhat similar problem when I was playing Dark Souls for the first time: I didn't use shields, but I didn't understand the concept of weight limits, so I was always fat rolling everywhere up until Ornstein and Smough.
I kept getting railed by them until I, out of frustration, stripped my self of all my armor and weapons (beside my strongest weapon at the time) and managed to advance much further than I ever had before. After a few more tries I finally managed to take down Beeg Smough and actually really enjoyed the fighting for the first time in hours (the Metroidvania-like exploration is what was keeping me tied to the game up until then).
This reminded me that there's a flip side to the beginner-strategy problem: when the game has a single strategy that, if you master it early, will carry you through the entire game, while punishing all the others-effectively giving those other strategies no reason to exist except as traps for players who haven't learned the One True Strat yet. In this case, staying light enough to do the fast rolls. I haven't seen what _Elden Ring_ is like yet, but I've heard it's doing the same thing they've been doing since _Bloodborne_ where most of the bosses make you execute frame-perfect dodges just to exploit the I-frames because all their attacks are basically AOEs and the only way to physically get out of their way is by hanging out at the other end of the room being useless. And at least _Bloodborne_ caught on that shields and armor are useless in a game with those types of encounters and took them out entirely.
@@stevethepocket Finished both ER and Bloodborne, don't know what you're talking about AOE attacks in bloodborne specially as an issue, in fact due to the aggressive playstyle of the game, you learn pretty early not to evade but to counter, that's why when you're locked on to a boss you don't roll but sidestep making it easier to get up close instead of distancing from the boss. In ER there's a bunch of bosses that act like that but nothing than can't be countered.
The majority of the bosses and all of Fromsoft games can be killed by an aggressive and on the nose playstyle, that's how I always play anyways and that's why I think Bloodborne and Sekiro are the best games from them.
@@stevethepocketIt sounds to me like playing the heavy shield knight is hardmode, and playing weightless backstabbing thief is easy mode, by your logic. I beat the game as a heavy knight with a shield, no rolling at all. But if that's too hard for you people maybe you should think about trying a different playstyle... yes I'm being saucy because I'm tired of people talking down other gamers for how they want to play. I beat Smough/Ornstein and Gwyn as a fat rolling knight with a shield and I don't care what others think. Stuff you people.
I really feel like you had a conclusion and worked backwards to find arguments in support of it.
I definitely did enjoy DS1 more once i got off the shield playstyle and started two handing spears, that happened to be my favored way to play! I think the problem more so than being given a shield early on, at least for me, was that there are a ton of weapons in the game. Some of which seem to be intended for you to grow past, and the process for upgrading weapons is really cumbersome and permanently eats up resources that are hard to get, so you dont really get an easy way to see the ceiling of what a weapon could do. That makes it hard to consider whether youd even like to switch to a different weapon over the one you've been practicing with and upgrading for hours and hours.
But i like the video! Interesting stuff!
Great video as always. Love the work you're doing.
As someone who played a Prot Warrior in WoW and then picked up Dark Souls games, I was glad that they let me feel like I was soloing the raid bosses. I still usually play with a sword and shield in Dark Souls games, but I also put on the amulet that attracts enemies attention and use that to help out hosts and friends.
Sekiro was a lot of fun, though. The perfect parrying timing was great to learn, even though I spent almost two hours on Genichiro because I couldn't get the timing on the lightning parry.
There's nothing I enjoy more than someone telling me how their enjoyment is objectively superior to mine.
not the point of the video and not what he said please close your TH-cam account until you can think about what you watch
You sound extremely hurt by my sentence. Maybe you should consider taking a break from TH-cam to go outside and take a few deep breaths. It might help you realise that while being an obvious hyperbole, my sentence was more than accurate.
@@Sora_Halomon Exactly the point of this video and can't be made unheard.
@@niemand7811 after further thought i've realized that if you want to interpret a neutral video as being against everything you value, i can't stop you. good luck and i hope you find peace in your life.
Bad take. It's like saying sprinting (2h) is more skillful than running marathon (shield)
Bless including the soundtracks in the video, I hate so much asking in the comments only to get a reply from someone who found my question 4 years later.
Just yesterday I rewatched the old Extra Credits video on this topic, which they called FOO (First-Order Optimal) Strategies! Ever since that video I've been much more aware of when I fall into this trap in a new game.
I heavily disagree with the entire take that "using shield is boring and cowardice", and by extension that the defensive playstyle is "entry level" and is ineffective at high level. Dark souls provides 3 defensive options because they all have a certain purpose. Parry is hard reactive answer to certain moves with guaranteed damage, roll is basically i-framing through the attack, meaning 0 damage, but vulnerable recovery and no guarantee for damage as the opponent can recover earlier, and shield as a passive defensive option against unreactable attacks, delayable sequences (the biggest complain about ds3 bosses by a mile is that they can delay attacks, tricking players into doing a roll and hitting them during recovery, and guess what mechanic is supposed to solve this problem) and optional followups. Playing dark souls through rolls alone is the easiest way to make the game waaay harder just because the game will trap you so easily and you basically should gamble which option will enemy go for, or outspace enemy and hit him during recovery, which is... well, is that really a more interesting gameplay for you? That is applied even more to the competitive games. I don't know a lot about mobas or FPS games at a competitive level, but as far as i know, nobody at the higher level plays "high risk high reward" playstyle or picks unorthodox strategies just because it gives more reward. Its a specific answer for a certain situation, where this option has better risk/reward. Once again: risk/reward, not just reward for aggressiveness. Even more so in fighting games actually, defense there is one of the hardest aspects and requires deep knowledge about all characters plus the skill to predict your opponents action in what is basically a sequence of complicated multilayered RPS games
you have it backwards. Later souls game teach players to spam dodge and overly rely on it. People who like to block often use roll but people like to roll often dont use the block option.
When using a shield there are alot of unblockable or hard hitting attacks which bream shield . this teaches the player to roll past attacks. In later souls games people spam roll for every option and never block because there are far less unrollable attacks then unblockable attacks. This causes people to spam roll against every attack and not explore other defensive options.
blocking teaches defensive variety in options. roll spamming is a noob trab that makes people overly reliant as a crutch.
Great video! One thing though, playing the Wretch makes more sense on a First playthrough, because by the second you know where all the things you want to get are
What's so good about Elden Ring's approach is that yeah, you can literally just sword and board your way through the entire game, but to do that, you literally need to go through the same thought processes any other build does. Early/light enemies are easy, they even visibly get pushed back by blocks on some attacks and not others, letting you know as a player there's times where you can use guard counter safely, and times when you can't. Even the weakest, easiest enemies have huge telegraphed attacks that show you that you shouldn't just sit and block everything, though. Finding out when to block is basically the same thought process as when to dodge, and as the player starts to become overwhelmed with the boss attack speed and strength that breaks shields, they can either branch into parries, learn Barricade Shield's timed activation to mitigate a LOT of stamina damage, or just.. try other tools. Especially cool since you can "no skill" your shield and give players the tools to try out ashes while still having the "panic block" safety net, and then they can naturally branch out from there, not from FromSoft FORCING them to, but from them literally deciding on their own naturally, and they can increase their block effectiveness with buildcrafting as well, but they're given every opportunity to experiment with all of the other various tools while still utilizing the blocking safety net they're comfortable with, so at no point are they forced to just quit shields cold turkey, and if they want to lean into shields, they absolutely can. If they want to branch out from there and try something different, they can. And it's up to them. They'll naturally try what appeals to them the most, and the game isn't forcing it into your face, but stealthily guiding you towards making those decisions yourself with the core concepts of the game design and ash of war system.
You think a shield is bad for dark souls 1 players????? I PLAYED THE ENTIRE GAME WITH BOWS, YOU JUST HAVE TO ROLL BACK WHEN ATTACKED AND THEN ATTACK. AND WHEN THAT DIDN´T WORK, I KEPT MY SHIELD UP AND DO THE THRUSTING SWORD ATTACK. I PLAYED THE ENTIRE GAME WITHOUT KNOWING HOW TO ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME
I think you're really starting to become complacent in your videos. I've noticed a worrying trend lately where a lot of your videos start from a premise that "X thing is good for game" or "Y thing is bad for game" and you try to justify that position, instead of approaching the game as it is.
This usually happens because we take our own personal opinion and assume that it must be the correct and universal one, and then look for reasons that we're right (and often ignore reasons that we're wrong.) This is why it's a dangerous way to approach "analysis." It leads to cherry-picking and confirmation bias, and towards judging games in a way that only applies to ourselves instead of trying to understand why people who don't agree with us feel the way they do. At worse it can even become elitist, when we answer that previous question with "because they're just dumb idk."
I like a lot of your videos and I think overall you still find good points. The whole "first order optimal strategies" concept is actually a sound one and a good warning to game designers that effective strategies will be used over fun ones...but you can't really turn around and tell people how they're having fun wrong.
I didn't know the background footage at the end of the video was a hint about the next video's topic
Your description of the problem in Metal Gear Rising is exactly the same I felt when playing Wildstar, many people gave up on the game after trying the endgame dungeons because before that you could ignore most of the game base mechanics, but they were obligatory to use and even to master to be able to complete the dungeons and raids.