Board Thread:Dark Souls II/@comment-24.8.54.69-20140324145355/@comment-1961216-20140426075226

Dark Souls did the impossible and made Japanese designers trying to make a Western game (a recipe for disaster) really fucking good, but Dark Souls still suffers from serious issues due to the circumstances of its creation. Dark Souls II addressed a large number of the stupid choices made in Dark Souls 1, but especially on PC it is still extremely broken at inopportune times - no longer by design like DS1 was, but every damn bit as glitchy.

So now we have a good interface with a sane equipment status screen, but we still get clipped by enemies that clearly did not touch us, occasionally don't attack when we press the attack key, and sometimes abruptly slide a few yards off to the side and fall off of a cliff.

But hey, at least Dark Souls 2 is /playable/ on PC, unlike the original! =)

[quote]"Largely added due to the differences in gaming between East and West"? What, you think that eastern culture is more sadistic or something?[/quote]

Of course it is. If you don't understand why he said that you're not very familiar with "hardcore" Japanese games.

A good example is Monster Hunter (a game I despise.) I consider this game MUCH more difficult than Dark Souls, because it is just as if not more Thinkin' Man's Combat than Dark Souls is but the player gets far less clear feedback (as in "not sure if you even hit the enemy" less feedback.)

You see, the Japanese have a love of intricate, labyrinthine game mechanics, and they love them even more if the player has to use calculus over a period of years to figure them out. If how to "be good" at your game is hidden from the player at every turn unless they have an army of 30-year-olds running tests, crunching numbers, and comparing spreadsheets from their parents' basements, then you've made a good Japanese game. Even Pokémon, a turn-based RPG based on rock-paper-scissors where you only get four attacks, has a hidden metagame component that the game pretends doesn't exist that is also complete bullshit (Innate Values).

I am thankful and quite frankly amazed that Dark Souls I and II put most if not all of their mechanics right there on the table for you, because Monster Hunter doesn't even tell you how much damage your attacks are doing. The nerd army is only needed for junk ordinary players don't have to worry about, such as the precise formula of random drop rates and how to determine matchmaking partners. That's FAR more open and honest than Japanese games tend to be.

In closing: there is a /very/ clear schism between Eastern and Western game culture; it can quite reasonably be described as "sadism" but I think the intention is to encourage players to surmount unfair odds so the game feels like fighting something truly evil (the game designers >__>) and is more of an accomplishment; and only someone with little to no experience between Western and Japanese games could possibly fail to notice this.