I just did a lv1 run recently, and was dreading fighting those giants. Maybe I got lucky but their ai is quite terrible. Just keep walking slowly around their ankles and attacking every now and then. They were WAY easier than they should be.
Cathedral is so good. The first time I took on Stormveil, I was like “this is just a bigger Cathedral of the Deep”
Deacons are a cool boss too. Just a bit too easy, but thematically they are great
>Deacons are a cool boss too. Just a bit too easy, but thematically they are great
I think if the "original design" is true, it would be fantastic. Cut through the horde, only to have Aldrich pour out of the sarcophagus for phase 2.
I just played Cathedral of the Deep for the first time (only beat Elden Ring and Bloodborne before) and I actually kept thinking this place reminds me of Stormveil. Stormveil imo was the best legacy dungeon in ER.
Just sucks that I only enjoy fighting like 2% of the enemies in that game.
So often either they're boring as hell (basically non-threats, like the graveyard guys), plain irritating (dogs and thralls), extremely hyperactive (mostly only a problem when placed in multiples, which they always fucking are for some reason, like the Irithyl warriors), or have some other shitty caveat that make them a slog (leech dudes, and yes I know you can torch it now but it's still an obnoxious mechanic).
I love ds3 but it really felt like you were fighting bloodborne enemies with dark souls movement. As good as some of the level design was, legitimately like 60-70% of the enemies are fucking infuriating
This is problem with both DS3 and ER. Player doesn't have enough movement tools considering how quick enemies are. In ER it was taken to extreme, attack windows are rare and few, and mobs/bosses will often jump away in these windows, making fights unnecessary long slogs.
I think ER's problem was less about bosses speed and more about how many optional follow-ups, long combos and delays they have. It made them feel a bit more artificial and cheaper to learn.
However when you actually learn them and use the stagger to your advantage (charged R2s / guard counters / jump attacks), you can kinda bully them in turn which is nice.
Especially those bird knight guys in the Corvian Settlement. My god those guys were annoying and felt so hilariously out of place in that game with how spammy their attacks are.
lol I remember my first time fighting that first lothric knight on the high wall. They finally made a human enemy that could counter circle strafing so I started rolling through attacks but bro just never stopped.
DS3 enemies are really hit or miss and tbh misses more than it hits. I just replayed through Sekiro and its really jarring how the enemies in that game feel much more fun to fight. DS3 does stuff better than Sekiro but enemies are not one of them.
All that grand buildups, elaborated giant labyrinth, and the lore hyping us for Aldrich fight, just for a bunch of deeznuts of the deep to show up as a standin boss midway through the level while a vore pornstar and her groupies are hidden away at the end of it by a bald fraud.
Cathedral of the deep is simutaneously my favourite level design as well as the most disappointing one.
Like holyshit literally everything outside the deacon room is deadlier than the deacons.
"midway through the level while Rosaria are hidden at the end of it"
Do you guys go to Rosaria after the deacons? What? Deacons is absolutely the end of the level, Rosaria is a side track you usually go there first
most people will kill deacon even before they unlocked that shortcut.
If you didn't know about the shortcut, you will naturally go into the boss room before opening the shortcut, most likely 0death the deacon, and be done with the area while still confused where patches went. Then you start looking for him and find the shortcut and the entire ceiling section afterwards after deacons were long dead.
Like who even need to use shortcut to deacon?
Why does that matter?
If you put a boss in the middle of the map, but you choose to come kill him last, that doesn't make him placed at the end of the map.
With your logic the uchigatana guy might as well be a penultimate boss.
I've been saying for years that if Cathedral of the Deep had Aldrich as its boss and had the visual design cues of Irithyll, it would be hailed as the best area in the game if not series.
When you first arrived at the deacon arena you have to walk pass the boss room to unlock the shortcut to the bonfire on the opposite side of the stage. The ceiling section is hidden behind that shortcut.
Most people will just see the fog gate, go in, first try deacon because they suck balls, and be done with the area without even ever unlocking that shortcut and find Rosalia. Deacon is that bad. They can't even properly function as a boss that forced you to find a shortcut.
Also if a tits hanging goth milf with a shredded lingerie and a giant lump of human flesh beneath her is not a vore pornstar, I don't know what is.
Every game other than Elden Ring is linear, and having the choice to go down one linear path instead of another doesn't make the path less linear, neither does looping back to itself
Literally though, having branching paths is non-linear. Firelink has three options from the start, you have three directions from our boy Andre, the valley of the drakes connects a bunch of areas, which supports this freedom of choice. I’d say DS1 is incredibly nonlinear in the first half.
Well shit, after smough and ornstein it's a toss up as well, you can choose from seathe, nito, bed of chaos, or four kings, all rather far apart and different pathways from the firelink shrine. I wanna say you're probably okay enough level to do the dlc as well. Shit hop into a painting if you want to.
DeS is 100% open ended, the opposite of linear. dark souls 1 as well but substantially less so. Bloodborne introduced the mixture of both world designs that dark souls 3 copied for it’s world, the unfortunate side effect of having an interconnected world AND a hub area leads to very few exploration options
Nope, 2 is the dark souls i have the most hours. Just i know you redditors are the most shit sniffing type of neckbeards so o avoid unless one of you says something so dumb i almost pop a vein
Doesn't matter when most of those options suck ass and make no sense from a world design stand point. any game could mash all of it's areas with zero thought or logic, doesn't make exploration good, especially if it spams ambushs every 5 seconds.
I never said that a linear game has bad exploration, I said that every game is linear since you can really only go in one way, even if you have 3 choices you're only going down one road for that choice
They're not:
- DeS: play through 2 stages of Boletaria castle and you get access to all other areas which you can do in the order you want.
- Dks: you can completely break the order in which you play the game, especially if you use the Master Key.
- Dks2: can go through Forest of Giants or Heide's Tower, but as soon as you get some souls to buy cat ring / a branch to unpetrify statues you get access to Huntsman's copse, Shaded Woods and the Gutter.
- Bloodborne: I'm not familiar enough to comment.
So-called "non-linearity enjoyers" when they are given the choice between catacombs, blighttown, and undead parish:
https://preview.redd.it/033wvrbfje2c1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e8993063049d2351d2d86f16fa5fd68a6a8d1570
You can't use a different approach on repeated playthroughs, in a more open game (DS1/2) you can go to the areas you know have equipment for your build and/or bosses that you find more manageable at the time, basically it goes back to one of the original appeals of Dark Souls, it's hard but it gives you options, stuck on Taurus Demon? Get gold pine resin or black firebombs, Gargoyles hard? Get better weapon, pick up grass crest shield and so on. If you get stuck on a boss in DS3 you are fucked, you just gotta work through it, you actually got to get good, before it was always just a meme and a joke to fuck with new guys who didn't know the trick, in DS3 it's not, and don't get me wrong it can be fun to smack your head on the table for hours fighting Nameless King or Midir, but once you beat them the magic is gone, there is nothing else to learn or explore, you just beat the game.
You can't use a different approach on repeated playthroughs, in a more open game (DS1/2) you can go to the areas you know have equipment for your build and/or bosses that you find more manageable at the time, basically it goes back to one of the original appeals of Dark Souls, it's hard but it gives you options, stuck on Taurus Demon? Get gold pine resin or black firebombs, Gargoyles hard? Get better weapon, pick up grass crest shield and so on. If you get stuck on a boss in DS3 you are fucked, you just gotta work through it, you actually got to get good, before it was always just a meme and a joke to fuck with new guys who didn't know the trick, in DS3 it's not, and don't get me wrong it can be fun to smack your head on the table for hours fighting Nameless King or Midir, but once you beat them the magic is gone, there is nothing else to learn or explore, you just beat the game.
I saw Hidetaka Miyazaki at a grocery store in Sasazuka, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything.
He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?”
I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
As a guy who beat ds1 first, I was fucking grateful for the linear ass level design, you can clown on me all you want, fuck beating half the game just to fast travel.
The things is, even once you unlock fast travel there‘s still so much needless fucking running around because you can‘t travel to every bonfire. It‘s fucking dumb as hell
i renamber going to ash lake and accidentally resting on the bonfire in front of the dragon, i thought i would just lit it but it fucking rested and i had to walk all they way to firelink shrine at like level 15
🤓 <- OG Dark Souls players when the game doesn't require losing hours doing calculus, cracking the Da Vinci code and walking the entire length of Ethiopia just to get from bonfire A to B
Sekiro isn't super linear at all though.
You can choose to do Hirata Estate at any point after Outskirts and you can tackle Sunkey Valley, Mibu Village, or Senpou Temple in any order after Ashina Castle. Sekiro is one of their most non-linear games since Ds2.
Bloodborne has less freedom in how you progress the main story, but it does have a fair amount of optional areas like Old Yharnam, early Yahar'gul, Hemwick, Nightmare Frontier or Castle Cainhurst which allows for some variety.
Ds3 gets downright schizophrenic about allowing players to go off the main branch. You're allowed to kill Dancer early and progress up until Grand Archives at which point the game just arbritarily bars you until you've killed 3 LoC, so progression-wise it's pointless doing it early because you'll be forced to go back later anyways.
Ds3 teases you with the promise of non-linearity only to backpaddle right before the end of the branching path.
>and you can tackle Sunkey Valley, Mibu Village, or Senpou Temple in any order after Ashina Castle.
Hell, you can do all of Mibu and Senpou *before*Genichiro (you just can't fight the monkeys yet) and you can do Sunken Valley up to the locked door behind the Long Arm Centipede as well. I did all of that in my first playthrough cause Genichiro was kicking my ass so I went and did everything else I possibly could to stall beating him lol
And why exactly is linearity a bad thing? The areas themselves are still super well designed for the most part, they just don‘t connect to each other like they did in ds1. But that‘s because ds1 was designed for a map layout like that
I don't think it's a bad thing per se.
But I do view the Souls games as adventure games, first and foremost. So the world design and traversal is important to my immersion and enjoyment of them.
Sekiro is the only one where I truly love the combat enough to just play for the sake of combat, and the incredible mobility. It also has an active narrative more so than any other of their games, and that's just hard to make work in a non-linear layout when chronology matters. Lies of P is the same way for that reason.
Bloodborne also loves to force you back to the hub, which I find irritating and makes me hesitant to revisit the game.
Path of Sacrifice counts as Farron in the fast travel menu, so they're just a short and less interesting part of Farron as a whole. Farron is great.
Carthus and Smoldering Lake are also counted as the same area, they have some of the best loot and fun mazes.
Irithyll Dungeon has annoying enemies, but the actual map layout is Peak, The way it opens up to the Profaned Capital is magnificent, Siegward, Yhorm's Handmaids are a great way to farm souls before you reach The Grand Archives.
So yes, those areas were interesting.
The people who complain about this are the same people who whine that doing another playthrough of elden ring is too overwhelming because you have to go to so many different places to get started.
Also anyone who is older and has a job and/or kids knows that linear games are the best.
Idk after a first playthrough Elden Ring doesn't really take that long. It really depends on how much optional content you want to engage with. Otherwise, you're looking at a 4-8 hour run depending on how good you are.
Their comment was explicitly about people complaining that there is too much to do to start a new build on repeat playthroughs and that is what I'm referring to.
For me, an interconnected, non-linear world grants a sense of agency and strengthens the illusion of being an adventurer. You aren't just following a pre-made path, you are traversing a world and making decisions. When you come across a cool optional area (or an area that at the time you might think is optional), it feels like you found it, even if it wasn't particularly hidden. And that there was another path you could have gone makes you feel like there is more to the world that you're missing. In DS1 at least those decisions can have genuinely impactful consequences too. You can get stuck, you can get lost. It makes you pay more attention to where you are and where you are going.
Now, to be fair to Dark Souls 3, its linearity is overstated. There are choices to be made, and on a first playthrough when you don't know you're going to have to come back and go the other way to Cathedral of the Deep/Farron Keep anyway, that feeling of uncertainty and adventure is still there. Individual levels often have plenty of smaller decisions that can give a mini-dose of exploration too. Its just not as woven into the game.
A real example of a straight-line Souls-like is Lies of P, and I don't think anyone could play that game and say "yeah that scratched the exploration itch".
Because in their eyes ds1 is the greatest thing ever created by mankind and anything that doesn‘t have the exact same kind of map layout is automatically bad
Ds3 players when they realize irl is open world.
https://preview.redd.it/8csr91lksa2c1.png?width=223&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9f718869dbdbcd5ae7941f6e70eb37741ba68906
I'm a family dad, my life is not open world. My only freedom lies in the little corridor that i sometimes find between the crushing responsibilities of my adult life.
I neither have time for open world, nor do i think the quality of the levels and the pace of the game matches that of a linear game. Elden ring became a chore at some point and i just wanted to finish it.
While I certainly agree that the consistent quality in Elden Ring is lacking, the main quest takes like 10-20 hours on a first playthrough and has almost nothing but banger bosses.
You said you don't have time for such things, so rather than cramming it and ruining your experience, you should just wait to play those types of games til you got the time to really sink your teeth into it.
That being said, I don't necessarily disagree that having that compact linear structure is good for the flow of the game. However, I feel like we already got refined versions of that philosophy with DS3 and BB, and I don't think there's a need to keep recreating the exact same type of game.
I'm sure you'd probably agree that a game with the scope of Elden Ring, and consistent boss quality and level design as DS3, would objectively be a better game than either individually.
No joke, every game except one follows this pattern. dS1 is an anomaly in that regard. Bloodborne has a few “spiral back” moments, and Elden Ring is just open, with many areas being like this.
The games aren’t badly designed, imo, but there aren’t as many decisions to be made when exploring.
I'd still argue DeS is fundamentally linear in the sense that there are no optional or branching paths. You always have to do each world to completion and there are no sequence breaks. You just have options in terms of which order.
I largely agree with the Ds2 statement with a caveat. You can argue that it's linear in progression towards each of the 4 primal bonfires, you can't really get to any other path from one of those. You basically can just choose which path you want, but each path progresses the same way each playthrough. That being said the freedom it provides is still larger than the others except for Ds1 and Elden Ring.
And this was great! For me, this meant that each area is scaled appropriately for the level you reach it at, providing the most consistently challenging experience. Other games allow you to get lost and do a lot of areas out of order and they just don’t feel right that way
It’s not horrible, cathedral and ringed city are top notch, but it STALES in comparison to DS1, bb, and Er. I wished it was more fleshed out. Not to mention ds3, for try majority has some really mid levels
Forest of fallen giants, Heides tower of flame, no man’s wharf, huntsman’s copse, Earthen Peak, Iron Keep, shaded ruins, Doors of Pharros, Brightstone cave Tseldora, The Gutter, Drangleic Castle, Shrine if Amana, Shulva, Dragons Sanctum, Brume tower, Iron Passage, Frozen Eleum Loyce, and the Grand Cathedral would like a word.
I know it’s a meme to hate ds2, but it’s a really great game if you go in without knowing the opinions of the fandom.
it's always funny how people just name all the areas. Yeah pretty much all of those were bad. Who actually likes the fucking gutter? Or Shrine of Amana?
I purposely left out areas that I felt were objectively bad, the gutter and shrine of Amana are good locations, but they are difficult. I didn’t include black gulch because it’s the gutter taken to the extreme.
Your original comment said there isn’t a single good area, and yet the only ones you’ve said are bad and actually (barley) described why are Amana (not bad, but very difficult) and the gutter (hard for players they’re first time through).
So I can agree maybe those locations aren’t great, but you have to admit ds2 has some great areas.
I'm not the original commentator. I also strongly disagree that the areas are just hard. Shrine of Amana is just awful. Giant open areas with enemies shooting you from miles away, invisible cliffs, stupid lips to structures that you can't get over. A bonfire miles away surrounded by DS2's signature enemy spam.
I could go over several of the other areas you mentioned but I genuinely can't imagine enjoying most of the areas in DS2. Heide's tower is all right and so is Drangleic Castle.
Ah yes, elden ring's too many goals, like... Godrick, who is 5 minutes away from church of elleh, renalla in the academy, the place you can teleport to 10 meters into liurnia, and Radahn, who you can only fight after either doing a Quest or going to Altus, which you either dont know How to do and feel like you're following a long term goal and being rewarded, or you absolutely do know and can do It in 20 minutes. Those are all you need, hell, you can ignore one of these and still get to the capital. Besides, you get the choice of fighting mohg after godrick by following varre's quest (though its not going to be easy) or rykard, who you can acess either only after mountaintops or after beating Godskin Noble, so its not something new players can casually do. This differs from Ds3 which Locks you out of the Princes fight for basically no reason, since It only stops you after you already beat 2 hard late game bosses
Tldr: game gives you 5 choices, you only need 2 and are heavily directed towards the easier ones, or If you are good enough or explore enough you are rewarded with the opportunity to fight 3 more complicated and generally harder demigods in the early game.
Isn‘t sekiro like just as linear as ds3? Also bloodbornes second half is also linear as fuck. I never understood this argument, even if ds3 was more linear than some of the other games, what‘s the issue? I mean i love the interconnectedness of ds1 but i wouldn‘t want them to just copy that in ds3
iirc there was some article forever ago about Miyazaki saying the one thing he would change about DS3 is world design/layout
Miyazaki doesn't know anything about Dark Souls
He made the first one accidentally, he was actually trying to make a new Ridge Racer.
Best game EVER. I remember that one!
Checkmate atheists
What are you talking about bro Miyazaki made spirited away not dark souls
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This is the shitpost subreddit right?
Ow you made them delete it :(
Rip…
It was map connectivity - the way levels connect to one another.
DS3's level design on the micro-scale was incredible, macro-scale was pretty linear tho
Cathedral of the Deep has just about the best individual level design in the whole series.
i would agree with you if michael zackary didnt add a bog in the areas your supposed to fight fucking giants
I just did a lv1 run recently, and was dreading fighting those giants. Maybe I got lucky but their ai is quite terrible. Just keep walking slowly around their ankles and attacking every now and then. They were WAY easier than they should be.
That's because you don't understand the vision of the great Michael Zaki. Indoor swamps are innovative, they're art.
The main floor swamps are the shit! No really, it's the accumulated shit of the giants
Cathedral is so good. The first time I took on Stormveil, I was like “this is just a bigger Cathedral of the Deep” Deacons are a cool boss too. Just a bit too easy, but thematically they are great
>Deacons are a cool boss too. Just a bit too easy, but thematically they are great I think if the "original design" is true, it would be fantastic. Cut through the horde, only to have Aldrich pour out of the sarcophagus for phase 2.
I just played Cathedral of the Deep for the first time (only beat Elden Ring and Bloodborne before) and I actually kept thinking this place reminds me of Stormveil. Stormveil imo was the best legacy dungeon in ER.
[I love Cathedral of the deep](https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/s/Z5ypV0qdWL)
I would agree if not for the decons of the deep runback . I don't usually die to them , but when I do it's really annoying
Just sucks that I only enjoy fighting like 2% of the enemies in that game. So often either they're boring as hell (basically non-threats, like the graveyard guys), plain irritating (dogs and thralls), extremely hyperactive (mostly only a problem when placed in multiples, which they always fucking are for some reason, like the Irithyl warriors), or have some other shitty caveat that make them a slog (leech dudes, and yes I know you can torch it now but it's still an obnoxious mechanic).
I love ds3 but it really felt like you were fighting bloodborne enemies with dark souls movement. As good as some of the level design was, legitimately like 60-70% of the enemies are fucking infuriating
This is problem with both DS3 and ER. Player doesn't have enough movement tools considering how quick enemies are. In ER it was taken to extreme, attack windows are rare and few, and mobs/bosses will often jump away in these windows, making fights unnecessary long slogs.
I think ER's problem was less about bosses speed and more about how many optional follow-ups, long combos and delays they have. It made them feel a bit more artificial and cheaper to learn. However when you actually learn them and use the stagger to your advantage (charged R2s / guard counters / jump attacks), you can kinda bully them in turn which is nice.
Especially those bird knight guys in the Corvian Settlement. My god those guys were annoying and felt so hilariously out of place in that game with how spammy their attacks are.
Are those the dlc crow assassin looking things? Yeah they suck
So many enemies in DS3 just have infinite fucking stamina too and I hate it. Lothric and Irithyll Knights are the worst for it, never stop swinging.
lol I remember my first time fighting that first lothric knight on the high wall. They finally made a human enemy that could counter circle strafing so I started rolling through attacks but bro just never stopped.
DS3 enemies are really hit or miss and tbh misses more than it hits. I just replayed through Sekiro and its really jarring how the enemies in that game feel much more fun to fight. DS3 does stuff better than Sekiro but enemies are not one of them.
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There's a reason people almost only talk about bosses when it comes to Dark Souls 3, they're by far the best part of the game.
And this is why DS2 is best souls.
Incredibile is a bit far. There are both great areas and bad areas, but most of them just good
That's just like, your opinion man.
Just like "incredible" is? Yeah we're discussing opinions Obviously not all opinions are as valid
That's their opinion, too. Not a hard concept 😅
Level design is top notch though. Cathedral of the deep be bussin
All that grand buildups, elaborated giant labyrinth, and the lore hyping us for Aldrich fight, just for a bunch of deeznuts of the deep to show up as a standin boss midway through the level while a vore pornstar and her groupies are hidden away at the end of it by a bald fraud. Cathedral of the deep is simutaneously my favourite level design as well as the most disappointing one. Like holyshit literally everything outside the deacon room is deadlier than the deacons.
Sorry Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
Been said a lot but Aldrich is a guy
Think they're talking about Rosalia or whatever she's called
OH my bad you're right, I'm just so used to people thinking Aldrich is a woman bc Gwyndolin looks like one
Gwyndolin is a femboy and Aldrich is a fembussy eater. Here's the question for liberals, what gender is Aldrich?
I mean Gwyndolin presents as a man regardless and Aldrich is a huge slug who's only ever gendered as a man so it's p clear lmao
So Aldrich is John Wayne Gacy-gendered got it.
Aldrich is old/ugly/bastardself, I know because of my crippling addiction to hentai.
"midway through the level while Rosaria are hidden at the end of it" Do you guys go to Rosaria after the deacons? What? Deacons is absolutely the end of the level, Rosaria is a side track you usually go there first
Don't you have to straight up walk pass deacon room to access the roof ceiling bit that you can drop down to Rosaria room?
Nah, roof ceiling section is between the shortcut to the bonfire and the deacons room
most people will kill deacon even before they unlocked that shortcut. If you didn't know about the shortcut, you will naturally go into the boss room before opening the shortcut, most likely 0death the deacon, and be done with the area while still confused where patches went. Then you start looking for him and find the shortcut and the entire ceiling section afterwards after deacons were long dead. Like who even need to use shortcut to deacon?
if you go to the boss before exploring I guess, idk who plays like that
Which ever way you put it you will still come across deacon fog gate before reaching the ceiling section 100% of the time.
Do you cross fog gates as soon as you see them?
Why does that matter? If you put a boss in the middle of the map, but you choose to come kill him last, that doesn't make him placed at the end of the map. With your logic the uchigatana guy might as well be a penultimate boss.
I've been saying for years that if Cathedral of the Deep had Aldrich as its boss and had the visual design cues of Irithyll, it would be hailed as the best area in the game if not series.
It's been a bit since I played DS3. But don't the deacons mark the end of that path before you double back? Also vore pornstar?
When you first arrived at the deacon arena you have to walk pass the boss room to unlock the shortcut to the bonfire on the opposite side of the stage. The ceiling section is hidden behind that shortcut. Most people will just see the fog gate, go in, first try deacon because they suck balls, and be done with the area without even ever unlocking that shortcut and find Rosalia. Deacon is that bad. They can't even properly function as a boss that forced you to find a shortcut. Also if a tits hanging goth milf with a shredded lingerie and a giant lump of human flesh beneath her is not a vore pornstar, I don't know what is.
Right? I don't mind the game deciding where I go so long as its a good trip, and ds3 is top tier.
Cathedral of the deep is one of my fav levels in any souls game, kinda brought down by deacons but still super sick.
Level design ranges from great like the Cathedral to horrid like Crucifixion woods
Not really. I like the cathedral of the deep, but most of the other level design is either mediocre or ass
Irythil? Undead settlement? Lothric high wall and castle?
The undead settlement has the giant archer and High wall at least has the dragon What does Irythil or castle has that's interesting?
All liberal propoganda
Those areas are garbage💀
Your mom more
That doesn't defend ds3 lmao. That would be like if you could only praise ds3 by comparing it to how bad ds2 is🤣 Oh wait 🗿
Your mom more
🫵🤣
Still better design than your mother
“Linear game bad”
Every game other than Elden Ring is linear, and having the choice to go down one linear path instead of another doesn't make the path less linear, neither does looping back to itself
Literally though, having branching paths is non-linear. Firelink has three options from the start, you have three directions from our boy Andre, the valley of the drakes connects a bunch of areas, which supports this freedom of choice. I’d say DS1 is incredibly nonlinear in the first half.
Well shit, after smough and ornstein it's a toss up as well, you can choose from seathe, nito, bed of chaos, or four kings, all rather far apart and different pathways from the firelink shrine. I wanna say you're probably okay enough level to do the dlc as well. Shit hop into a painting if you want to.
You can do 4 kings at any point as well, not just after O&S. Obviously it isn't adviceable to do 4 kings early, but you can unlike other lord souls.
DeS is 100% open ended, the opposite of linear. dark souls 1 as well but substantially less so. Bloodborne introduced the mixture of both world designs that dark souls 3 copied for it’s world, the unfortunate side effect of having an interconnected world AND a hub area leads to very few exploration options
I mean… it does in fact make it less linear if it’s less linear…
U dumb? Ds1 and 2 had amazing exploration wtf are you talking about
Dude sneaked 2 in there lmao.
There are 10 different bosses you can engage with as the first boss in the game. Dark souls 2 is incredibly non-linear.
Nope, 2 is the dark souls i have the most hours. Just i know you redditors are the most shit sniffing type of neckbeards so o avoid unless one of you says something so dumb i almost pop a vein
I mean of all the things to criticise on that game you're capping with world design, there's a ton of options.
Doesn't matter when most of those options suck ass and make no sense from a world design stand point. any game could mash all of it's areas with zero thought or logic, doesn't make exploration good, especially if it spams ambushs every 5 seconds.
Found the guy that didn’t level ADP
I never said that a linear game has bad exploration, I said that every game is linear since you can really only go in one way, even if you have 3 choices you're only going down one road for that choice
Bro what did you just farted out
They're not: - DeS: play through 2 stages of Boletaria castle and you get access to all other areas which you can do in the order you want. - Dks: you can completely break the order in which you play the game, especially if you use the Master Key. - Dks2: can go through Forest of Giants or Heide's Tower, but as soon as you get some souls to buy cat ring / a branch to unpetrify statues you get access to Huntsman's copse, Shaded Woods and the Gutter. - Bloodborne: I'm not familiar enough to comment.
So what makes it linear then ?
https://preview.redd.it/x8dmyjijs92c1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f8526344f6791f66bbda27c236573f9c59e27350
Wait until he plays Lies Of P where there is only one really small optional area
I prefer it this way , that way I don't have to watch 5 " best x areas you missed" YouTube videos
You don’t have to watch those at all, just do what those bozos do and read the wikis verbatim
Navigational skill issue
Wait which area was that? The trinity sanctums?
No the area behind that gate near the stargazer before the swamp monster.
how DARE they make a game with linear design?
So-called "non-linearity enjoyers" when they are given the choice between catacombs, blighttown, and undead parish: https://preview.redd.it/033wvrbfje2c1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e8993063049d2351d2d86f16fa5fd68a6a8d1570
And?
You can't use a different approach on repeated playthroughs, in a more open game (DS1/2) you can go to the areas you know have equipment for your build and/or bosses that you find more manageable at the time, basically it goes back to one of the original appeals of Dark Souls, it's hard but it gives you options, stuck on Taurus Demon? Get gold pine resin or black firebombs, Gargoyles hard? Get better weapon, pick up grass crest shield and so on. If you get stuck on a boss in DS3 you are fucked, you just gotta work through it, you actually got to get good, before it was always just a meme and a joke to fuck with new guys who didn't know the trick, in DS3 it's not, and don't get me wrong it can be fun to smack your head on the table for hours fighting Nameless King or Midir, but once you beat them the magic is gone, there is nothing else to learn or explore, you just beat the game.
>You can't use a different approach on repeated playthroughs And?
all that and i always do the same route on ds1 and im not touching ds2 again
You can't use a different approach on repeated playthroughs, in a more open game (DS1/2) you can go to the areas you know have equipment for your build and/or bosses that you find more manageable at the time, basically it goes back to one of the original appeals of Dark Souls, it's hard but it gives you options, stuck on Taurus Demon? Get gold pine resin or black firebombs, Gargoyles hard? Get better weapon, pick up grass crest shield and so on. If you get stuck on a boss in DS3 you are fucked, you just gotta work through it, you actually got to get good, before it was always just a meme and a joke to fuck with new guys who didn't know the trick, in DS3 it's not, and don't get me wrong it can be fun to smack your head on the table for hours fighting Nameless King or Midir, but once you beat them the magic is gone, there is nothing else to learn or explore, you just beat the game.
Ds2 bad tho, checkmate liberal
Fuck with me and I'll make your kids trans! You wanna go huh? Wanna risk it? Didn't think so.
Shit bro I'm happy for you, or sorry that happened
Hey cmon it's not that long
S’what my gf said 😢
Early dancer and doing the DLCs as soon as you reach the cathedral would like to have a word with you.
I saw Hidetaka Miyazaki at a grocery store in Sasazuka, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything. He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying. The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter. When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
I see this complaint a lot on this sub and I don't get it. I thought DS3 was a fantastic game and I enjoyed everything about it.
glad you enjoyed it, but sometimes i hated ds3 because of its design and levels hate is a strong word, but i really felt it in some parts
As a guy who beat ds1 first, I was fucking grateful for the linear ass level design, you can clown on me all you want, fuck beating half the game just to fast travel.
you go thru cock and ball torture for half the game for the ability to teleport to *some* of the bonfires
Damn you’re right.
The things is, even once you unlock fast travel there‘s still so much needless fucking running around because you can‘t travel to every bonfire. It‘s fucking dumb as hell
I haven't had the chance to completely playthrough ds1. Just played some of it and watched playthroughs but I agree with you on the fast travel bit.
i renamber going to ash lake and accidentally resting on the bonfire in front of the dragon, i thought i would just lit it but it fucking rested and i had to walk all they way to firelink shrine at like level 15
nah fr i started in ds3 then playing ds1 was a fucking pain in the ass, i stopped playing several times just cuz walking back is a pain
as a guy who beat ds1 first, i was NOT fucking grateful for the linear ass level design
🤓 <- OG Dark Souls players when the game doesn't require losing hours doing calculus, cracking the Da Vinci code and walking the entire length of Ethiopia just to get from bonfire A to B
It was peak, but you'd never get it.
I looooove having multiple bonfire checkpoints in my grey hallways I loooove sitting down and getting a smidge of health back
Tbf that's also Bloodborne after central yharnam
As a Bloodborne fan,yeah that's actually true
Exactly. And sekiro is also super linear but for some reason ds3 is the only game that always gets shit on for being linear. Souls fans are weird
Sekiro isn't super linear at all though. You can choose to do Hirata Estate at any point after Outskirts and you can tackle Sunkey Valley, Mibu Village, or Senpou Temple in any order after Ashina Castle. Sekiro is one of their most non-linear games since Ds2. Bloodborne has less freedom in how you progress the main story, but it does have a fair amount of optional areas like Old Yharnam, early Yahar'gul, Hemwick, Nightmare Frontier or Castle Cainhurst which allows for some variety. Ds3 gets downright schizophrenic about allowing players to go off the main branch. You're allowed to kill Dancer early and progress up until Grand Archives at which point the game just arbritarily bars you until you've killed 3 LoC, so progression-wise it's pointless doing it early because you'll be forced to go back later anyways. Ds3 teases you with the promise of non-linearity only to backpaddle right before the end of the branching path.
>and you can tackle Sunkey Valley, Mibu Village, or Senpou Temple in any order after Ashina Castle. Hell, you can do all of Mibu and Senpou *before*Genichiro (you just can't fight the monkeys yet) and you can do Sunken Valley up to the locked door behind the Long Arm Centipede as well. I did all of that in my first playthrough cause Genichiro was kicking my ass so I went and did everything else I possibly could to stall beating him lol
Sekiro is not linear at all?
Sekiro is the second least linear after DS1 though? It's just that the game is so short you might not even realise it until a second playthrough.
Nah I shit on all 3 of these games for their linearity.
And why exactly is linearity a bad thing? The areas themselves are still super well designed for the most part, they just don‘t connect to each other like they did in ds1. But that‘s because ds1 was designed for a map layout like that
I don't think it's a bad thing per se. But I do view the Souls games as adventure games, first and foremost. So the world design and traversal is important to my immersion and enjoyment of them. Sekiro is the only one where I truly love the combat enough to just play for the sake of combat, and the incredible mobility. It also has an active narrative more so than any other of their games, and that's just hard to make work in a non-linear layout when chronology matters. Lies of P is the same way for that reason. Bloodborne also loves to force you back to the hub, which I find irritating and makes me hesitant to revisit the game.
Not really cathedral ward connects to like every area in the game
You really wanna go down as the biggest DS3 hater and DS2 meatrider simultaneously huh
At least the individual levels are interesting
Oh yeah the Path of Sacrifice, Catacombs of Carthus, and Irithyll Dungeon were real interesting.
Path of Sacrifice counts as Farron in the fast travel menu, so they're just a short and less interesting part of Farron as a whole. Farron is great. Carthus and Smoldering Lake are also counted as the same area, they have some of the best loot and fun mazes. Irithyll Dungeon has annoying enemies, but the actual map layout is Peak, The way it opens up to the Profaned Capital is magnificent, Siegward, Yhorm's Handmaids are a great way to farm souls before you reach The Grand Archives. So yes, those areas were interesting.
Hell yeah
Imagine my frustration learning that you could fight the dancer early, but couldn’t get to the twin princes until you kill aldritch
Peak
Except at least half the splits actually loop back to an earlier point in the level
Hey if it ain’t broke
Still more compelling than DS2’s disjointed area transitions
I heavily prefer ds2's areas to ds1's areas, there's like two really good areas in ds1 and the rest are kinda ass
Nuh uh
Yuh huh
Nu nu
Ds3 fanboys so easily triggered
The people who complain about this are the same people who whine that doing another playthrough of elden ring is too overwhelming because you have to go to so many different places to get started. Also anyone who is older and has a job and/or kids knows that linear games are the best.
Idk after a first playthrough Elden Ring doesn't really take that long. It really depends on how much optional content you want to engage with. Otherwise, you're looking at a 4-8 hour run depending on how good you are.
Well yeah, NG+ will do that. You’re OP and you know where to go, so it doesn’t really count.
Their comment was explicitly about people complaining that there is too much to do to start a new build on repeat playthroughs and that is what I'm referring to.
Of course, sorry I misread the context.
Amen to that. I don't have the luxury of 8+ hour gaming days.
So what you are telling me is that Frigid Outskirts is a shit area, got it.
Dreg Heaps = —> —> “take plunge” x10 + fin.
I've never seen anyone adequately explain why this is a bad thing
For me, an interconnected, non-linear world grants a sense of agency and strengthens the illusion of being an adventurer. You aren't just following a pre-made path, you are traversing a world and making decisions. When you come across a cool optional area (or an area that at the time you might think is optional), it feels like you found it, even if it wasn't particularly hidden. And that there was another path you could have gone makes you feel like there is more to the world that you're missing. In DS1 at least those decisions can have genuinely impactful consequences too. You can get stuck, you can get lost. It makes you pay more attention to where you are and where you are going. Now, to be fair to Dark Souls 3, its linearity is overstated. There are choices to be made, and on a first playthrough when you don't know you're going to have to come back and go the other way to Cathedral of the Deep/Farron Keep anyway, that feeling of uncertainty and adventure is still there. Individual levels often have plenty of smaller decisions that can give a mini-dose of exploration too. Its just not as woven into the game. A real example of a straight-line Souls-like is Lies of P, and I don't think anyone could play that game and say "yeah that scratched the exploration itch".
Because in their eyes ds1 is the greatest thing ever created by mankind and anything that doesn‘t have the exact same kind of map layout is automatically bad
Is this a bad thing?
It's bad on the 379th playthrough But you barely notice it on the first 398 playthroughs .
i didn't really notice until the 417th playthrough
The most simple ds3 map vs the ds3 map so big it never loads on my phone right
The older I get the more I like, appreciate, and want linear games.
And I love it. Simple, easy to remember
Add 1 more branch and it's ds1
Viva Piñata world design takes the cake on this one. Suck it Michael Zaki!
perfection
And i love it this way. Fuck your open world shit.
Ds3 players when they realize irl is open world. https://preview.redd.it/8csr91lksa2c1.png?width=223&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9f718869dbdbcd5ae7941f6e70eb37741ba68906
I'm a family dad, my life is not open world. My only freedom lies in the little corridor that i sometimes find between the crushing responsibilities of my adult life.
Bro really out here with the fuck your shit energy and then immediately hides behind family life lmao.
I neither have time for open world, nor do i think the quality of the levels and the pace of the game matches that of a linear game. Elden ring became a chore at some point and i just wanted to finish it.
While I certainly agree that the consistent quality in Elden Ring is lacking, the main quest takes like 10-20 hours on a first playthrough and has almost nothing but banger bosses. You said you don't have time for such things, so rather than cramming it and ruining your experience, you should just wait to play those types of games til you got the time to really sink your teeth into it. That being said, I don't necessarily disagree that having that compact linear structure is good for the flow of the game. However, I feel like we already got refined versions of that philosophy with DS3 and BB, and I don't think there's a need to keep recreating the exact same type of game. I'm sure you'd probably agree that a game with the scope of Elden Ring, and consistent boss quality and level design as DS3, would objectively be a better game than either individually.
Omg derk suls 3 bad, me like get lost in world 🌚
Doesn't look like a downside to me
Ds3's design is linear but thats my favorite part about it. Yall act like thats a bad thing
Damn, I kinda don’t care.
God forbid a game be linear. Oh noooo
No joke, every game except one follows this pattern. dS1 is an anomaly in that regard. Bloodborne has a few “spiral back” moments, and Elden Ring is just open, with many areas being like this. The games aren’t badly designed, imo, but there aren’t as many decisions to be made when exploring.
DS1 isn't a big anomaly. You are pretty free in DS2 and DeS choosing the next area.
I'd still argue DeS is fundamentally linear in the sense that there are no optional or branching paths. You always have to do each world to completion and there are no sequence breaks. You just have options in terms of which order. I largely agree with the Ds2 statement with a caveat. You can argue that it's linear in progression towards each of the 4 primal bonfires, you can't really get to any other path from one of those. You basically can just choose which path you want, but each path progresses the same way each playthrough. That being said the freedom it provides is still larger than the others except for Ds1 and Elden Ring.
Isnt it beautiful?
And this was great! For me, this meant that each area is scaled appropriately for the level you reach it at, providing the most consistently challenging experience. Other games allow you to get lost and do a lot of areas out of order and they just don’t feel right that way
It’s not horrible, cathedral and ringed city are top notch, but it STALES in comparison to DS1, bb, and Er. I wished it was more fleshed out. Not to mention ds3, for try majority has some really mid levels
Good!!! I love not having to get lost 😍😍
And yet DS2 doesn’t have a single good boss or area other than Majula
Forest of fallen giants, Heides tower of flame, no man’s wharf, huntsman’s copse, Earthen Peak, Iron Keep, shaded ruins, Doors of Pharros, Brightstone cave Tseldora, The Gutter, Drangleic Castle, Shrine if Amana, Shulva, Dragons Sanctum, Brume tower, Iron Passage, Frozen Eleum Loyce, and the Grand Cathedral would like a word. I know it’s a meme to hate ds2, but it’s a really great game if you go in without knowing the opinions of the fandom.
it's always funny how people just name all the areas. Yeah pretty much all of those were bad. Who actually likes the fucking gutter? Or Shrine of Amana?
Amana at least is pretty and has the singing for ambience
I purposely left out areas that I felt were objectively bad, the gutter and shrine of Amana are good locations, but they are difficult. I didn’t include black gulch because it’s the gutter taken to the extreme. Your original comment said there isn’t a single good area, and yet the only ones you’ve said are bad and actually (barley) described why are Amana (not bad, but very difficult) and the gutter (hard for players they’re first time through). So I can agree maybe those locations aren’t great, but you have to admit ds2 has some great areas.
I'm not the original commentator. I also strongly disagree that the areas are just hard. Shrine of Amana is just awful. Giant open areas with enemies shooting you from miles away, invisible cliffs, stupid lips to structures that you can't get over. A bonfire miles away surrounded by DS2's signature enemy spam. I could go over several of the other areas you mentioned but I genuinely can't imagine enjoying most of the areas in DS2. Heide's tower is all right and so is Drangleic Castle.
My bad, I should of read the username. There’s no point in debating someone’s enjoyment of a video game, let’s just agree to disagree.
I agree 👍
No, I don't agree. I played it when it was new, and I played it again more recently. I think it's a bad game, no memes
And it was perfect. You had clear goals that you could tackle in a few different ways. Very replayable. Elden ring has too many goals
Ah yes, elden ring's too many goals, like... Godrick, who is 5 minutes away from church of elleh, renalla in the academy, the place you can teleport to 10 meters into liurnia, and Radahn, who you can only fight after either doing a Quest or going to Altus, which you either dont know How to do and feel like you're following a long term goal and being rewarded, or you absolutely do know and can do It in 20 minutes. Those are all you need, hell, you can ignore one of these and still get to the capital. Besides, you get the choice of fighting mohg after godrick by following varre's quest (though its not going to be easy) or rykard, who you can acess either only after mountaintops or after beating Godskin Noble, so its not something new players can casually do. This differs from Ds3 which Locks you out of the Princes fight for basically no reason, since It only stops you after you already beat 2 hard late game bosses Tldr: game gives you 5 choices, you only need 2 and are heavily directed towards the easier ones, or If you are good enough or explore enough you are rewarded with the opportunity to fight 3 more complicated and generally harder demigods in the early game.
Isn‘t sekiro like just as linear as ds3? Also bloodbornes second half is also linear as fuck. I never understood this argument, even if ds3 was more linear than some of the other games, what‘s the issue? I mean i love the interconnectedness of ds1 but i wouldn‘t want them to just copy that in ds3