Why Dark Souls 2 shouldn't lose the challenging gameplay to be more accessible

GameZone writes, "When Dark Souls 2 was announced via a trailer at the VGA’s, the crowd went crazy. Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls, before it, have huge followings. This is because of the difficulty of the games and the way they don’t hold your hand. Some of the anticipation simmered down when one of the new directors, Tomohiro Shibuya, recently told Edge Magazine he wanted the game to be more accessible and easier to understand. There's a fine line, however, between making the game more accessible and making it easier to play — the latter being a huge mistake."

[adorie]

Want to settle this? keep it the same, *add* an easier difficulty. problem solved. everyone is happy.

[Lord_Sloth]

I agree. If we want to play DS2 on the level of DS then just up the difficulty. If we want to progress on NG+ then we select the difficulty. Everybody SHOULD be happy, but they won't be.

[specialguest]

You don't understand dark souls difficulty. The game is challenging because gamers today forgot or never learned how to play games with patience(don't charge and button mash), precision(timing), and a little bit of thinking(use your damn shield and know your limitations). It's the core game and level design that makes it challenging, and to make the game easier, you would have to break the core experience.

The game isn't like other games where it's hard because of the number of enemies, enemy's AI increase, or the strength/life bar increase of the enemies.

So what's your idea on making the game easier? Make enemies weaker? A lot of them are already weak and not so skillful at defeating you. Invisible walls? Don't even....

[adorie]

Actually, I do understand the difficulty. I just started Demon Souls and I'm deep into Dark Souls(PC) I haven't beaten neither, right now I think I'm chasing this guy the Fat Minister, cut the game shortly after that.

Dark Souls, I'm in Anor Londo looking for some super powerful bow.

The game requires lot's of reactions and anticipation. It's only as hard as you are lazy.

Difficulty selection should be able to provide A.I tweaking as well, since that is what you're getting at, right? Like I said, add a difficulty for the casuals, that way everyone is happy.

People get too serious about games on this site, which is ironic, since games are meant for "fun"

[Nevers]

Add an "Easy Mode" for the casuals.

Just make that setting unable to participate in PvP/MP. With the way DeS and DkS worked, having the single player campaign be easier would make it so that people get the best weapons for PvP/MP easiest. It's akin to getting all the upper tier weapons usable in CoD MP by playing the SP campaign on casual. Bet people don't like that idea.

So give the casuals the option of either limiting their experience or playing the game how it was intended. It's still ultimately their decision and they can only blame themselves for chosing the lesser experience.

[shadowraiden]

i dont get how people mix up accessable and making a game easy there 2 completely different things.

Dark Souls is an amazing game will go down as my favourite but omg did the menu system make the game so much more clunky then it needed to be.

i doubt they will make the core gameplay any easier after the success dark souls brought but the idea of cleaning up and making the item inventory/menu systems etc more accessible is a big welcome.

[SnakeCQC]

arrggghhh this again the devs ALREADY clarified! they just want to make a better intro to ease new users in

[ginsunuva]

But that's the point that got the series fame. Who would want a game that's notorious for a challenge to suddenly become easy? What was the point of us playing? FOR THE CHALLENGE. It's not like CoD kids will magically come running in and buy 10 million copies. We all know what happens when devs try to casualize *cough* DMC *cough* Fuse *cough* Ninja Gaiden 3...

[zerocrossing]

I agree, but Id get that cough checked out.