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Comment by aixi | Hacker News Reader

It impacts your experience in the sense that development time was given to balancing different difficulties. Even if the Souls games had a 'no damage taken' mode, for example, there are multiple mechanics where you fall off a cliff and die, and these things would take development time to correct. And again, it would mess with the author's vision on what the ambiance of the games should be like; It's oppressive because it's supposed to be, and frankly people who don't get it and demand explicit difficulty settings don't really want to play Dark Souls at all.

You don't need to have explicit difficulty selection to make a game easier: as said multiple times in these threads, there are a bunch of ways From does it without recurring to it.

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>It's oppressive because it's supposed to be, and frankly people who don't get it and demand explicit difficulty settings don't really want to play Dark Souls at all.

I 100% agree. I'm not really deep into the Souls games. My first game was Dark Souls 3 (after which, I went back to the original, and am still trying to setup and emulator for Demon's Souls).

What I find very compelling about these games' design is that the environment itself is very fair yet brutal. You don't run and jump across cliffs willy-nilly. You don't sprint into a dark room. A rickety bridge isn't something you carelessly waltz over. Everything is designed around patience and observance. Literally every trap in the game (with one exception) is telegraphed by the environment. You just have to look. Things being able to easily murder you is part of the experience. You don't level up in so much as get better at observing the game and learning mechanics. Stats do matter, sure, but even so your large healthbar isn't a guarantee of your survival. It allows you to make a few more mistakes at best.

I think people that want these games with a lower difficulty slider don't "get it". Virtually every other RPG pumps you full of stats and tells you that you're the chosen one. The leader, the one to rule them all. But you don't really earn it. Every level up makes you stronger while the world remains static, eventually culminating into you dominating based off of pure passive, mathematical advantage. Which I guess is fine for a medium that a lot of people use for escapism. But if that's what you want, then Miyazaki's games aren't for you. You have so many other games to choose from I don't understand why there's such a dreary emphasis on one of the few exceptions.

I haven't played Dark Souls, since I'm pretty sure it would be too difficult for me. But from reading what people value of the game, one way that might allow them to adjust difficulty without compromising the spirit is to slow the enemies down. Some of us don't have as good of reaction time and coordination as people who are good at video games, so even if I am carefully watching the game, and thinking about how to approach it, I often times can't execute on that. Games that mix reaction skill with problem solving (like people describe Dark Souls) are the worst because I can never tell for sure if I am approaching incorrectly, need to practice my timing more, or if the game has just hit my fundamental limits.

That said, I have no problem with some games not being made for me. I only state this because the article mentioned Miyazaki wanting to make his games more approachable. I'm curious as to what was done differently in in Elden Ring.

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