This Game is Hard for All the Wrong Reasons

[Aria]

I'm not usually one to comment on game difficulty. Dark Souls is hard and is meant for people who like that. Farming games are easy and relaxing. You get the point.

But its a whole other issue when the difficulty comes from wresting control from the player. Or so to speak "it's not fair!". I know people usually shoot down these kinda comments but hear me out.

It's okay if the game wants to be jank and not have fast travel, quest escort NPCs that can die and use up your wakestones and monsters who can stun lock you.

It's not okay to do that when the game seems to be either buggy or programmed poorly on purpose.

Quests keep making you run between towns for some reason. The one that annoyed me the most was the Mellena one, but anyway... You wouldn't use a ferrystone because it's too expensive. So cart it is. Except, I've had pretty much a 100% hit rate with cart raids, which is stupidly annoying when I just want to turn in something. Once, the raid started with an ogre slamming down on the cart before I even had control, so I died instantly.

NPC escort quests are another point of contention. I don't mind it that much. And panicking to keep them alive is fine. But them yeeting themselves off a cliff for... some reason is not. I even flat out had a wolf spawn behind some kid NPC I was escorting and one shot him before my speed of light reflexes could kick in, forcing me to waste yet another wakestone.

And what gets me the most is enemy spawns. I've had so many instances of epic boss fights. Sometimes a griffin and an ogre are punching each other, and I kill them both. Or a Drake fight that finally ends with it not running away and dying with honor. But like 50% of the time, 6 goblins spawn behind me and do their leap attack before I even know about it, killing me instantly. And I'm using elf village armor, the best I could find.

It's okay for a game to be jank. It's okay for a game to be hard. But it has to be fair. No one is gonna be happy when player agency is taken away. Please fix it. Don't make monsters spawn every five seconds. Travel shouldn't literally take an hour just to hand over some object. Keep that monster density for actual dungeons. NPCs should stop committing suicide. And there should be some distance mechanic where monsters can't just pop in beside you and off you after a boss battle.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by Aria:

Originally posted by The Tempted Man:

Pure skill issue.

How on earth is NPCs jumping to their death a skill issue?

NPCs jumping to their death does not make the game any harder, so what's the point of even bringing it up in a discussion about game difficulty? That just looks like you're looking for excuses for why the game is giving you trouble and bringing up random unrelated stuff.

[ninakoru]

Originally posted by Aria:

It's okay for a game to be jank. It's okay for a game to be hard. But it has to be fair. No one is gonna be happy when player agency is taken away.

Don't pay attention about the skill issue responses. Is just trolling.

The thing is... why the game has to be fair? I like that this game is unfair. It really adds up to the adventure spirit and sense of wonder.

Not every game has to have a set of rules that if you master, you overcome every eventuality by sheer skill and knowledge. And I love souls game for what they are, don't get me wrong.

In this game, you prepare, learn and adapt, but is not a 100% guaranteed success, and I am happy with it.

[ShadowSkill11]

There's nothing to fix with the core loop. It's not Dark Souls and you are just terrible from a failure to adapt.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by Eggs&Toast:

Originally posted by Aria:

Quests keep making you run between towns for some reason. The one that annoyed me the most was the Mellena one, but anyway... You wouldn't use a ferrystone because it's too expensive. So cart it is. Except, I've had pretty much a 100% hit rate with cart raids, which is stupidly annoying when I just want to turn in something. Once, the raid started with an ogre slamming down on the cart before I even had control, so I died instantly.

The game has been designed this way specifically to make you purchase Fast Travel DLC.

The experience has been intentionally enshitified to push you to spend another $3 here, another $2 there. You are not buying a game. You are buying a program that manipulates you to spend more & more & more. It's the mobile game monetization strategy; except in this case they also make you pay for the base game. This was coming eventually. The only option is to not give them your money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

It's astounding how some people just believe whatever outrageous stuff they hear on the internet without second thought. It's fascinating to think what even goes on in their heads, the thought process must be utterly baffling.

[Aria]

Originally posted by DaBa:

Except this game isn't hard, what are you smoking? Dark Souls isn't a hard game either and it's still more difficult than this. Unless you're deliberately going out of your way to make it harder by being under geared and underleveled, but that's your decision to make.

Also sorry to break it to you, but that "jank" (most of it anyhow) you're talking about is just a deficit in your skill. I know it's hard to accept when other people tell you to "get good", but sometimes that's exactly what the solution is.

So NPCs yeet themselves off a ledge and fail the quest for me or instantly dying before I get controls back during cart travel is somehow a deficit in my skill? Did you read my post? I wasn't talking about combat being hard, but all the difficulties that the player has absolutely no control over.

People need to stop acting like I didn't play DDDA. The jank was there as well, I'm well aware. I'm okay with the jank, if it's something within my control. I'm annoyed about things that happen outside of it.

Souls like games are controlled and precisely made. The level design is what makes it interesting to play. DD2 is currently just a random course of events due to bugs or poor programming that cause me to die or NPCs to commit suicide.

I'm not saying combat is hard. Combat is easy at this point. Drakes die in a few minutes or less.

[NineChameleon]

Originally posted by Eggs&Toast:

Originally posted by Aria:

Quests keep making you run between towns for some reason. The one that annoyed me the most was the Mellena one, but anyway... You wouldn't use a ferrystone because it's too expensive. So cart it is. Except, I've had pretty much a 100% hit rate with cart raids, which is stupidly annoying when I just want to turn in something. Once, the raid started with an ogre slamming down on the cart before I even had control, so I died instantly.

The game has been designed this way specifically to make you purchase Fast Travel DLC.

The experience has been intentionally enshitified to push you to spend another $3 here, another $2 there. You are not buying a game. You are buying a program that manipulates you to spend more & more & more. It's the mobile game monetization strategy; except in this case they also make you pay for the base game. This was coming eventually. The only option is to not give them your money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

It was this way in Dragons Dogma 1. So no, it isn't. Stop spouting nonsense. If you want to hate the game at least do it for the right reasons and not made up ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Originally posted by Dystariel:

The escort quest thing is a bit annoying, but in terms of actual combat...

I got incredibly frustrated fighting my first dragon because I was button mashing, buffering a bunch of input, and then end up animation locked so I couldn't react to an attack.
Thing is: all of my combat problems went away when I stopped button mashing and started playing around the frustrating mechanics.

Once I know saurians can chain stun me as they do, I play in a way that doesn't allow that to happen and it's a solved problem.

Your comment is being glossed over and honestly it shouldn't. Because this is the entire point of the combat system here.

You're NOT a match for an 8 foot tall lizard monster. Because you're not an 8 Foot tall lizard monster. But you are an intelligent person (I hope) so you can fight in a smarter way than just "unga bunga run at enemy and stab".

If you've ever played the game outward, and seen it push the idea of "being an adventurer is hard and dangerous actually" then you'll get this even more.

It's not about learning to read movesets like dark souls. It's about learning that specific enemies are dangerous in different ways. And playing in a way that mitigates the risk of those dangers.

Also you dont have to accept every escort quest. If someone walked up to you and asked you to escort them to India from France on foot would you say yes? Chances are you'd say no. Unless you'd personally done that journey before. Because you dont know for sure the route or what dangers are involved. Its the same principle here.

[DoorMeetsChair]

I dunno how you approach it but as a veteran from DD1 and Dark Arisen, the same strategies that worked for that game work here. Launch a pawn or climb up to enemies to reach their weakspots, so you can stagger. then trip and throw them to the ground, then use the triangle attack since it's a finisher and deals massive damage. Learn elemental weaknesses and combos, you can use drench and ice to freeze enemies and wail at them without hurry. It's actually less exploitable now since only archer can inflict drench reliably, then there's environment stuff or finding a weapon that does status effects (I have seen some with a bit of sleep but nothing much yet, there must be some hidden around). On the first game right at the beginning you could find a pair of daggers that made enemies tarred really well and it was dope to make cyclops burn. But all this is until you break the game by overleveling everything and you can just poke and kill whatever. It then becomes so boring. I wish you could limit your growth somehow. Pawns are also really aggressive and end killing anything I find, so damn quickly...
And for sure, don't try to fight certain enemies until you are stronger or find weapons that deal massive damage to them (I have found a bow that is specially good against griffins and chimeras so far, but no testing done yet).

[ThatOneGuy]

Originally posted by NineChameleon:

Originally posted by Eggs&Toast:

The game has been designed this way specifically to make you purchase Fast Travel DLC.

The experience has been intentionally enshitified to push you to spend another $3 here, another $2 there. You are not buying a game. You are buying a program that manipulates you to spend more & more & more. It's the mobile game monetization strategy; except in this case they also make you pay for the base game. This was coming eventually. The only option is to not give them your money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

It was this way in Dragons Dogma 1. So no, it isn't. Stop spouting nonsense. If you want to hate the game at least do it for the right reasons and not made up ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Originally posted by Dystariel:

The escort quest thing is a bit annoying, but in terms of actual combat...

I got incredibly frustrated fighting my first dragon because I was button mashing, buffering a bunch of input, and then end up animation locked so I couldn't react to an attack.
Thing is: all of my combat problems went away when I stopped button mashing and started playing around the frustrating mechanics.

Once I know saurians can chain stun me as they do, I play in a way that doesn't allow that to happen and it's a solved problem.

Your comment is being glossed over and honestly it shouldn't. Because this is the entire point of the combat system here.

You're NOT a match for an 8 foot tall lizard monster. Because you're not an 8 Foot tall lizard monster. But you are an intelligent person (I hope) so you can fight in a smarter way than just "unga bunga run at enemy and stab".

If you've ever played the game outward, and seen it push the idea of "being an adventurer is hard and dangerous actually" then you'll get this even more.

It's not about learning to read movesets like dark souls. It's about learning that specific enemies are dangerous in different ways. And playing in a way that mitigates the risk of those dangers.

Also you dont have to accept every escort quest. If someone walked up to you and asked you to escort them to India from France on foot would you say yes? Chances are you'd say no. Unless you'd personally done that journey before. Because you dont know for sure the route or what dangers are involved. Its the same principle here.

If you are not doing unga bunga run and stab at enemy with a Warrior, you haven't lived

[bshock]

All part of the fun. When a NPC dies in my world, I leave them dead. At least there is a way of reviving them if you insist on completing every quest.

[Aria]

Originally posted by DoorMeetsChair:

I dunno how you approach it but as a veteran from DD1 and Dark Arisen, the same strategies that worked for that game work here. Launch a pawn or climb up to enemies to reach their weakspots, so you can stagger. then trip and throw them to the ground, then use the triangle attack since it's a finisher and deals massive damage. Learn elemental weaknesses and combos, you can use drench and ice to freeze enemies and wail at them without hurry. It's actually less exploitable now since only archer can inflict drench reliably, then there's environment stuff or finding a weapon that does status effects (I have seen some with a bit of sleep but nothing much yet, there must be some hidden around). On the first game right at the beginning you could find a pair of daggers that made enemies tarred really well and it was dope to make cyclops burn. But all this is until you break the game by overleveling everything and you can just poke and kill whatever. It then becomes so boring. I wish you could limit your growth somehow. Pawns are also really aggressive and end killing anything I find, so damn quickly...
And for sure, don't try to fight certain enemies until you are stronger or find weapons that deal massive damage to them (I have found a bow that is specially good against griffins and chimeras so far, but no testing done yet).

I feel like people aren't reading my post clearly. The combat isn't hard. I can absolutely destroy drakes easily. Nothing is a threat combat wise. The things that are killing me are bugs and loading screens. I'm sure I'll get a few "i didn't see these bugs", but so does every game honestly. Your experience may differ from mine. If you didn't get any, good for you. It doesn't mean I didn't see any.

I've already gone to ng+. This isn't a diss of the game. I love it. I just wish that these issues get ironed out. Okay? Okay.

[Aahzmandias]

Compared to the first game, this game is easy mode.

[Turbo64]

It's not all about skill, this game's design is still unbalanced.
Compared to From Software's games, I feel this one's even tougher because of its frustrating design. Personally, I don't find From Software's games that hard. Everything they put together feels balanced and just makes sense.

But with this game, it's a different story. Some might call it old-school design, but I'm not buying it. Having to walk around so much isn't exactly a blast, especially when NPCs and Pawns can be more of a hindrance than a help.

[Yumyumdevilegg]

For escort quests the way I handled it, at least in the first one, was travel to the area first and then place a port crystal so I can just teleport them over there.

[(ง ͡ʘ ͜ʖ ͡ʘ)งBonesMcSpook]

If I can kill a minotuar and chimera in a monsoon with 20 fps without taking damage and you cant handle cart raids, its a skill issue.

[MiyuEmi]

I expect this to be like the first one, it's difficult if you rush in an expect to be able to slaughter groups of enemies without them putting up much of a fight. The pawn system is there to help, so choose your pawns and their skillsets wisely. Make sure they have upgraded gear when available which is crucial honestly if you want people to pay rift coins to rent out your own pawn. That said, as said above, the game is not difficult, it just requires you to prepare and be careful before rushing in. All of the reviews for the first game (which I played to death and thoroughly enjoyed) make this clear, so I expect nothing less than that from this one.