First person shooters are just dumbed down point and click games.

It is like they just removed the entire puzzle element, so you can play brainless.

I agree. On top of that, I get motion sick really easily, so I can play a lot of FPS games for about 15 minutes max.

Or if you develop wrist pain… most FPSs just go right out the window. Or you play on controller and get whomped by the mouse and keyboard players.

Sucks to suck?

The game is popular but isn’t universally beloved, even the fans hate it, but they got the monopoly in football games

I share your sentiment; but you need to remember that SM1&3 were both originally NES games, and even the All Stars remakes are largely hampered by the original consoles limitations.

That’s why both SMW and Yoshi’s Island are such better experiences overall, they didn’t have to emulate those same limitations in order to preserve an original playstyle.

Eh, just wasn’t made for you. Not everyone needs to listen to death metal either.

I can just close the game and never play it again

True and healthy!

while I enjoy actual good games.

blatant copium

I’d like to make a counterpoint here, but first I want to acknowledge that you are 100% entitled to your opinion and maybe souls-like games are just not for you. It’s a shame that people are kicking downvotes your way because this is in no way a new or controversial opinion, but like you said, the community can sometimes take their love of the game/series too far and blame the consumer for not liking the same stuff they like, which isn’t fair and just makes the souls community looks like clowns.

Anyway, my counterpoint is that I don’t feel like these games are as difficult as people make them out to be. IMO, older games were just as hard, if not harder to complete even when playing optimally. In the framework of just about every Souls-like game, you have tools that you can use to almost completely trivialize the toughest encounters if you want. DS1 can be beaten by a complete amateur if you do the gravelord speedrun (which doesn’t require any real speedrunning tricks and there are many youtube tutorials that you can follow along with, takes about 10-15 minutes from character creation) and get the gravelord greatsword which can inflict Toxic on all the bosses, so you can just hit them a few times and run away for the rest of the fight, waiting for the poison to finish them off. That’s just one example. Just about every installment of FromSoftware’s Souls’ series has some overpowered cheese that you can research to essentially trivialize the game. Some people might argue that you’re not beating the game in the “intended way” if you take such shortcuts, but I disagree. Any way you make it to the end is the right way.

For a lot of people, part of the fun of a game like Dark Souls is the adventure, the discovery, and yes, pounding your head against a tough boss trying to beat it over and over. If you’re the type of gamer who gets easily frustrated to the point where you feel like quitting when encountering a challenge that feels unfun or unfair, I can see it not being an enjoyable experience. The thing that keeps most people coming back is the dopamine hit that they get when they do finally overcome that challenge and they are rewarded with more stuff to explore, new items to pick up, and so on. I think if there were any argument to be made against making the game easier for yourself by exploiting broken game mechanics (or with an easy/story mode added or modded in), it’s that you probably won’t be super invested in the outcome and get bored easily. Without the challenge aspect, the Souls games are very much a bare bones experience. It’s essentially a generic fantasy RPG with a story hidden behind item descriptions and cryptic NPC interactions. That doesn’t exactly make for the most compelling gameplay, so there’s no trail of breadcrumbs to keep the gamer uninterested in the challenge going. There’s a sort of intrinsic value in these games that can’t be quantified, because everybody gets something different out of it.

Look I think there are valid complaints to be made about the Dark Souls franchise, but criticizing them for not giving you waypoints says more about you than it does the games themselves. The lack of any sort of hand holding was by far the most interesting thing for me when I first played Dark Souls and is the thing that got me hooked. The tension in exploring a new area, having no idea what to expect and being so scared you’re going to die is a wonderful feeling, especially when you overcome it and survive to the next bonfire.

You’re making me want to write a boomeresque comment about how kids want video games to hold their hands. Don’t you have a sense of adventure? Is exploration and mystery not interesting to you?

The games usually have an easier mode that is still not easy. In DS 3 playing the Knight and using the shield heavily works pretty well and make a lot of bosses trivial.

But yeah, it’s not for everyone, grinding timings and level information can be really frustrating so if the satisfaction of beating a level is not enough there’d be no point.

If you look at the first game from a historic perspective

The first game basically was an open world RPG with 151 unique characters with each their strengths and weaknesses, and their own attacks, and all could be customised. Running on a handheld that previously could only play Tetris.

It was a freaking coding masterpiece.

But I agree the gameplay loop hasn’t upgraded the way it should. It didn’t evolve with the medium and stuck too much to its roots.

Although the grinding in the newer games has been minimised. You can play through the games without grinding once.

They came from a different era. If you didn’t grow up taking long road trips with a Gameboy pocket/color for your only distraction then you probably don’t get the nostalgia rush that most pmon fans do.

It’s weird, because Pokémon didn’t invent turn-based RPG’s, nor did they even invent the pocket monster genre because Dragon Warrior Monster arguably had a better game than Pokémon out around the same time - with more monsters, breeding, and a better storyline.

But Red/Blue and Gold/Silver were great games of their time. Very basic, but great, mostly because of the world built around them. If you didn’t appreciate Pokémon, it’s probably easy to see why you’d find it dull.

I’ll go ahead and say this also includes all “Souls-like” games for me.

Combat seems clunky, buggy, and unnecessarily difficult. I don’t have a ton of time to play games, so when I do, I want it to be relaxing.

I felt this way too, but my husband guilted me into sticking with it and I’m super glad he did, we had SO much fun playing split screen. I’m the type of person who has to look at the controller to see which one triangle is to give you some idea of my adeptness.

First board? Not sure what that means… the tutorial? On the nautiloid? You are missing out on so much

It took me a long time to warm to them.

The more armour you wear in the main Souls game, the slower and clunkier you are. It’s kind of a gotcha, in that you instinctively think more armour will help, and it does the exact opposite because you get hit more often. There’s a lot of shit that isn’t really explained at all. Some people like that, but the Wiki is there if you don’t.

Parrying was all but impossible for me, I just went with sword and shield for most of it, switching to the massive zweihander for the DLC.

Dark Souls 2 is the worst of them, I’d skip that if you ever try again. Way too many enemies in every area.

I tried Dark Souls and quit pretty early because I couldn’t pause. I don’t care about doing inventory or anything like that, but I’d like to be able to just stop things if I need to go check on the door or something. The outside world doesn’t stop just because I’m gaming.

I also just dint have the time to get good at them. I get maybe 2-3 hours a week to game on average these days. I’m not going to dump a year into getting my ass kicked for a single game.

I’m not sure about universally loved. I’ve never heard of this series…

Oh man I hate turn based combat. It’s the worst possible combat system. If you try to fight enemies more powerful or numerous than you, you just lose and that’s all there is to it. Anything besides turn based actually allows you to benefit from skill and strategy. Factors besides enemy numbers and level play a much larger role in how the fighting plays out.