The Worst Feature in Every Soulsborne: From Demon Souls all the way to Elden Ring
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- čas přidán 2. 08. 2024
- One thing all these games have in common is that they are amazing regardless of their faults. They're not perfect, and I'm sure many will disagree with what I picked as the ''worst features'' -- but if anything, I think that just highlights how we all value things differently, and I think it's amazing being able to hear new perspectives -- if you feel like I am wrong on something or so, please do let me know, I'd sincerely love discussing anything souls related anytime. With that said, I still hope I didn't come off in a bad way -- at the end of the day, I just love talking about something that became an (almost) everyday pass-time for me, even if sometimes I'll talk about something that can be perceived negatively.
It's all in good fun, I promise!
/ wip_a_comparison_of_ro...
• The Ringed City - Dial...
• Knight Artorias - Cut ...
/ my_favorite_ds3_level_...
00:00 Intro
00:39 Demon Souls
04:26 Dark Souls
08:10 Dark Souls II
12:25 Bloodborne
16:39 Dark Souls III
21:27 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
23:20 Elden Ring - Hry
I think my least favorite feature of dark souls 2 is definitely the fact that they took away your i frames when interacting with things like doors and chests.
That's honestly pretty annoying at times, especially when you're trying to rush to a boss room (like the Smelter Demon xD) -- I did get used to it eventually but the first playthrough was indeed rough
skill issue /jk
Yh it’s easily the worst thing for runbacks unless you quit out and de aggro and the hollowing
Literally a skill issue tho. This is only a problem if you want to run past everything which is a discouraged tactic in the game. Every area in ds2 tries to encourage a certain path to take on each enemy one at a time to slowly move through the area to the boss. The more you have to do so the more enemies stop respawning anyways so if the boss is particularly difficult then the run back becomes very easy over time. I’ve proven as much of this with my “iron keep is overhated” video and my “Shrine of Amana is overhated” video.
It's a bit antagonistic for me to admit it, but I liked that change, solely because it ONLY screws over people that try to skip every single enemy and rush to the boss/loot. It's a very effective way of shutting down that "skip everything and then complain the boss is too hard" playstyle too many people embrace.
No boob slider is the worst feature in every game
BIG TRUE If ever I make a ''str mommy'' style character, it NEEDS a proper boob slider
Even AC6 would be better with it
No boob and booty physics is the second worst
Definitely the worst feature of ds3 was making the equip load and the stamina load a separate state each
Oh yeah that definitely was an odd choice -- I wonder why they did that
Definitely agree. I was doing hardcore fashion souls in ds3 and was mixing sets constantly. Felt like i was handicapping my character by putting so many points into the equip load stat.
Personnaly, I think equip load should be influenced by other stats, not just endurance. Everybody is gonna level that just for the stamina, so being able to wear plate armors is going to be accessible to any character. I like that having access to better defense while staying in your prefered type of load is a build choice, not something everyone will do.
Because every character needs stamina to hit roll and cast spells, they wanted to separate the ability to do more actions and the ability to use heavy armor, which is a good thing. It's not a convenient thing, but it's good for build variety, or it would have been if armors in ds3 were more useful, which is to me the real problem of the game: they made the roll the centerpiece of the game, shields are useless because the enemies attack way more than in DS1, armor has no poise and damage mitigation is a joke so you have little reason to be a tank and they made rolls use next to no stamina while raising the % under which you fast and mid roll, and the made the mid roll almost the equivalent of DS1 fast roll. And all these changes could have been avoided by simply giving active poise to every weapon and have damage reduction do something you can notice.
@@trebmal587 Equip load should just be based off of strength!
Bloodborne's worst feature is its PS4 exclusivity. I have to pay extra for a Playstation online subscription thing to even see player messages?
Big big big agree -- I'm shocked it's been almost 10 years and no PC port in sight :( I feel like we'll have proper PS4 emulation before a PC port for Bloodborne
Gaming exclusivity needs to be banned entirely. It's completely anti consumer and only benefits greedy corporations and hurts customers.
You shouldn't have to own four different expensive pieces of hardware in order to play any game you want.
Despite how much people loved it, it almost seems like Bloodborne was an afterthought. It was released on the PS4, given a handful of patches, and forgotten about. They never even fixed the frame pacing issues, never gave it a patch for better performance on the PS4 Pro, and after 9 years haven’t even hinted at a sequel or a port to any other system.
Corporations dictate legislations, not governments nor customer services. Corporations dictate, legislative bodies execute. That's how it eeeee.... Deal with it. @@WyattStrange
@@sigiligus And a PC port would sell like hotcakes. It's an open goal for Sony. Then again maybe they're saving it for another unnecessary remake to sell the PS6.
The input queue is the worst feature. Miss timing a roll and getting hit then having your character roll 3 seconds later after the recovery, directly into the bosses next attack is always infuriating. It’s either that or the camera focusing on the boss’s crotch.
The main reason I dislike most giant bosses is exactly because of the camera issues that are presented. Most of the time you're gonna be wacking away at their feet without seeing much else. Though, I like that for some bosses the camera does zoom out if they're really massive
This is especially an issue in Elden Ring, where boss attacks are specifically designed to punish roll spamming, but the 'spamming' happens anyways because of the input queue
Play unlocked
im torn on it tbh. i like the idea of punishing spamming, they want you to be as conscious as possible with your inputs, but the execution is definitely annoying.
im torn on it tbh. i like the idea of punishing spamming, they want you to be as conscious as possible with your inputs, but the execution is definitely annoying.
Yknow, the funny thing about the health loss problem, is that they used a very similar system in Demon's Souls, and Dark Souls 3, with one major difference. Demon's Souls shows you how much health you're missing when you're a phantom, and Dark Souls 3 increases the limit of your healthbar when you're embered. Functionally identical, but a small change in UI elements completely shifts the connotation. (also embers are far more plentiful, and I don't think you have as much missing HP when not embered in DS3 vs being a phantom in Demon's Souls, but the mechanics are still basically the same)
I actually didn't know this up until recently, I never had any idea that it's actually all just a psychological trick, and you know what? It worked because I certainly got bamboozled!!
@@fermyondspositive reinforcement vs negative reinforcement is a very deeply ingrained topic in game development, its pretty cool
In demons souls, the game is balanced around you being in soul form. (I.e. the difficulty is balanced around you being at half health), so Human Form acts more like a buff than soul form acts like a debuff
Totally fair and I agree -- I just... don't really enjoy that as a design decision; I think for many people it falls under the hood of ''feels bad to play seeing half my HP bar grayed out''. Much like with most things, I grew to be okay with, but I can't deny a part of me wishes it worked differently (like how in DS3 you gain a health buff upon using an ember/beating a boss)
@@fermyonds im so glad that they fixed that design issue with embers in ds3.
@@the4GIVENnot a design issue but a choice. just saying
You aren't wrong, but it is a psychological thing. Dark Souls 3 sort of fixes this issue by instead buffing you when you're embered.
@@sanctum2fan a bad one
I have a different opinion on the torches in DS2. I like that you can't just pull a fully lit torch out of my pockets at any given time. I like the immersion of needing an already lit fire or a flame butterfly. BUT If we simply had an animation that played without needing a separate fire or a consumable item, I would be just as happy. Its the little things.
I can absolutely see the point you've made for that. I love immersion myself
@@fermyonds The belt lanterns are my go to light sources specifically for this problem lol
If you want immersion, your character has all sorts of pouches and pockets, I find it hard to believe he doesn't have a piece of flint with him to lit a torch at will...
@@dearcastiel4667 I want an animation of him using the flint. That is what I am talking about. I don't just like pulling out a fully lit torch, like it was on fire in my pocket the whole time.
@@saithvenomdrone It would be cool if there was an animation for Pyromancers or something such as a Pyromancy spell, though I'm not sure how you have it work alongside the flint idea.
I hate the capacity of spirits things in sekiro. They work exactly like vials and bullets in bloodborne but almost every prosthetic uses a lot of them. There is no possibility to increase the number of spirits, nor you can aqcuire them during combat. Not to mention special abilities are so cool you want to make full combos with them without worry that they might be useful later.
Technically you have the Ceremonial Tanto which lets you sacrifice HP for Temporary Emblems, but overall yeah I've never really considered how unpleasant it is in early playthroughs (I feel like later on it becomes less of an issue, but early on with the limited quantity, yeah its a problem)
Did you actually play the game? There are multiple skills that you can acquire that increase your max spirit emblems over the base 15.
They’re 3 upgrades in the skill stree that literally increase the amount you can carry
Elden Ring dungeons really are repetitive. I just peek in to see if I need Gravitas or Sacred Blade depending on the enemies, then try to not step on the traps. I often don't even bother with the boss if the loot if not useful. The other day I killed some troll in an Altus dungeon because it was faster than walking back out, and it was worth less than one bird.
I honestly wouldn't mind it if they were a bit less repetitive or just had better stuff rewarded. Maybe the DLC will have more unique caves? Or maybe we won't have any at all. We shall see soon enough I hope
reward on minor boss kill was absolutely awful I understand that they didnt want to overdo it but man
Elden Ring's dungeons are a symptomatic problem with the game itself. Fromsoft got so ambitious with their world size they failed to populate it with relevant stuff. That's why a lot of dungeon rewards feel weak; they were probably made just to fill that dungeon, so they can't risk it being bonkers good or else people might miss it, since most players tend to miss at least 1/3rd of the dungeons during their first and sometimes only playthrough. It's why IMO Elden Ring actually has the least replayability of all the Souls games, since once you've explored it all, you're keenly aware how much of it is completely irrelevant and can be completely skipped just rushing to the next boss or legacy dungeon.
@@OGXenos exactly my thoughts. second elden ring run i just skipped every dungeon that didnt have good loot in it and didnt bother with the mines once i had their respective upgrade material.
in every other soulsgame exploration feels rewarding even if you dont need the loot, because optional areas almost always rewarded more souls and better upgrade materials then the main path, but were harder.
@@the4GIVEN 100% agree. I have no problem replaying DS3 and re-exploring every single nook and cranny in case I feel like changing my weapon mid-playthrough or need some extra consumables, and the maps are small enough that doing so really isn't an issue and often gives relevant loot like upgrade materials. In Elden Ring, it's very hard to self-motivate to explore anything a second or third time when you know EVERY cave on the entire continent doesn't have higher than a smithing stone 3, and the most relevant loot you'll find from overworld encounters is some berries, rope, 1,000 runes and a cookbook on how to make another arrow you won't use.
The limited torches make sense when you remember DS2 was supposed to have a lot more pitch dark areas necessitating a torch or other light source. In that context a timer and limited activations add tension and resource management. But then the idea was abandoned outside that one big light and the room where you break some windows open, but the timer remained.
Also the worst feature is the change to parries. Could never get used to the DS2 parry where you have to wait for them to fall dramatically to get a riposte.
I forgot about the original vision regarding pitch black areas!! You bring up a very good point -- thank you for that!
I do understand your frustration with the parry changes, I did like the fact that almost every sword can parry now (its so fun with Greatswords) but yeah, the wait can be irritating
Actually if you are quick enough you can riposte a parried enemy while they are still standing, which leads to a different riposte animation and slightly more damge. The riposte window is tight tho and a regular hit might stagger them out of the critical state.
Discouraged button mashing. Was a phenomenal change imho.
god could you imagine the dark souls video essayers tacking on another hour of “why ds2 is the WORST game FUCKING EVER pt3”
the edit with siegward and gehrmans theme was genius.
as for elden ring i think the elden ring upgrade system is the worst part of the game. it doesnt make sense to me that you can get smithing stones 7-9s from a bell bearing and then you realised you're out of 3 or 4s and you have to go find more or kill a boss in a cave to get the stones needed. this has happened to me many times, ill find a weapon and think "oh, what a cool weapon, have to go back to upgrade to use it against the bosses" and then realise i dont have 12 of the somber smithing stones needed to go from +3 to +6. it's really really tedious
you realize there are bell bearings for every smithing stone out there and somber smithing stone 1+2 are unlimitedly sold by the blacksmith from ranni? your problem doesnt exist
@@Oyasumikaworu_ iji only sells somber smithing stones. my point is it's tedious to go back and get bell bearings if i can already get higher tier upgrade materials from a bell bearing. why can't a bell bearing that gives you 7-9s give you every smithing stone below 7-9?
@queenofastora Thank you for your kind words! And honestly I'm ashamed to admit it but I've only done 3 playthroughs of Elden Ring so far, and I usually had my routes planned out with what weapon I want to use for said playthrough (first time around I went for Claymore/Greatsword, second was Bloodhound's Fang and Moonveil, with my current one being primarily focused on the Golden Halberd) so I didn't run into that issue myself, but I can absolutely see why it would be tedious. I apologize for not making this observation myself
@@fermyonds no need to apologize. admittedly it is my fault i dont have all this stuff planned out, but in the other games i typically have a lot of upgrade materials anyway (the ghrus in the demon ruins in DS3 almost always drop titanite shards for example)
The worst feature of Sekiro to me is terror. It’s a stupid instant kill that is very annoying. Luckily, it is not that frequent in the game.
I feel like Terror is supposed to be the Curse/Blight version of Sekiro -- and while it certainly is annoying, I think its made "easier" to deal with thanks to the Purple Gourd
Yeah, I 100% agree with that. Sekiro barley has any problems and I would say terror was just my least favorite out of the bunch.
@@fermyondsThe difference is curse is mostly from nothing enemies that can be easily killed (obviously besides seethe). Terror on the other hand is mostly minibosses and it's way more op. The souls games had a way better balance with the mechanic
It's not a feature but rather the lack of one that I hate most about Elden Ring: Covenants. There are soooooo many factions warring over The Lands Between that just don't get that little "Soulsborne" spice added onto them that made the Soulsborne factions so unique. They added character to our characters, that little RPG aesthetic role players just love.
Imagine upholding Godrick's claim to power over Limgrave, becoming a Stormrider Knight. Your would be summoned primarily in Stormveil itself and secondarily all across Limgrave. Your phantom would become a dull grey on the inside with an even duller gold on the outsides.
Imagine swearing yourself to Caria and becoming a Carian Knight, with the ability to be summoned in to defend Caria Manor, The Academy or the surrounding grounds when you activate a special item like a crest or some such. Your phantom form would also take on a Cyan hue, the same shade as Glintstone.
Imagine taking part in Dragon Communion and having the option of (metaphorically) offering your own heart (and the hearts of others), becoming a Dragon Thrall. In this covenant, you'd be summoned anywhere the Dragon minibosses are located, and also being summoned in Farum Azula. Your phantom form's hue would turn a shimmery yellow-gold with a black inside.
Imagine swearing to The Ancestor Spirit to defend the subterrane, becoming an Ancient Defender. You would be summoned whenever someone is in any of the subterrane places and your phantom hue would become the same as the followers down in Siofra.
Imagine branding your soul with the black flame of The Gloam Eyed Queen, making The Godskins' cause yours and damning the Gods themselves, becoming a Godskin Swaddling. You would be summoned near any Divine Tower, in Farum Azula or just anywhere The Godskins are, and your phantom would take on a dull white aura with a black inside.
Imagine swearing an oath to Radahn's cause, becoming one of his Redmanes. You would be summoned anywhere in Caelid, as well as any of its caves. Your phantom would take a burning appearance, bright orange around the outside with a darker red-orange inside.
Imagine praying to The Golden Order, becoming a Knights' Blessed. Sworn to defend anywhere The Golden Order has touched, you would be summoned mainly in Leyndell, but also anywhere in Altus. Your phantom would become more golden in color, similar to the normal appearance but more vibrant in contrast, visibly brighter and standing out more.
Imagine becoming part of The Volcano Manor and actually seeing that, becoming a- wait that's already a thing, nevermind. They actually DO HAVE Covenants. A whole TWO of them, both of them being Invaders. Wow. Whatever. You would be summoned anywhere across The Manor as well as all up, down and around Mr. Gelmir itself. Your phantom's colors would become similar to the lava that has all but overtaken the grounds themselves, an angry red in the center and a bright orange glow on the outside.
Imagine sympathizing with the Giants, becoming a Giant Sympathizer. You would be summoned anywhere Giants or Trolls reside across the entire map. Your phantom color would become greyish-brown in the center, with just a lighter grey around the outside.
Imagine actually becoming part of The Frenzied Flame and making the choice make sense, becoming Frenzied. You would be summoned in the Leyndell Catacombs, The Underground Roadside, The Subterranean Shunning Grounds and basically anywhere Frenzy is. Your phantom would take on the same colors as the Flame of Frenzy itself, darker orange on the inside and maddening gold on the outside. Your eyes would also begin to literally burn out of their sockets, emanating the Flame of Frenzy itself from within.
Imagine having your blood shared with Miquella or Mohg, inducting yourself into their family and becoming a member of The Mohgwyn Dynasty- oh wait that's the other ACTUAL Covenant. Screw it. You would obviously be summoned in the Palace itself, but also anywhere around it and even in The Consecrated Snowfields, since it is where Miquella was spirited away to the Palace. Your phantom would be very similar to the normal invader's, but be more red in the inside area of your body.
Imagine swearing to assist in finding Miquella by taking on Malenia's oath, becoming a new Blade of Miquella. You would be summoned up, down and around the entire length of The Haligtree and even The Consecrated Snowfields. Your phantom would take a bright white hue reminiscent of Miquella's Knights' Armor, while you also gain a golden-white hue around your body as well.
Imagine communing with Godwyn's Soulless Corpse, becoming a Death Walker. You would be summoned anywhere in and around The Nameless City (which is just a part of Leyndell that fell underground), and would be specially summoned as part of the entourage of phantoms summoned as Fia's Champions. Your new and improved phantom form would become reminiscant in color to The Prince of Death's pustules, a sickly yellow in the middle emanating out into a black nothingness on the outside.
Finally imagine swearing to defend all Merchants and their plight, becoming a Merchant Mercenary. You would be summoned anywhere there are merchants, and your phantom's colors would become a Chromatic, multicolored collage of colors, with a stand-out bright white for your center.
There's indeed so much potential for covenants in Elden Ring. Loved reading through this, thank you for your thoughts, genuinely!!
I just wish we had the Moundmaker faction back, maybe with some spice added to it (like being part of the "Frenzied Flame" covenant and you'd have to kill both the hosts and the invader, just as an idea)
A thing I love from the Chalice dungeons is the fact they allow you to access unused content with the right code, like the earlier versions of the Moon Presence.
I really wish the other games had something like this too! So many cool enemies in the chalice dungeons. It really can be an amazing experience
I did the DS3 grind once. After committing silver knight genocide, I did not have any patience left to grind the invader covenants. So I found some random guy online who was willing to let me invade them and grind free tongues and vertebra shackles. Yeah, never doing that again lol
Oh yeah there are definitely ways to get it done quicker if online's an option -- offline though, ouch, that's gonna be a long grind x))
Worst thing from Ds3 is vitality spec, just make endurance tied to equip load I don’t want to spend extra levels on a different spec just so I can wear decent armor even in late game
Yeah that's a really good point -- the first of the series I've managed to complete was DS3 and honestly I was shocked to see endurance/vitality being one stat in other iterations like DS1 or ER. I believe DS2 also had this, though
I think the bonfire kindling in ds1 functions an opt-in difficulty slider. You upgrade your flask with the rite of kindling and firekeeper souls, then bonfires allow access to easier gameplay without forcing you to pick easy mode for a whole playthrough. Joseph anderson talks about this in his dark souls critiques and I agree
I wasn't even aware of that video and that perspective is something I'm very glad I got to hear, so thank you sincerely for sharing it!
The worst thing about the vials is the fact they get more expensive
That happens to all of the consumables too, right? I think firepapers end up costing an insane amount (like 8k)
@@fermyonds yeah man
i think the worst feature in bloodborne is the lamps/bonfires, not that they are bad in general but the fact you have to go back to the hunters dream and then can teleport where you want instead of going straight to it. I dont know if im just stupid and missed something and you can actually tp from lamp to lamp but if i didnt, its the most annoying for me
Oh yeah I get that completely, I wish the lamps also functioned like bonfires, just having a quicker way to reset the world would be nice -- it genuinely sucks when you're trying to farm for something and you have to return to the Hunter's Dream every time
One thing I didn't like about Sekiro is that enemy Vitality is more of a suggestion. Rarely can you take down an entire healthbar of a boss without dying yourself or using a deathblow through a posture break. Vitality only serves as a means to draw out fights if you're not aggressive enough by making enemies regenerate posture faster at high healt, as well as making burn and poison less useful against pretty much anything
Oh I completely get that -- there are a few bosses that I ended up defeating through reducing their vitality to 0 (as opposed to breaking their posture, for instance with Demon of Hatred, and in the past with Father Owl in his Phase 2) but most of the time it just comes down to posture breaking. That said If I'm not mistaken, if you lower their vitality, they also regenerate posture slower, so in a way you kinda want to damage both of those things
You are wrong on that one. the vitality isn't meant for you to Whittle down and kill the boss, when you lower a boss or even an enemy's vitality you also lower their recovery rate of posture. That means you can easily rack up more posture damage over time. This incentivises you to damage vitality of enemies so as to not spend an eternity deflecting them
For me the worst thing about Sekiro is the Headless. They're usually placed in really cramped locations that screw with your camera, you need a specific (and rare, for most of the game) consumable just to damage them, they can slow your movement speed to a crawl, and they also cause Terror buildup. It's like they were designed to be as annoying as possible
The underwater Headless are a little better because they don't require any consumables and you have more freedom of movement, but I usually just skip all of them
I'm generally not a fan of fighting them either (although once you have the purple gourd its much more manageable) -- the only one I try to actively avoid is the one in the Mist area. Screw that guy in particular
i agree on all of those no questions asked
had to google some elden ring cave locations so fucken annoying and than you get literal trash when you actualy find one on your own
I did my first playthrough without Googling anything -- as soon as I finished the game I decided to look up a 100% completion map. I think I ended up only doing 40-50% of all caves. There's soooo many
Yep, in the long run it feels just like Skyrim's 39th bandit cave.
Also replaying it is kinda boring at first because the first few hours are just about running around and collecting essential items. There's so much freedom in theory but if you want that weapon upgraded there's not many different routes you can take because there's more or less one dedicated mining tunnel etc for every level.
The Dark Souls 3 transition with Gherman's theme was gourgeous
I'm genuinely glad you enjoyed it -- I remember at the time I was considering not having that in the video since it kinda dragged on, but I decided to keep it in still. I'm thankful I did
There's another really disappointing thing about covenants in DS3 - the fact that they became pretty meaningless in terms of roleplay. You can switch them freely any time so the connection to them doesn't mean much. Meanwhile, in DS2, you at least need to actually visit a covenant's leader to switch to them and DS1 you even can get lightly punished for leaving a covenant.
I feel like they wanted to do this as it's much more convenient, although I do like the roleplay aspect that was present in DS1 and 2. I think the punishment in DS1 can be a bit severe, so I'm oddly glad it's not a thing anymore, but even then, from an RPG perspective, it's superior to what we have in DS3
@@fermyonds Yeah. I still remember what clown-fiesta we had in the active times of DS3 online when whenever a player was getting invaded they would immediately switch to the blue sentinals convenant to get helpers and gank the invaders.
Yea dude: perfection doesn't exist, but Sekiro is really near to it.
I do a playthrough of it every now and then and every single one of them is just an amazing experience
This is true, but still I can highlight two significant drawbacks of the game: This is the number of repeatable mini-bosses within one game, as well as bosses and bad rewards for exploring levels. On NG+, for example, you will almost always be running as fast as possible from boss to boss, which slightly diminishes the value of the work that the level designers put into this game.
😂😂😂😂😂
Bloodborne is, sekiro close second
@@HellonearthlABB The two absolute worst of their games, imo. DS1>DS2, DS>DS3>ER>>>BB>>>Sekiro.
DS3's worst feature IMO is the sheer amount of weapons/armor that are only obtainable from farming enemy drops that are more often than not less than 5% chance drops.
It ties in with the covenant rewards thing as most of them pretty much require you to farm enemies nowadays.
It's a shame since there are so many cool and unique weapons/armor sets that are pretty much unobtainable unless you have a spare couple hours (or even DAYS) to spend farming for them.
Oh yeah RNG drops are always a pain in the ass. I'm glad Elden Ring doesn't have that many low drop% items (with a few exceptions) -- in a way I enjoy the excitement of getting a new chance based item but I much prefer guaranteed drops
Worst feature of DS3 by far was the removal of true poise along with heavily reduced defensive stats. It makes wearing heavier armor a completely pointless investment and it really limits build variety.
I think DS1's poise was a little too strong, but yeah DS3 on the other hand is a little too weak x) I wish there was a better middle ground to be honest, most of the time its just best to light roll and never really worry about armor too much besides maybe a few exceptions
@@fermyonds I can agree that DS1 poise was too strong, but it definitely should have been reduced instead of outright removed. It's a good system.
my hot take on Elden Ring is that you shouldn't be able to warp freely around the map. some of the traversal mechanics proposed seems useless after you do it for the first time to reach for a site of grace and I think that for an open world game, most of the open world feels useless after a certain point. I absolutely love Elden Ring but I think they could've created a more meaningful way of using the gigantic map they've created. My opinion is that you should be able to warp to some specific sites of grace, determined maybe by some presence, like the churches where Melina feel Marika's presence, etc
That's a very interesting take on it and I like that! While we're on the topic of warping around, one thing that actually bothered me is that Elden Ring doesn't have a "Homeward Bone" type of item -- previous games allowed you to "nope" out of combat situations, meanwhile the closest thing we have is the Mohg medal (I forgot the name) that's locked behind a quest
@@fermyonds there is also memory of grace item it acts like a coiled sword fragment from DS3 but it deletes ur runes
@zgamin5197 No, the coiled sword fragment and the feather in DS2 are just infinite homeward bones. The memory of grace is like Dark Souls' Darksign.
I think one of the best things about Dark Souls is how it teaches you the world and how to traverse efficiently without warping for half the game, later when you get the ability its a huge convenience but not totally necessary. I feel like maybe they could've done something similar with Elden Ring also because I do kinda agree. that being said though the game is absolutely massive they'd have to be very smart about it.
@@fermyonds Homeward bone would be unnecessary in Elden Ring because you can just warp from anywhere, unlike earlier games where you need to be at a bonfire. And getting out of combat situations is easily done by just quitting out, which resets enemies and puts you outside boss rooms.
I think they should make it so you lose health on death, until you reach your bloodstain. So that you learn to be patient after death and not feel punished or needed to farm some sort of item like a Human Effigy
That would be cool honestly! I like that the rings of sacrifice actually work like that (as in, if you wear them when you die, you also retain your human status)
Farming Blood Vials is useless.
It's better to collect some Echoes and buy them in the store.
Every time I would level up and for the rest of the echoes I bought blood vials.
I've never run out of them.
Honestly yes -- you're right, I just wish I could've spent those Echoes on levels instead x) hence why I prefer the flask formula
I think the dogs-ogres route in Central Yharnam is still better for farming blood vials, I remember in my first playthrough that was the way to go, and was pretty fast. You have 2 werewolves with 2-4 each and 3 ogres with 0-3 each, you can end up with 17 blood vials in just one run if you are lucky
If you are not doing cummmfpk obviously
@@matttake4852I just used the cummm dungeon and maxed out the blood vials and liter every item in the game
@@joaquinmuniz3055 yea the cummmfpk dungeon is always the answer, but at those times the world didn't know his existence ahaha
The worst feature of Bloodborne is the jump button being locked to circle
Weirdly enough, I've gotten used to that and it's how I like it now! That said, Elden Ring's separate jump button is still king
@fermyon man I can't tell you how many times I've tried rolling while sprinting and gotten clobbered 😅 ER jump is absolutely king.
The jump in Bloodborne fucked me up during bosses on multiple occasions. At least in the other games, I could remap the jump input.
@@russiandrago821 EXACTLY
Thanks for the video! I discovered your channel just today, and while watching this video, I thought I would really love to hear your take on the best features of each game that never found their way back into another entry (lik the mound maker covenant or left-handed weapon movesets).
Wishyou the best!
I absolutely want to do something like that someday soon. I am currently doing a Moonlight Greatsword speedrun (lol) but I promise I'll get to doing this as well very soon. I love talking about anything Soulsborne -- and honestly, I was already considering doing a "best abandoned features", since I feel like there's a lot of them. Thanks again btw!!
DS2's worst feature being the torch timer is wild, even some of the fundamental mechanics like lock on and movement are kinda broken with DS2, and so for me its between lock on and soul memory.
I completely agree with the Soul Memory bit -- I almost never did online content in DS2 so I forgot about its existance, but yes, its genuinely awful. As to why I hate torch timers / butterflies so much, honestly, its tied to just how useful they are -- I've often had cases where I ran out of torch time during Duke's Dear Freja boss, or similarly in No Man's Wharf, and honestly those were the instances I remembered because those were the times the game felt very.. "unpleasant" if that makes sense -- I know 99% of people won't feel this way and I totally get why -- its just that most of the other stuff (except soul memory, screw that) don't really bother me at all, whereas this annoys me constantly x)) that said, I fully get you. I used to dislike the lock on especially, back when I first started (I assume you mean that after you roll and attack, your character commits to the action in the direction of the roll, rather than towards your target)
Sorry for the long response, I just wanted to explain why I felt this way
@@fermyonds Nah man, don't apologize, I guess I get that a bit more now. I never had much use for torches outside of dark areas and maybe the beginning area with spiders in Tseldora, so for me I wound up having well over 2 and a half hours of torch time by the time I hit Dranleic Castle.
With lockon the big things I hated were, yes committing to the direction of the roll with rolling attacks and not the direction of lockon, along with the short range to be able to lock onto enemies, meaning most ranged builds get zoned by ranged PvE enemies, and then to top that all off, you actively move slower while locked on in all directions that aren't forward. for the enemies that are on the slower side, being unlocked means you can pretty frequently just walk out of the way of attacks without even needing to roll or sprint, trivializing some enemies while also regaining stamina at the same time. it gets real wild and real broken with that stuff.
while DS2 lock on is wierd I think it is far superior to whatever the lock on in DS1 is, being unable to run in any direction is wild, so is cardinal rolls, it basically makes it so you are forced to play locked off if you want a fair experience, because otherwise lol
I have an infinitely easier time playing with DS1 lock on than I do with DS2 lock on. I don't even feel these issues when playing DS1, but I guess that must be how DS2 fans feel about what I say. @@teiull9388
Too be fair all the souls games had some way to block players from playing with people that weren't as far into the game as them. DS2 just went a little extra by counting every soul you collected even if you lost them. The best system in my opinion of this was DS3 which tied it to your weapon level if I remember it right?
I think vitality is the worst feature of dark souls 3
That's a totally valid thing to say, although I believe DS2 introduced the endurance / vitality split :C
I for sure think that the “losing hp on death” of demon’s souls could have been more interesting if you got it back upon recovering your bloodstain.
It would've definitely been nicer, I agree with you there x)
I've never heard somebody introduce the bonfire kindling system in DKs1 as "The way healing works" before. Caught me off-guard... I was thinking, "the heck is wrong with estus flasks?" I get it now though. Despite the fact I don't think it's really an issue since, if you get stuck, the game will just give you around 10 humanity as you kill basic enemies around the place. (More than enough to kindle ANY bonfire to max) I can see why you'd think that system was unnecessary.
I should've mentioned somewhere in the video that the first souls I actually finished was DS3, and so for me it was a bit odd that it's vastly different in DS1 (I mean kindling vs. estus shards) but since making this video I did open up a lot to the idea of kindling and how in reality its basically a difficulty slider. Either way I should've been more clear, apologies!
I actually liked the bonfire upgrading in ds1, since the world felt so connected, if I felt like I needed 1 or 2 more flasks to beat a boss, I’d upgrade the fire, but I was careful to choose locations near multiple areas I wanted to go
I first finished DS3 so coming from the Shard system to this was definitely odd, however I opened up to the idea of kindling since I've made this vid. Seen a lot of good points brought up regarding it, and yeah, it's actually not bad at all
Scholar of The First Sin's worst feature: making you pay full price for upgrading a game you bought 1 year ago
Yeah I don't like it when game companies do that. Prolly the worst offenders for things like this are Capcom with the DMC special editions, or Atlus with their Persona games
Fermyon : « We all love variety right ? »
Gwyn : « NOOOO, NO GOD PLEASE NO, NOOOOOOO »
Yeah our Lord of Cinder is kind of a dick, isn't he?
I think the only reason soul form is disliked by the community is the mindset that comes with it.
I don’t see it as losing half of your health when you die, I see it as GAINING double health when you become human. Presumably the game is mostly balanced around the idea that the player is playing in soul form, since I always felt the first level was almost too easy with human health. But that’s just me.
I reckon at least 90% of first time demons souls players played most of the game in soul form, so becoming human is more of a reward then it is the status quo, and I think fromsoft knew this. Dark souls 2 is a different beast entirely, I can’t really justify its design.
I think you're right about it -- at the end of the day a lot of these things are just about the perspective more so than anything else -- I still need to git gud at DeS!
For me, the Estus Flassks healing over time instead of in bursts is a pretty good design choice, since it incentivizes the player to actually find a window to heal rather than trading some healing with some hits from the enemy.
You're completely right and honestly there are benefits to chugging Estus in advance in DS2 (especially if you are poisoned) and I understand why its healing over time and the benefits of it, its just that it feels kinda odd when there's also lifegems which essentially serve the same purpose (although admittedly they do heal slower) although thats just how I feel about it
@@fermyonds Yeah, I get what you mean, but lifegems and flasks are used in different situations (at least for me). Lifegems are used after the combat ends and you have some downtime, and estus flasks are used in the middle of combat, since the healing is a lot faster and the animation is faster.
What I like about Blood vials is how they let you explore and fight a boss all in 1 run, rather than be incentivized to just skip every enemy. In the other games, stopping to fight non bosses just drains you of your resources, making that boss attempt harder.
The issue is that the later levels don't drop blood vials as much as early ones, going back to incentiving you to skip enemies again and how the price of vials goes up after story progression.
I do like how they modified this system in ds3 and elden ring by giving you back a flask charge after killing enemies in those games, but still not enough to stop playing from skipping the enemies.
Oh yeah I can see your point and I think thats great about Bloodborne too. Personally I love what Elden Ring did with sprinkling in the Tear Scarabs, I think that feature genuinely saved exploration for me. It made it so much smoother going from one place to the other without breaking the gameplay loop
I actually really like the blood vial system from Bloodborne, it encourages you to fight enemies rather than run past them. When you do want to farm, the best farming route is in the lantern before Ludwig. The two church enemies always drop blood vials and bullets then +5 vials from the guy hitting the gate
I personally farmed for them in the deeper Chalice Dungeons (echoes = more levels too ayy) but yes, that's a very good spot!! Honestly I kinda had a very sour look on Vials and maybe I was too harsh on them..
Nah the best farming route is opening a depth 5 chalice dungeon and killing 3 easy enemies and you have like 20k echoes
My least favorite bloodborn system is the hunter fights as the hunters have infinite stamina and bullets.
I swear Hunter fights are harder than most of the bosses for me (with a few exceptions) -- they're no joke!
I'd rather do cursed chalice dungeons than fight hunters any day of the week
Love DS2, but can't deny there are couple head scratchers there:
- pvp lvl being tied to your earned souls
- lack of invulnerability while opening doors and pulling levers
- no funny ragdolls
- not much blood
- backstabs/ripostes not connecting instantly
I completely forgot about Soul Memory since I didn't do much online content in DS2 but damn, that thing should've never made it into the game. I also agree with the other things, especially the lack of s with doors -- that killed me more than I'd like to admit xD
Bloodbornes worst feature is definately the counter damage, you take it for everything, dodging, healing, and attacking. Attacking makes since but why for healing and dodging?
I actually never even knew this was a thing until someone pointed it out to me a while back! But yeah I agree it's way too harsh
Breakable chests in DS2.
Also limited consumables. Seriously. Fuck limited consumables.
I feel that way too about limited consumables especially in Elden Ring where I genuinely enjoy crafting items
DS2 is my favorite in the series, and I've never really minded or understood the things most people complain about. But I knew there was _something_ that drove me up the wall*, that I couldn't quite put my finger on.
So thank you for reminding me that it's breakable chests. Aka, the reason I refuse to swing my weapon around chests even in DS3 and ER.
* Also, the reaper movesets suck. So happy DS3/ER fixed them. Elden Ring even made the powerstance moveset worthwhile!
I don't know how to improve dungeons, but I think it was a good idea to add something to find every few leagues in Eldin Ring, or the map would just be too empty.
Oh yeah you're absolutely correct -- it makes the world feel more alive, it's just that I think for subsequent playthroughs it can be a bit annoying going to every corner of the world to get ''x,y,z'' item that you need for later x) that said I still don't really mind it much but it can be repetitive,at least to me
One thing worth noting is that the human/spiritform system in demon souls is functionally identical to the ember system in ds3: if you defeat a boss or use a specific item, you get increased health. When you die that health increase is gone. The difference is purely psychological since in demon souls you always see the capped healthbar taunting you and so it makes you feel like something got taken away from you as a punishment for failure, while ds3 makes it feel like a reard for success.
The only real functional difference between those two systems is how in demon souls it's tied to world tendency which incentivises killing yourself in the nexus after every boss kill to go back to spirit form so that you don't accidentally fuck over your world tendency
So it's basically a ''glass is half empty'' vs ''glass is half full'' situation? That's a good way to look at it actually, never considered that!!
My main issue with ER is the bosses. Not all of them, but a good chunk. The abundance of gank bosses for instance (courtesy of DkS2's director's hand being in the game), as well as unavoidable attacks. By that I mean, for instance Margit has a 3-hit combo that ends with a cane stab into the ground. You can roll the first two attacks with perfect rhythm, but then the cane jab hits you out of your second roll because it's too fast. It's not in your character's rhythm, so you cannot fully weave dodges between them. You need to either roll back out of reach of Margit entirely, or get behind him during your rolls. It's no longer a dance. This is compounded by moves that have false openings that you cannot punish. And all of this goes for more than just Margit. Many bosses have this issue.
I say that having no-hit all the bosses myself, but I was also fully aware of all this, so I made sure I played specifically. Skill alone won't do it.
I salute you for being able to do no-hit runs -- I've succeeded with that in some games in the past but anything-souls is a no-go for me, I don't think I'd ever be able to do that x))
In any case, yeah I've noticed that in Elden Ring they really stepped up the game with roll-catching attacks / requiring very specific dodging patterns. Sure, previous games had some of that too but phew man ER was on a whole different level. Delayed attacks as well have caused me a lot of trouble.
Regarding Gank fights, honestly I'm shocked Elden Ring doesn't have any ''unique'' gank boss. I hope the DLC fixes that and we get a proper duo (something akin to Demon Princes would be awesome imo)
@fermyon I hope for that too. Crucible Knight duo was a nightmare to no- hit. Even with parrying, I can get hit by the other one the game I come out of the riposte animation.
Also Valiant Gargoyles. I nuked them so it was just two 1v1 fights. They can combo big AoE attacks together to where there is no correct time to roll. You get hit regardless.
Bloodborne has quite a few gank bosses as well, give Tanimura a break lmao
@@Shin_FTWI’ve done Valiant hitless at RL1, the fight took upwards of 10 minutes but it’s absolutely doable. Not fun, but fair if you’re incredibly conservative with your openings
I find it weird how you called it unavoidable before describing how to avoid it. Better to call it a positional attack, since your regular s alone won't dodge it.
i loved the part when you made a bad jump and the boulder attacked you
See, here's the thing. I took a calculated risk. The problem is I'm awful at maths.
In all seriousness that clip felt too funny not to share!
an actual criticism i have for sekiro is the fact that you have a limited inventory of spirit emblems which you need to farm or purchase, because the storage could be infinite and therefore make your experience using costly tools/combat arts a lot less of a headache
Yeah I totally understand that -- it sucks in the early game especially -- I think it would prolly be better if it was something that would refill much like your gourds, but who knows, maybe I'm wrong on this x)
Adaptability stat is basically a microtransaction but in a souls game
"Wanna have more i-frames so you can actually dodge attacks and have more chances of winning? Better spend and waste souls on adaptability instead of health, damage stats, weight limit, etc."- Fromsoft
Basically like being forced to buy something in a mobile game to either have an easier time instead of boring grinding or to actually get past a stage that requires you buy something
Monster Energy Zero Vergil profile pictures always have the best takes, I love this -- I'm gonna keep calling adp exactly like this
That's some masterful editing, timing Gehrman's theme with Siegward's cutscene, I very nearly cried. Great job!
Thank you, genuinely -- I still want to get a lot better at editing but it's always a pleasure to see a comment like this -- thank you from the bottom of my heart
The kindling take for DS1 is crazy because that’s literally the best healing system, it’s the perfect form of difficulty modulation
I didn't look at it as a ''difficulty slider'' (paraphrasing here) at the time, and honestly since making this, I've opened up a lot to this idea and I fully understand why it exists and the reason it is like this. My mistake here for not really looking at it from a different perspective
ER's worst "feature" for me is the NPCs that teleport around the huge map and are incredibly easy to miss and spurn you if you make their tea wrong, making their item drops and in some cases whole areas unattainable for the rest of the game. Hindsight is 20/20 and most people don't seeem to care since you can just check the wiki these days, but for me on my first playthrough it really pissed me off when I found out via my friends that I'd missed Ranni at the church of elleh and then somehow fucked up her quest later on already by activating the radahn fesstival etc. How was I supposed to know that you're supposed to go *back* to the church, at night, after already going past it and getting torrent?
Yeah I get that, I think on my first playthrough I only managed to do Alexander's questline -- some I definitely shouldn't have ended up missing but well xD
You're right though, I feel like From's quest design is okay if you're talking about a game like Dark Souls where you can kind of have a good idea of where each NPC might be heading based on what they say (there are some exceptions ofc like Sirris in DS3), but with Elden Ring and the massive open world, its a bit of a mess (especially for sth like Millicent's quest chain)
Yeah, every game has its weird quirky design decisions. For me, Bloodborne using quicksilver bullets for hunter tools is mind numbing. It just doesn't make sense and clashes with another mechanic of the game. Pvp wise, i hate invaders getting sent back when they get to the boss. Just lock the players down until they deal with me or let me enter the boss fog too.
I'm guessing the reason Hunter Tools use bullets is because we don't have a mana bar / another resource that would function as something like that -- that said, yeah I get your frustrations, it'd actually be funny if it was possible to enter the boss room with them x))
Does anyone know the name of the song playing in the background of the dark souls II section? I know it’s a boss theme but not sure which one
Sir Alonne!
DS2s worst feature is souk memory. It borks up matchmaking hugely. But it's also totally ignorable if a person plays offline.
You're right, I forgot SM is a thing at all since I mostly played offline for DS2, but yes, that thing should've never made it into the game
Sekiro has the same problem as Bloodborne with its Spirit emblems when you get stuck on a boss.
My approach to Sekiro was (I think anyway) somewhat unpopular -- I mostly ignored a lot of gameplay mechanics the first time around and just focused on parries and getting a few attacks in here and there, so I never really felt that issue with the Spirit Emblems, although someone else also brought it up and I think it makes sense why its disliked
I can't disagree more when it comes to the Estus healing in DS1 and 2.
I like that kindling a bonfire is basically a mechanic to make harder areas easier by spending a resource that is of a slight rarity. Most important fires give you 10 estus anyways and having the extra estus encourages longer gaps between bonfires and more exploring on a first playthrough.
The Estus in 2 is actually quite potent because of the way it heals. You can use it as a sort of means of tanking hits via the healing fully recovering multiple hits post the drink.
Honestly I didn't really look at it that way when I was making this -- since then I did see a lot of other opinions and did more research on this topic and I do think that kindling as a "difficulty slider" (I am paraphrasing this) is actually pretty dope. In any case I am glad I got the chance to talk about stuff like this since it ends up being very eye opening!
@@fermyonds Yeah! I Enjoyed the video. I just always likeded the healing in 1&2 and wanted to add my thoughts.
Both games do have an issue with healing though as they have better nearly unlimited healing in Humanity and Life Gems respectively.
Humanity not causing an issue to new players until they learn an invader with 99 humanity will always out attrition them.
Life gems being able to stack almost eliminated the uses of Estus in combat for me, especially with low ADP.
I personally never had issue with the Blood Vials in Bloodborne. I always gained more than I used, though I did play super carefully lol. My playthrough is recorded, mostly. I walked through every area, to not draw aggro from far away, and I fully cleared out everything. So I got a ton of echoes and BV drops, allowing me to then level up a lot and buy more vials with the leftover echoes. The best part about them is they're 40% healing, so leveling your health also technically leveled up the vials.
I think the main issue I took were some things that seemed unavoidable. Undead Giants with the cannons for instance. If you quickstepped the first frame of damage, the lingering fire would catch you. Stuff like that bugged me, though that was only in the Chalice Dungeons. I can't even complain about the blood gem farming since, while the cursed/fetid dungeons for the 27.2% phys gems were brutal since having half your max HP meant that - while physical attack damage was also cut in half - elemental attacks would insta-kill you because they weren't reduced, it's not like those were the only gems. The DLC gave access to 22.3% phys gems from the Hamlet's Winter Lanterns, which were good enough.
But I think whenever I'd farm vials, I went to Cainhurst iirc. The one enemy with the rapier could drop them, along with decent echoes. I could be remembering wrong. But then there's that dude just outside of Ludwig's boss room that always drops 5 vials. Or just going through Yharnam. Everything there drops them relatively often enough.
I'll have to check your playthrough out at some point, seems like a fun thing to watch through whenever I'm doing a monotone task or something as such x)
That said, yeah I completely understand your comment regarding the cut HP -- It's honestly forever engrained in my mind, especially trying to fight the Watchdog of the Old Lords. So many memories just came back x)
@@fermyondsAh, my playthroughs are kinda boring since the most talking I typically do is on-screen text lol. In Elden Ring I would take now and then when explaining lore stuff (usually with Godwyn). But I did put more production into adding music to make quests/lore parts more dramatic. Using music from Kingdom Hearts, Nier, and more.
Best example for what I mean in regards to the editing is this - czcams.com/video/RqHCkDcfuZM/video.html
But it's not entertaining to listen to while doing other stuff. It demands more focus because of the lack of talking lol. Also yeah while damage you take is cut in those dungeons of BB, the elemental damage not being cut just makes those bosses oneshot monsters. Not fun. Even if I can do them no-hit, it's far easier (mentally) when I know I won't die _if_ I do get hit lol.
The only thing I hate about world tendency is that you have to cheese it and stay in soul form for the whole game just to do quests. It would be better if world tendency wasn't tied to quests and there were other ways to increase it. Instantly losing half your health also sucks because it basically means you only get one ring slot. It would be better if you lost a bit of health when you die but could return to human form if you get your bloodstain. They could have also made it so that losing your bloodstain buffs an enemy and gives you one last chance to get it back!
Sekiro forcing you to break the momentum of a fight is also a big buzzkill! It would be so easy to just tie a different combat art to a different button combo such as LB+A for High Monk. It would make the game feel so much more fluid. They could also do the same with ninjutsu and prosthetics, and maybe even use a different buff for a different elemental effect, like red gourd for a fire effect for example.
I like all of the ideas you have to be honest -- but yeah, I think tendency being such an important factor for NPC quests as well is indeed annoying. I missed almost every single quest on my first playthrough because of that x) needless to say its one of those things I'll never have to worry about again thankfully
But yeah I really wish it was possible to use multiple combat arts without having to go into the menu. Still my biggest pet peeve to this day
16:40 casually drops one of the hardest ds3 edits and one of the cleanest transitions ever made
Thank you for your kind words, genuinely x) means a lot to me
Agility is genius. Here’s why.
But first, let me correct you on a supremely important point: There are only 2 roll types in DS2, not the 3 types of 1&3.
There’s the normal roll, which is when your equip load is 70.0% or less. And fat, at 70.1% and above.
Your roll in DS2 has two governing attributes. The distance you travel over the ground. And s.
The distance travelled is based on equip load. If you’re naked, you’ll roll nearly twice as far across the ground, as those at 70.0. The relationship is a linear one. As your equip load increases, your roll distance decreases. A fat roll is either at the shortest length, or not even possible, if you equip over a certain threshold. Longer rolls are surprisingly effective at evasion.
The other part of the roll is the s, which you correctly state is based on Agility, whereas it is commonly misunderstood to be the Adaptability stat that is responsible.
These two governing attributes are what makes DS2’s rolls the best. And Agility is genius. Why? Because in PvP, you need more than functioning eyes to determine if your opponent has the best roll, or not. In 1&3, it’s immediately apparent, and you know exactly what you’re dealing with, and how to fight. Not so in DS2. It favors the experienced player, who has to poke and prod, just to make an educated a guess.
Besides the mystery, there’s fashion. Everyone gets a normal roll. So there’s no struggle to fit your fashion under a certain threshold. No more wearing the Stinky Hollow Loin Cloth, just to make the cut. Wear a little more or less, and your roll distance is the only thing that changes.
Agility helps build diversity. No more clothy wizards that roll better than warriors, who need to spend levels just to be on par with spellcasters. In DS2, it’ll cost a Wizard more than a Warrior to roll like a god, as I’m sure you’re aware their main stat that levels up spell casts, Attunement, also levels Agility, but at third the rate of Adaptability. But hey, they can. A fully tanked Ultra user can have the best s too.
But in the end, how different is Agility than the way 1&3 do it? Not much, except for one key way. If you’re a Warrior, and you want to have a good roll, you’ll have to level up a stat to do it. I hear you say that they get more than that from the stat, but so do you in DS2. Faster Estus chugs, for one. In the end, if you want a good roll, in any game, you’re going to have to spend. Pay up!
The one key difference, is that in 1&3, the moment the game starts, you can have the best possible roll, by getting naked. Just like that.
Some like that more, but there’s a lot that want the game to be an RPG. It takes investment to get good. Maybe you start with a class that has an ok roll, or not. Some players want build diversity, and adversity.
In the end DS2 has a huge amount of levels you’ll earn before you finish the game, many more than you’ll need to have all you could want in your main stats, and secondary ones, too. In the long run, it’s only the meta-loving PvPers that seriously care about min/maxing every stat.
As for the issue of the game not telling you about agility’s importance, I’d argue it has a flashing red light and blow horn attached to the help pop-up. “Aids in the ease of evasion”, in a series notorious for being opaque, and secretive, is screaming at you: you want good rolls, level me!
This is a complaint that I’ve never understood. DS1 does literally nothing, zero, zip, nada, to teach you about s. But I never hear anyone complain about that. You’ll still have to figure it out yourself, or wait for the community to do it for you. So it goes with DS2. If the help pop-up was somehow not enough, and you’re in the dark, there’s a community of enthusiasts who will figure it out, and tell you all about it. Almost assuredly, exactly how you figured it out in DS1.
Thank you very much for the correction -- I always assumed there's 3 distinct types of rolling but I guess I learnt something new today!
As for the rest of your comment, I have to say I really like how well you structured it and I agree with a lot of the points -- at the end of the day I feel like it comes down to preference still, but I personally don't mind AGL/ADP too much, since, again, as you mentioned, you get so many levels in DS2 without even farming that it really becomes a non-issue regardless of what build you're doing, unless you're aiming to be in a certain soul memory range, but even then, it's not as big of a problem as people make it out to be, at least imo
@@fermyonds I’m glad to help. And thank you for the compliment. I’ve spent a lot of time defending my fav souls title, and hearing other’s opinions. 1,000’s of hours of PvE and PvP. It’s nice to see after years of being the black sheep that DS2’s image is being rehabilitated. Especially since (braces for pushback) Elden Ring is so closely related to it. ☺️
My least favorite mechanic/thing about each game
Demon souls - inventory weight
Dark Souls 1 - Occult is useless
Dark Souls Remastered - summons can use estus flasks
Dark souls 2 - adaptability
Dark Souls 3 - NPCs kinda sucked
Sekiro - lack of build diversity
Bloodeborne - every section in every zone is just gray.
Elden Eing - it takes forever to get good faith spells, making it incredibly boring for like 20+ hours.
I can understand everything you dislike here, although personally I love the colour palette of Bloodborne. I think it fits the world nicely, that said I am always happy to see vibrant colour everywhere (like in ER)
I didn't really like running the chalice dungeons in Bloodborne, myself (like other people, I found them repetitive and boring), but I still appreciated them. They were a good way to grind blood echoes and get weapons. Hell, with False Depth Chalices, you only needed the first Pthumeru chalice to get otherwise out-of-reach weapons...which I liked, because it countered my actual least-favorite aspect of Bloodborne: the weapon distribution.
I'm someone who never willingly plays NG+ (except in DS2), so certain weapons in BB not being available until really late in the game (sometimes outright just before NG+) would have been maddening if not for the Chalice dungeons. It's not really a big deal in other Souls games, since even late-game boss soul weapons with unique attributes at least have movesets resembling early weapons. Not so with Bloodborne, where most of the weapons are A) two weapons-in-one, and B) wildly different from each other. I don't need to beat Nashandra to be able to use a scythe at all in DS2, for instance, whereas the Burial Blade is the only scythe weapon in BB, and without Chalice dungeons getting it requires beating Ghermain.
(Not even counting the weapons in easily-missed areas, either. I never found Cainhurst, so if it weren't for False Depth dungeons I wouldn't have been able to try using the Blades of Mercy or the Reiterpallasch.)
I very much agree with you and I think this is the best thing about Chalice Dungeons. You can make a solid character right away with little to no investment, and you can basically choose any weapon you want to use right at the very start (well, within the first hour or two, but yeah)
Completely agree with you on Sekiro, they should have added so you can have 4-5 skills active at once. Example L1+ X, Y, A, B R1 instead of the usual L1 + R1. And increase number of spirit emblems from 20 to 40 for example, unlock extra 5 extra spirit emblems with each NG+ and after a few playthroughs you have character that can pull off super stylish combos.
Honestly yes, it'd just be a fun thing for the game. Really like your ideas!
The only main thing that irked me in DS2 was the time given to the devs to cook.
They didn't let them cook
Yeah it was in development hell, right? I remember reading about this and its actually pretty interesting to think about what it "could have been". I still enjoy the final product, but you know, always good to think back on the potential it had
@@fermyonds look up "how the gutter got gutted" for an in depth analysis
As an Elden Ring only player, the idea that you can have tons of healing items to farm for sounds AWESOME. I WISH I could farm for extra healing in Elden Ring and walk into Margit's fight with 200 vials of Crimson Tears, play super defensively, and have a guaranteed win. So you might be annoyed about farming in Bloodborne, but I WISH I could have it in Elden Ring, where you can only have a limited number of heals.
Unless Bloodborne only let you carry so many into a boss fight, which would be the worst of both worlds.
Basically, yes -- you can only have 20 vials at a time, unless you equip certain Runes which allow you to carry more, up to 32 I believe -- that said, if you decide to use these Runes, you won't have access to other amazing ones that boost your damage, resistances, etc (Runes in BB are the equivalent of Talismans in ER)
I believe only Dark Souls 2 allows you to carry an infinite number of healing items
imo DS3's worst mechanic is by far how they handled poise. Coming from Elden Ring -> DS1 -> DS3 the hardest adjustment was getting stunlocked by every enemy despite your armor. It works the same way for the enemies, but it was definitely a mechanic that took me a while to adjust my playstyle around.
Oh yeah I completely get that -- Elden Ring was very similar to DS3 with this in the beginning (with a few exceptions) and then they buffed the poise of basically every armour piece and now it feels so much better, pretty much the perfect middle ground between how OP it is in DS1 vs. how bad it is in DS3. Hyperarmour on heavy weapons in DS3 is fun, but I wish the armor pieces just had more poise in general
Gotta say, it brings me joy that Sekiro effectively doesn’t have a “worst feature”. Sekiro is easily my #1 game if all time
I've seen a couple of comments bringing up a good point with how Spirit Emblems can be a pain in the butt when they run out completely and how you have to farm / buy them, but honestly this didn't bother me that much -- I love all of the souls games equally (including BB and ER) but I think Sekiro is still my favorite of the bunch. It's just quick action super satisfying fun
what song is playing at 11:56?
it's so familiar but I can't place it
“Lullaby for mergo” from bloodborne
@@TheVertebraeTicklerthat's why I recognized it! thanks
Yeah it's the Lullaby for Mergo! I love it for how eerie it is x)
Demon's Souls - I agree. World tendency, especially being completely unexplained, is bad. A new player who doesn't know any better will be moving the world to black and making everything worse for themselves and not even understand why. The health loss, however, encourages the player to do the bad thing that moves the world to black BECAUSE it feels so immediately bad.
Dark Souls - Covenants as a general could count as there are more than one that just aren't very good, but the cat covenant is the worst IMO. A covenant that can, and when the game was in it's prime WILL, make you deal with PVP just to be able to traverse the area. You can't join without first getting through the area, and there's a required boss in the area so you can't just ignore it forever.
Dark Souls 2 - Given the focus on darkness, I can get the need to actually light your torch. The timer seems dumb, but I've never been short on torch time so whatever. There's a lot of bad mechanics in this game, but I would have to say the worst is the return to max HP loss on death combines with not actually recovering HP when you use the item that restores your maximum. Even Demon's Souls would at least recover you when you used the item.
Bloodborne - Just frenzy. I shouldn't need to say more. You kill the brain man, and frenzy keeps building anyway, and then you take shit ton of damage and probably die from it and have to do the same song and dance over again and either put on all your frenzy resist gear AND prey you sill have some sedatives, or keep smashing your head against the wall until you get lucky.
Dark Souls 3 - I guess the covenants, and the grind to get the rewards, but even then it's honestly not that bad. DS3 is just a solid game. Or the Champion Gravetender boss fight if you count that as a feature, because that's got to be my most hated boss fight in any of these games. I can't dodge the wolf for the life of me even though I can no-hit bosses like the Nameless King, or Ornstien and Smough.
Sekiro - The lack of build variety. Every playthrough will feature the exact same character build which removes ANY reason at all to play the game more than once. I loved Sekiro on my first playthrough, but I've never picked it up again because there's no reason to do so. Even a game as terrible as Demon's Souls (and it is terrible) at least a new build has a chance to bring me something new I didn't get from a previous run.
Elden Ring - The open world. I might get some hate for this, but I just can't stand open world games. They feel incredibly unfocused, which is the exact opposite of what I want from a story being presented to me. Regardless of whether the story comes from a book, movie, game, or other I want, no NEED, a story that is being told to me in an intentional way. I can't not do all the content and so if I attempt to complete an open world game I am then bouncing from area to area just to make sure I don't miss shit and the story becomes like pointless fluff. The only way I was even able to force myself through this game was with a guide so that I could make it feel more structured.
I completely understand every single point you bring up especially when it comes to Frenzy buildup in Bloodborne. Whenever I'd hear the "la la la" I knew I'd have to get some antidotes ready. That thing killed me more than almost everything else in the game.
I also wish Sekiro had more weapon variety, I get what they were going for but it'd just be nice having other weapons you can use.
As for Elden Ring, what bothered me a lot with the open world were the quests -- considering the sheer size of the world, at least for me it was pretty hard to follow where I have to go in order to make sure I don't brick any npc quests. I literally wouldn't be able to complete something like Millicent or Seluvis' quest without the help of a guide.
Also I thought I erased the Champion's Gravetender from my mind. I was wrong. Thanks for reminding me it exists x)
Can someone explain the graph? Is the green active Iframes? If so what is the red ?
Green is the active i-frames, red is when you no longer have i-frames, for example in DS2:
- At 92 Agility, you have 10 active i-frames, going to 96 gives you 11, etc.
I feel like the spirit summoning system could have been improved by making each non-named summon item have a low-ish drop rate from the enemy itself. I feel like this would give players more incentive to actually fight through areas instead of just rushing through, also opening up quite a lot of dungeon loot drops for something actually rewarding instead of another near useless ghost.
Yeah the spirit summoning system has room for lots of improvements -- I wish that they were more than just a meatshield for boss fights to be honest -- most of them sadly end up being useless unless you're doing a Pokemon style run x)
While the less health does show up in DS1 and 2, they're much better handled. DS1 only has it when you get cursed, and DS2's can be mitigated with a ring you get pretty early on, and both are easily cured.
True -- those are both good points, it's certainly less severe than DeS's!
Demon Souls: World tendencies, leading to Nexus suicide-run after every boss.
Dark Souls: Bed of Chaos fight and the Channeler's Trident's drop rate when doing knight's honor.
Dark Souls 2: Soul memory and rolling i-frames being tied to an otherwise useless attribute.
Bloodborne: Having to farm for basic heals and parries.
I agree with a lot of these things being super unpleasant especially the Bed of Chaos x)) I was so stuck on it the first time around
Like it or not, Dark Souls 3 had the same style of Health Loss of DeS, but people tend to ignore that because it's disguised by not showing your ACTUAL max HP unless you are embered. There's very little difference between those systems and so many people seem to shit on DeS for doing this, but then turn around and act like its not in DS3.
I actually had no idea about this when I was making this. Had zero clue it was all a psychological trick but I'm glad I was told how it actually works!
Demon’s souls, wasn’t that punishing, mostly gimmick bosses apart from maybe Flamelurker, Penetrator & False king Allant. Which is why it doesn’t feel unfair.
And you're absolutely right -- I'm still not a massive fan of mostly playing with 50(75)% HP but once you get used to it, it's fine -- And honestly even though most of the bosses are gimmicks, I still like them. Flamelurker is my favourite tho
I absolutely _loath_ the way DS2 handled input queue. Once you get used to the system, it's not terrible, but it completely goes against the muscle memory you built up in DS1.
Going back to DS2 is always a pain for me, because it takes me an hour or two to remember how to play around the queueing mechanic.
That's a totally valid thing to say -- honestly I don't have this issue much anymore but in the beginning it was a pain getting used to it!
also, obligatory grasses on comment
I think DS2's biggest flaw with ADP was a lack of explanation about what it was, usually these games don't need explanations about the mechanics and it's easy to learn as you go but ADP was such a subtle but important stat to level you probably won't even notice what it's doing unless you're actually looking for it. There's probably a lot of first time players that never figured out what it did and just assumed it was a junk stat. On top of DS2's hitboxes being utter dogshit in the first place the lack of early understanding of the stat probably what led to the game being very controversial on release. ADP as an idea is still shit but fromsoft's faith in the players being able to see literal singular frame improvements is insane.
Yeah I completely understand that perspective and to a sizeable extent I agree with that. Also, that last sentence you wrote is really thought provoking. I wonder what other companies would have this level of faith when it comes to the mentality of "just give it to them, they'll figure it out"
The world tendency in demon's souls literally fucked me up, I started playing it one week ago, and only before King Allant I got what it really meant, so it kind of fucked my first run over, now I'm trying to get summoned to get world in full white tendency and it's taking so damn long
Yeah I was in a similar situation as you -- it's awful for the first playthrough but for the second one (if you want to do a second one, that is) you're gonna have a much better experience now that you know all the ins and outs of it. Still, I'm sorry you had to deal with that
@@fermyonds yes, I'm planning to get all that I lost from the first run and try to go through all the events that require full world tendencies, good luck to me :')
the worst feature of bloodborne is that its exclusive for a platfarm that cant even held stable 30 frames
100% correct. I'm kinda sad that quite literally every PS4 exclusive is on PC now (Ghost of Tsushima left and that's here in May) except for Bloodborne. Ugh it's so disappointing
Saying BVs are Bloodborne's worst feature made me livid, especially while you give Demon's Souls a pass for it. Blood Vials are dropped and found all over the game, and they're incredibly cheap, especially with how easy soulfarming is in Bloodborne. If you're at Orphan or enjoy doing chalice dungeons, you can get hundreds of vials in a matter of minutes. Nowadays I never find myself needing them if I just spend excess souls on them after leveling up as I progress. If you're spending any length of time farming for vials after Central Yharnam, you're doing it wrong. Meanwhile in Demon's Souls, you only really find grass in one of the five worlds. Soulfarming is NOWHERE near as quick and easy as Bloodborne, especially earlier in a run. Not to mention you don't get HP back for hitting enemies. Nor that the game can be made to be MUCH more brutal than Bloodborne with World Tendency.
blood vials >>> grass, though i'm glad we can agree the flask is infinitely better than both
though i guess i can see it from another perspective. DeS was their first crack, whereas BB they had already come up with the flask and just opted not to use it... so i guess it's a valid criticism of the design choice. i just think grass can be a way bigger pain than vials.
I can totally see your point and maybe my memory of it is skewed since its been months since I've been on Bloodborne (like actually doing a playthrough), and the reality is that every single time I played Demon Souls, I had the Providential Ring as my starting gift, and grass really felt plentiful. But again, I should have done another playthrough of Bloodborne before putting this together and not just base it off on memory. This is a mistake on my end, and I'm sorry. I'll do better
@@fermyonds Don't worry about 'doing better' 😭 this is a great video and it's just your own opinion. The vial-grass comparison just triggered me. Maybe my view is skewed too: I just finished a really rough DeS playthrough and my character sucked. You do get a ton of healing items at first, but if you go through them after leaving World 1, it feels way more tedious restocking.
Also all I have is the original which has no Providential Ring lol. Maybe the remake messed with drops too? I dunno, either way, everyone has their own experience with the games so don't feel sorry or anything lol. If anything I'm just mad you didn't suffer the lack of grass that I did.
I'll have to play the original DeS at some point! Never had the opportunity for it but I'll try to do it sometime this year hopefully. I'm very much looking forward to it -- thank you for your nice words as well btw - I genuinely appreciate it
@@fermyonds Good luck if you do. And I'd love to see a comparison if you end up feeling the two experiences are notably different.
Sure thing! Thank you for the idea as well -- again, might take a while till I get there but I'd love to experience OG DeS
Dark Souls II: No Gwynevere.
I feel you, brother.
And, yeah. Adaptability is THE worst attribute point I've ever seen in any RPG. Even worse than luck. But I think DS2 was made with the intent of being harder for the sake of being harder. You get a trophy called "This is dark souls" for dying and you can't get any more on the nose than that. The different critical hit system is weird as well. When you parry, you have to wait for the enemy to fall on their butt to land the critical hit - it makes no effin' sense. The backstab animation was sick, tho.
I have a weird perspective with ADP -- on one hand I can see and understand why people like it and enjoy it, on the other hand, I can see why people hate it xD it's a pretty polarising topic to this day. I'm kinda on the fence about it, where I just level it up and not think about it anymore, so I'm not sure where that puts me
that said, yeah I always thought its kinda weird they have an achievement called like that. When I first saw that, my first thought went into that comic with Link (from Legend of Zelda) playing Dark Souls and getting killed -- I couldn't take that achievement seriously, nope xD
Invincibility frames in DS1 were not tied to your Equip Load. This is a common misconception.
All rolls have the same amount of invincibility frames. The only way to increase the amount of s your roll/backstep has is by equipping the Dark Wood Grain Ring (+2 s).
The only things that Equip Load affects about your rolls is Distance, Animation, and amount of Recovery frames (which can also affect how early you can cancel the end of your recovery into another action).
My whole life is a lie. In all seriousness, I learnt something new. Thank you!
Imo the Worst feature of dark souls 2, by far, is the changed enemy locations in Scholar of the First Sin. White Knights go from being an interesting optional challenge scattered through the first half of the game to obnoxiously spammed all in one early stage. Shrine of Amana goes from a tough challenge fighting off melee enemies on narrow pathways while dodging some projectiles to a miserable slog through sniper spam city. The natural difficulty curve progression is turned on its head as the first few levels swarm the player while some of the later stages are if anything too easy.
I've never played the OG DS2 sadly, but man I really wanna try it this year. I kept hearing good things about it, so I'm curious to see what its like
I think my least favourite part of DS2 is how kinda shitty the infusions tend to be. Maybe I'm just not able to figure it out right, but it just seems like infusing a wep makes it just straight up worse
There are times where I don't bother infusing either -- usually with Rapiers for instance, or with many melee weapons -- only exception being going for a Lightning Infusion -- those are great; or if you're doing something like a Dark Weapon/Hex build, the Dark Infusion's insane as well! I enjoy the Blood and Poison ones too, but Lightning/Dark are my faves
The Cummmf chalice makes farming for bloodviles reduntant
You're completely right, I was just trying to look at most of these things from an offline play perspective, but you're spot on, that dungeon's awesome
for me it would be:
DeS: genderlocked gear
DS1: new game + ( it is really unbalanced)
DS2: non respawning enemies (makes farming for fashion insufferable) and the introduction of "+1" rings
BB: farming for blood vials
DS3: every thing you mentioned in the video + the "poise"/hyperarmor, and rolling around with huge stamina bars in pvp
Sekiro: not being a tenchu
ER: the fact that both dropped items and sites of grace are barely visible at a distance and also really easy to pass by them without noticing
I completely understand each and every single one of those things. I wish DS2 at least had something like the covenant of champions for infinitely respawning enemies but without making them harder :(
Also regarding the point in ER, dude that was so true for me especially in the Mountaintops and Consecrated Snowfields. So hard to see white items while being in a white environment xD happened to me in DS3 as well with the Ashes of Ariandel and I believe Irythill too at some spots
Why do people hate farming for blood vials when all the other games put a hard cap on how much healing you can take into a fight? It sounds like you can grind for long enough to nail down a fight instead of having to actually kill them faster than they can kill you.
As a long standing lover of DS2 who defends it constantly. I think the worst feature of the game is the reduced max HP upon death. It doesn’t bother me personally as a player but it exists solely to punish new players who aren’t familiar with DS2 and especially in SOTFS edition a newcomer is gonna die a LOT because they won’t know about adaptability either. This leads to a really awful negative feedback loop and I truly think it drives away a lot of potential newcomers to the game long before they have a chance to see all the good things in the game.
Pretty much yeah -- I'm generally not a fan of health loss mechanics either, but I'm happy to see someone else who loves DS2!
I never minded losing health on death, actually. You're rewarded with a full bar after you defeat the boss and you just see how far can you go through the game without losing it. And I never really minded ADP, because it added an extra level of character customisation -- not every character I leveled was a shieldless agile close combat type.
I think the worst features are: world tendency for DS (should've been just an online only feature), soul memory in DS2 (it's just a bad pain in the ass to deal with design, especially for a game with such a stellar PvP), the absolute and utter lack of poise in DS3 and open world in ER. It's really hard to think of any feature that's genuinely bad in DS1. I haven't played BB, and I dropped Sekiro after disliking every single thing about playing it for like 2 hours.
Tbh the ADP being another layer of customization is a good point -- I've yet to play a Shield build in DS2 (powerstancing and magic builds are just too fun) and I agree especially on the Soul Memory bit. My mistake was forgetting about it -- I mostly play offline so I genuinely didn't even have that cross my mind x) I really hope Bloodborne comes to PC soon..
I think the worst feature of DS3 is it's weapon balance. Looks like design team thought that boring and plain weapon should be pushed up more, and most of the common weapons (humble straight sword, sellsword scimitars, estoc) were almost too good, when weapon made from bosses/farmed from rare enemies was mostly smoking garbage, most often being bogged down by abysmal scaling. Hardly locked linear progression system (can't unlock archives until very late in the game) doesn't help that either.
In DS2 worst feature ever is, hands down, the soul memory. PVP is based on it, and for dedicated PVPers it's easy to quickly acquire all the needed gear and just OWN everyone, while ordinary players who sometimes lose souls and farm them again often end up so far in Soul Memory bracket that they get Ng+ invaders. Despawning enemies is closest second contender, I fukken hate that you can despawn an enemy you farm for resources like weeds and rare weapons.
I made such a mistake by forgetting about Soul Memory -- I mostly play offline so I forgot it even was a thing, but yes, it is the worst system 100%
And honestly I agree with both of your points with DS3 -- there's a few boss weapons that stand out to me that I genuinely enjoy and think are great (Vordt's Hammer, the Farron Greatsword, Dragonslayer Greataxe and the Frayed Blade are my favourites), but when compared to sellsword twinblades or the Lothric Knight Sword... yeah, they can leave much to be desired x) also with the Archives, yeah I wish it was possible to do Twin Princes early. I understand they lock it away for lore reasons or something but still..
“DS3 ended up being so good-“
*SHOWS ALBERICH BOSS FIGHT*
B-but I like Aldritch :(
The both best and worst ideas fits for DS2
By far my favorite system in it was how easy blacksmithing was to work with in conjunction with being able to get infinite materials in a cycle, and the NG++ covenant items being sold was super helpful, but soul memory made matchmaking a nightmare
The way DS3 reworked poise kind of disappointed, especially after trying out a poise heavy build in DS1
World Tendencies in DeS was a neat idea, but if there was a fast track mechanic to adjust it, that'd have been nice. Going to black was easy, but the other way around made full item collecting a nightmare. Arguably that one crystal lizard in the valley of storm that might drop that one hard to get pure stone was hands down the worst thing in the game
I even forgot SM is a thing since I mostly played DS2 offline but yeah that thing suuucks. But yeah I agree with the ease of access to upgrade materials. I like how in the first hour or so of the game you can have a +10 weapon if you're quick enough -- and besides that its just easy to find the mats needed to upgrade anything new you may come across that you'll want to try. I remember my first playthrough of Ds2 I had a few armor pieces maxed out too, something I didn't even bother doing in DS1!
Anyway yeah I think poise is definitely odd in DS3. I'm happy with how it is in Elden Ring though (not too opressive like in DS1 and not near useless like in DS3)
On the topic of tendencies... yeah. Getting to white is really hard unless you are doing multiplayer
As an Elden Ring player on my first and possibly only run, I'm shocked about what you said.
However, I think you didn't quite realize that if caves aren't fun on future playthroughs, and they don't offer anything useful, you don't have to do them. I love them, but if I got sick of them, I just wouldn't do them.
I think the worst feature is how you can't move and you get slaughtered if you get knocked off your horse. I mash the dodge button for five seconds while everything in the area whales on my prone body, and so a dismount is more or less an instakill. Why not just give me the same time as when I'm knocked over normally, where mashing circle DOES usually let me survive?
You brought up a good point about caves and not having to do them -- and also about getting destroyed once you get dismounted. I share your sentiment with that, happened to me more often than I'd like to admit
In DS2, i expected Soul Memory to be the worst one, but the Adaptability stat was a very close second.
To be fair I made a huge mistake when it comes to DS2 -- Soul Memory is genuinely the worst -- it just wasn't in my mind at the time because I didn't do much online content in DS2, but yes -- it's terrible x)
Very good and interesting video, but I disagree with a few of the points:
Demon Souls - Honestly, anyone who's played the game quickly accepts that the 50% (or something like 70% with that ring) of HP is the actual HP you have, and the rest is a bonus you occasionally get for a few runs. I dont think most people actually miss the rest of the HP, since you barely get to play with it, so I genuinely do not think this feature makes the game "unnecessarily" harder or more frustrating. You simply get used to it, like you do with every other method of torture Fromsoftware comes up with.
Dark Souls 1 - I think the healing system where you upgrade bonfires is perfect, actually. It adds another layer of risk-reward to the decision making of when and where to spend your humanity, since it can also be used to regain human form and summon help. So also giving this utility to humanity makes the player think more, and strategically decide which bonfires to upgrade and where to spend his resources, at least on the first playthough.
Dark Souls 2 - Havent played it :P
Bloodborne - This disagreement I think is due to me and you having two different experiences with the game. Even though I agree that the limited healing system is not the best, I dont think I ever had to grind them in Bloodborne, maybe just one time. But in Demons Souls, I actually had to grind them at least 4 times, because I genuinely dont remember them being droped everywhere like you said. They only dropped like crazy in the first map and in the runback to the final boss, at least for me. Also, I don't think the enemy absorbing your souls when dying is a bad thing. Sometimes it makes the game harder, sure, but not that much harder. Killing an npc isnt that much more difficult than accessing the spot you died, since there would be enemies there anyway. But this feature actually helped me sometimes, because the enemy what absorbed my souls would occasionally be a little closer to the spawn than the actual place I died, and I just had to kill it instead of running all the way back there. Anyway, I kinda see where youre coming from, but I genuinlely dont think this feature ever annoyed me or even made my playthrough harder, not once.
Dark Souls 3 - Agree.
Havent played the rest either.
Honestly ever since I've made this, I've come to open up to a lot of the ideas -- especially with the Bonfire Upgrade of DS1. It was a rather stubborn perspective from me (I went from DS3 to DS1 when I first played through the series) and instead of looking at it as a potential "difficulty slider", I was considering it to be a "mandatory upgrade" when in reality its just something you do if you struggle with the area.
I also had someone tell me they had a similar experience as you did with Bloodborne's vials / Demon's Souls' grass system -- maybe I just got really lucky, though I did have the item discovery ring on for a good portion of my playthrough, so maybe that's also why -- regardless,
I wanna say thank you for the comment. I genuinelt appreciate a good read like this