In the modern age of gaming one thing is certain, games are being developed for a much wider audience. While it’s always great to see gaming grow and encompass the masses, creating games for a wider audience generally means that games are getting easier to play. If you compare modern games to those of the original Nintendo or Super Nintendo era, there’s a stark contrast in difficulty. Bottom line, games these days are far too easy for someone who grew up with the NES and SNES.
That all changed when Namco Bandai and From Software teamed up to unleash the Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls series on unsuspecting gamers. While many found the games to be too difficult, the 2014 release of Dark Souls 2 created a title that merged the two camps. It offered difficulty that far exceeded most other games, but wasn’t quite as challenging as the previous two from the development team.
Most games start off in an easy area that allows players to learn the basics. Dark Souls 2 throws high-level enemies at players right at the beginning of the game, with no set path for players to take. One hit from the enemies near the beginning of the game and you’ll probably die. Even the “easy” enemies near the beginning will kill your character in less than three hits.
The game was a welcome challenge that helps to give players a true sense of accomplishment. When you complete a quest or defeat a boss that you’ve died from over and over again, you feel refreshed. There’s very little in the game that doesn’t offer a satisfying sense of accomplishment, even if it takes hours of frustration to get there.
Even leveling up your character is difficult. You need souls to level up. You collect these souls by killing enemies, then go back to the main hub area to spend souls and level up your character. If you die, you lose all of those souls. You can get them back, but you have to fight your way to the spot where you died and hope you don’t die again before reaching that point. If you die a second time before retrieving your lost souls they’re gone for good.
Dark Souls 2 is a challenging and very rewarding game that only gets better with the addition of the three DLC areas added after the initial release of the game. It’s not an easy title, but the challenge is what makes it special.
Avoid unending death with Prima’s complete Dark Souls 2 walkthrough! If you’ve already completed the main game, we’ve got you covered with walkthroughs for Crown of the Sunken King, Crown of the Old Iron King, and the Crown of the Ivory King DLC!
