Should Dark Souls Have an Easy Mode?

TL;DR: Nah

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I don’t disagree that Dark Souls’ difficulty bars some – all right, maybe a lot of – players from enjoying the series. The game can be grueling, and it demands an up-slope climb through hellish challenges before it rewards you. But an Easy Mode just won’t work.

It isn’t as simple as reconfiguring damage input/output. The game relies on the mechanic of death; is designed around it. The bastion of relief that are bonfires, the necessity of hunting down and aptly using shortcuts, learning which enemies to cut down and which to avoid, regaining lost souls, the risk versus reward nature of accruing souls (where higher levels force you to stack more and more, meaning even the smallest encounter threatens a huge loss)… it’s all negated by an Easy Mode.

The game would need to be restructured around it or players are just missing, well, the whole point. And this is coming from someone that advocated the shit out of getting a softened difficulty when I couldn’t wrap my head around the opening stretch of Bloodborne. With Dark Souls III, I finally reached that coveted “clicking” point. The game isn’t a hack n’ slash. It isn’t a typical RPG, either. It’s something else. It’s a game that promises macabre marvels and huge victories… so long as you learn how to dance to its tune.

I’m not one of those seething jabronies that bombard comment threads with their dumbass call to arms of “Git gud!!!111″ Let’s put that mantra to bed. Instead, start reciting this: Keep trying.


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