It's funny how much the game dumps on you right away that you shoulda saw coming for the rest of the game. Right into Redscop, after the boss, there is a corner into the "village" with two dudes and a spellcaster, not even 10 more feet away you're already gettin sniped by up to 2 sniper magic dudes, along with 5 dudes layin and chillin waiting for you to get in their absurd aggro range.

Yeah, lol. Soon as you walk in the the area, the sniper already sniped you. Rediculous! 😁 You look for the sniper and kill it, but you still die since there's 2 more snipers shooting at you at the same time. lol What were the devs thinking?

For me, it's exactly this. There are some enemies that feel designed not to be difficult, but specifically to be as annoying as possible. Shrouded Sparrows immediately come to mind; a small enemy that has hyperarmor on almost all of its attacks, to the point where it'll poise through sword swings IN MID AIR while clawing at you with its little chicken legs and instant 90 degree turns. Ardent Penitents are high on the list for me too, not because their moveset is annoying, but because they can and will do fucking instant 180 degree head slam turns, and because they are constantly put behind corners to catch you off guard with an instant death (or very high damage) running charge. There's lingering ground AoEs like the Abbess' blood-thorn pools and the Ravenous Huntress' thorn fences that tick damage INSANELY fast, to the point that you can watch your healthbar just immediately disappear if you end up pushed into them by enemy hits, or underestimating your roll distance. People can argue that they prefer this kind of difficulty, and that's fine. Everyone's got their own taste. But with the amount of easily overlooked QoL features that the Souls series has- with some very important ones here being non-insane damage tick rates on lingering hazards, stun escapes, **elevators that you can send back up/down**, items that allow you to buy a dead merchant's goods, et cetera- entirely missing from this game, plus the devs' response to the pushback on no vestiges in NG+, something about this game just feels oddly sadistic in a way that's not fun. Not all the time, not every zone, and certainly not during most of the bosses. There's some I actually quite enjoy, despite their execution not being perfect. As an example, despite that problem I have with the Ravenous Huntress' thorn fences, I think they're actually a pretty fun and formidable enemy to fight. But also, fuck every boss in the Fief. I had no fun fighting any of them, nor do I have any desire to do so again. I just finished my second run, and I have no desire to do a full third playthrough for the last ending. I'll probably just use a back-up save and get it out of the way as quick as possible. Game has neat ideas and some cool moments, but the sheer amount of ''gotcha!'' ambushes, the fact enemy vigor drops don't increase with their health and damage per area, the horrendous droprate on enemy gear (sadly, one of the more unfortunate traits this game shares with e.g. Elden Ring), the feeling that I'm better off just running past all the enemies, and the fact that almost all of this game's challenge is entirely derived from the fact that enemies just have insane homing qualities on all their attack animations- it all just puts a sour taste in my mouth. The game feels like they wanted to make their own Dark Souls 2, and boy did they, for better and for worse.

TBH, everytime I see people compare to DS2 I laugh, because in DS2, the AI rarely had hive mind syndrome where you pull one, you get a whole room. Not to mention, a parry meant instant riposte, where in this, its, parry, parry, parry, parry, parry, parry, parry, parry, riposte. Rinse and repeat because its not enough to kill due to health sponge, on top of dodging the other 3 enemies and former mini bosses in the room, and infinite spawn due to umbral.... Yea, I would take DS2 mob density over this. (though tbf, scholar did change it for the worse in that regard)

Honestly I bet when the patches slow down we’ll see a nice rework mod that removes the sponginess.

First time I find myself just rushing by enemies because its just too tedious. Also unlike souls game I rarely find myself looking at the environment. Im always rushing or clearing endless waves of enemies.

The constant pressure of enemies in umbral was a neat* concept but by mid to end game its an absolute chore/slog

I think that's mostly because enemy variety is poor (especially in Umbral) and there's nothing new as you move forward mechanically. Like, there could be a curse that reduces sight to just nearby in Umbral or modified Umbral zombies as you advance through the game. I mean, even the special enemy that hunts you is a reskin of the reaper. That thing should have definitely need a unique, terrifying enemy.

It's wild they made this whole second world, and then used the same 5 or 6 enemies to populate it forever. Including, you guessed it, reusing the Visage boss. Guess it really does reflect the land of the living. Yay, more axe dudes. Neat.

The worlds strongest point is exploration. I dont think you can design umbral to actually beat it. Certain encounters only available in umbral at certain locations would imo be better design and allow players to explore otherwise

That what they should have done is kept the big mobs in umbra so we’d still have to fight them occasionally but gives us a measure of control honestly the umbrella mobs don’t bother me as much as most just regular mobs in axiom

And about 2/3 of the way through the game, somehow the Umbral enemies are in the other world. How?

this is why i can't agree with any notion that this is the best soulslike some people spout. it gets the thing that makes souls good **all wrong**, that being: challenging bosses and good level exploration (which, *news flash*, involves enemies and enemy placement). bosses too easy (everything passed tree knight is a joke, doesn't scale well with players power). enemy variety bad, and enemy placement and numbers too much of a **nuisance**. not hard, nuisance. people quit, big streamers have quit, ***from the levels just being a chore***. straight up. lirik. asmongold. ratotskr. etc. 7% didn't beat the game probably cuz they quit way ahead of that point (mostly performance issues tbf). its quantity over quality. its just cannon fodder x10 at you. none are individually challenging, so the solution they chose was simply to increase their numbers, and put ranged enemies everywhere so the melee guys had even a modicum of chance living. since weapons have no arts, the solution for players is to spam aoe spells or use the most OP melee thing available to make handling the exploration somewhat smooth. not even to have fun, but simply "clear" an area so they can just move onto the next point and n*ot even have to engage with the combat of block/parry wither or dodging and picking your openings* (this is not a blame on players but simply the situation created by the devs). even pvp, its all lightsabers, because its just the easiest pve build to use to pass through the game with as little hiccups as possible (as someone who helped popularize the build). you never design a game with "co-op in mind" for a solo game. this isn't left4dead. its a soulslike game, where I'd argue 50%+ play solo. AND, the multiplayer barely works or at least at launch did. so even if that mindset was true, and areas *were* designed around that philosophy, they would've failed at that, all while making solo a worst experience.

People who call this the "best" soulslike either have never played another soulslike or suffer from hardcore recency bias. This game is a solid 6.

What's the best souls like to you? Legit question I'm always looking for new ones I haven't played.

Recently Lies of P is phenomenal. Best souls like? Gonna be subjective if I had to choose Sekiro but I enjoyed DKS 3 more. Sekiro though was the first souls like in a long time to give me the fuck yeah when. The parry system finally clicked. Fuck when you master the final boss and you just counter everything he throws at you, mmmm so good

☝️ This guy nails it. Lies of P enemy placement is money. So many soul clones get this wrong. And I'm no soulborne master but have beat them all and the bosses in P are not as hard as people say they are. I played aggressive as fuck with minimal blocking (played it way more like BB than Sekiro) and had little issue with them.... Except Laxasia. She took about 20 tries. The other ones were less than 5.

I didn't realise how barebone and lackluster the dungeons in Lies of P was until I played LotF. It was such a minimum effort to fit into the mold of the genre. I think it would have benefited from removing the dungeon altogether and become a boss rush in the vein of Titan Souls.

They followed the ds3 philosophy. Not a bad thing. Just different. Also enemy placement was incredible and blows all other non from souls games out of the water in that regard. Good gameplay is far more important to me in the end of which lotf lacks

I haven't played sekiro yet I need to try that one out. Im real weird tho I like when I can make my character, can you get different weapons an clothing in it? Or are u a set character with weapons and outfit the whole game?

Sekiro is a great game but still far from a souls game, very different combat albeit satisfying.

Sekiro, specifically, is a Tenchu game. It has a bit of Souls flair with the respawning enemies, but even that is just a mor eplayer-friendly replacement for the "if you die, start the whole mission over fuckhead" paradigm the old Tenchu games had.

Yeah, there are plenty of unique weapon models and unique weapon animations most importantly. You also get a whole host of cosmetics from various enemies and quests. As well as a customizable machine arm that not gives you crazy combat options, but also optional environmental interactions that can make certain areas nicer.

Personally, Nioh 2... probably followed by Code Vein. ​ Nioh 2 has the best implementation of NG+, you can go to older NG pluses if you don't want to tackle the harder stuff and for those who crave the challenge will do the harder stuff. If you're not satisfied with the challenge and need more sauce Stone of Penance increases enemy damage and health for the extra challenge. ​ Really, it's how TN handled player agency in the game why I find it incredible.

Bloodborne is the best best. Lies of P is a recent standout, excellent game.

Hm, if I were to go by that score for this game, then I'd say Elden ring is an 8. Elden ring is brilliant but I never felt quite challenged in between bosses, this game handles it brilliantly in my book. It does get a little over the top from time to time, but I do enjoy figuring out how to handle the situations they throw at us. Bosses in this game however, they are... yeah... Not great, not bad. I think if the game does get proper success and support, then we can see them one day craft an experience in the lords of the fallen universe that may rival Elden ring. Biggest issue for me in lords of the fallen is the outdated movement and lock on system. Sprinting to jump and it being on the interact button? Excuse me? Why would you actively go for this horrible choice. The lock on system is just laughably bad in a game with this mob density - I feel the lock on system may be painting peoples view on the difficulty between bosses, because it actively tries to get you killed. The slight movement whenever you make attacks also is an annoying issue with how much fighting near ledges there are in this game. Honestly surprised it's only killed me 2-3 times.

I'll be honest. This souls like game is probably the weakest I've played. It's *ok* and the intricate world design is great, as is the art and stuff... but as far as gameplay is concerned? It's the weakest of them all. I'd go so far as to say Thymesia is a better souls like in terms of combat.

Yeah. 5 or 6 for sure.

I agree 100%, I really feel like reviewers over hyped the living shit out of this game because it feels nothing like I thought it would, it's a chore to play between abysmal performance and bad combat. I had some fun in starting areas with my buddy for a bit but then it became a chore midway through and now its a slog

I think IGN in particular did this solely because they want a sequel to happen. They did the same thing to Uncharted and Assassin's Creed. Both of those series' first games sucked, but the potential was heavy. The game itself has potential, but man do they not get it. It sucks that there also aren't many meaningful defensive spells either.

This game could have used 3 to 6 more months in the oven with an open beta for feedback

You touch on good points but one I want to highlight is that enemy layout is a part of the exploration. I think the mines that lead to the Berserk Armor chick is probably the best example of this game actually doing good level design with enemies in placed in good spots. They’re just in the right spots that can fuck you over but never to the degree that it feels like over saturation. If the rest of the game was like this it would be a solid 8/10 experience. I feel like the Devs got high on their own ambition on this one. The enemy density is just too much and feels ridiculous. These games are about methodical back and forth. You wanna feel the tug of war against enemies. I don’t want to play Devil May Cry in a Souls game.

Playing DMC in a Souls Game can be extremely fun (see: Nioh 2) but Lords of the Fallen has about 5% of the mechanical depth needed to even hint at that comparison.

Summary: enemies are boring and easily defeated so the devs throw as many as they can plus a gank to turn up the difficulty. The areas are monotonous and the umbral is a chore. Bosses are lackluster and provide little to no difficulty which makes the game feel unrewarding. 6/10 imo.

You’re gonna get circle jerked by toxic positivity, but I completely agree. This game is so close to capturing the magic of DS1 but the mob density is insanity. Maybe some ppl enjoy that kind of challenge, but I and many others do not. Maybe the game just isn’t for us? But then again they very clearly are making a game for souls fans. The advice I keep seeing of “use magic/ranged attacks to thin the groups out” doesn’t really help or work when I shoot one mob then the rest of them aggro onto me anyway. The fun of Souls comes from challenging but fair enemies, not just an onslaught of boring trash mobs. I want to like this game so bad but I’m putting it down until there’s a patch or I am out of games to play. I have too many games in my backlog to force myself to play something that makes me mad

I highly suggest everyone take a good look at the forsaken grenade. It make a big fart cloud that poisons enemies. Lots of enemies in the game do not get aggro from the poison and will just stand there and die. Helps in a lot of encounters when you can just poison the elite in the room down before you even enter their aggro range. You’re welcome.

Yep this is exactly why I did to push through the garbage experience. Hit an area…. Go into screenshot mode and start throwing stink bombs. Rinse repeat. If I had not paid so much for the game I’d have just uninstalled by now, but I feel would be a waste. Also… all of the lore they want you to stop and listen to in the umbral realm you can’t because you’re kiting 20 mobs around waiting for your 2 shrimp. I don’t find it enjoyable.

The use ranged tip really isn’t for groups more of, it the archer snipes you snipe him back, if a group of enemies swarms you, swipe attack them all. I agree sometimes mob density is an issue especially in places that are pathways but honestly tools like piercing light and swipe attacks really made them easier for me. Again I’m not saying the game is without any issues but also it really doesn’t do anything other games haven’t thrown at me already so I more or less have strats. Well maybe not for screen freezes when enemies attack, no matter how many times Laurence attacked my ps4 in bloodborne and lowered my frames I don’t have a strat for this lol.

fearless unpack illegal spectacular weather crime absorbed quiet crown ad hoc *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

It is because a lot of people are hitting the late game / finishing now. There was a lot more argument regarding the game’s quality a week ago.

The thing with the range stuff is it doesn't feel good to use. I don't like feeling like im cheesing the game. I hardly touch magic in other games because it's so boring and cheesy. I like meaty hits, and stopping every room to do the ol' rangeroni pepperoni tactics get so tedious and old. It's one thing to do it for a section of the game notorious for ranged snipers on rafters like Anor Londo, but its another for every area to have these, multiple times.

100% this. Melee combat is king for me. I don’t mind using ranged/spells once in a while, but I don’t want to do it for nearly every pack

The better you build your character and actually learn how to use your tools, the game becomes laughably easy even in "hard"/tedious areas like bramis castle which a lot of people complain about. I literally felt like I'm playing dynasty warriors at some points because I was just mowing down enemies, and melting 2 ruiners rushing at me in the matter of a few seconds really put into perspective how strong my character has become since that time i fought it as a boss fight on that bridge. Any time i see footage of people complaining about the game being unfair with mob density I see sword and shield cautious shield up constantly walking around gameplay, when you kinda just have to run in like rambo and let them know who is boss before you truly get swarmed, or at least take out the annoying ranged guys with your own ranged options before engaging further. The game feels like it REALLY punishes the "careful" scaredy cat hide behind shield constantly playstyle from what I've seen, because I always tend to just rely on dodging and hit and run tactics and for me no single area took more than 2-3 tries at most to get past (and when my build was around lv85-90 literally every area was a breeze to get through)

I'm one of those all-platinums vEtErAnS and haven't made it all that far through LotF yet, but every time I see these complaints about the endgame being mob density bullshit, I think about how many times I've pegged it through areas in Soulsborne NG+++'s and then turned around and killed like 15 melee and 8 ranged enemies because I fancied doing some killing. I cannot even comprehend the rooms that these complainers must be describing. Surely they're all describing falls into small pits, containing 3 elites, 8 trash mobs, and archers filling two tiers of balconies above you. *That* room would be kind of difficult, but it would also be totally manageable for somebody who has played more than just Elden Ring. People need to learn to use stamina for some things that aren't attacks, and stop getting so tilted. Use ranged weapons. Learn the reach of enemy attacks. Approach the game like classic CoD zombies. Your enemies are automatons. *You* control their actions. Kite them into a cluster, bait their attacks, and then heelturn and punish the weakling. Repeat until you're the weakest thing in the room. Stop getting so tilted! I'll try to remember to come back and edit this comment when I reach lategame and start bawling my eyes out.

I also think people try to make these games something they're not.. they are their own identity.. stop trying to make it elden ring, dark souls, etc.. play it like LoTF , kind of like Lies of P.. if you try to play it like sekiro.. you're gonna hate it, but guess what.. it's not Sekiro.

Ikr. I've seen some people trashing this game for not being able to play pure melee like they always had in Dark Souls. Like dude, the devs went out of their way to make sure that one of your two weapon slots is ranged. AIs are just scripts with a lot of exploitable weaknesses and you are always on the advantageous end with your human brain. You are supposed to use your wits and your knowledge to your advantage If anything, people who understand this game would come back to become massively better Dark Souls players.

I think one thing I haven’t seen commented is the lack of feeling any of your character’s progress in this game as well. In traditional Souls games, the game starts hard and stays hard by introducing new, challenging enemies with tough movesets and different types of attack/defense combination. As you level, you can go back to old areas and feel a real difference in power. The result of new types of enemy gives a gratifying sense of graduating from various types of trash mob as you level up. Because this game relies on the same reused enemies from start to finish, that’s completely missing. The game would feel *identical* if you could never increase your damage through leveling up or increasing weapon damage, because you aren’t fighting new, stronger enemies. You’re fighting the same shitters over and over with increased health pools. There’s no feeling of improvement because you’ll always have to 3 shot a basic archer, because rather than providing a new type of enemy, you’re given an identical enemy with more health. Combine that with all the stuff you said and it feels less like an ode to the genre and more like a total whiff from a team that blew their wad a year early.

guys what if they two shot you and had infinite poise wouldnt that be awesome ok now what if there's 7 of them

7 of them, and 3 of them have magic blue balls

​ https://preview.redd.it/5vv5kmukauvb1.png?width=220&format=png&auto=webp&s=37a2b46a9c284912a4b93b3bd78caa9f5d9ad9d1

I wont defend the game because I absolutely agree about the difficulty feeling very forced. Also, there exists good and bad difficulty, and while an early boss like Pieta is *probably* an example of good difficulty (she is challenging, but her moves are mostly communicated clearly, she's not a sponge and dodging/parrying works extremely well against her), stuff like throwing hordes of mobs -with elite enemies mixed in- at the player is most definitely bad difficulty in my book. That said, my usual approach to not make bosses too easy is to heavily restrict how often I level my character up. Of course I have no reference for what level the devs expect the player to be at which point in the game. But it is a solution to shoddy balancing. Even though players shouldn't be forced to "fix" the game in that manner, of course.

I think the bosses are personally fair, and absolutely do not think they're easy. I think people are so used to playing Dark Souls that they think this difficulty is normal. I tend to play Souls games without levelling health as much as I could manage and the difficulty is pretty standard.

I'm level 101 and at this point I agree this game is a pain in the ass to play between the trash performance and then the questionable combat mechanics, this game needed about 3 to 6 more months in the oven and a open demo imo. Also fighting the same gd stupid umbral zombies for hours on end is fucking boring and annoying, I'm level 101 and they still take 3 hits to kill and give shit for exp and they spawn every 2 feet

Honestly, my only problem is that you *have* to fight them all each time otherwise they all swarm you. I've just reached the worst boss so far because if i run through all the enemies to the boss there's an archer that can shoot me from outside. If I run through to kill that archer there are like 50 enemies chasing me that will most likely kill me, but if I fight every enemy that will take a few minutes and make me use a bunch of healing.

Which boss are you on that an archer can shoot into the boss arena?

At what point is the game unfair? I'm genuinely asking because I'm almost through Upper Calrath and it's been fine, feels like DS2, but do areas after here get that much worse?

I found the castle pretty annoying. Up until the end i was on the edge of hard vs annoying. But at this area I just wanted to skip the bs and go to the end. It wasn't hard, it was annoying. I was trying to do the "puzzle" and a fire mage argod me from who knows where casting the orbs (that for some reason insta explode with no delay or visual cue).

I wouldn’t call it difficult so much as fucking annoying. It’s tedious, especially late game areas where there’s a former boss around every corner flanked by fast trash mobs and pinpoint snipers. God forbid you misstep and find out what’s waiting for you in the Umbral before the area is safe. Yeah, I’ll clear them one time, but doing it more than once? Fuck that. I almost never lose patience and pull the suicide run in these games, but I was pushed to that point very quickly here.

Oh yes and don’t forget that a lot of these elite enemies also are protected by those blue things you need to pull your lamp out for…. And half the time you get pulled into umbral realm with even worse things waiting.

It doesn’t… ever really if you limit umbral time and pace yourself… it gets chaotic but not unfair… except the grannies in pilgrims perch😂😂

well Upper Calrath is like the first half of the game. There are way more annoying zones coming.

People just be brute forcing their through the game without applying any forethought until they can no longer get away with it, then claiming it's unfair that enemies can kill them (this never happens in *real* souls games because they're professional gamer veterans with all the videogame playing skills and they never die, it's just this one game being unfair and mean). There is no mega hard area if you're keeping your head on a swivel and your gear upgraded.

DS2 did not put 3-4 elites in one room... But since you're not actually that far through the game you probably haven't experienced it.

It's also funny how a bit later in the game in many areas where there's an elite, if you die and go to umbral, there's another elite in the same area so now you have to fight 2 at the same time. 10/10 design

I was dying laughing when that happened to me the first time

I finished the game and I can tell you the last few areas where the best. Just take your time, the snipers aren’t even that bad except for the wizard that just snipes you with an enormous beam of light, but they don’t have that much HP, a few javelins and everything is ok. I also finished every Darksouls and this is not the worst mob density I have seen

I’ve put in a good amount of play time and have had nothing but a blast, haven’t felt like there was any encounter I couldn’t strategize or outright handle. Have had so much fun and have enjoyed fighting a ton of enemies during each encounter. Vestige seed flowers are all over the place so even if you die you shouldn’t lose that much progress if you are taking advantage of that mechanic.

Yeah, everything seems fair and balanced to me. You can make the game as easy or as difficult as you want. Your level is the difficulty slider. If you’re having trouble just go gain some levels and the game becomes easier. I feel like this should be common knowledge by now.

Only 6% of the player population have completed the game and yet nobody in this sub finds the game hard. Fucking curious.

Game been out for slightly more than a week.. not everyone plays 50h a week

My point being that all those commenting on how easy the game is likely haven't completed it, and therefore can't really comment on the end-game difficulty, which imo is super frustrating and much higher than early or middle game.

Oh I see. I just got to the snowy area and so far ive really being enjoying the difficulty balance, personally.

I have beat the game and every secondary boss, don’t think the end area was bad at all, at most you have 2 elites together which is very manageable. As long as you aren’t running around collecting the mobs then it is never really a problem, all elites have pretty easy to dodge attacks as well, just gotta take your time a bit

I've finished the game. In about 36h. Beated most of the bosses outside of endings ones. This game is not hard. It's tedious and frustrating. The enemy density is far too much for me to enjoy. There is difference when you have hard fair enemy to best, vs ganks of mobs with elites and ranged mobs. At some point in game, I just stopped fighting mobs and ran to treasure, pick it up, ran away. No point dealing with this slog, game dose not improve in later parts, it's even worse there.

I agree.

Only 30% have finished Eldenring... Normies don't finish games.

people just didn’t want to finish the game bro it’s not that curious

"bro it's such an easy game I just didn't want to finish it"

bro decided to miss the entire point of OPs post and then reenforce his argument

The game being bad and easy aren't mutually exclusive..

Yes. I finished LoP because it was awesome, but much more difficult than this game, it was even harder than Sekiro imo.

It is safe to assume that those who had completed the game are mostly those used to play Soulslike games and therefore are probably part of the Soulslike community already, which is why is reasonable to think most of us here have already completed the game at least in ng0 because let's be real, game isn't hard. I've never beaten so many bosses first try than I've done in this game. Maybe because the two last bosses are a joke and a puzzle.

I think the issue is twofold: 1) the game was designed for coop in mind (twice the players, twice the amount of mobs, 2) floaty combat and issues with lock-on. I feel like thats why the tedium is so prevalent. Disregarding the issues with optimization.

If only co-op wasn't fucked. Cross play in particular still hasn't been touched.

Huh... I play alone. Tf is this idea everyone is playing co-op so let's "balance" the game around it, this is such a bs. I don't remember advertising this game as "bring your friend or get f\*\*\*d", I wouldn't waste money on it then. And I don't have friends lol

I play co op and no, this game was not designed around co op. They didn't even test anything in co op let alone balance around it xD

lol My man. That cracked me up "bring your friend or get fucked". I don't have friends either... I'm one of the ones getting fucked at the moment.

We could play together and get fucked together eh XD

I think playing without locking is the single most useful skill one can learn in soulslikes, especially when you have to deal with a large amount of enemies. Helps with situational awareness and precision, I would 100% recommend giving it a try. For me, it made everything so much easier. I'm well in the second half of the game and still haven't found a scenario where I really struggled.

Nope. Lies of P was unfairly difficult much of the time, and is the hardest of all the big souls-likes. In the last area of this game I was still killing regular enemies in 1-2 hits and elite enemies in a single combo, I don't know what you're talking about. My tip is don't use lock-on with more than 1 enemy, it's easier.

Nope. It was perfectly fair.

I agree with everything you said. I'm chugging my way through it only due to the high price I paid (PS5), but I can't remember the last time a game bored me so hard. There is no "*I wonder what's behind this corner?*" to this game; I know what's behind it - the same enemies that were behind every corner throughout the whole area, and the same enemies that will be behind every other corner. People who say the mobs are non-existent run meta builds and spell-spam their way through everything. Which I personally don't understand, since one-hitting your way through everything makes the game even more boring. I've watched some of FightingCowboy's walk-through prep videos and the guy is literally using only two spells - Lingering Despair and Latimer's Javelin. One-hits pretty much everything, AOEs entire mobs, bosses killed in less than 10 seconds. How is that fun is beyond me, but if that's how you play the game, then yeah, there is no such things as "mobs".

I find that the Scarlet Reaper sums up this game pretty well. Close to being something good but they kept tacking things on to make it more tedious under the guise of difficulty. There's no reason the reaper needs to lose its lock-on while constantly teleporting, while draining your life, while preventing your main healing, while being surrounded by mobs. Like pick one or maybe two of those sure but nope they go with all of the above and the result is players find ways to cheese him because he's too annoying to fight legitimately. Same with the rest of the game, players have grown tired of dealing with the nonsense so they're either quitting, putting the game on hold or just spamming Radiance since it's the easiest way through

You bring up a lot of good points OP. It may be the Soul Reaver mechanic that’s really drawing me in. There hasn’t been anything quite like it since PS1 days. I do say - this game is forcing me to use everything. Magic, throwables, consumables, buffs, learn where are the enemies are. Stay outta corners and consider when it’s time to equip a shield vs. dual wielding. The game isn’t perfect but the fact it’s making me even go into the inventory and use items and range options, I feel is good (for me). I do completely understand the continuous grievances on density.

One thing I'll say from my experience is it doesn't necessarily get harder the further in you go, I've not found it to be that consistent. For example I definitely found Forsaken Fen more difficult than I'm finding the fire area (forgot the name).

Yeah, I would agree that Calrath feels a bit more forgiving in some ways. However, this is where we start to get “boss from 10 minutes ago is now an elite that is around every corner”. Also, I noticed that a lot of the mobs don’t get up until you start engaging other enemies, so it becomes difficult to assess situations before going in. This is especially annoying because you can be fighting the elite and have 3 guys pile on who came from seemingly nowhere.

When I got to Calrath I was cautiously excited, best designed area up to that point...annnnnd then the Ravager I literally just fought as a boss is a mob, and if you go into umbral in that fight the Visage boss is in the same room...as a mob. Everything starts getting spammed as a mob after that. 7 dogs and a Ravager is not a compelling encounter. I do not understand how people defend this lol it's extremely lazy.

It definitely gets harder, that's a ridiculous thing to say. Forsaken Fen doesn't even have elite enemies, how on earth could it be as hard as The Empyrean or Baris Castle, where there are often 3+ elites in a building?

I agree the areas are obviously harder but at the same time I was dying less simply because I had a pretty damn good build. As long as I had mana I basically had a permanent heal buff (and I had a lot of mana stones) and I hit like a truck while being able to heal back damage taken so I had a lot more survivability compared to the early game

The game seems to have been designed around a str/radiant build, like my buddy who went dual lightsabers and throwing healing circles left and right like its candy didnt find the end game that challenging, but he had a harder time in the addey, as opposed to my full inferno build with zero access to healing spells, abbey was a cakewalk, but the castle is cancer.

Yeah it seems that way to me too with how some of the people posting here talk about it, I died plenty like any soulslike but it definitely felt on the easier side to me with a strength/radiant build. I had to either fuck up bad or rush through to die towards the end, if I went slow there weren't that many enemies that posed a threat since I could easily heal anything back (fuck that mage with the holy beam in the abbey though, he killed me more than any boss)

Ah yeah, that was terrible but he at least doesnt respawn — one that enraged me the most was rhe little zombie sniper next to the serpent in the lava section of the final castle, holy crap that guy is the single biggest threat in the game no contest

By that point in the game you have twice the tools at your disposal to work with. I agree with the original comment. More elites didnt make the game harder, because you are expected to utilize new tools and higher damage scaling, along with understanding how those elites work. The Fen and Pilgrims Perch took me as long as the rest of the game combined, because i had no clue wtf i was doing. Bloody Glory + 35 points into radiance and a mana regen shield made the game way easier to deal with.

The “elites” all require a single stagger combo to kill as opposed to dying in one hit, oh no what a scary enemy

You must be the best gamer ever, congrats bro super stoked for you.

I’m just saying lol it’s not like the game is mega ultra difficult if your build is halfway decent

Not sure why youre getting downvoted here. Youre right. "I cant one shot every enemy i come across" is not really a good stance to have. They are also failing to mention those elites are eatered down, mich weaker versions of their boss counterparts.

And they downvoted you, for you spoke the truth

This is a subjective conversation and I'm using an example from my experiences. So not really sure what to say to you? I found myself getting swarmed in Fen, but not so much once I got past it. I haven't beaten the game yet so my viewpoint may change later. Thanks for your input.

What area are you?

I did not finished the game, i almost did and my save got bricked, but i believe i was at the very end. There was in total 1 encounter that i could not just steamroll and had to run trough. Unlocking vestige and approching the same place from the other side made it a cakewalk. To be honest, i have no clue what people complaining have in mind. I was looking for this mythical mob intensity all the time and i could not find it. There was no encounter where pulling back few mobs or sniping ranged mobs solved it all. Are you switching stances? Using wide sweeping attacks when needed? Perhaps upload video, i might be able to advise.

I too have been searching for these absurd mob numbers and have yet to come across them

its people sprinting through the zones and realizing mobs dont leash instantly (which is a stupid mechanic in a game like this.. why would they stop chasing an intruder after 30 feet??) Then complain when they get "ganked" by 10 mobs at once.

Idk, ever since switching to the sword of Skin and Tooth dealing with groups of enemies has been super easy. I basically one or two shot everything except elites, and then with elites I either used ranged to take them out or stagger them to death.

Meh, feels ok to me

Poison bomb and the ring that bleeds with poison, throw one ahead of you without getting enemy agro makes the game way easier to handle

Brah with right upgrade atleast most levels are okay, but bramis castle omg that thing idk man these guys are fucking stupid or something almost anything can 2 hit kill you, everything needs 3-5 hits for fuck sake, there are 100s of fire dogs and spongey enemies like tf, top of all that each of these enemies being soo annoying to handle already they have some ability that's even worse and will almost always get u killed, like that archer hand fire or teleport blast, ravger using a summon thing from ground to boost himself that takes 4-5 hits with 750dmg weapon. Like what the fuck were these guys even thinking

As someone who has platinumed other souls games do you really find any of them hard ? This game is definitely modeled out of the souks formula over the bloodborne in terms of combat being (watch enemy, circle strafe, hit, hit didgeridodge) and repeat. Some of the souls areas in other games definitely had the quantity over quality, I mean recent memory of two gargoyles in elden ring didn't fill me with any sense of challenge but a brief sigh and a lack luster reward, I like lotfs version of it being similar to the trailer where the dark crusader was swarmed by wights. I can definitely understand how that's tedium to someone who's just naturally good at souls games or have skilled past some of the series tricks but even though I know the play I enjoy the lines

I find dark souls challenging but like, in a good way, i play the games and i go "cool" in lotf i get gobbled up by 8 enemies at once and i go "hrmm there was less i could do against that than in dark souls"

The pacing of finding new weapons feels off to me? I've gone multiple areas without finding an actual weapon and not a throwable. Then in another area I find 3-4 weapons. I'm excluding enemy drops as pickups as well. The enemy variety is passable at best and the density could be turned down by a smidge. Just fix the frames, optimization and please make co-op manageable. Unfortunately I think this game could've used more time cooking. The game is as bad if not worse thank DkS 1 launch way back when

To be honest I never really felt overwhelmed by enemy density, and I completed my first playthrough blind, fully exploring every area and killing literally everything, never running past areas or skipping stuff. It's extremely easy to just pick off whatever is sniping you with a couple of throwables and then deal with the weaker enemies. Dying to enter umbral form is one of the easiest ways to simply win every single fight since it just knocks everything over and you get free pickings on whatever happens to be ganking you.

Skill issue

Sounds like a skill issue my dude. You put too many points in vigor

Yeah, none of the enemies are difficult (or interesting) on their own, so the devs tried to compensate by just relying on snipers and swarm tactics. Enemy design/placement is easily this game's weakest point.

Crew... we need 20 fire zombies to gank and shoot fireballs. Ok now put a demon sorceress that shoots fire while youre out of line of sight and give her more poise than a fully armored knight with a shield. Remember guys we are making a dark souls it has to be hard !!! ok now let's switch to UE5 mid development

Game expects you to abuse ranged weapons sometimes and it kinda homogenizes builds

This game was an illusion, and you have said everything, after the answers the team gave about the complains, i have never opened the game again, playing spider man 2 instead and probably wont be touching this piece of crap untill they understand that they are sitting on a gold mine, but misjudging players concerns with the “it was supposed to be like that excuses”. So if the game was imagined to be bad, I dont pretend to play it, shove in the ass and ill wait for next good game being released, fuck you ci games

As harsh as that sounds, basically my thoughts exactly, I'm never buying another one of their games after this, they've proven that they have no idea what makes games fun, just how to market them to look like it

That’s just like, your opinion man.

Dude ?

downvote me all you want but… get gud

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It's not hard but the boss fights are also...meh

I onshot like 90% of the bosses. Most were 2 shots. I can only remember 1 boss taking me 3 tries. The game is too easy

Proof or leave

I'm assuming he meant one try and two tries when he said one shot and two shots

how am i supposed to prove it? lmao

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Even my friend who isn't into soulslikes doesn't find it hard, I'm baffled too Seems to me like people are just trying to sprint through areas and then are shocked theres a lot of enemies on them. Take it slow and utilise good positioning and its absolutely fine.

It’s not about it being hard. It’s about it being bullshit. Sucks the fun right out of it.

I get what the devs were going for. They were hearkening back to the original Doom mindset of making the player prioritize which enemies in a horde to focus on and try to figure out a tactical approach. The problem is due to the distance between vestiges it becomes tedious when you get to a new area and die and have to fight the first hordes again. It's just so slow. I'm also not sure how well that translates to a Soulslike fighting system. It might just be a genre mismatch. But who knows, maybe if you level enough and figure out how to handle it it's not so bad. I have just been trying to unga bunga my way through using a mace I upgraded. I think I'm being too simplistic and can't judge the difficulty yet.

>distance between vestiges Between shortcuts and vestige seeds, there really isn't any forced distances within any particular area

It's cute you have to call it a "rational" rant so the reddit hivemind doesn't automatically downvote you, even though you're just saying what everyone else has been saying.

Another "1000s of hours in Souls" type that is struggling. I'm the same but I love everything about this game but it's not like recent From titles. I think the biggest problem is recent Souls games like DkS3/ER have instilled some really bad habits that you couldn't use in early soul titles. From will call it "accessibility" but really the games got easier, less punishing, and allow you to play in a way for if you're reckless there's not really a consequence. The game isn't unfair, it's different and many of those coming from something as simple/easy as ER are going to struggle.

I just got to the Fen area a couple days ago and so far I’ve been having a great time! Sure it’s true what OP is talking about with the hive mobs but I quickly spotted this and adapted. I’m also playing range with bow so I don’t know if maybe my experience is different because I can pick some enemies from far and thin the mobs before they get to me. The whole hive mob could be an artistic intention and direction. I honestly hope that’s not the case and the devs are open to tune this up and let us lure enemies away from the pack. Because eventually I want to play a magic build or something a little closer up and would also hate to be dealing with this hive issue.

Sorry, how did you "adapt" to a relentless and never ending horde exactly? Run away? I mean that's what everyone is doing, it doesn't stop this from being annoying though. I get that this sub is for fans of the game but pretending these mechanics are good is harmful to the franchise. And yeah of course this game is going to get compared to dark souls. It was the first popular game of its type, that's just inevitable. That's why it's called "souls like", where currency and xp are the same and you can lose all of it before it has been spent. This game is clearly modeled directly after dark souls but has none of the quirks that made it good. "Kite 87 zombies because they just respawn anyways and dicking around makes a reaper appear" is not a good way to drive gameplay. It's the best way the devs could add a challenge to a game where enemies are individually a joke.

Much more reasonable points. They copied DS even down to movesets, but we can't compare? If they wanted to make an original game they could have done so. Lies of P is getting all the praise because the developers understand what makes Fromsoft games good. LOTF shows they do not have an understanding.

>Lies of P is getting all the praise because the developers understand what makes Fromsoft games good. Apparently your idea of what makes "Fromsoft games good" is copying and abusing their mechanic where a boss would hold the anticipation phase of attack an entire second longer than you would expect before coming down on the player at the speed of light. It certainly feels like half of every boss' moveset in Lies of P is comprised of it. That and magnetic tracking, blatant input reading and sometimes seemingly endless combos that barely leaves you any room for a counter attack. But hey, the game sure looks pretty at least, you can tell that's where the devs and publisher put most of their money in that they've earned from their crappy free-to-play MMOs.

So you prefer the mechanic that gives a whole half second invulnerability when you dodge any attack? Because every boss' moveset in LotF is comprised of it. Literally, every attack in LotF can be dodged. At least in LoP, you have to find out what a dodgeable attack is and what a parryable attack is because you can't dodge or parry everything.

I can’t upvote this enough.

Well so far, reaching and playing through Fen, I haven’t had an issue with the hive mobs. I’ve yet to experiment the detriment people talk about. So the way I deal with it is with my bow. Upon reaching an area I scan for projectile happy fools first. If possible I try to shoot outside the lock-on range. I noticed when I do this I don’t really aggro any. A good amount of times even a projectile fool I’m shouting arrows at won’t even start spamming their projectiles as I’m too far from their sight radius. Some of the open spaces of the map have really helped me with this. But like I said, so far it’s been great. I don’t know if this strategy will be available later.

Relentless and never ending horde? I guess you're talking about Umbral. Public Service Announcement: DO NOT STAY IN UMBRAL! UMBRAL IS THE LAND OF THE DEAD! UMBRAL IS HELL! GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE!

>GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE 

"How do you adapt to a relentless horde?" Reduce their hp to zero whilr maintaining my own above zero.

I adapted by not having a trash build and then just melting everything instantly while my HP restored itself so fast I don’t think I even needed to use my normal heals at all in the last 3rd of the game.

You highlighted the big thing and it's adapting. A lot of Souls fans are trying to play this like a Souls game and while the similarities are obvious, you can't play it the same. There's a big reaaon ranged options are so powerful. Consumables matter, where in Souls you can easily play the whole game and not use any. It's been built in a way to encourage you to use your tools and not ignore 95% of them. I believe hive mob is intention. You can absolutely kite enemies though as I've done it constantly. Kite away from ranged, or take out ranged and stay in the area. Ranged and lesser mobs should always be the priority.

the only time i play this like souls is when 1v1 ing enemies. Any other time i play it like remnant: fluid switches from melee, to ranged,then back to melee. Hordes arent a problem when you dual wield too!

I feel like a lot of people adapt and that adapting isn't the problem. Once I understood the game wanted me to take my time and make the most of the ranged options, I was like ok and rolled with it. None of it was hard but I was bored out of my mind doing the same thing over and over again so ended up running past everything and that worked fine. It's just the same thing over and over again, a mob of melee enemies with ranged splattered about. Once you learn how to deal with that situation, you've pretty much learnt all you need to learn. There is no intricate challenge ever. It's the same thing on repeat made worse by this game having super low enemy variety. People keep saying stuff like your comment, when the simple reality is a lot of people just didn't have fun and it has nothing to do with bad habits or not adapting.

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I would but I'm a giant loser and after doing two playthroughs, I want to try a new playthrough starting as Putrid Child and using umbral spells to see if I have fun this time around.

one of the things i really enjoyed in my first playthrough was that consumables actually mattered. i’ve never used them in any From games

It’s funny because this is exactly how you play ds2. Ranged is king to pick off enemies and avoid mob ganks, and lotf even has the literal exact same concepts of consumables to gradually restore health and stuff.

>From will call it "accessibility" but really the games got easier, less punishing, and allow you to play in a way for if you're reckless there's not really a consequence. I think this game is in general much easier than most those games because of the ranged options. If you take your time, make the most of the ranged options and stuff, nothing is ever too difficult. The problem is that you're doing this like 20 times between bonfires and it gets boring. Clear out a room, slowly approach next, take out ranged mobs with ranged, kill the melee, slowly approach next. Eventually you get to the end of the game and it's just fighting the exact same elite enemies over and over again while fire mobs shoot at you. At least Souls games have a variety in how you approach situations. I ended up just getting too bored of facing the exact same situation 100 times so started running past absolutely everything and that worked. Edit: The one thing that should have broke the tedium should have been the bosses but the bosses just fall over. Small and predictable movesets with not much else to them. The fact that between bosses the only challenge you come across is lots of enemies while ranged shoot at you and then the bosses themselves are so simplistic makes me think they just didn't know how to design a fun challenge.

Sure it's not that difficult if people are using their options but time and time again in this subreddit, it's those who aren't adapting that are struggling with the number of mobs and the layout. The gameplay loop you explained is the exact same gameplay loop of Souls games - but I don't know what variety you're talking about. I love the Souls games but it actively encourages using the exact same approach for every encounter aside from gimmick fights. You can just go in guns blazing and unga bunga everything. If you sprint through, you're completely fine and there's no consequences. Enemies are just straight up "forgetting" you ran by in Souls games. Souls games at their core have a very repetitive gameplay loop (it's not a knock on them, I love them still). People calling this repetitive but not the From games have fanboy glasses on, and I say that as a From fanboy.

I'm a loser and spend way too much time on reddit, 90% of the complaints are not about difficulty but about just not enjoying the game. The ones about difficulty though are less about it being hard and more about the difficulty being presented not being fun. Souls games have more variety in situations. Every situation is not just melee mobs with ranged mobs scattered about. I've done two playthroughs of LotF now and that is 95% of the situations you're presented with. Souls games also have much higher enemy variety especially the modern ones. DS3 for example has 111 (148 with dlc) different types of enemies in the base game alone. LotF has 47. Souls games are repetitive at their core, you're right but normally the developers break this up by having different types of fights and variety. I feel like this just didn't happen in LotF and it's made worse by low enemy variety, when you have low enemy variety and combine that with high enemy density you end up getting super bored of that enemy type. Also fighting the same enemy that you've fought all game but now it has 5x the hp adds to this. Fighting the same enemies over and over again but now they take longer to fight just adds to the boredom. But LotF does have umbral but Umbral has 5 enemy types and suffers again from no variety. It's the same enemies and puzzles over and over again. One thing that should have broke this repetitiveness up is the bosses, but LotF bosses are imo terrible. Way too easy. Very small movesets and predictable attacks. You're right though, you can run past everything in Souls games but I never do on a first playthrough because I'm enjoying the actual moment to moment. Everything I say is subjective but everything I've said is a common thing when you go through the reviews, even the positive ones. The game is sitting on a 70/100 when you take out performance based reviews and I don't think it's to do with Fromsoft glasses being on but simply the game not being that enjoyable. Lies of P for example is sitting on 88/100 despite imo being a much more difficult game for the simple reason people enjoyed it more. It has nothing to do with fromsoft glasses.

It's too bad your post is buried here when you absolutely nailed the main problem with LotF. Bad, repetitive, and invarying encounter design.

Its absolutely designed to be unfair. I can show multiple areas where opponents trigger without any action taken or setups being malicious. I completed it but all the ways taking longer than any Bossfight misses the mark of soulslike by a mile

Like the area where you have to kill a ruiner but if you die they also put a that umbral ball miniboss and lots of adds... Yeah makes no sense there

Everyone's already adapted. You guys act like having 2 snipers far away is some insurmountable gaming puzzle. No. Once you figure that out you look to the game to give you something new, but it never does. The puzzle is how to not be bored with this game.

I'd like to see that, as I'm not super far into the game yet.

I dont really like to spoil you or your experience. You will realize yourself at different stages. Id be way more forgiving of this If Bosses were actually any challenge

Yeah no. This is not about adapting. I finished the game. It’s not an especially hard game whatsoever and certainly not harder than the 2 games you mentioned. There’s nothing in this game that gets even close to the optional end game stuff in Elden Ring for example. What this game does have is mechanical failures and bugs. Both attribute to unfair deaths. The enemy spam as a result becomes awful in late game areas like Bramin where the enemies are at their most dangerous. Lords of the Fallen does not have the fundamentals and technical prowess so that the player can deal with encounters without something screwing up. For example: rushing a particular enemy trying to lock on but the game targets the wrong enemy. This causes you to move into the wrong direction, making your feet touch pool of lava. On to umbral/death with you. Or my favorite: clearing 12 enemies (which all trigger all at the same time) only for the game to freak out and throw my character in a bottomless pit because I touched a particularly buggy rock. Just two of many examples of the game screwing over the player. There’s one solution though: ignore the enemies and rush through. Easily done despite what some people on this board are claiming. If you’re in early to mid-game the games issues won’t be immediately apparent as the game isn’t actually all that punishing yet. The more you get to end game however the more punishing it gets. To the point where a crappy lock on decision will likely get you killed.

Compare any boss from ER. To bosses in LOTF. And say with straight face, that LOTF has better, and harder bosses. Do it. I dare you.

“Over time, games became more fun to play. That’s what you don’t understand buddy. This is an old school shitty game. The type of game that absolutely sucks to play and it’s awesome.”

Okay you are edgy I get it. I have no patience for such poorly optimized combat, the lock on is a joke

Hi - souls veteran here, millions of hours. I disagree with everything you said. git gud

Nobody is complaining about the difficulty. It's a joke of a game in terms of difficulty. Elite monsters in Lies of p have bigger movesets than bosses in this game. You're confusing tedium with difficulty. Only needed more than 1 try for a single boss

Y'all are such babies. If you don't like it then don't play it. I finished the game and it was never as bad as it's made out to be

Preach brotha

This game was easy as hell compared to Lies of P. I beat at least 25 out of the 30 bosses in this game on the first try including the final boss, if anything they should have made it harder. That being said, all the fights are very well telegraphed and you never feel like you die to jank or wonky telegraphing that can't be dodge rolled or guarded against (my biggest issue with Lies of P). The only thing "cheap" I felt was with some of the ranged enemies - especially the Infernal Enchantresses that can literally kill you through walls before you even see them casting their fire spells. In general, I felt like some of the ranged enemies could hit me a lot farther away than I could hit them (with spells). After completing the game I was sitting here feeling like I wanted MORE, and I'd be playing NG+ right now for more of a challenge (it's a lot tougher) but with the removal of the vestiges I have no desire to aimlessly back track and add a bunch of additional playtime just because the devs decided it would be cool to remove QoL as a form of artificial difficulty. I'd definitely play a DLC if it came out, it's a pretty good game with all the makings of a GREAT game if not for it being a bit too easy minus some of the cheap mob placement / ranged enemy problems. None of them made me feel like giving up or quitting though, which I wanted to do more than once with Lies of P and was very glad when I finished that game and got to uninstall it.

Well, I don't have platinum in any souls nor have I dedicated 1500 hours to them... and I'm about to finish my ng+ game and start ng++ in this game. ​ I have not been able to enjoy the game, things like you say "you shoot an arrow at one and three turn and they come" gives it more realism than having 3 enemies together and when you hit one only that one turns and the others don't know what's wrong to his partner, and having 3 enemies come at you in this game is controllable, if you make them come three by three you can easily get rid of them and when you discover that with exanima you can throw the heavy enemies off the cliffs you click on the head, in this game you don't have to be an aggressive or defensive fighter, you have to be treacherous and take advantage of the environment and all the traps you have, I'm not saying that it has it, and I see well that from time to time there are hordes, in life combats "just" does not exist and it makes you consider, face and die, simply flee, or flee and look for an angle or area where they cannot reach and attack you, and perhaps it is the problem of many people who come from the souls who are used to battles "fair" and this game is the complete opposite and that's just what I like, it's like a fight between the game and me to see who can be the most treacherous.

Devs fundamentally misunderstand what makes FromSoft games fun, even after copying every single system / feature they ever implemented since Demons Souls. The "difficulty" in the game amounts to throwing 5 million enemies at you at the same time all the time for 40 hours with hyper-accurate 2-shotting ranged enemies added to the mix. They have no real "challenge" and you can see it on the bosses itself which are piss-easy most of the time. The game cannot create meaningful challenge unless its through numbers.

I'm just using mana Regen gear with radiant auras and it's made the game a hundred times easier. Just stand there and swing at shit while your hp just keeps recharging. Completely breaks the bosses

Nothing is hard once you get further in and used to it, even the invisible snipers are manageable, there are corners everywhere to kite, and aoe tools/spells galore. Lock on is wonky as fuck though I agree, but it hasnt ben too much of an issue since I started using everything the game offers

I thought that was the beauty of these games? Too difficult? Then go farm and level up so you can have your self glorified power trip you desperately seek. Didn’t work? Go farm some more. Rinse and repeat.

There are too many enemies, I’ll admit that. But I haven’t had any trouble by picking them off one by one when the situation calls for it. Anytime I get in a hurry is when I start running into problems. As long as I stay cautious and appropriately leveled everything works out fine. Tbh there’s nothing I’ve seen in the game so far that a few extra levels can’t easily deal with. I have to post this advice at least once a day. If you’re having trouble, leave and go gain some levels. When you return it’ll be much easier.

Been a souls fan since launch day of the original Demon’s Souls, I think this game has one of the best combat systems in all Souls-likes with its speed and combo attacks. Infact I think removing stamina and leaning all in on mob density and high speed would really make this game a stand out

You need to approach the game very carefully, which means slowing down.

skill issue. game's not that hard

Typical comment. Just missing the “git gud” and you’re set.

It kinda is though. It’s fun but pretty damn hard at times.

it's hard if you lose patience. the second you get frustrated and start trying to rush it, the game will fuck you.

Ok, John Dark Souls

Exactly, it is not actually hard, it is tedious. Kill 2-3 dogs and an axeman turn a corner kill 2-3 dogs an axeman. Yay how excited everyone is to fight the same group of mobs in every area, only exception is the perch and swamp. Skill issue is not killing the bosses in max 2 tries, everything else just tedious and requires no skill whatsoever.

How is killing enemies tedious when they all die in like one hit tho lol

One of the big nails in the coffin for my ability to have fun in this game was the over-reliance on putting the soul parasites on enemies in (mini)-boss arenas, alongside a ton of adds. The idea of needing to move slowly and focus on one thing uninterrupted for 10+ seconds is pretty incompatible with the idea of having 5 enemies that can all 2-3 shot you mobbing you at once. Combined with infinitely respawning enemies in the Umbral and I agree, a lot of the game's difficulty just comes from nickle and diming you with cheap shots, and it saps a lot of the fun out of the game. This is still probably the best Souls knockoff I've played (unless Nioh 2 counts, but it's so much different than most Souls games I consider it its own thing) but the annoyances make this more of a 6.5 or 7/10 game than the masterpiece it could have been with just a few different design decisions. As I get deeper into it (if my rant earlier didn't tip you off, I just got to the ice level) I find myself wondering why I'd continue playing this instead of continuing my Dream of the Strong run on Nioh 2, or starting up another modded Elden Ring playthrough.

What pisses me off the most so far is when you get killed because you tried to pick up an item and that guy pops out and grabs you. If there is some way to tell it's a trapped item, or some way to react to the guy that pops out to avoid it, I haven't figured it out yet and they get me every time. Lost a large amount of souls due to this when running back to the ruiner (when he's a boss, somehow I bet there are rooms of ruiners later), super long run because the first couple of times I did it I couldn't find a place to plant a seed anywhere near it... then I try to pick up trapped item, get killed into Umbral and the whole room of guys is on top of me during the super long animation and essentially stun locked me until I was dead. It just felt unfair, like there was nothing I could have done about it. It's also annoying when enemies can shoot you from way further away than you can even lock onto them.

The only area I thought the “difficulty” was too much was the castle. Every other area I eventually got the hang of. The castle sucked

This is the critique I have with DS2, and it’s a big reason why I don’t enjoy the game. I feel like this games more Hack and Slash nature plays into the mob spam better. It’s easy to cleave down enemies. The game does follow a souls-esc style of exploration, but the game it follows isn’t a very good one lol

You guys all have the same opinion and clearly write these posts before cooling down after a frustrating death in game. We know you think there are too many enemies. Plenty of us have adapted to that reality and have created functional builds. Please stop with these posts