Precisely. Mindfulness! Souls requires you to engage with it. It is not a game you play with half your brain, or while watching TV. It expects your full attention and will punish you if you don’t give it.

Some bosses you are meant to summon help on. :)

The neat thing about Souls to me is, the enemies and challenges are all carefully constructed such that they’ll be a breeze to some character types, and very hard to others. I’ve played probably a thousand hours of Souls 1, and in my opinion there just isn’t any single build that won’t find some areas of the game…

Ornstein and Smough are still fair. They weren’t intended to be taken alone. I agree on the Capra Demon though. That fight would’ve been more fair if you could observe the arena ahead of time, somehow. Springing a bunch of dogs on you in a closet is pretty unsporting.

It is completely wrong that Dark Souls is some masochistic, ultra hardcore game. As one review for Demon’s Souls put it, “Demon’s Souls is as hard as you are stupid.” What they meant by that was, it’s a game that expects you to pay attention to it and not to get over-confident with it. It invites you to make mistakes…

Sure, but most hobbies have limited practical use. So long as you find it interesting and it enriches you in some way, what does it matter? Anyone with half a brain has exactly zero interest in using their self defense skills in a live situation.

Eventually we’re going to reach the point where this kind of thing doesn’t stand out anymore. There are lots of LGBT people in life, I work with some of them. They’re no more ‘shoehorned’ into entertainment than they are ‘shoehorned’ into my everyday life. They’re a part of the world, but though entertainment is meant…

Normal changes with the times.

Yeah, I’ll definitely give you the Shinra march. That’s a pretty classic QTE and I completely forgot about it.

I realize you’re trying to make a point, but I simply provided my own experience, and then asked, precisely, “So what’s actually happening to get people up in arms?” Like, all I’ve done is made sure to avoid Dark Souls related forums and not click on Dark Souls related stories. It has worked well so far.

I had been considering getting laser eye surgery for some time, but the promise of VR finally pushed me to get it done. It was totally worth it in general, and the ease of using VR is just gravy.

I believe that was a question, not an anecdote.

And the rest of the game being way worse.

I could go on about this at length, but put shortly and off the top of my head:

I don’t understand this at all. I’m on the internet for hours a day. I read tons of gaming related sites. I am a massive Souls fan. Yet not once so far have I managed to have anything spoiled for me or watch a stream of someone playing the game. So what’s actually happening to get people up in arms? Avoiding spoilers…

I’m no expert, but the SR-71 is an interest of mine. Is it possible that photo in silhouette is actually an A-12 or one of its variants? It looks like it has the more rounded nose cone.

They are entirely avoidable. Stop pushing onward in a dungeon when your first stress bar is full.

Maybe once you get to that second stress bar, it should occur to you to go home instead of continuing to risk your character’s life. The game places that choice entirely in your hands. Continue on and risk pushing your characters too far, or go home and play it safe.

Phew, not too bad. Better than a lot of people would have done with no warning.

Say it with me now: “And nothing of value was lost.”