>>19034353I wanted to like Dark Souls. The atmosphere is fantastic, and the constant, genuine threat of death makes exploring feel way more rewarding. The combat is visceral, and the weapons all feel different, but the combat is a big part of what kills it for me. You spend 95% of your time keeping yourself safely out of range and move in for one or two swipes before backing off again, and repeat this process 100 times, and every enemy you add exponentially increases the time you have to wait to attack safely. Shields sometimes let you stay close longer, and sometimes you get staggered/run out of stamina and get raped for not playing it safer. Ranged weapons are better if you bottleneck everything you kill and buy arrows by the gross, or if you just want to hurt a distant enemy's feelings. Killing stuff sucks even worse when you're backtracking and killing stuff you've already killed, and you have to kill it, the game won't tolerate you not taking every encounter seriously. Then there's the invasions, in which burly dudes in big spiky suits of armor shove their 12ft polearms right up my plebian asshole, detracting from the eerie feeling of isolation that the game otherwise has in spades, and encouraging me away from slow, deliberate exploration of this world and its progression systems and towards the strategy guides.
tl:dr
I gave her my heart and she slowly crushed it into a million pieces.
