Console exclusives are always made to be accesible to players, to convince more people to get the console to play them. They won't risk making it too hardcore because they need to convince people to fork out the 460 dollars to get it.
Uh.... no. Exclusives TRYING to sell more boxes doesn't make a game more accessible. That's utilizing the relative INaccessibility of the game to push players into buying more units. The tactic utilizes inaccessibility by its very definition!
Dark Souls (and its sequel, by extension) WAS an example of an accessible title, because it was made for multiple systems, so more people could access it. Hence, accessible, by definition.
also if this kind of game is the "vision" of the director then that guy has a single idea only, one trick pony game designer...
If his "vision" was making action RPGs with one playstyle in mind, sure. But that's not it. FromSoft's "B Team" did exactly what you think made
Dark Souls great when they created DkS2, and it was received with tons of hate and despair because of how much of a departure it was from Miyazaki's vision. As he put it himself, the story of the Souls series was inspired by his wonderment when reading Western fairy tales as a younger man, unable to understand the full story because he wasn't fluent in English, so he was only able to pick up on bits and pieces, and he used his imagination to fill in the rest. He wanted to recreate that with his games, and he's done a stellar job, 3 times out of 3, so far. That's not a one-trick-pony at all. =P
Yes, as much as I've butted heads with SnapSlav over it, Demon's Souls is a masterpiece.
I'd advise playing Dark Souls, it's spiritual successor, after you're done. If you feel like more, then move onto Bloodborne.
Hands down, the level of customization possibilities was the best in
Demon's Souls, I think we can agree on that?
I'm trying out an Arcane build in BB right now, but there are a great deal many downsides to it. Namely, it doesn't come online for a LONG time. You have to beat EVERY dungeon and unlock the highest level Root dungeons and THEN begin farming them for decent Blood Gems. Meanwhile any physical build will, at latest, come fully online by the time you reach Mergo's Loft and can spend 5-10 minutes killing Winter Lanterns (the corrupted dolls with gigantic frenzy-inducing eyeball brain tentacle heads) so going for an arcane build is a really slow endeavor. It's also just NOT the same as making a "wizard" in previous games, or hell, a "battle mage" that still utilized melee combat to go along with his spells. Ultimately, an arcane character just uses a different type of damage, so their main draw is being able to USE those Hunter Items that other builds just can't really utilize effectively.
I guess it's sorta like the new version of Cannon cheesing? Unless of course v1.04 changes that again! XD
Not saying it's OP, I'm saying it's strategy is all dribbled down into one thing: Shoot to win. True, it's harder to score with the nerf, but it still can be easy once you get a pattern down on enemy attacks (just like how Dark Souls with the latency issues, I was still able to parry most players with nothing but Dual Dragon Bone Fist for lulz, only time it became hell for me was Russian players for some reason). I myself had a relatively easy time with the Bone-Ash'd Cannon strat, the only issue, like you said, was when I was facing someone from Russia or who knows what. I just find it unappealing when most players huddle into the 'easiest one-shot kill' strat, or 'spam till win'. Remember the monoscim spam2win crap in Dks2? Either way, I'm glad they're patching and paying attention to their game, and it makes me happy.
Still haven't played DkS2 yet, so I wouldn't know. All I know is that SOMEHOW lagstabs weren't an issue at all in DS, then suddenly with DkS there were lagstabs to abuse, courtesy of latency issues, and they made up the vast majority of PVP encounters in the game. You could go hours into
Demon's Souls without encountering many cheesy PVPers, but you were practically guaranteed a minimum of 90% of
Dark Souls PVP encounters would end with a lagstab to the face. It was frustrating as fuck. Add to that the ridiculousness of Havel Darkwood Grain rolling and the terrible imbalance of elemental weapons, and the PVP scene in DkS was simply a mess. It had the great potential to be the most fun in the series, but it simply wasn't because of the balance issues.
BB, meanwhile, takes a full step forward while taking a massive step back. Changing how critical hits works makes lagstabs physically impossible to pull off, latency or no, however the incredibly sparse covenant systems and, indeed, reverting to the maximum number of 4 players in any one game like the first game is a considerable downgrade from
Dark Souls' no-holds-barred open PVP matches of upwards of 10 players inhabiting a single game. Also the Bell system is just crap for PVP, but that's its own topic... ~_~
