You’re supposed to die a whole lot. Every time you fight thrugh an area you have a chance for drops, you gain xp, and if you’re paying attention you’re figuring out the best path through the area in hopes of getting further next time. That process - advancing, learning, getting xp, dying, and repeating, is the core gameplay loop. If you don’t enjoy that you likely won’t have fun with the game.
Oh, it’s secretly a roguelike that’s why it sucks. That makes sense, thanks.
Sort of? It’s not really a roguelike because you keep your character when you die and at most you’ll lose the experience points you gained since the last checkpoint. Checkpoints are usually between 5-20 minutes apart, with the time between them really heavily dependent on player skill and game knowledge. On my first playthrough one section of maybe 200m took me several hours of fighting through it over and over again until I cleared it. This playthough took me five minutes bc I had much much better game knowledge and understood how all the systems worked. And I cleared it in five minutes using an archery build that isn’t really supported by the game, and I did a lot of screwing around.
Also this isn’t a secret it’s the absolute core of the entire genre. Almost all soulslike games pit you against a big gnarly boss at the absolute start of the game that will beat the crap out of you many times specifically as a tutorial on how the game loop works. That boss is there to kill you so you know that death isn’t a failure state or you “losing the game”, it’s just a normal part of gameplay. Ds1 has asylum demon, i don’t recall is dsii has one, dsiii has iyudex gundyr, sekiro has that guy in the field, elder ring has the grafted scion. They’re all there right from the start of the game to kill you so you learn that death is at most a temporary setback and a chance to regroup and test new ideas. It’s the first thing the genre tries to teach you.
Oh, it’s secretly a roguelike that’s why it sucks. That makes sense, thanks.
Sort of? It’s not really a roguelike because you keep your character when you die and at most you’ll lose the experience points you gained since the last checkpoint. Checkpoints are usually between 5-20 minutes apart, with the time between them really heavily dependent on player skill and game knowledge. On my first playthrough one section of maybe 200m took me several hours of fighting through it over and over again until I cleared it. This playthough took me five minutes bc I had much much better game knowledge and understood how all the systems worked. And I cleared it in five minutes using an archery build that isn’t really supported by the game, and I did a lot of screwing around.
Also this isn’t a secret it’s the absolute core of the entire genre. Almost all soulslike games pit you against a big gnarly boss at the absolute start of the game that will beat the crap out of you many times specifically as a tutorial on how the game loop works. That boss is there to kill you so you know that death isn’t a failure state or you “losing the game”, it’s just a normal part of gameplay. Ds1 has asylum demon, i don’t recall is dsii has one, dsiii has iyudex gundyr, sekiro has that guy in the field, elder ring has the grafted scion. They’re all there right from the start of the game to kill you so you learn that death is at most a temporary setback and a chance to regroup and test new ideas. It’s the first thing the genre tries to teach you.