RE: "In Defense of Dark Souls 2" - A Measured Response - Part 1

I think maybe the over-the-top dislike some fans exhibited towards Dark Souls to cause the developers to walk back on ideas that were genuinely better okay I could spend a good deal of this video defending Dark Souls 2 in fact I'm going to compile a video looking at the central complaints about it and why all of them are wrong and lies from criminals and I'm gonna put that up in a separate video a bit later on when that comes up hop up the link here so okay cool back to blood-borne [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello there ladies and gentlemen hi Maura and welcome to my response series of which there is only one other video in it currently I absolutely love to break down arguments from other people and analyze them in my main series of videos so why not make it the sole focus in another series the premise of my response series is opening up the community of YouTube to the difference between opinions and statements of fact since many have been making comments about how objectivity in game design isn't possible because it's about everyone's perspective this is a myth people have already responded to criticism of Harris's video like many do with stuff like this as this is his opinion leave him alone but this time is no such argument considering that Harris openly criticized Matthew mitosis and his video several times throughout and I mean he makes several response videos in response to people as well well there's this guy who calls himself some black guy his videos entitled Bill Nye ruins my childhood oh dear did the science man hurt your feelings but I thought rational people put facts over feelings this ultimately means that Harris is absolutely fair game regardless of that I would recommend my fanbase brace themselves since this is going to be my most disliked video series considering the track record I've had with criticizing beloved YouTube reviewers and that's okay voting with the button is exactly what it's for this is h-bomb a guy or Harris bomber guy he created a video in response to the general assessment of Dark Souls 2 from the world itself and Matthew mitosis his video on the subject I will link all relevant videos in the description and it will be a benefit to you all to watch them and gain the full context however I am currently here to tackle the argumentation from Harris about the souls Bourne series I want to go through his video analyzing arguments appreciating evidence and maybe add something new to the conversation I will also try and connect patterns with his format and style while of course offering my own perspective on this whole topic I am a subscriber of H bomb and I have seen each of his videos he to me has always been extremely entertaining he can create videos with some incredibly interesting perspectives that add a large amount of understanding to a topic that was previously missed by many but he will then also make videos that lack any sense of objectivity or appreciation for anyone's perception other than his own his narrowed view and smug approach to his often ego driven channel results in content that is essentially a hit or miss depending on his own bias and how much effort he puts into his research his personality can cause him to make hard-hitting and fantastically constructed videos it's just a pity that this coin has another side and which side does in defense of Dark Souls 2 for Harris you're a Brit for Christ's sake don't spell defense as though you're in the colonies his video opens with an introduction to tell us why he's making it and what to expect this game is unfairly maligned I think Dark Souls 1 was incredible and people who really liked that one had kind of unrealistic expectations and got inevitably burned by the sequel being different or failing to be as spectacular and new as its predecessor when it came out judging it as a game I think it's really good now the opening five words - a statement here are what's important the rest of that statement is dressing is Dark Souls to unfairly maligned it is professed by many that the game is the weakest in the series and that are deviated from coherent design in a myriad of significant ways and thus earned its reputation however if people are over exaggerating the more corrosive elements of Dark Souls 2 and it has far more to offer than critics would have you believe then yes it would indeed be unfairly maligned but how would you be able to prove whether that was the case you would need to take established perspectives of those within the industry or the audience and prove them to be falsely or maliciously developed or he could prove him to be true and genuinely developed and so Harris begins his video the opening argument is about the healing system in Dark Souls 2 a system that has been criticized by many as something that ruins what sense of consistent flow and difficulty the space spent between bonfires occupies by providing an easy access to many forms of healing that are very effective in allowing you to travel the world with ease comparatively it is said that Dark Souls 1 limits the player on their healing abilities and this provides a very consistent understanding of your resources and what needed to be managed ultimately causing an experience that force players to think about every fight and position they took as well as having them learn the land as they carved their way through Paris establishes that the healing in these games will to take the difficulty considering it represents the amount of mistakes you can make before you will eventually be sent back to your checkpoint he then says this the recent souls games are difficult in the first place is because of the way damage works in the games if everything was the same but all attacks did 1/2 or 1/4 the damage they do the game would be fundamentally different less challenging and less fun as a result so let's break this down the souls born series would indeed be fundamentally different if you were to double or have the health of enemies or double or have the damage of enemies there is no denying that if you were to have the health than the game would definitely be less challenging since the challenge is to rid the enemy of their health I imagine 100% of viewers would agree with that statement the problem here is that h-bomb uses the Tim fun as if that is quantifiable let's say there is a man named Jack who is relatively dreadful at video games but plays casually every once in a while for fun he is compelled to play Dark Souls by his friends and so it takes months and months of individual sessions to reach half of the Lord souls and then he has something come up in his life something significant that prevented him from playing on if this man had the time he would have eventually beaten the game however had every enemy been given half health he would have completed the game already and enjoyed his time with the game far more this is evident by the fact that once he had his own power level increased via leveling and upgrading he decreased the difficulty of the overall game and was able to approach enemies with satisfaction for himself where other more talented or skilled players will not have required these resources I don't know if it needs to be said but doubling the damage of your weapon or having the health of all enemies is essentially the same thing point is Jack did exist albeit under a different name I watched him stream his entire experience and I felt a little humbled in the dark souls really isn't a game that is for everyone once they get good some people just want to play on no stops or setbacks they don't want to be punished and held back which is not an insult to Dark Souls but it is why people still talk about whether or not it should have an easy mode many games require a form of study or attention and time not the least of which would be games like Civilization Dwarf Fortress Starcraft oxygen not included factorio The Binding of Isaac and Crusader Kings to mention a few different genres this is something many people around the world want mechanical depth extended periods of time devoted to a system and viewing your own improvements as time passes mastering what appeared to be quite the feat the reason I need to establish this is the two words here less fun considering there are people who are on the opposite end of the scale the people who prefer a simplistic game with little in terms of punishment hell there are people who seem to enjoy drilling into their own heads or a masochist for general terms it would seem that something being less fun is almost impossible in a general sense there would have to be a special circumstance for example if you want to show that it is your own feeling that is absolutely fine but here it is inaccurate since if the game did have the health of all enemies Jack would have had much more fun while playing while people like me and perhaps you Harris would have wondered why the game was so easy and thus had less fun hell what if Dark Souls had double the health of all enemies from the get-go or a hard mode I imagine Harris would be against that concept but what if we lived in a world where that was normal can you honestly say how much fun is brought from it the reason I have tackled this thoroughly is that we're going to see a pattern in Harris's work you will often make a strong premise based on factual and presented evidence but then he follows that by a weak conclusion additionally he will shoehorn in the Tim fun as if it is accurate when it simply is not nor is it helpful to the conversation but the problem here is the constant need to prove that Dark Souls 2 is indeed better than Dark Souls 1 so already he needs to start manipulating the language because if something is more or less challenging objectively it doesn't mean it's more fun it doesn't even mean it's better designed however if something is more or less fun objectively he may as well be saying it is better and that is far more satisfying to get out in the conversation whether or not it's accurate however he hasn't tipped his hand yet so let's wait for that souls games have no difficulty setting because there's almost no way to make the game easier without fundamentally altering the thing that makes the games fun in this scenario the thing that makes the games fun according to his previous statement is the amount of health the enemies currently have if we change that in any way we will change the amount of fun according to this what is interesting here is that I agree with him completely but for different reasons changing how much health enemies have would change how much fun the game is yes it would make it far more fun or much more fun or a little bit better or mostly the same or worse or a lot worse or terrible it would change based on how much they changed it who's playing the game and how much time they've spent with the game as much as I appreciate the work created by from software I seriously doubt that anyone including their own team think that the amount of health every single enemy has in the game is that it's best amount it could be to mediate difficulty and create the most fun that's not even something that anyone could know anyway Paris then talks about how the healing abilities of your character will fundamentally alter how you approach the game blood-borne healing is about being immediate and fast while Dark Souls healing is about being careful and finding windows to use it interestingly he says the developer controlling the items in relation to health and their values would have a strong influence on how the games are played and is more important in a sense than any of the others on the team which is actually very true in its own way he then says healing in Demon Souls was often something that had to be given a lot of time and space and generally became nerve-racking in boss fights this is also true healing is a risk / reward system and it is in all of the souls Bourne series but then he said something else there is something of a downside to this however firstly while it is very calculated and purposeful and challenging to heal should it be it's fair but is it good to be in a situation where the most pressing thing trying to heal is a really bad idea that would itself kill you a lot of early players die while mashing the heal button that's not fun even if simply not doing that is technically the sound response should it be challenging to heal it really depends on where you're arguing from are you asking from a standpoint of whether it is fun to heal in video games as a mechanic health bars are an established aspect of video games the health bar represents your mistake allowance in Dark Souls it is also mediated in tandem with your armor and resistances the reason we have healing items and mechanics is to restore our mistake allowance but if healing would challenge 'less then why not simply give us a health bar representative of the amount of health we would have if healing was added to the bar and remove healing all together making healing difficult acts as the punishment for making the mistake in the first place and trying to essentially undo it this moves to the second sentence in which he declares that it is a fair system but asks whether the system is good when healing is a bad idea that would itself kill you this is a very weak way to structure your arguments healing cannot be strictly considered a bad idea that would itself kill you it is a deal you make with the item itself a deal that you will receive the reward of reinstating your mistake allowance and in exchange the item expects you to sacrifice seconds of your time and movement to a lot a free space of a select amount of seconds you will need to understand your enemy and react to them it is undeniable that if you take a hit during battle or evasion of an enemy in the game then it is your fault perhaps not 100% of the time but mostly as this is what the souls games are predicated upon ultimately your health is your responsibility in each of the games in the souls borne series make that clear how difficult it is to heal is down to the player the healing will only become something pressing if you take the hit in the first place the most pressing thing in the battle is winning the battle and subsequently the operations that come with that including attacking defending moving positioning healing and timing all of it so not only is it not the most pressing thing but it is not a bad idea either it'll be good or bad based on the players decision to use it at particular times we then move on to the more frustrating part of his argument a lot of early players will die while mashing the heal button that's not fun I find this absolutely dumbfounding it isn't fun to be hit when trying to dodge attacks or to lose stamina to the point of breaking your own shield block or to be hit while trying to attack something or to die these things shouldn't really be fun they are counterweights to the enjoyment of the game itself the lows help define the highs and vice-versa the highs in this case would be to successfully land that attack to successfully find the opening to heal to successfully defeat the enemy of course healing isn't fun when you get hit during it however I don't believe that it is meant to be fun losing health in the majority of games is not something that is desired but he does add the caveat on the end a lot of Ailey players die while mashing the healing button that's not fun even if simply not doing that is technically the sound response if someone is dying when healing then advise them to stop healing when they're not safe this is the experience running as intended while also acting as a fantastic risk versus reward system whether it is fun or not is completely irrelevant because of the satisfaction it creates in the result of winning the battle after healing successfully and using your understanding of the battle at hand the in previous games they wanted healing to be like this risk reward thing where you stop so if you want to heal you're taking a huge risk and leaving yourself open but it seems like they settled in blood point of having it be a really quick thing you can do almost anytime and just forgiving you for that and that's okay maybe it co ethically makes it less challenging in some ways but it's worth it because it means you don't die while healing and that just feels bad even if it's your fault but since they took that out now you only ever die because you failed to dodge or because you were attacking when you shouldn't have done and that I think feels a lot better he's opening the statement by mentioning that the previous games wanted healing to be this risk / reward system which naturally implies the blood-borne does not which isn't true many will find themselves dying moments before or during a heal in the game granted it is faster but so are the enemies in blood-borne so is essentially everything in blood-borne I don't want to get too far into blood-borne right now but I can see where he wants to direct this whole section on healing already besides healing isn't a huge risk unless you poorly plan for it you have to identify an opportunity to heal just like you would when looking for an opening to attack it utilizes the same skill but for a different purpose though I am curious what settled means for blood-borne blood-borne is an entirely different game to the souls series that is faster paced it is more aggressive more reactive you behave as though you're on the hunt while Dark Souls is slower more defensive more meticulous more heavy you are still open for being attacked while healing in blood-borne because the enemies are much faster than in Dark Souls not to mention that everything in each of the games reflect their own goals blood-borne wants you to be in the fray until it has ended so they made healing faster more readily available during battle and something that you could recover by attacking back they gave you a ridiculous amount of stamina to begin allowing to escape many such an attack many times with plenty of stamina remaining there are countless choices made to facilitate this change it wasn't changed because the developers thought it wasn't fun to heal during battle this is evident by the return of the souls healing system in Dark Souls 3 if I wanted to spin a narrative I could say wow it looks like from software decided that blood-borne was really bad and so didn't carry over significant features but that would be incredibly disingenuous and ignorant of the styles that each of the games employ he goes on to say that maybe it theoretically makes it less challenging in some ways this is a very wonky statement making use of maybe theoretically and some ways but the gist of it seems to be that healing being faster having more heals available and granting you massive stamina would make the game less challenging I think we can all agree with that despite the caveat that the enemies do indeed move faster but didn't you say this the game would be fundamentally different less challenging and less fun as a result making blood-borne less challenging in terms of healing is good but making the souls born games less challenging is bad I disagree with both of these statements but let's look at the ending of the statement but it's worth it because it means you don't die while healing and that just feels bad even if it's your fault but since they took that out now you only ever died because you failed to dodge all because you were attacking when you shouldn't have done and that I think feels a lot better it feels bad to be hit when healing and that's good enough as a reason to remove the chance of it happening altogether well why don't we remove the ability to be hit while attacking adding some kind of stasis effect well how about we remove death entirely I never thought it was that much fun clearly there's an issue here then you tell us that being injured or dying thanks to failing a dodge or attacking when you shouldn't have is the only way you will suffer and that makes it feel a lot better well similarly to attacked when you shouldn't have done how about healed when you shouldn't have done I would appreciate the distinction of what the difference would honestly be since if you remove the chance of being hit while attacking then you would also likely make certain people feel a lot better if you watch the portion of the video where Harris says all of this you can see him blatantly missed i'ma dodge after successfully healing and then mists i'ma jump again killing him he uses this footage to explain that healing while fighting isn't fun if you are injured or killed the problem here was simply a mistimed role you need to give yourself more space or a better opening of time against these kinds of enemies and that is honestly a rewarding set of mechanics since you can regain your chance to make more mistakes this is a friend of mine called Fortier and he is currently fighting the smelter demon and he gets reduced to an extremely low amount of health but he knows he has to wait for his opportunity to heal because smelter demon has an aura of damage and a comically large hitbox so he waits for his opportunity and then takes it the system here working perfectly hell watch this he forgot to put his healing on the quick select and ended up applying a new resin to his weapon but because he waited for his opportunity to heal he got away with the resin to know okay I meant to heal but sure since many of the interactions be it healing attacking or applying a resin usually cost around about the same amount of time since they all follow the same risk / reward system however this unfortunately seems to be a biased argument against a system that is working perfectly well and it has been forged in order to prepare for the inevitable defense of Dark Souls 2 or more accurately how Dark Souls 2 is better than dark souls 1 he then talks about how if you play demon souls in a certain way you can gain access to near infinite healing and once you nail the individual fights and healing when appropriate you will become unkillable this is true and potentially why they changed the system in dark souls and then he says this Dark Souls replaced this health system entirely with the estus flask a healing item which you couldn't buy more of you had a limited amount of users which recharged at bonfires or when you died yes I know you can also get health pack by using a humanity but doing that burns such a rare resource that I couldn't really regard it as a source of healing unless you're one of those good at Dark Souls people I've heard so much about well firstly Humanity is not strictly rare you pick up quite a bit of it even in the opening of the game and there's even positions early game in which you can farm it honestly it depends on how you define rare secondly you couldn't regard it as a source of healing you mean the thing that will literally heal you the item that you can consume multiple times in one life that will heal your health bar full from as little as 1% is not regarded as healing by you well you are simply wrong finally why do you have a passive-aggressive hit against the community that surrounds the game here I understand that the get good meme is from the souls community and there are many people telling you that you are doing something wrong rather than it being a moment of the game being poorly designed but for someone like you Harris for someone who spent an entire video explaining how many people were playing a game wrong I find it very amusing that you don't appreciate people telling you how to play the game quote-unquote correctly so whether or not get good can apply we will have to decide case by case to see if the claim is fair using humanity is indeed an option for both new and veteran players to function as a full health bar restore and potentially act as your saving grace if you genuinely haven't used it this way then this is just a moment where your own experience is hindering your ability to analyze the game accurately it is as though you're implying that the souls community think that people who are good at the game will use humanities for healing when it is more often used by new players to heal without understanding the full potential of humanity conversely veterans will use them to heal in tight and profitable spots but it is actually a layered mechanic of risk versus reward once again if you pop these resources you can use them to restore your humanity at a bonfire which will allow you to summon and then you can Kindle the bonfire to increase your maximum amount of Estus all the humanities can be used in conjunction with covenants this is a glaring oversight and is paramount to your analysis of the healing systems in the games not to mention what can happen once you have the right of kindling over all your statement here makes me think you simply don't use humanity to heal and feel that nobody else should be either I'm sorry Harris it is a healing mechanic that can work as a last resort to push you further on your run from a bonfire to another or as a last-gasp it can save your life in a boss fight but once it's gone you can't get it back with ease it takes time to replenish your stores it also means that there's a net maximum amount of times you can possibly be hit by enemies or a boss in a single run in this regard Dark Souls is tremendously more difficult but also more satisfying because of the new element of challenge it adds however you're still left basically prone while you do it and it still takes just long enough that getting killed while trying to heal is an annoying and common possibility he has the premise right that Dark Souls added a new system from demons the restricts your amount of healing thus limiting your mistakes and providing a sense of satisfaction if you overcome the odds with that limitation but then he says the healing takes just long enough to be annoying to die from this is an example of showing one's hand when analyzing content it isn't that the healing is objectively too slow or the blood-borne system of rally and 20 heals is objectively better it's that the animation is just arbitrarily too long we don't get the admission that this is only how he feels but once he's able to slip that piece of argumentation past he can then Avalanche a whole load of arguments on top to wedge in the perspective that he has I wonder what would be the right amount of time or what would be considered too short if we're willing to accept that healing isn't fun in Dark Souls which as I mentioned can't even be said in any way other than personally Harris will begin to reveal what his actual intention with this video is and it means if you're on a run to a boss and you take a certain amount of damage you feel like you're already doomed on this run because there's no way you can get past them with that little health remaining so you have to go back or just go on a doomed run and die and come back again and that can kind of wear down your ability to keep playing the game and enjoy it which is a big deal in games so this was very charged in that you can see him turn on Dark Souls 1 he is close to bringing in Dark Souls 2 and we are now waiting for the other shoe to drop firstly he says that if you take a certain amount of damage you feel like you're already doomed on this run and that there's no way you can get past them with that little health remaining this will obviously be assuming that we do not have humanity's as an option since Harris has deemed them non healing items nor do we have access to divine blessings Elisabet mushrooms or miracles for the sake of his argument we need to ignore all of them but even then doomed as opposed to being invincible as you stated in Demon Souls I would find that to be a worthy upgrade in terms of a challenging piece of design this is a bizarre piece of criticism from Harris since my response to him would likely be this in this regard Dark Souls is tremendously more difficult but also more satisfying because of the new element of challenge it adds apparently Dark Souls adds more satisfaction by limiting your healing items Dark Souls also subtracts satisfaction by limiting your healing items he has now altered his perspective in order to bring the backstab of Dark Souls 2 in we're gonna see what that is sooo but as Harris has already told us the reason this system is satisfying is that every run from bonfire bonfire will represent a challenge one that if we lose will indeed a knife or straight anger and potentially depress us but once you overcome it it is uplifting encouraging satisfying and enlightening it is the difficulty of the run itself that provides the satisfaction of defeating it as Harris said if our healing was infinite then even the biggest piece of damage wouldn't matter as long as we could survive the fight long enough to heal and thus be invincible so to return to the statement there's no way that you can get past with that little health remaining I call that perseverance my friend if you've been losing to the gargoyles with ten Estus and one time you get to the fight with just three remaining it is entirely up to the player whether they want to try or not maybe you could still gain something of a bit of an understanding of the enemy from this run or perhaps you just want to see how well you can perform without the safety net of more healing options to take the opportunity to develop your skills the feeling of defeat is not an inherent feeling in players everywhere it is simply something you have chosen as the downfall of the system when in reality both you and I are aware that this acts as a boon for many players again we can't have the highs without the lows then is this line here that can kind of wear down your ability to keep playing and enjoy it which is a big deal in games this is a very weak argument the very feeling of wanting to maximize your chances of defeating your opponent and feeling under pressure when you've made mistakes wouldn't be possible if there were easy ways to supplement your Estus flasks the fact that they are limited makes them important which creates the entire experience though I don't know why I'm saying this since you've already said it yourself but I think it's about time for the other shoe to drop Dark Souls 2 in my opinion fixes some of this pretty well firstly it takes an age to drink again making it even more deliberate than the demon souls one and your health actually recovers over a very short amount of time instead of instantaneously this forces the player to not even consider healing until they're free and clear because there's no chance they'll just get the essence of their lips before getting hit and stay alive ironically by being even more slow and deliberate it further dis encourages the thing that causes annoyance when it doesn't work while trying to heal and there we have it it took some time but we have the goal of this video made very clear it isn't about what you can value in Dark Souls 2 and how the game itself is well-designed on its own it is about how Dark Souls 2 does Dark Souls 1 better because Dark Souls 1 is the enemy in this video the sheer lengths he's going to go to to try and prove this will be unfathomable and it begins right here so let's get started check out the language he's using here fixes some of this pretty well he's implying that not only are there multiple issues with the healing system in Dark Souls but the system itself requires fixing Dark Souls 2 is apparently an upgrade however the only issues he's raised about the system in Dark Souls 1 so far is that you can sometimes be without the ability to heal which is literally the crux of the healing system in Dark Souls 1 the system can't function if there's no failure state therefore there is nothing to fix by his own arguments he says that taking longer to drink Estes is more deliberate than in Demon Souls I think he meant to say Dark Souls here but what does deliberate mean I saying that from software have always tried to imply that you shouldn't use Estes during battle and their way of telling you that is healing takes time therefore to try and make his message clearer from software made it so that Dark Souls 2 had you drink for even longer than it recovered over time instead of instantly to try and tell you that healing while in fights is a bad idea the reason I can't possibly agree with this is that there isn't a fight in Dark Souls 2 where it is a bad idea to use Estes while in the heat of battle it is in fact rather easy you simply need to do as I recommended previously find your opportunity as you may have noticed in the background there is a handful of clips we're drinking Estes against a vast majority of bosses in the heat of battle in Dark Souls 2 is more than possible it's practically encouraged moving on however he says that this forces the player to not even consider healing until they're free and clear because there's no chance they'll just get the estus of the lips before getting hit and stay alive again this is factually wrong the player isn't told anything here objectively neither are they forced to do anything and the fact that he will say this is that a hint of subjectivity is extremely weak there are plenty of opportunities during normal and boss fights to use your Estes the theory that they do courage the usage of it is nonsense I would assume the only reason they extended the usage delay for Estus in ds2 is because they had additional healing options and wanted to balance it in some small way obviously I am speculating because I don't actually know the developers personally and neither does Harris as the background footage continues you can see more estes being consumed during the heat of battle very close to bosses if from software didn't want me to do this and they should have done a better job of making it more difficult what I think is more likely is that Harris hasn't experienced this himself or he's omitting it next up we have it further discourages the thing that causes annoyance when it doesn't work dying while trying to heal so he reaffirms the point here which again makes little to no sense at all since now the conclusion is Estus healing in Dark Souls is bad because we will find ourselves getting hurt when trying to use it during battle and getting hurt while healing isn't fun despite the fact that it almost certainly is the players error Dark Souls 2 fixes this for one by making it take even longer to take effect thus telling the player not to use it at all I don't know how he could have written this out and not spotted the twisted logic if this even were true then you're essentially telling me that Estes is only meant for healing between battles or when the boss is at the opposite side of the room basically when no one can hit you and if that was true then the developers would have given it a 7 to 10 second wind-up surely literally making it impossible to do without taking a hit in reality they made it take the amount of seconds that means you have to find an opening during the battle at hand literally about the same time as the average swing from your sword because fundamentally the player [ __ ] up when they took a hit and now they have to make up for it by finding a window in which to recover that free hit if you get hit again while trying to find that window you'll be running out of opportunities to claw back your advantage and that Harris is the tug of war rhythm of Dark Souls one besides that what makes Dark Souls 2 any better if you genuinely believe that to be the case Dark Souls 2 also supplements this with life gems life gems are a little bit like the grass down to being purchasable and coming in numerous sizes they take a while to use and they heal over time very slowly this is genius you see attrition isn't necessarily a fun kind of challenge it can create a nice feeling and a risk that you'll be worn down too far to make it anywhere but you know what isn't fun knowing you'll definitely [ __ ] because you'll most likely lose the remaining health you have before you get anywhere new knowing you're at the limit your healing can possibly take you with your abilities and you're just not good enough and you're gonna have to keep playing this area over and over or go farming and level up or something so the first things that he declares life gems as genius this tilts the entire conversation for him since he is aware that the standard criticism for life gems is that they skew the entire difficulty of the game just like the healing and demon souls can which Harris already stated himself but now the system is apparently genius and you'll have to twist more aggressively for this to pan out as a consistent analysis additionally he is front-loading his conclusion here to completely flip the perspective on life gems preemptively clever but he has to provide strong argumentation for it to stand the last angle to this opening is that there is an important sort of lesson in basic English language debates you'll operate with P EE this stands for point evidence explanation I make the point that humanity is a useful healing item I show my evidence for this point with battles in Dark Souls where humanity's have acted as a saving grace and literally filled a health bar I explained that the health bar being healed and the use of it as a last resort is in full operation and how this is feasible thanks to the amount of humanities on offer that is the standard way that I and many others including Harris usually debate and discuss issues but here he's opened with the conclusion of the explanation this is genius aside from the fact that I am obviously criticizing the quality of his writing here it is manipulative to bookend the evidence and the point with your own conclusion there's called poisoning the well and you should avoid it at all costs unless the evidence makes it undeniable which in this case is quite the opposite we have him using the Tim fun again which is always a Roenick ly frustrating as I have stated previously my friend Jack would have far preferred these games if everything was a lot easier if he had triple health and damage and if every enemy was hard and crippled he would have had a lot more fun with that game so I accept the argument that attrition isn't necessarily fun because it's undeniable that anyone could have any level of fun with any level of product fun is always subjective because it is a feeling but this as a concept is something that Harris will sometimes agree with and sometimes actively deny for example he tells us that it is not fun to lack the health you think you need to make to the next checkpoint this falls apart once again when considering that it cannot exist as a punishment without the health items being important and meaningful besides what is more likely than a player admitting defeat is that you'll be under pressure and fight harder and with more focus if you die you could have a better understanding of the area and can develop from there once again dying isn't meant to be bloody fun that is a learning experience that leads to players eventually reaching their goal which can be massively relieving and rewarding the recognition of a challenge defeated by them and them alone the idea that they can return to the safe haven of the previous bonfire or they can push forward and progress to the next portion of the game at the risk of dying would be what we call the risk versus reward and that very concept makes up a fundamental gameplay of the souls Bourne series then he says something very interesting another example of what is not fun knowing you're at the limit your healing can possibly take you with your abilities and you're just not good enough and you're gonna have to keep playing this area over and over or go farming or level up or something Harris says this is yet another example of what isn't fun however this is something that can happen in blood-borne and Demon Souls and Dark Souls 2 as well as Dark Souls 1 he knows this happens because anybody who's played those games knows this has happened at least once the idea that you do not have the resources or skill to push through an area so you don't you back up and train you level you keep trying to learn the area to master it or you try something completely different and explore a new area I think old yharnam is a great example of attrition in an area of blood-borne trying to understand and control that area is tough for new players this is a basic level of learning that will occur naturally and actively depending on the players engagement with the game that is interesting to me because he believes that life gems answer this question life gems give you the health that you need to push through but let me ask you a question what can we do to make something strictly easier for the player in Dark Souls we can limit the health of the enemy we can limit the damage of the enemy we can limit the amount of enemies we can limit the abilities or the speed of enemies we can increase the player damage play a speed play a stamina or we could increase the player's health pool all of these things will allow the player to approach the scenario with more ease they will reduce the challenge if you will and What did he say about that the game would be fundamentally different less challenging and less fun as a result decreasing the challenge will make souls born games less fun increasing the player's health cool and reducing the challenge will make the game more fun I don't even agree with either sides of this contradiction by the way they are both nonsense and subjective in terms of how much fun you're going to have by bringing back theoretically infinite health but making it heal very slowly the creators have introduced a way to get around this annoyance without making the player feel totally invincible they also have tactical uses since they take a while to use in to slow their risky to use in fights but if you're good at not immediately dying they still heal you so you can run out of estes and still have access to a source of healing that requires some skill to use effectively which is kind of cool and smart they're also useful for if you expect to take damage but don't think you'll be able to stop and heal later in some boss fights using a gem when you get the chance and then attacking means you'll get some health back even if you get hit a bit later this is frankly a welcome addition so Harris claimed that the reason you felt invincible in Demon Souls was the infinite amount of healing items and the ability to farm said items this resulted in the player being able to heal to full after each fight as long as they mastered the timing to heal in battle and it resulted in them being practically unkillable listen to him saying it this means that if they master the timing to heal in battle they're practically unkillable and can't be worn down by attrition as they progress to a level as long as no one encounter can fully drain your life bar which can still happen a lot demon souls difficulty is reduced quite a bit from where it was probably meant to be you technically have access to an infinite infinite infinite amount of life as long as you use it properly now let's replace Demon Souls with Dark Souls 2 and reread that statement this means that if they master the timing to heal in battle they are practically unkillable and can't be worn down by attrition as they progress through a level as long as no one encounter can fully drain your life bar which can still happen a lot Dark Souls twos difficulty was reduced quite a bit from where it was probably meant to be we technically have access to an infinite amount of life as long as you use it properly infinite healing items in Demon Souls gives you invincibility if you use it skillfully which makes you uncle able infinite healing in Dark Souls 2 gives you the ability to live longer if you use its skill which is cool and smart he did say this about life gems they are risky to use in fights but if you're good at not immediately dying they still heal you so you can run out of estes and still have access to a source of healing that requires some skill to use effectively which is kind of cool and smart he said that healing with the estus flask would result in him getting hurt and that was simply not fun but healing with the life gem during battle requires skill to use effectively which is cool and smart ignoring for a second that he uses cool and smart to describe something he is employing a double standard to support a healing system that he prefers healing with Estes and Dark Souls 1 can result in getting hurt if you aren't careful and that isn't fun healing with life gems and Dark Souls 2 can result in getting hurt if you aren't careful and that is cool and smart he then says that they are also useful for you if you expect to take damage but don't think you'll be able to stop and heal later in some boss fights using a gem when you get the chance and then attacking means that you'll get some health back even if you get hit a bit later this is frankly a welcome addition I agree with Harris here this is pretty cool that you can assume that you're going to take damage from the fight and thus begin healing before you get hit to account for it the reason I bring it up however is that firstly if you have enough time to find a position to pull off a life gem then you have enough time to pull off an Estus flask secondly life gems can easily be stacked and prepare you for incoming damage far better than Estes can what I mean by this is that life gems can be used preemptively to take expected damage in the future thus eating future damage for you where Estes cannot this applies when you are dealing with Dragonfire crowd control or poison all of which are prevalent in Dark Souls 2 to illustrate my point you can take a life gem and before your health reaches full take damage from a mimic that would have killed you and survive or an estes would have left you for dead these interactions mean that life gems offer so much more survivability than simply having an estes in your arsenal and they cannot be considered a lesser Estus flask I've heard the criticism that the addition of life gems utterly destroys the delicate balance of the entire game and it's erased the majesty of the estus flask and it's purposeful limitation of a player's maximum amount of mistakes this innocence is an accurate analysis the balance is shifted however it's shifted in favor of the player in a way that's overall positive for the experience so first of all we have Harris admitting other criticisms that counter his analysis during the video more people need to do this instead of creating their own echo chambers and videos and it's something I've always appreciated about him what I don't appreciate is straw men which is something Harris is very familiar with a misrepresentation of a person he is arguing against in order to strengthen his own argument the addition of life gems utterly destroys the delicate balance of the entire game and it's erased the majesty of the estus flask look at the language he's used to represent the argument utterly destroys delicate balance erased and majesty the reason he is using such emotive and superlative language is to set up the straw man to be completely unreasonable make the person who is constructing the argument look ridiculous and it is far easier to defeat them this is how I would present the argument the addition of alternate farmable and infinite healing items makes the balance of managing your health resources fall apart because the player will no longer have to take consideration of their resources they will simply have an infinite source this is supported by the fact that there is a vendor that will provide you an unlimited source of life gems from the moment you've spoken to it after defeating the last giant which is often referred to as the tutorial boss not to mention that after focusing on things like repairing equipment and leveling your character you can spend your remaining souls on life gems and keep a consistent steady source of them throughout the game this means that you can farm them but you don't need to unlike Demon Souls which could at least mediate the benefits by making it boring to achieve ultimately this will allow the constant supplementation of your Estus flasks and provide no limits on your healing while maintaining the benefits of the slow healing I provided earlier you can even find yourself using them to shave off the remaining pieces of Health you have missing to improve your odds of approaching the next area because they are so plentiful not only is there a vendor but you can find numerous and generous pickups throughout the game often resulting in you having too many to pick up throughout the game now this may sound as though I'm describing my own experience but I took it upon myself to play without life gems and the game was far more difficult then I played with a strict rule set of only buying them once I had used the souls for leveling and I found the healing system to be literally broken in the interest of confirming this I asked five separate friends who enjoy the soul series to try the same playthrough with the same rules and they reached the exact same conclusion I implore all who are listening to try this defeat the lost giant and talk to the hag from that point on buy life gems whenever you finished levelling up in majula to the maximum amount you're able and then watch the resulting gameplay be ruined by how overpowered you will become during boss fights and regular battles you may not have been personally aware of how this system will steal you in the game but hopefully upon playing it you will understand why the limited healing system of Dark Souls 1 provided a strong balance instead of nonsense regardless he is making the argument that the balance is shifted however it shifted in favor of the player in a way that's overall positive for the experience so it is as simple as that he has stated that it is not a negative and it is indeed a positive I would accept that it gives the player more healing options and that could be construed as a positive but as I said previously what is the point of a health bar if it can't be drained this is important because once you finish a playthrough of Dark Souls 2 and really look at your inventory you will find a massive amount of healing items that is unheard of in a game that wants you to cherish your health pool the obvious argument is that you should just give the player infinite health or super easy healing why stop with Dark Souls 2 which is something that he covers straight after blood-borne probably does the best with its use of healing blood vials are simultaneously infinite and finite you can buy a bunch quite easily but only have twenty on hand at any time the more you find in a level are immediately usable if you have less than 20 on you so you can use more than twenty if you use one in a fight and then one drops from a corpse later which happens fairly often the healing is also quicker and you have a lot of control over movement while you do it this is good here we have another example of Haris being completely correct with the premise to a tee aside from the whole blood-borne probably does it the best comment which he is yet to prove in any way he has all the facts lined up and representing the truth and then we have our expected malformed conclusion this is good it is not strictly good to have more health faster health easier health and farmable health these are not strict upgrades they are changes they make things easier sure but all of it reduces the challenge in healing I genuinely believe that Dark Souls is not a series in which infinite health matches it well limited Estus flasks are a fantastic system it allows the developers to surgically craft runs between bonfires knowing what players will have at the lowest and highest on average therefore constructing a path allowing for X amount of mistakes and increasing that limit as you progress in the game this will usually force the player to improve naturally and that is a very clever approach to defining a difficulty curve this however doesn't work for everyone and people like my friend Jack who would more than likely prefer infinite healing which would mean removing any semblance of meaning from the healing system in general you can argue objectively that Estus restriction creates a challenge and that is a widely accepted reason for why we play the souls borne series as gamers you cannot argue the same principle with infinite health there is barely any challenge left within it aside from landing the heal which you have already contradictive Lee stated is both not the fun part and the cool and smart part you can argue that someone may have more fun or may have less fun with it but ultimately there are some people who have fun eating [ __ ] so let's not go there infinite healing does not skew the balance it removes the balance there is no worry about your health resource as long as you don't drop below zero and that removes a large portion of the challenge experience of the souls borne series or better put the game would be fundamentally different less challenging and less fun as a result but hey I didn't say that I just talked about how good it was being made tactical the way it was in - but ultimately as a mechanic I think it's more enjoyable to be able to heal quickly because dying while healing or dying because you were unable to heal because tactically it would have killed you is just never fun or interesting if I want to grade all four games healing methods I would put Dark Souls last here because I don't personally think it's method of attrition is all that fun when it comes down to it and the precise amount of time it takes to heal and the way it immobilizes you makes it always a tantalizing risk you think you might just be able to make which means more players - I trying to heal in this game than any other I think Dark Souls 2 is the second best behind blood-borne and hey that's pretty good so to finish his section on healing he admits that he talked about how tactical healing is good but now he's saying it isn't or rather that it is more fun when it isn't tactical it is more fun when it is easy this is ridiculous you should be punished in the game when you have failed in correctly dodging an attack or healing when you're in danger should punish you there's no way around that conceptually hell it still happens in blood born then he twists his own perspective here because the floodgates have been opened with the word tactically he described the life gems as a tactical choice during battles but this would obviously apply to Estes as well so he has to skew the wording look at this dying while healing or dying because you were unable to heal because tactically it would have killed you is just never fun or interesting tactically it would have killed you he is implying that sometimes you simply cannot heal at all and you will die while in something like blood-borne you will never be without a chance to heal this is wrong because there's always a chance to heal and it is a tactical choice in the game you need to understand your enemy and identify your opportunity as I've shown several times already on top of this he once again reaffirms that dying while healing isn't fun and he adds all interesting on the end this time tell me Harris how interesting is it to die in general how interesting is it to die during attacking how interesting is it to die during a dodge how interesting is it to be killed by something you didn't see dying while healing isn't strictly supposed to be fun it isn't strictly supposed to be interesting it is supposed to kill you and your logic here is extremely weak we have Harris saying that he wants to grade all of the games in terms of their healing methods which to me is useless to the analysis because there are so many more variables to consider and without the supporting evidence this is incredibly arbitrary but the man may do as he wishes Harris says the darksouls has the worst healing system and Dark Souls 2 has the best behind blood-borne his reasoning is once again that healing in dark souls is a honeypot and it will kill you more often than not while other games are more forgiving we've been through this once before but once again he has more evidence for the difficulty of healing watch this if we slow his footage down we have Ornstein recently ending his lightning bolt in preparing to start a charge this is the frame in which he starts his charged windup and about seven frames later Harris decides to start healing and as a result he is punished aside from the obvious miscalculation who in their right mind heals during a fight with Ornstein and SMO while standing in the open field rather than heading bhai two pillar is it possible that some players aren't good at identifying times in which to heal when others are and this is a skill in which to learn to prove your point about how it's too hard to heal you leave yourself wide open to two enemies that both have a charge and are both telegraphing that to you and they're about to use it personally I would hate Dark Souls if they allowed you to heal without consequence if they put you in stasis when you decide to do so or make it fast to the point where your health may as well regenerate you have to fight for that heal Harris you have to do it with your own understanding of the enemies instead of just allowing them to pummel you while leaving yourself wide open his point is that Dark Souls 2 has the superior healing to Dark Souls 1 his evidence for this was dark souls 1 limiting you with the estus isn't fun being hit while healing isn't fun humanity doesn't count as healing and he failed to mention kindling life gems are fun and tactical to use blood-borne is better than them both and that's about it the explanation amounts to how much fun you will have there is little mention of a coherent or objective argument there have been many strong contradictions and that is for 7 minutes and 48 seconds of his 80 minute video this section ends with the assessment that Dark Souls 2 is behind blood-borne in the best healing systems and that's pretty good that's a strange opinion to reach after the evidence and arguments presented considering that you will unlock the ability to access infinite life gems and Dark Souls 2 after you kill the last giant and speak to a vendor from this point on you will only need 300 souls per gem and each gem is worth 500 HP this means that after you level your character from defeating each boss you are easily welcome to stock up on life gems inevitably leading you to reach 99 quite easily from as early as you want since if you do a small amount of farming this will be possible to achieve before even fighting a second boss however you will achieve it naturally regardless eight level this is the best part actually I've I finished a game used all my souls to level 99 life gems awesome no we're doing it we have the estus obviously life gems one two three four five six seven eight nine ten and at certain points in the game it will get ridiculous because of the amount of souls they provide you in Dark Souls 2 this ultimately means you'll have almost 100 basic stackable estes charges in your arsenal irrelevant of your other healing items if you choose to put your points equally into adaptability strength dexterity endurance and vigor which any sane person may or may not running with your average sword in the game nothing will be able to stop you except extreme circumstances the addition of life gems isn't the problem it was making them so readily available Dark Souls 1 had the opportunity to kill pinwheel and gain the ability to have 20 Estus but killing pinwheel is something veterans can still have trouble with from soul level 1 and new players probably won't even understand what kindling is or even go to pinwheel before getting the Lord vessel they can but it's unlikely basically Dark Souls 1 at its easiest gives you 20 Estus flasks to use which isn't even easy to achieve Dark Souls 1 at its hardest gives you 5 esters fast to use which is actually very hard to manage Dark Souls 2 and it's easiest gives you over 200 kinds of Estus flasks to use at base which is easy to achieve Dark Souls 2 at its hardest gives you around about 100 Estus flasks to use naturally which is easy to manage and there we have it it is clear which game has the system behind it cultivating the path forward in terms of difficulty the system that will funnel the player into adversity and challenge consistently an account for how much health they will have at the time Dark Souls 2 is a cop-out in terms of healing it added a whole bunch of extra forms of healing to appear as though it had multiple layers of strategy when in reality revealed that the team behind it not have any intention of crafting or balancing the difficulty of each area by hand instead they did as they wished and players will have to grab as much as they could find or in certain cases as much as their pockets allowed while over in Dark Souls 1 take five or ten but if you're willing to make a long journey make use of the right of kindling pop your humanity's assuming you're okay with losing them and use your own knowledge to push your limit to twenty a mere double of what your base maximum is then you can do so but it won't be simple and you have to perform this for every new bonfire if you want to maintain it before the Lord vessel is found Dark Souls two's healing system as it currently stands completely missed the point of what healing was used for in its predecessor in terms of dictating difficulty and went in the complete wrong direction we can only be thankful they didn't bring this back in Dark Souls 3 once you achieve what is essentially infinite healing it will absolutely ruin boss fights and it will ruin your average encounters the footage you've been seeing in the background was an experimental playthrough I performed and the rules we're as follows you cannot farm souls you may only spend spare souls on life gems after leveling up you must level adaptability to cause agility to reach 105 before leveling anything else to account for iframes once you have reached 105 you have to level strength dexterity vitality and endurance equally you must explore the land as much as you can talk to and not kill all MPC's and take the game naturally and carefully this resulted in reaching 99 life gems at the 3 hours and 34 minutes and permanent coasting through the game as the enemies could not stop me I didn't have any special armor or special leveling boss fights were an embarrassment and exploring was extremely easy take the smelter demon for a poignant example his aura of damage is negated by the life gems and stacking them ahead of time gives you the benefit of being able to heal fully even after eating extra hits from him interactions like this off throughout the game and you will see them for yourself I'm afraid that after looking heavily into this the complaints about life gems are completely genuine life gems as a system aren't that bad they are slow acting esters which offers interesting and tactical uses in battle as Harris said but giving the player such an incredibly potent and infinite amount was a mistake and it manages to rot the game from the core I implore you all if you didn't know about this to replay the game with the rule I used and tell me you didn't find it incredibly easy compared to the last time you played it the only times you're going to die is when the game absolutely spams enemies at you or in other extreme circumstances the healing is an objectively strong issue when it comes to the fundamental aspects of an RPG it conflicts with the ideas behind having the player make important decisions in relation to their own survivability and allows the players to approach the game as though it's a hack and slash with regenerating health and that's a real shame but on its own it isn't enough to say the game is badly made that's going to require far more evidence what is clear however is there was not enough research performed into the healing system in Dark Souls 2 by Harris and he has a romanticized vision of it within his head and with that we reached the end of Harris's opening section to his video and it was probably the least vicious or combative but if you've seen his video there is far more to look into for my series I have completed Dark Souls 2 14 times and watched or communicated with five friends while they played through the game you are going to see them pop up throughout this analysis the reason I've played the game so extensively and taken so many references is because I wanted to know everything to test everything and we're gonna tackle every last point that is made throughout Harris's video piece by piece all the way until the end to better understand Dark Souls 2 and perhaps the soul series along with it this series is going to be extremely long and it's already complete as is my usual method of delivery on YouTube you will find one video per two days until all of the parts are released and then I shall will already be returning to my infinite slumber in which I shall create more content for you folks to consume the series will end with my own personal criticisms of the game combined with some of the positives of Dark Souls 2 i believe harris missed at the end of that my final thoughts on Dark Souls 2 will be made clear and my current estimation of the series will be about 10 hours long split into several different sized videos because the concern is less about the length and more about the subjects being covered being split efficiently which basically means you're in for a long ride folks please let me know what you think of the style in the comments and I will get back to you thank you for watching and I'll see you next time yeah sure I'll take it yeah what the it's just inconvenient that's all I've upgraded my weapon while the [ __ ] dog is attacking me wait like a statue he's [ __ ] making

Channel: MauLer

Views: 1,085,868

Keywords: Hbomberguy, Harris, Bomberguy, hbomb, Dark Souls, Dark, Souls, Dark Souls 2, Matthewmatosis, in, defense, of, response, A measured, PC, Bloodborne, Demon's Souls, Demons Souls, video, games, ARPG, Analysis, review, design, critique, fromsoftware, opinion, fact

Id: RzKasf4_x34

Length: 58min 9sec (3489 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/PWNders]

Huge dark souls fan here. Dark souls 2 is far an away my favorite dark souls!

[u/suppow]

I had a very hard time trying to listen and follow what's being said in this video, I didnt have any trouble with the original video, I dont know if it's the pitch or timbre, or if it's the rhythm and pacing of the speech, but I kept zoning out like when you have trouble focusing your eyes on something.

I'm not an expert on this but maybe it was too bassy for me, I think spoken audio is often best fit to the medium range of tones when adjusting the mix if I'm not mistaken.

[u/theweirdfishes]

Holy crap. A planned 10 hours for a 1 hour video? That seems...excessive. Either way Dark Souls 2 is my favorite and I feel like this reviewers focus on objectivity is a gigantic issue. Hbomb shouldn't have to say "to me" after every statement to show that it is a completely subjective opinion (which he also states multiple times).

Ultimately Hbomb's defense is his personal defense as to why HE like Dark Souls 2 and passing off some of that reasoning to viewers. His style is over the top, and yes judgmental/condescending to some. But that is more interesting to listen to (I'm going to say this even though I mentioned before it shouldn't have to be quantified) me and to quite a few others.