I think complaints about Dark Souls are actually generally well-received beyond “it’s too hard” or “it has artificial difficulty” and even those won’t be received too negatively if the cited examples are good enough (bed of chaos, etc.). Most fans of it, beyond those who’ve never even played it and are just acting to fit in with their hardcore friends and their ‘winner: dark souls’ memes, will admit that the game is quite flawed. Journalists won’t because journalists are those fakers for the most part, for this and many other series; they just plain aren’t gamers anymore and seem to be becoming more and more people who treat ‘gaming’ as a thing to be talked about rather than done.
As for complaints, it lags in a lot of areas, it has an awkward input queue system that takes a bit of getting used to, parry and backstab become too easy once you get the timing and they’re generally way too powerful, most bosses don’t truly react to you and will give you way too many opportunities to heal, the stat system is more complex than it needs to be and has trap stats, weapon forging has an entire forging option that’s a trap (raw), the online community is full of weird ego-driven players with their own ‘rules’ they expect random strangers to follow (killed so many invaders while they bow to me, gotten hate messages, laughed at the idea of an invader feeling insulted), etc.
The sad thing is that even with all of that it’s still better than its alternatives in the 3rd person action RPG category. It doesn’t force a story/most of it is in item descriptions, the voice acting is decent and not an overbearing element, it has a nice western RPG feel and decent weapon variety, etc. The sequel is looking promising and I think there’s a demo or something out soon, though not sure if it’s for PC or for everybody or what.
P.S. The price difference between PC and console versions is actually because the PC versions includes what is $15 expansion DLC on the consoles. So buying it for $15 on console + $15 expansion DLC = PC price of $30. The thing about the expansion DLC though is that it’s largely endgame content. They made its bosses a bit faster/more relentless/more reactive so if the game’s not your thing and you don’t get that far the PC version is definitely more of a bum deal until the sales bring it down to $10-$15 like you noted (amazon seems to like doing this often).
One thing also is that I don’t have much time to play games. Games like Dark Souls aren’t something you can just get in and get out quick. Games like the Atari Era are a little too short for me. I know people don’t like to hear it, but the game size around the 8-bit and 16-bit generation just FEELS perfect. I’m quite happy with Super Metroid’s size or Final Fantasy IV or VI’s size, or Chrono Trigger’s size. Some games you can get 40+ hours from. Others are less like Super Mario Kart but you can get in, and get out. It is also one big thing I liked about Wii Era games.
If I have time to play a game all day, it’s going to be something like a PC RPG or PC strategy game like Civilization. I play Alpha Centauri and the hours just go into a vortex.
In some of the games I’m playing, it just seems strange that there is too much for me to do, and it makes me want to quit playing. I’m not sure how to express this.
Take a game like Starcraft. It doesn’t take much time to get into the game and get good. Mastering it is something else. However, you mastered it with bites of playtime. Think of Chess. The rules of Chess are easy to learn. But you don’t spend 10 hours in a single session of playing Chess!
Different games require different game session times for effective play. It seems that more and more games are going beyond the necessary game session time for effective play. If you notice, Nintendo’s more popular franchises still require a lower amount of game session time to equal effective experience. How much time does a game of Smash Brothers take? Or Mario Kart? Or even 2d Mario? If I chose to play 3d Mario, it is going to take a while. I think a flaw in Metroid Primes was that it required a large time commitment for the game session as opposed to Super Metroid.
I like to hop in and out of games fast. Like cartridges in a pile after a period of time of playing games. Today’s modern games keep feeling that you only play one game at a time for HOURS and HOURS until it is beaten. Just because I don’t have the time or patience to invest HOURS and HOURS doesn’t mean I want ‘casual’ games. I want games with looser game sessions.
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