I’ll start with a few:
- Cyberpunk 2077 (PS5). Only 53.8% of players earned the “Lovers” trophy, awarded for clearing the prologue at the No-Tell Motel, and only 77.3% of players earned the “Fool” trophy for clearing the preceding lifepath part of the prologue. Which means that ~20% of the people that played the game never made it out of the character creator, and another ~20% of the people that played the game went out into the open world, faffed around for a while, and then decided they were sufficiently entertained & then went back to playing FIFA.
- Bonds of the Sky (PS4/Vita). You might have heard of Cyberpunk, but I doubt you’ve heard of this game, which is a low-budget Dragon Quest clone. It’s not one of those “pay us 3 dollars/euros/pounds games and we’ll give you an easy platinum” shovelware games that the PS4 had in abundance at one point in time, and yet, the platinum trophy has an insane 59% acquisition rate. (By contrast, Horizon Zero Dawn, a much more popular game with a trivial platinum trophy, has only a 5.4% acquisition rate for its platinum.) The few people that played this game must’ve really loved it.
- Bloodborne (PS4). Only 44.6% of players beat the first boss, Father Gascoigne, but 25.9% of players beat the boss that triggers the endgame to start. So FromSoftware lost half their players in the game’s first area (or the character creator again), but of the roughly half that made it out, roughly half of that half went on to finish the game. Talk about polarizing opinions.
- Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning (PS4). How common is it for players to rage-quit in the character creator in any given game, I wonder? Because only 69.1% of the people that played the game collected the “Reborn” trophy for clearing the prologue. I don’t get it; a 90% rate would make more sense, but even that would imply that 10% of their players started the game once, decided “oh hell no,” and then went back to playing FIFA.
What are others’ observations? All platforms with achievements/trophies are valid.
I’m not surprised at all to see a soulslike being polarising. Some people absolutely love them, but I think you find out pretty quickly if they’re not for you!
I remember trying dark souls once in like 2014 and calling it quits after like 1.5 hours. People love them and I wouldn’t ever want to take that away from them, but for me the game’s design was just so hostile toward the player.
I posted another comment about having pretty much this exact experience myself!
People hate this opinion but I felt like the controls and animations were horrible. Feels like trying to control a fighting game through an excel spreadsheet to me. Maybe that’s something that’s improved in the series since then, but I was always baffled when people told me the action was good
Did you play on PC? Apparently the original port was really badly done.
Same for me, around 2017
I used to dislike dark souls. Recently I tried it again - I struggled but I finally got the hang of it!
I think the hardest is to know what to do. I figured out I was struggling because I kept going in zones I was not expected to go yet.
Also it’s such a big shift compared to what I was used to. You have to wait for the right opportunity to attack rather than going in there and relying on reflexes.
I tried it for a few hours and my review was “not telling you how to play the game doesn’t make it hard, it makes it badly designed”. I get that a lot of people like that, but I was just not having fun as I wandered around confused to be killed again.
Yeah exactly. Here follows some spoiler for those who have never played Dark Souls
spoiler
Once you escape from the asylum you can get to the catacombs right away. I did that and got my ass kicked so I figured I was not supposed to get there first.
So I went up towards the upper Bell. Which I did ring. But then afterwards it looked so clear to me, especially as you unlock the shortcut to Firelink : yes ! The other bell must be down in the catacombs! So I headed there.
I struggled a lot to handle all the monsters. I kept going until the valley where you face skeletons on wheels and the black Knight. I figured “no something isn’t right, I don’t think the game is supposed to be that hard. There are tips on the ground about using a divine weapon but I don’t even know how to get one.”. I read a post online and figured I went the wrong way… Once again
Once I fixed that and went the right way things got significantly easier. I heard how some players literally got down to the catacombs from the get go and somehow managed to get to the boss door only to be met by a yellow fog that can’t be passed, and how they struggled to get back to firelink without getting killed…
The bottom line is that I think you need to have someone telling you where not to go to really enjoy Dark souls. Because its not obvious whether you die because of your incompetence or just because you were not supposed to be there right now. I wouldn’t say its bad design though - but it’s not for everyone for sure
I guess I can’t say its objectively bad because so many people enjoy it, but a game where I can’t even tell if I’m playing it correctly is definitely not for me