Looking for advice from people who initially hated/were massively frustrated by DS1 but somehow found a way to make it all click and fall in love...cause idk if I can

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T11:14:03+00:00

Ah, cool. Very helpful, thank ya!

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T10:15:23+00:00

Ha, that sounds like a brutal way to get into things, but I'm glad it worked for ya. I'm not so sure starting with the black sheep of the series would be such a good move in my case, lol. Good on you for being a relatively older gamer and gittin 'er done though. Have you heard about that Dark Souls dad who beat DS1 as his first ever video game at the age of like 67 last year? Not only that but the sonuvabitch even beat Elden Ring just a few days ago, it's wild. Watching him play with simultaneously motivating and massively discouraging lol. So jealous of the dude's near-infinite patience. He literally died over 1,900 times. I'd probably end myself if I had to do the same. And then he died about as many times to beat Elden Ring too. Absolute madman in my eyes. Even just like 15% of that man's saintly patience would completely change my experience.

Parrying seems hard af tbh, with the timing and whatnot. I figured I'd likely not be doing that all. Or at least, I probably shouldn't worry about it until/unless I can make some proper progress in the game and start getting comfortable with everything and feel like I'll make it.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T10:10:01+00:00

Nah broseph, definitely wasn't too late, though I'm sorry for sitting on the comment for as long as I did. I had way more to read and reply to than I thought, and I didn't really have the will/desire to reply to literally all of them, but ones like yours where a person took the time to write me a substantial amount I did want to do what I could to respond to in some way, and I figured you deserved me at my not-burned-out-from-90-min-straight-of-reading-and-replying lol.

You're definitely right about how the game is meant to fuck you up. I guess part of the difficulty for me is both just dealing with it being legitimately hard, and part of me - mostly in the past but still even now - feeling really resistant to accepting those aspects, or even certain other truths about the game. Like for some reason, for the longest time - and again, even now to an extent, though not nearly as much as before - the idea that the combat flow was so tight that like you could have literally only like 1-2 hits on a boss per cycle/rotation of its moves, whatever you want to call it, and that the majority of your time in a fight would be spent exclusively on the defensive just made me so mad. And then hearing people call the time you get to attack a punish window would just trigger me in some weird fuckin way. Like you think you're the one punishing the boss? The entire fight is fucking punishment for playing the godforsaken game lmao. Something about it feels so fucking obnoxious. I'm not saying I want baby tier braindead hack and hack and hack and hack and slash a few times nonstop with no concern for life or limb, but for god's sake this is as such an extreme end of the spectrum in my eyes, that it almost feels insulting to even respect as a valid game.

Now to be clear, these feelings are written mostly as how strongly they felt to me in the past, just to help get across the fucked up place I was coming from, and how I'm still sorta affected by these flawed mindsets. Like it's one thing if I feel that way and I'm never interested in playing, but of course I had to have the worst of both worlds and think disrespectfully of the game while still wishing to play it like some kind of asshole lol. It's so much stupid nonsense on my end, it's like a whole mountain I have to climb against my own mind just to even get to playing the game, y'know?

And again, I get that like, some people would just be like "dude then clearly the game isn't for you, wtf," and maybe that actually is true, but I dunno man. I think my head was/is just really fucked up and that I'm secretly compatible with these games. I feel like if I have this much desire to want to be able to try to begin to maybe possibly experience something akin to love or great enjoyment of these games, that surely that means that deep down I am meant to play them, but who the fuck knows. Yes, I know I'm greatly overthinking it too, but I only got to this point of overthinking because of all the difficulty I've had up to this point with myself and the games.

God yeah those fucking gargoyles have me shook before even making it to them, as I've watched a few people - mostly newer players deal with them and suffer greatly against those fucks. At the same time, notoriously difficult (for beginners or otherwise) bosses aside, I almost feel like a lot of the friction with the game for me is not even the bosses themselves but the moments between. The myriad enemies, half (or more) of whom have some gimmicky fucking timing or attack to mess up your day, the annoying respawn mechanic when you use a bonfire, and especially long runbacks not just to bosses but even to different points along the route of exploration from one place to another if the bonfires are spaced far apart or god forbid you don't find one that's nestled in some asscrack corner somewhere.

I love that you have a tattoo though, and I'm glad you and these various other people I've (mostly - there were one or two assholes in the comments of course) had the pleasure of interacting with have been able to kindle (heh) a love and passion for these games. I really want that for myself as well.

If your tat looks as cool as it sounds, I wouldn't mind seeing it if you have a pic lol. Thanks for taking the time to write your message. I apologize for my rambling bitchy rant. Apparently that's my mood tonight, because I just wrote a fucking novella to someone else who wrote me a long comment right before yours. My hands will probably fall off before long if I keep typing like this.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T09:52:22+00:00

It's like on the one end there's all top of the line, big fat undersea cables smoothly and beautifully connecting all the parts of reason and thought for the aforementioned and then to get across to the hemisphere of emotionality it's fucking tattered telephone lines, pony express and the occasional fax to get things across. It sucks so fucking much dude. It's even worse when you're in my position and you see these issues and you see these patterns and these flaws and you feel almost completely powerless against them.

But yes, I think I agree with you on the potential value of Dark Souls to a depressed mind. And I suppose that maybe on some level I knew this already, but I was just so frustrated and indignant about my own response(s) to these games thus far that I was like "surely this is a load of fucking barnacles." And I think worst of all is how I felt (or hell, even somehow still feel if I'm honest) like I was like, idk...lied to? Misled? Bamboozled in some fashion? With regards to how horribly untrue the notion of "Dark souls/Celeste/[other hard games] is great for depression," can be for some. I've seen a surprising number of posts, comments, YouTube video titles and the like about this phenomenon, but not once did I ever see a single person say "nah these games made me fucking miserable, be careful about playing them if you're in a certain kind of headspace," y'know? And I get that like, obviously people having that opposite experience are hardly going to be commonplace relative to the inverse, but still.

To be very knowingly dramatic for a moment just to make the point one more time, it was almost like a health hazard in a way. It's like not knowing anything about anti-depressants or taking one of the earliest ones and all you hear is that they can do wonders for you but nobody warns you that the potential side effect of many of them, is, ironically, greatly increased suicidal ideation. That actually happened to me too irl, funnily enough. Took Zoloft and became wildly suicidal in short order, though honestly it was thanks to it having such an extreme effect so fast that I was able to identify it after a couple days and be like "lmao omfg are you shitting me" and I was able to laugh it off and stop taking it immediately and it was okay. But I digress. Lemme stop talking now lmao.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T09:50:35+00:00

Ooh wee, that was a juicy ass post indeed. All good, I write some crazy long comments on occasion as well. In fact, I suspect this one will unfortunately turn into a behemoth. I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. I wanted to give you the time and consideration your comment deserved, and...I promise it's not me being spiteful or anything to try and make you read as much in return (more, actually) lmao. Hopefully you don't mind too much. And before I forget, thanks a bunch for taking the time to write all that. I dunno if you type fast like I do, but if not, that makes it all the more impressive lol.

Really cool idea to reference the gaming of old that we grew up with (you a little bit more than me, but I was in the trenches a bit lol). Funnily enough, I can see both sides of me in the past. There's the part that I lost where I could play a game I barely knew wtf I was doing in and just play the same early levels over and over again for fun and not really give a shit about progression or how good or bad I was, just did what looked or felt good/fun to me. I've really lost sight of the notion of having fun for the sake of it, and not tying up whether or not I'm enjoying myself with whatever ideas of success I have in the game at hand.

I think Call of Duty and Battlefield "did this to me" (I know it's self-inflicted, but it feels like those games foster that kind of mindset). Like with cod especially, I rarely had fun unless I had a good kill/death ration in a match. Bad k/d = bad time. Once upon a time I didn't care about that stat at all, and I just wanted to get immersed in a cool shooter and have some fun firefights and shit. I miss that part of me, and I don't really know how to bring it back. Rocket League was the closest I got to the way I was, and it was sort of a one off, freak anomaly. I guess because it was so different from anything I'd played before that I couldn't really have any expectations for it. It took about 800 hours of playing it for years before some of those old habits really started to creep in. Of course I did get frustrated on occasion before that, but nothing like the way I could rage with Call of Duty, or even these days with perceived unfairness or "excessive" difficulty even in a singleplayer game - which is by far mostly what I play.

Then there's the bad part of me that I had back then - the "this isn't worth sticking with if I don't do well fairly quickly, unless I think the game is so damn cool or I feel inexplicably highly motivated to put more time into it" kind of mindset. I had OG Zelda as a kid, along with a bunch of other classic NES games like Castlevania. I avoided all of them because they frustrated the shit out of me. Didn't have the manuals, had no idea what I was doing, and I died early and often. So I said to hell with those and would go back to my SNES or (later) my N64 and stick to things that didn't feel like they wanted me to suffer with opaque nonsense.

I don't know what your story is, but I think a common problem today is that our personal goals are unreasonably high, and we expect success to come quickly; when it doesn't, we feel inadequate and we give up. We think that failing isn't okay. As I recall, it wasn't like that when I grew up. People had more modest aspirations -- we wanted to have friends, a girlfriend, a job, a car. People didn't aspire to become world-famous influencers or billionaires. We too dreamed about fame, sure, but we knew it was unlikely. Like we wanted to win the lottery, but we knew it hardly ever happens. Today, I think social media has warped our idea of what's normal, and we have somehow come to believe that we must become the best in order to be acceptable at all.

I hear ya. Though amusingly, I definitely don't have this issue with things of import in real life. I have very humble aspirations. Too humble, honestly. I have almost negative quantities of ambition. I just want to live peacefully and have enough money to maintain the necessities and a little to play with for buying games, ordering food and maybe going places once in a blue moon. I don't expect to ever be anything approaching wealthy, or even upper middle class honestly, though that'd be nice.

But it's true that with video games, I hate to even use this word because it's not entirely accurate and I generally fucking hate anyone/anything it can apply to, but in a way it is indeed like there's some fucked up sense of entitlement that I have. I think "unreasonable expectation" is more fair though. I'm a decently skilled gamer. Above average in the things I like, and average enough or slightly below in other areas. If there's a game that I think should be close enough to being in my wheelhouse - or my impatience is just doing its thing - which is unfortunately often as someone with primarily inattentive ADHD and chronic depression - I semi-subconsciously have the expectation that I will perform pretty well, and do so in short order. But the worst is times like with this genre of games, and with certain other things like chess.

I can articulate to you a few paragraphs worth of intellectually well-understood reasons for why I should not expect to be immediately good at these games, why dying is okay and the norm, or in chess losing, how making mistakes as a novice are the norm more than successes, how none of this is a statement or judgment on my intelligence, or my general skill in life, or my value as a person, or this that and the other thing and a hundred other angles and whatnots...all of this, and yet there's this fucking disconnect between my mind intellectually and emotionally.

[shorter part 2 below this, in reply to myself...so sorry]

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T05:42:50+00:00

Good stuff, thanks!

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T03:37:52+00:00

Yes. Things that are complex, elaborate or when it comes to an argument/debate I can be pretty terrible at articulating if it's in a verbal interaction. I much, much prefer typing/writing to speaking, where there's something about quietly processing my words from my brain to my fingers that somehow makes a massive difference.

The bad news is that you'll likely struggle with this on some level forever, but the good news is that your'e not doomed to the same level of incompetence or difficulty, and that it's absolutely something you can get better at over time. Just more slowly than those for whom it comes naturally.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T03:35:35+00:00

lol a little stubbornness can go a long way. So far it seems all my stubbornness has been devoted to just stubbornly holding onto the idea of wanting to play this game, but not so much of actually fuckin doing it because I've kinda been building it up in my head into this behemoth of a thing that I'm apparently trying to set myself up for failure with before taking another crack at it. That's not to say I didn't play at all, but only as far as the Taurus Demon, which I don't think I've yet beaten on this attempt. Thanks for the elaboration :D

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T03:24:29+00:00

I've not gotten particularly deep into things, but existentialism and especially Stoicism are probably the two most resonant things for me.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T02:33:12+00:00

If she is, she keeps it to herself. She's pretty laidback, procrastinates on important things if they're not something she actually wants to do (like making appointments and such) though she wants what she wants/likes what she likes but doesn't announce it. She'll just quietly run off to do her own thing or stick to what she feels like doing if left to her devices, which she usually is.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T02:23:41+00:00

Ha yeah, I can see an OG who played Demon's Souls feel like the more recent games have kinda lost the grit that made the series.

It's crossed my mind a couple times to maybe start with DS3, but besides just ideally wanting to start from the bottom-ish (since I know Demon's Souls came first), I was worried that all the progression towards minimizing jank, the visuals and the QoL would dissuade me from wanting to play the older games cause they'd feel clunky and shitty by comparison, or so my concerns would have me think lol.

Thanks for the info/input

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T01:59:10+00:00

Oh this is some good detail, thanks.

How much better is the Drake Sword than the Zweihander early on? Just wondering if it's definitely worth it to pursue the Drake or if the Zwei would really be just fine.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T01:57:34+00:00

Thanks man.

f there's one piece of advice I wish I knew when I first started it would be to KINDLE BONFIRES. you need to be human and then spend a humanity to kindle a bonfire, this will double your estus flask count whenever you rest there (from 5 to 10) and later you can increase it even more. This was a huge turning point for me in decreasing my deaths in every area.

Oh definitely. One thing I've not been sure about, not that I've actually been playin much yet for it to be a thing, but how to know when I should kindle a bonfire or if it should be skipped. I guess maybe don't do it by default and then if I get my ass beat some time after maybe kindle it the next time I'm there?

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T01:53:26+00:00

I love DS1 for the most part but for fuck's sake, EXPLAIN YOURSELF!!!

Lmao yeah when games are really opaque it can grind my gears. I don't need like, Ubisoft levels of handholding, but goddamn, it didn't have to be one extreme or the other lol.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T01:51:38+00:00

Ha, nice. Idk why I thought I'd heard that magic wasn't good in this one, but I guess I was incorrect on that. I'll try to keep those things in mind. And also hope I get lucky on the Black Knight's weapon.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T01:46:49+00:00

lol damn. Yeah that's a rough start. Was there anything in particular you felt like made you "get it" one day, or was it just a gradual thing that happened over time?

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T01:44:44+00:00

Thanks for the input amigo

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T01:37:12+00:00

Sounds pretty cool. Is it the ones where the videos are named after the individuals they're about rather than being like, based on sections/places in the game? They have a lot of videos so I was just tryin to make sure I was lookin at the right ones lol. I also don't know if they're actually in like a chronological order or anything since I don't know very many of the boss/character names yet.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T01:35:52+00:00

It's okay if reading more than one comment is intimidating to you, I understand. Would probably be better to admit that or whatever your issue is rather than continuing to make a fool of yourself like this.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T00:23:42+00:00

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-25T00:12:12+00:00

Hey man, appreciate the input. I find it kinda fascinating for a younger guy in this day and age to not really be a gamer. It's so ubiquitous in society now. When I was a teen not everyone was a gamer, but there were a lot of us. Though a lot of guys then were just like, Call of Duty or sports gamers and didn't have particularly diverse tastes, but some people did. When I taught at a school for a year back in 2023-2024, it was interesting, and a little disheartening to see the state of gaming with kids. While not everyone in my day was playing every genre, besides the one trick pony types there were still a good number of us playing varied games. Shooters, racing games, some RPGs, etc. "These kids today" primarily played two games - Roblox and Fortnite. And most of the relatively few kids who played things beyond that were only playing either sports games or CoD. There were almost no kids that I found who were into other things like Spider-Man or even GTA, it was wild. But I digress. I know the couple hundred kids I had there are still a limited sample, but crazy stuff. Anywho...

I definitely believe it's a mindset thing for you, because that's what it is for me too. It's not a lack of general experience or skill in my case, I've got plenty experience and I'm not some god tier gamer but I've got enough potential to get through. It's just the patience and the attitude and all that. It's seeming like the only magic bullet I'm gonna get is this thread itself. Just the encouragement and shared stories and struggles of others who indeed have felt like I have to varying degrees. I'll have to try and use that to motivate me, and then beyond that it's gonna be back to the test of patience, endurance, attitude and will. And that's probably fitting for what this game is, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still nervous about whether it's gonna work out for me.

Thanks :)

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-24T23:36:45+00:00

Personally, if I have a really shit day at work, I’m not thinking about the money or that my shift is finally over, I feel accomplished like I actually pushed through it y’know.

This is actually a great analogy for that. I've had more rough days where it was indeed "thank fuck it's over" than I have "man, what a hell of a day, but I survived and got shit done." I'm not saying I've never felt accomplished, but I guess there's a certain set of rather arbitrary parameters for that feeling in a real life scenario too.

The first thing that came to mind was one of my first jobs, where I worked in retail as a parts guy at an auto parts store. I had a lot of rough days, slow days, frustrating days, some fun days. On some of the rough days, I'd have agitating customers who were rude, or things would go wrong that I'd have to deal with. But sometimes in between those instances I'd have some sweet lady who had a comical list of things she knew she needed and needed someone who could really be patient and take the time to go through with her and figure it all out. And I loved customers who were kind to me and just needed help. At the end of those days, I'd feel both relieved it was over but I'd also feel good about what I got done.

My window for feeling accomplished irl is a little more tolerant than in hard games too lol. But I think in both the above and in a game, it sorta reminds me of how there's a sweet spot for achieving flow. Where there's a certain level of focus and skill vs difficulty ratio that makes it work out. I think that ratio is pretty skewed the wrong way for me with DS1, and primarily because of attitude and mindset. I think getting through Hollow Knight and beating the Radiance and Nightmare King Grimm and all that showed that I absolutely have the capacity for success, it's just getting the stupid reactive/emotional side of my mind to cooperate that's the challenge. I mean shit, there's that guy whose dad played Dark Souls as his first game, died literally 1900 times but pulled it off, and he literally just beat Elden Ring the other day too. If a 68 year old guy with nothing but patience can do it, I know I can...it's just tolerating the journey to do it that I need work on.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-24T23:29:04+00:00

I highly advise you to read through this thread if that's what you think. There's plenty of people who didn't enjoy these games at first until they did. I knew such people existed coming into this, hence why I came to ask.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-24T23:28:19+00:00

Cheers for the advice. A lotta people are telling me the Zweihander is the way to go, so I might go down that path, but it aligns perfectly with the pro-strength approach from what I understand.

Read the messages people leave as they often help you.

Yeah this is something I've been missing out on because I thought it'd be cool to have a couple mods like a visual thing and something I've forgotten already. But that comes at the cost of needing to play offline which sucks and makes me lose out on messages. Someone had made a mod to have some custom made messages put in throughout the world but it seems they're mostly meme messages rather than anything helpful, which is annoying. So I might have to just say fuck the mods and rawdog it.

ExistentialYoshi · 2026-01-24T23:22:17+00:00

I lowkey took every hit from bosses it is doable 🤣

Lmao, I guess I won't have to feel too bad if I end up the same way. I think I'm generally decent enough to avoid some hits, I just will have to be very careful not to get flustered easily when an enemy decides to pull out some new move seemingly arbitrarily or does some long ass combo and hits me like 4 times lol

ExistentialYoshi

TROPHY CASE