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Comment by WilTimSon | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of people on forums focus on the difficulty and gameplay aspects because they're easier to have a conversation around. But, as a big fan of the 'series', I've always been in it mostly for the unparalleled aesthetic and atmosphere. Firelink Shrine in and of itself is one of my favorite locations period, because it's like a complete inversion of a typical fantasy game hub - almost dead, surrounded directly on all sides by danger, full of secrets, populated by NPCs that are either gravely depressed or dangerous. It's this strange isle of safety that isn't necessarily welcoming. Also, as I found out in my first playthrough, magic spells sent from that stupid bridge reach Firelink, killing AFK players who triggered the enemy. Ahem... Not that it happened to me.

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Bloodborne was my first (I've since played Demon's Souls, Dark Souls trilogy, Sekiro and now Elden Ring too) and the atmosphere is what drew me in. Sure, the gameplay and the challenge kept me playing, but the atmosphere is what made it special. Over time, as I started to unravel more and more of the lore and storylines, that's what really got me addicted, but that took time. The gameplay alone wasn't enough, I almost gave up on the game initially, but the atmosphere and visual aesthetic really stuck with me. I've since bought a bunch of the art books on ebay too since I just love the Souls and Bloodborne visual design so much.

Now that I'm heavily mentally invested in their games, I am enthralled by their deep yet vague stories, but I'm constantly impressed by the visual creativity and aesthetic sensibilities. That screenshot in the article is incidentally an area I screenshotted myself just yesterday, although mine was more about the shadowy silhouettes of the statues in the foreground (not really shown in the image in the article).

I can one up this. The obscured story told through items descriptions and vague dialogue feels like a meta game on its own for those who really want to venture in. To me it felt like I was rediscovering games again, reminded me of playing old games like Lands of Lore, Black Crypt or Ultima for the first time, strange sense of wonder. Never thought I’ll get this feeling again after so many years.

I'll one up you on that one: I kinda enjoy the Souls gameplay (in the most generic "I like winning" way) but it's everything around the gameplay what makes me want to play the games.

Then again, I do that for many things. Video games, tabletop games and even non-interactive media like comics, books, mangas. It's probably a faulty switch in my brain, but somehow I enjoy reading about and looking at the art of X (currently and fittingly to this thread, Berserk) more than consuming X.

> I think a lot of people on forums focus on the difficulty and gameplay aspects because they're easier to have a conversation around.

The key is that there is probably a fairly uniform consensus that the art direction is good, while the topic of game difficulty is a more volatile topic and one where there is more room for debate.

And, of course, most forum users cannot brag about how beautiful the game is, but they can implicitly brag about how good they are at the games by disputing the difficulty.

Or indeed explicitly brag by affirming the difficulty but making it clear that they did it with their eyes shut.

I mean that's what forums are for, right? Peacock feather displays?

Personally, I've never really played these games, but from what I've seen they don't look particularly difficult -- provided that you dodge within a certain number of frames, know your enemy before charging in, and avoid trying to play the games as you might approach something with faster-paced combat.

The devs say you're supposed to die -- to learn. Not all that difficult then? They're just tailored for a certain type of gamer, like most games.

> I think a lot of people on forums focus on the difficulty and gameplay aspects because they're easier to have a conversation around.

I think that's true for many topics. Some people evaluate developers based on lines of code because it's hard to evaluate the value of the code. In sports, athletes are evaluated based on how fast they run, because it's easily quantifiable and understandable, even if that's not especially important to the job. People tend to focus on flaws, IMHO, for the same reason.

And I think it's especially true in the arts. When people don't know what to say, when it makes them uncomfortable, they find the flaws - easy to talk about, and it dimisses the uncomfortable thing from the conversation. What makes art art is hard to define, unquantifiable, and often challenges our understanding.

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