Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Hard, or just obtuse?
Stuff like this is why I pretty much never recommend the Dark Souls-type games (or similar genres such as roguelikes or ironman game modes) to people without a lot of caveats up front. Those types of designs can be really fun for particular people but also turn off a huge swath of the population from the get go. Even people who would eventually learn to love it may not be up to pushing through the initial pain to get there, and I don't blame them.
Similarly, I spent 20 hours trying to love Crusader Kings 2 and while the underlying game itself was somewhat enjoyable, the atrocious user interface and endless clicking made it so painful for me to actually play the game that I just up and quit one day and never looked back.
But even keeping into account the subjectivity of experience when it comes to games, God of War is something I can readily recommend to pretty much everyone. Even novice gamers will enjoy it because the combat is fun and you can dial down the difficulty to enjoy the world/narrative, while more experienced hardcore gamers can set the difficulty to max and grind through the endless repeating dungeons and do the really tough, entirely-optional content.
This isn't to say that God of War is better than Bloodborne - just that it's more readily recommendable.
+2
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
As I said, there is a design language to From games. Once you understand that design language, you understand what the game is asking of you, and your confidence in your ability to deliver that goes way up. I've said for a long time that From games aren't actually that hard once you understand them, but they do ask a lot of the player. As someone who didn't have their design language "click" for me until Dark Souls 2 (after bouncing off DaS and DeS very hard), I totally understand why they seem impenetrable to some players. If you just want mindless, easy to get in to fun, From's games are probably not for you.
I think one of the things that makes Bloodborne so great is that it's first From game I played that was very clear about how it wanted you to play from the get go. Dark Souls, as much as I love that series, lets you easily fall in to "play traps" that work, but are boring and obtuse. Bloodborne makes very clear from the get go how the game is meant to be played. Sekiro continues this design language and I hope going forward this is how From does things.
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I mean, I find Bloodborne still difficult where I don't find Dark Souls difficult for various reasons. First, I usually take a build that is mainly magic built into Dark Souls, and spec enough to wield multiple weapons and methods of attack, which generally means that I have a tool for every situation that is optimal. Bloodborne buries its ranged and spell specific options behind hours of content where I specifically have to be good at melee, and not just regular melee but dodge-happy melee (Whenever I melee in Dark Souls games, it's with a shield, even if that's technically less than optimal play). I'm very bad at dodging, and I'm very bad at countering and I'm moderately-better-than-trash at melee-without-a-shield, so Bloodborne is its own beast.
The other issue, and possibly more pressing, is I'm never going to get more than 20-30 minutes to play Bloodborne unless I schedule it, because I have a 3 year old and I'm not playing it in front of him. And I'm the stay-at-home dad, so I'm not exactly getting to play anything M rated, and very few things T rated if it's on the Livingroom TV, and I can't go to another TV during the day because . . . I'm parenting the kid while the wife works.
Playing for scant stints at a time every few months does not a good experience in a From game make. Thus it's probably harder because I'm just not going to regularly get 3+ hours to really dive in to the game, and instead have to try and remember any rules of the game while still trying to progress in the short amount of time I have every few months when he and the wife decide to take a short nap on a weekend or something. And that's on top of almost everything in Bloodborne working against my natural instincts to hide/run/attack from range/get away/block.
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+1
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
That's kind of one of the play traps I'm talking about. I shouldn't talk in absolutes, if you enjoy playing with a shield don't let me or anyone else tell you otherwise....but I think Bloodborne is representative of how From expects their games to be played.
That said Bloodborne is absolutely more aggressive than Dark Souls, with the limited healing items and health regen from attacking. Sekiro ratchets up that aggression another step. In almost every situation, being up in the enemies face is the right strategy in Sekiro.
I mean, I find Bloodborne still difficult where I don't find Dark Souls difficult for various reasons. First, I usually take a build that is mainly magic built into Dark Souls, and spec enough to wield multiple weapons and methods of attack, which generally means that I have a tool for every situation that is optimal. Bloodborne buries its ranged and spell specific options behind hours of content where I specifically have to be good at melee, and not just regular melee but dodge-happy melee (Whenever I melee in Dark Souls games, it's with a shield, even if that's technically less than optimal play). I'm very bad at dodging, and I'm very bad at countering and I'm moderately-better-than-trash at melee-without-a-shield, so Bloodborne is its own beast.
The other issue, and possibly more pressing, is I'm never going to get more than 20-30 minutes to play Bloodborne unless I schedule it, because I have a 3 year old and I'm not playing it in front of him. And I'm the stay-at-home dad, so I'm not exactly getting to play anything M rated, and very few things T rated if it's on the Livingroom TV, and I can't go to another TV during the day because . . . I'm parenting the kid while the wife works.
Playing for scant stints at a time every few months does not a good experience in a From game make. Thus it's probably harder because I'm just not going to regularly get 3+ hours to really dive in to the game, and instead have to try and remember any rules of the game while still trying to progress in the short amount of time I have every few months when he and the wife decide to take a short nap on a weekend or something. And that's on top of almost everything in Bloodborne working against my natural instincts to hide/run/attack from range/get away/block.
Congrats on having a 3y/o!!
I played Bloodborne before I got my spawn, so . . . yeah, I don't see myself playing it except for the rare times we agree I get stay up late and sleep all Saturday morning...
. . . kid is murdering my gaming hours, but I still love her more than anything.
"Asking a lot of the player" is pretty much a euphemism for "hard."
Because hard games can be overcome with things like hard work, pattern recognition, trial and error, etc. etc. If a game can't be eventually overcome by effort, then it's not a hard game -- it's a broken game.
Switch: 3947-4890-9293
+3
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
That's kind of one of the play traps I'm talking about. I shouldn't talk in absolutes, if you enjoy playing with a shield don't let me or anyone else tell you otherwise....but I think Bloodborne is representative of how From expects their games to be played.
That said Bloodborne is absolutely more aggressive than Dark Souls, with the limited healing items and health regen from attacking. Sekiro ratchets up that aggression another step. In almost every situation, being up in the enemies face is the right strategy in Sekiro.
I mean, I also died 3 times trying to listen to more official advice about how to beat Ornstein and Smough and then I went in and "did it my way", and I won. Which is I think a strength of the Dark Souls games that Bloodborne sort of lacks; I don't have to play a Dark Souls game in the way the dev intends except in a few scant fights. I've beaten every boss in the first two games, and the few that I hate the most are the ones others seem to love, like Artorias, because there's really only one solution to some of those fights where your only window is between endless dodging and minor hits.
I also commonly play what folks call hybrid classes in Dark Souls games; sorcery magic, a bit of pyromancy, a main Int main weapon and a shield, with multiple other weapons including a bow, several other shields . . . basically, the tools are optimal, my play almost certainly isn't. But it's gotten me through all of the first two games and a good chunk of the third thus far, and every boss and secret in between. The issue is that Bloodborne doesn't have a ton of that wiggle room, and I'm not actually going to get much good . . . er than I already am, so it's more about being able to put in the time to refine what I can already do and "get" the game.
Which, when we talk about difficult games, it needs to be understood that the difficulty can come from multiple angles, and much like "this game is the best for me", there's also, "this game isn't difficult for me". I've beaten Artorias. I understand that boss, I get what it's trying to do, and honestly? Though I get the design language in that, it's honestly way harder and way much more work than I'd ever want to put in to a whole game. Thankfully, Bloodborne does have some wiggle room, and I've finally gotten (last time I played) into a point where I've got the melee weapon I want and think I can get some of the spell items I want.
And also also, I started Bloodborne and then Dark Souls 3, and my mediocre talent with the counter system in Bloodborne made for a much better counter attempt rate in Dark Souls 3. I still have my shield in 3, but I wasn't always blocking. But I was still eating a hit, like, at least 50% of the time I was trying to counter, so dodge or more commonly roll the fuck away or block are still my main tactics.
Kind of like how I beat the Bloodstarved Beast not with the recommended strats, but by farming souls for oil and firebombs, summoning an NPC ally, and having them distract while I soaked the bastard in oil and then lit his ass on fire. A few hits from a serrated weapon with the fire paper I had and down it went.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I don't want mindless fun, but I also don't want needlessly punishing games.
I wish the Souls fandom hadn't cultivated the "gut gud" cretins that rallied around those games, because as much as I know you meant nothing by "If you just want mindless, easy to get in to fun, From's games are probably not for you." it's still difficult to see it as anything other than an insult.
It's the attitude of "These games are for SMART, SKILLED gamers, so if you are having trouble, you must be STUPID and BAD AT GAMES" that puts a bad taste in my mouth for the entire genre.
That and I think they're unnecessarily difficult and would attract a much larger, healthier fandom if they had some difficulty options.
But that discussion has been had, and by people more eloquent than me.
"Asking a lot of the player" is pretty much a euphemism for "hard."
Because hard games can be overcome with things like hard work, pattern recognition, trial and error, etc. etc. If a game can't be eventually overcome by effort, then it's not a hard game -- it's a broken game.
I don't want mindless fun, but I also don't want needlessly punishing games.
I wish the Souls fandom hadn't cultivated the "gut gud" cretins that rallied around those games, because as much as I know you meant nothing by "If you just want mindless, easy to get in to fun, From's games are probably not for you." it's still difficult to see it as anything other than an insult.
It's the attitude of "These games are for SMART, SKILLED gamers, so if you are having trouble, you must be STUPID and BAD AT GAMES" that puts a bad taste in my mouth for the entire genre.
That and I think they're unnecessarily difficult and would attract a much larger, healthier fandom if they had some difficulty options.
But that discussion has been had, and by people more eloquent than me.
The 'Get gud' crowd are . . . just A holes. Put them on ignore.
Bloodborne has plenty of shortcuts that makes you feel good about finding them ... and they aren't hard to find ... but the game is really shitty about telling you that you need to do a), b), c) in order to unlock the real [fun of the] game...
I don't want mindless fun, but I also don't want needlessly punishing games.
I wish the Souls fandom hadn't cultivated the "gut gud" cretins that rallied around those games, because as much as I know you meant nothing by "If you just want mindless, easy to get in to fun, From's games are probably not for you." it's still difficult to see it as anything other than an insult.
It's the attitude of "These games are for SMART, SKILLED gamers, so if you are having trouble, you must be STUPID and BAD AT GAMES" that puts a bad taste in my mouth for the entire genre.
That and I think they're unnecessarily difficult and would attract a much larger, healthier fandom if they had some difficulty options.
But that discussion has been had, and by people more eloquent than me.
Personally I just want to be able to ask "is this game Dark Souls hard or Bayonetta hard" and not get subjected to multiple paragraphs about how Souls games aren't actually hard as long as you're smart and use the dodge button etc. Just tell me how hard the damn game is, christ.
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+5
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Bloodborne is a bad game because just looking at it makes me feel nauseated. Fix your tech, From Soft.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
I'm sorry you felt insulted by that, I certainly didn't mean it as an insult. It seems to me your issue is less with the games and more with the "git gud" shitheads, and that's exactly what they are.
I do find it interesting though that people only seem to get this way about video games. If you tried to, for instance, play the piano and were very bad at it, and a great player told you that to enjoy it to it's fullest you need to practice and get better, would you feel equally insulted?
I'm sorry you felt insulted by that, I certainly didn't mean it as an insult. It seems to me your issue is less with the games and more with the "git gud" shitheads, and that's exactly what they are.
I do find it interesting though that people only seem to get this way about video games. If you tried to, for instance, play the piano and were very bad at it, and a great player told you that to enjoy it to it's fullest you need to practice and get better, would you feel equally insulted?
Learning to play the piano is not only a skill, it's an art. I think a serious comparison between these two gives Souls games a laughable amount of unearned credit. I disagree with the analogy on principle. It's an entertainment product.
I'm sorry you felt insulted by that, I certainly didn't mean it as an insult. It seems to me your issue is less with the games and more with the "git gud" shitheads, and that's exactly what they are.
I do find it interesting though that people only seem to get this way about video games. If you tried to, for instance, play the piano and were very bad at it, and a great player told you that to enjoy it to it's fullest you need to practice and get better, would you feel equally insulted?
No, we'd though feel insulted if the piano teacher told us that we can only be considered good at playing the piano if we didn't play those easy, mindless songs we actually enjoy.
Also that implies that people who aren't into Souls games aren't good video game players.
cloudeagle on
Switch: 3947-4890-9293
+2
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I'm sorry you felt insulted by that, I certainly didn't mean it as an insult. It seems to me your issue is less with the games and more with the "git gud" shitheads, and that's exactly what they are.
I do find it interesting though that people only seem to get this way about video games. If you tried to, for instance, play the piano and were very bad at it, and a great player told you that to enjoy it to it's fullest you need to practice and get better, would you feel equally insulted?
Learning to play the piano is not only a skill, it's an art. I think a serious comparison between these two gives Souls games a laughable amount of unearned credit. I disagree with the analogy on principle. It's an entertainment product.
Yeah, for me it's more like I'm an excellent pianist and tried to play the violin and didn't enjoy it, and then was told by other violinists that I'm just a shitty musician and I just need to put more hours into practicing the violin in order to properly enjoy it.
Could I do that? Sure. With enough time and effort you can "git gud" at most anything (within reason). Whether or not I want to put in that investment or I will find the end result actually enjoyable is a separate question.
I don't think anyone here has that kind of attitude, though. It sounds like we're all on the same page that tastes can differ and assholes are just assholes.
I could never fully get into Bloodborne, because yeah I'm also not a fan of the hyper offensive playstyle coupled with dodging/parrying. I was always the big meaty shield tank boy in Dark Souls.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I prefer the sci-fi setting of The Surge because if I'm not beating down a battle mech the size of ED-209 with nothing more than a piece of rebar I don't feel like a man
The Surge is something I would never have tried if it wasn't free on Plus and I ended up buying the sequel to. Though several of it's trophies were glitched so I couldn't get them, and once I hit max levels on one replay there was this one section with two freaking splitting enemies and a giant dinosaur and I just gave up.
But fun discovery.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I'm sorry you felt insulted by that, I certainly didn't mean it as an insult. It seems to me your issue is less with the games and more with the "git gud" shitheads, and that's exactly what they are.
I do find it interesting though that people only seem to get this way about video games. If you tried to, for instance, play the piano and were very bad at it, and a great player told you that to enjoy it to it's fullest you need to practice and get better, would you feel equally insulted?
I . . . hm. I don't think the comparison is apt here, as video gaming can be a skill, but it's rare that a gamer uses a game and creates what would commonly be called art.
But let's take a look at art for a moment because I am an artist, so it's an interesting thing to look at as a metaphor. Art comes from the Latin word for skill, and generally referred for the longest time to the crafting anything like a tapestry, pottery, painting, etc. Throughout the years it's morphed into something more general, to the point where it's more about the idea of the creation than the skill put into it. That's not to say you don't benefit from some skill, but that commonly art is more about what it's trying to say and at what time in history. Like, Duchamp's Fountain, where he signed a urinal that was moved to a gallery, and the assertion was that changing the context around an object changes its worth as an object.
I'm not a fan of Duchamp's Fountain, but it is totally art. Because that's what art means now. I may not like it, but that doesn't mean it's not art.
Much like Bloodborne is art, you don't have to like it. And so is Super Mario Odyssey. And technically, so is Bad Rats.
But to the concept of a player as an artist: there are many classes and many teachers that tried to mold me into an artist that did what they considered art. To force me into their concept of art. I didn't, I was lightly ridiculed for it and now . . . I'm not known at all. I've never sold anything beyond a painting in high school. But I make the art I want to, I get to the destination I want to be in. Those teachers expected a certain thing from we or I wasn't doing art right, if I didn't use and develop my skill, and suffer as an artist and . . . etc.
I suppose my point is we don't just get this way about video games, it's just the easiest cultural example, because as an entertainment source it's the only thing that can deny you more entertainment if you are below a certain skill level or willingness to cheese the system as presented to get the ending. But in terms of even just the act of learning to make paintings, or music, or writing, or any other kind of art ther will be people who say that you just have to "get better" or "just do it my way", and invariable as more of them are wrong as they are right, and it turns out "get better" is rarely a good type of advice for anything because of course "get better" is probably part of the element, but it in itself isn't helpful. And it always comes off as gatekeeping and condescension. Just saying more and better and my way is the least helpful advice I've ever been given, by a teacher or a fellow student, because it lacks any communicative weight to it. Now, that can come either from the person saying it or it can have an impact because of a general question being non-specific enough to warrant a general answer, but if someone asks, "how do I get better at Bloodborne?", for example, the best answer would be another question, something like, "what parts are you having trouble with?", and if someone throws their hands up and says all of it, then is when you do your best to ask leading questions such as "what weapon did you pick/what kind of weapons do you usually try to play games with?" or "what is it that you want to do that you're not able to do?". Example in another game: I wanted to reflect the Guardian eye beam in Breath of the Wild, I looked up a bunch of things that simply said "do it when it's about to hit" which was useful for me, but then found one that said "from a medium distance if you hit the button the moment the power up for the beam does X, you'll reflect it every time", and if I'm at the right range I can still do it every time because I know exactly what to watch for. The specific tell.
And I want to be clear, I'm not trying to claim you specifically are being gatekeeping nor condescending. But quite commonly, a game player (or an artist) saying, "it's so easy, why don't you just do it this way?" is because the person speaking has a skill in that very specific game style and type (or that specific medium, in art).
So I think that yes, if I was just trying to play a piano to enjoy it, and to find my own way, but also asked "what can I do to make this better", the answer of "git gud" would make me assume the person was being a pompous jackass. Of course part of the answer is play more. That's beside the point. That's the general thrust. The question is more of how to help someone with your knowledge, and not simply say "it's hard, life's hard, buck up and just do it", because that's the least helpful advice on the planet.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I wish the modern warfare 2 remaster had spec ops mode, I remember that being a lot of fun coop. I don't think I care at all about going back and replaying COD campaigns. I've played 200+ hours of multiplayer in pretty much every COD game since MW2 and I didn't even bother to boot up the campaign in the last however many. I think the last one I played was BO3 and it was so so bad.
Oh, wow. I've always considered games to be "art". I mean, the whole purpose of art is to make you feel something, right? And you'de have to be pretty heartless to not shed a tear in the introductory scenes of The Last of Us or be particularly disinterested not to gape in amazement at the final reveal of Bioshock Infinite. There are many examples of games as art.
But in that analogy, the player is not the artist. The player is the spectator of the play, the viewer of the movie, the partron perusing the museum, the reader of the story. It's hard to tell a reader, "You're doing it wrong" if they don't enjoy a book. Even for something as divisive as the final Star Wars trilogy where some people felt it was terrible and others really enjoyed it, I can't imagine that any rational person would say "you just have to get into the rhythm of the plot and then it becomes a lot more fun".
I guess my points are:
- Games are art, but we, the players, are the consumers of the medium, not the creators, and
- preferences are entirely subjective and there is no definitive "good" or "bad"
Oh, wow. I've always considered games to be "art". I mean, the whole purpose of art is to make you feel something, right? And you'de have to be pretty heartless to not shed a tear in the introductory scenes of The Last of Us or be particularly disinterested not to gape in amazement at the final reveal of Bioshock Infinite. There are many examples of games as art.
But in that analogy, the player is not the artist. The player is the spectator of the play, the viewer of the movie, the partron perusing the museum, the reader of the story. It's hard to tell a reader, "You're doing it wrong" if they don't enjoy a book. Even for something as divisive as the final Star Wars trilogy where some people felt it was terrible and others really enjoyed it, I can't imagine that any rational person would say "you just have to get into the rhythm of the plot and then it becomes a lot more fun".
I guess my points are:
- Games are art, but we, the players, are the consumers of the medium, not the creators, and
- preferences are entirely subjective and there is no definitive "good" or "bad"
Yes, to be 100% clear, I wasn't trying to say that Bloodborne shouldn't be considered art. I don't think playing Bloodborne is art in any way, shape, or form though.
+1
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Counterpoint: Death of the Author
Art cannot exist in a vacuum without the person perceiving/consuming it. My experience of playing the game is the art.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I could argue, quite rightly I feel, that Sekiro played properly is a vastly different experience from running in a circle for 10 minutes (as is often the common strategy). There is something incredible about the way the boss and sword fights in Sekiro work once you master the system, that isn't there using cheap strategies or tricks.
Art cannot exist in a vacuum without the person perceiving/consuming it. My experience of playing the game is the art.
Counterpoint: Death of the author in today's day and age is almost impossible, what with living actors, directors, game studios, etc having a near-constant social media presence.
The audience is part of what makes art what it is, but they themselves are not making art, but rather what gives the art external meaning. The art's internal meaning is always the "meaning of the author". If we really wanted to engage in "death of the author", no one would quote Miyazaki's comments on difficulty in order to bolster their own opinions on the difficulty of Miyazaki's games, but in our current social system we don't really have a death of the author unless that author is already long dead and we have literally no way of knowing what is or isn't their intent, and honestly that hasn't happened for decades but that's a whole other kettle of fish.
Basically, death of the author is a questionable concept at its heart, and the best that can be said is probably more that you don't need to know an artist's intent to enjoy a work. But with much of our current artwork and especially current games even back to the beginning of games the intent of the author is pretty easy to find, from Shigeru Miyamoto claiming that Zelda was inspired by his exploration as a kid, up to the creative director of Assassin's Creed Odyssey saying that the intended default character is Kassandra. Since the 80s we have only gotten more information on author intent, not less, and so death of the author is almost a privilege or an intended ignorance rather than a form of art observation.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I could argue, quite rightly I feel, that Sekiro played properly is a vastly different experience from running in a circle for 10 minutes (as is often the common strategy). There is something incredible about the way the boss and sword fights in Sekiro work once you master the system, that isn't there using cheap strategies or tricks.
There is and always will we a difference in playing something well and playing something effectively, because the former is a matter of general skill, and the latter is a subjective measure of how the player interacts with a game. You can play differently, and even play as intended, or break every rule, and as long as the strategy is effective and the player is enjoying the experience, that experience is "right" for them. It certainly might not match the intent of the developer, (and we could and often do hear about the actual intended way to play a game from devs), but at the end of the day the player determines their experience. Now, yes, there's nothing like playing a game exactly as it was designed, but the beauty of most games is the ability of a player to take the systems presented and play in a different way than intended and be successful.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
The argument is about if the manner the game is played is considered "art" or not, with the point I'm making being that Sekiro definitely has a distinct style and look about it when played as the developers clearly intended. It resembles a very well choreographed and practiced sword fight, as opposed to a chaotic looking group of game mechanics.
I can appreciate that a more guided experience like Bloodborne or Sekiro may be more accessible for some players. But I vastly prefer the more varied gameplay styles that the Dark Souls games offer. Vastly different weapons with different ranges, tank builds, ninja backstab builds, mages. Some players go out and challenge tough bosses with their bare fists, and win. The ability to cosplay as most of the different humanoid NPCs in the game is pretty great, as well. With the right rings and whatnot, this sometimes fools invaders.
"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are." - Bertolt Brecht
+1
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
I would not, in any way, call Sekiro either guided or accessible.
I would not, in any way, call Sekiro either guided or accessible.
I agree that it is more accessible then the other from soft games. No arcane weapon upgrade system with limited upgrade materials, no weapons that seem useful but are traps, no bosses that are obviously designed for one play style over the other, no poorly explained stat system. Accessible compared to other main stream games? Eh maybe not. But definitely compared to other From games.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I would not, in any way, call Sekiro either guided or accessible.
I agree that it is more accessible then the other from soft games. No arcane weapon upgrade system with limited upgrade materials, no weapons that seem useful but are traps, no bosses that are obviously designed for one play style over the other, no poorly explained stat system. Accessible compared to other main stream games? Eh maybe not. But definitely compared to other From games.
Nope.
Not at all. Every Dark Souls game and even Bloodborne were considerably easier to play than Sekiro was. In Sekiro, once you hit certain bosses you are 100% completely committed to the fact you have to learn how to play well to get past them. In every Souls game, you can power level or use a completely broken build to easily bypass it. In Sekiro, you're going to have to get good at what the game wants to get past Lady Butterfly, Genichiro or the final boss, Sword Saint. In Dark Souls, you can grind enemies to level your health and abilities, so that you can basically power your way past. Sekiro does not have the option to level up your health and attack power* substantially higher than any boss that gives you trouble.
Also in Souls/Bloodborne you have the option to call in other players to help you beat any boss in the game if you're really struggling with them. Sekiro does not have this option. I have never spent more than an hour trying to beat a boss in Dark Souls or Bloodborne (or Demon Souls for that matter). In Sekiro, I had to spend 3-4 hours on some of the harder bosses, because there isn't an option to just come back and laugh at them with considerably better equipment and stats.
Souls/Bloodborne are thus infinitely more accessible than Sekiro.
*Albeit, possible with one item but you're going to spend longer grinding to make your attack power high than you will actually beating the boss and it's only a very late game item.
Edit: Unless we are talking about very different meanings of accessible!
running in a circle for 10 minutes (as is often the common strategy)
Was this a thing aside from the final boss?
Yes. It's surprising how many bosses you can beat like that. Albeit, it's not a great strategy, but it does work quite a bit more often than it should. A couple of bosses are really good at punishing it though, but running away and slashing in some rare "safe" times is a way you can do it.
Returning to before and to make sure I'm not confusing the terms here, what are people meaning by "accessible"? I've always understood the term to refer to people being able to get through a game, despite major difficulty barriers, disabilities or similar. Fromsoft games are notoriously bad at this, but at least Souls have grinding RPG mechanics and the ability to call in other players, which mean players can overpower/get help for difficult fights. Sekiro, from what I played, has neither of those and is thus considerably more inaccessible than any other Fromsoft game before it. Sekiros lack of accessibility is a frequent and much discussed topic in fact!
running in a circle for 10 minutes (as is often the common strategy)
Was this a thing aside from the final boss?
Yes. It's surprising how many bosses you can beat like that. Albeit, it's not a great strategy, but it does work quite a bit more often than it should. A couple of bosses are really good at punishing it though, but running away and slashing in some rare "safe" times is a way you can do it.
Returning to before and to make sure I'm not confusing the terms here, what are people meaning by "accessible"? I've always understood the term to refer to people being able to get through a game, despite major difficulty barriers, disabilities or similar. Fromsoft games are notoriously bad at this, but at least Souls have grinding RPG mechanics and the ability to call in other players, which mean players can overpower/get help for difficult fights. Sekiro, from what I played, has neither of those and is thus considerably more inaccessible than any other Fromsoft game before it. Sekiros lack of accessibility is a frequent and much discussed topic in fact!
I personally wouldn't use "accessible" in that way.
I interpret "accessibility" as a gauge of how difficult it is for a person to pick up a game and have an understanding of what they're supposed to do and how they're supposed to do it. In this sense, something like Crusader Kings 2 would be the epitome ("difficult to learn, easy to master") of an "inaccessible" game.
By that standard, I can see how someone might say that Sekiro was more accessible than the Dark Souls series as you have fewer gameplay options presented to you (especially at the beginning before you start unlocking more and more arm upgrades).
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
No, that is not what accessibility when it comes to games means. Accessibility is the ability for people with disabilities (such as impaired cognitive function, physical impairments, deafness etc) to be able to play through the game in question. Closed captioning for people who are hearing impaired, colorblindness options, difficulty settings and similar are all examples of accessibility. If you need examples of what's meant by this, you should examine the accessibility options of The Last of Us 2, such as the ability to completely make the games graphics a monochrome blue (environment), red (enemies) or yellow (Interactables) so that visually impaired people can clearly see what they can or can't interact with. Another good example is Ghosts of Tsushima, where you can gain more resolve by cutting bamboo stands by pressing multiple buttons in quick succession. An accessibility option in the menu entirely disables the timer - so you only have to remember the buttons but not hit them within the 2-3 seconds it requires of you.
It does not mean "This game is easy to play because it has limited options at the start", because Sekiro is - by absolutely no meaningful definition - accessible under the way it's used currently in the games industry. Dark Souls and Bloodborne aren't really either, but they have huge asterisk's because of the multiplayer and the fact you can just outgrind a problem if you put the time in. This article will give you a good start as to what this discussion is about.
A good example for me is that I am actually colorblind and have trouble with some games because of it. In Sekiro, there is a particular boss whose color pallet matches the color pallet used for the danger symbol. This meant a very fast and really annoying attack I couldn't see the visual cue for, meaning it was very hard for me to dodge - because I learned to dodge on the display of the symbol and not the sound. This meant that boss was incredibly frustrating and significantly more difficult, because you can't do something as simple as change the color of the symbol so I could see it against the boss' color pallet. In fairness though, that boss also has an easily accomplished exploit that lets you instantly kill it and just move on :P
I have played and loved all of the Souls games, Bloodborne and Sekiro, but I do wonder about some of my current health issues that may one day start to impact my ability to play these games. I'm starting to find it hard to hear certain things and audio cues for example, something that has become a major problem for me in the past few years.
Yes, when someone is talking about the "accessibility options" that a game has and the like, they are using it in the sense you refer to. But I don't think that's the only (or even most common) way that the term "accessible" is used in conversations about games.
I believe that when Zoku Gojira and furlion referred to Sekiro as being more accessible than the Souls titles, they were doing so more in line with the meaning that I laid out.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Yes, when someone is talking about the "accessibility options" that a game has and the like, they are using it in the sense you refer to. But I don't think that's the only (or even most common) way that the term "accessible" is used in conversations about games.
I believe that when Zoku Gojira and furlion referred to Sekiro as being more accessible than the Souls titles, they were doing so more in line with the meaning that I laid out.
But that is not the way it is used in discussion currently, especially in the discussion of games like Sekiro. If the game is easy to learn, which Sekiro arguably is does not make it accessible. Crusader Kings presents you with a nigh overwhelming amount of information, but 20 hours in there are no significant barriers to actually playing it. 20 hours into Sekiro, the game is not accessible anymore and there are major actual barriers to continuing to play the game successfully that are entirely lacking in Crusader Kings. "Accessibility" has a specific meaning that has been adopted when talking about games.
Crusader Kings III has done several things for accessibility, such as font sizes, different difficulty options and so on actually. It's much easier to play now and they're constantly improving things, like the originally nightmarish interface, to make things better.
Edit: To give you an example used from an article above, Sekiro could very well have chosen not to translate any of the Japanese. If people played it without the ability to speak or read Japanese, imagine someone responded by saying "Git gud at Japanese". That's the discussion around accessibility.
No, that is not what accessibility when it comes to games means. Accessibility is the ability for people with disabilities (such as impaired cognitive function, physical impairments, deafness etc) to be able to play through the game in question. Closed captioning for people who are hearing impaired, colorblindness options, difficulty settings and similar are all examples of accessibility. If you need examples of what's meant by this, you should examine the accessibility options of The Last of Us 2, such as the ability to completely make the games graphics a monochrome blue (environment), red (enemies) or yellow (Interactables) so that visually impaired people can clearly see what they can or can't interact with.
It does not mean "This game is easy to play because it has limited options at the start", because Sekiro is - by absolutely no meaningful definition - accessible under the way it's used currently in the games industry. Dark Souls and Bloodborne aren't really either, but they have huge asterisk's because of the multiplayer and the fact you can just outgrind a problem if you put the time in. This article will give you a good start as to what this discussion is about.
Games with systems that are relatively clear and easy to grasp are routinely described as “accessible”. Or, to fall back on a tired old cliche, easy to learn but hard to master. Whereas a game easy to learn and easy to master, we would presumably just call an easy game and have done with it.
Now, I agree that today, “accessibility” tends to refer, more so than the root word, to options that make a user interface more intuitive and practical for differently-abled people. But in written use, the term goes back more than 250 years.
And for the record, I make extensive use of the accessibility options on mobile devices and in software, because they often enhance the UI even for someone capable of the full range of motions and visual or auditory cues the default settings were designed around. Likewise, I run with colorblind settings enabled in some games, where and when I find the adjusted color warmth and/or palette to be useful and/or visually appealing.
I also find closed captions very useful for previewing content in a video with the sound down (or off), and indispensable for enjoying in-flight entertainment, where having the volume up means being subjected to cabin announcements at ear-splitting volume directly through my headphones.
The fact that I find these features useful, despite being technically able to make full use of the device or application without them, should speak to both “accessible” and “accessibility” having meanings not rigidly defined as pertaining only to the adaptation of a user experience for ease of use or access by those with a disability.
Zoku Gojira on
"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are." - Bertolt Brecht
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
I understand that, but terms change and we're talking about the literal poster child for that entire discussion as Sekiro was *the* game that started off a massive resurgence about the debate on accessibility last year. I didn't get to play Sekiro until this month, but even I knew about the huge discussion surrounding it regarding its difficulty and lack of accessibility. I ultimately decided I could handle it and I was very glad I could.
In terms of those options though, I also use them and have been in Last of Us 2. I've basically been playing the entire game in monochrome blue, because the weird collectables - like cards and coins - stand out much more easily when you do this.
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Stuff like this is why I pretty much never recommend the Dark Souls-type games (or similar genres such as roguelikes or ironman game modes) to people without a lot of caveats up front. Those types of designs can be really fun for particular people but also turn off a huge swath of the population from the get go. Even people who would eventually learn to love it may not be up to pushing through the initial pain to get there, and I don't blame them.
Similarly, I spent 20 hours trying to love Crusader Kings 2 and while the underlying game itself was somewhat enjoyable, the atrocious user interface and endless clicking made it so painful for me to actually play the game that I just up and quit one day and never looked back.
But even keeping into account the subjectivity of experience when it comes to games, God of War is something I can readily recommend to pretty much everyone. Even novice gamers will enjoy it because the combat is fun and you can dial down the difficulty to enjoy the world/narrative, while more experienced hardcore gamers can set the difficulty to max and grind through the endless repeating dungeons and do the really tough, entirely-optional content.
This isn't to say that God of War is better than Bloodborne - just that it's more readily recommendable.
I think one of the things that makes Bloodborne so great is that it's first From game I played that was very clear about how it wanted you to play from the get go. Dark Souls, as much as I love that series, lets you easily fall in to "play traps" that work, but are boring and obtuse. Bloodborne makes very clear from the get go how the game is meant to be played. Sekiro continues this design language and I hope going forward this is how From does things.
The other issue, and possibly more pressing, is I'm never going to get more than 20-30 minutes to play Bloodborne unless I schedule it, because I have a 3 year old and I'm not playing it in front of him. And I'm the stay-at-home dad, so I'm not exactly getting to play anything M rated, and very few things T rated if it's on the Livingroom TV, and I can't go to another TV during the day because . . . I'm parenting the kid while the wife works.
Playing for scant stints at a time every few months does not a good experience in a From game make. Thus it's probably harder because I'm just not going to regularly get 3+ hours to really dive in to the game, and instead have to try and remember any rules of the game while still trying to progress in the short amount of time I have every few months when he and the wife decide to take a short nap on a weekend or something. And that's on top of almost everything in Bloodborne working against my natural instincts to hide/run/attack from range/get away/block.
That said Bloodborne is absolutely more aggressive than Dark Souls, with the limited healing items and health regen from attacking. Sekiro ratchets up that aggression another step. In almost every situation, being up in the enemies face is the right strategy in Sekiro.
Congrats on having a 3y/o!!
I played Bloodborne before I got my spawn, so . . . yeah, I don't see myself playing it except for the rare times we agree I get stay up late and sleep all Saturday morning...
. . . kid is murdering my gaming hours, but I still love her more than anything.
Because hard games can be overcome with things like hard work, pattern recognition, trial and error, etc. etc. If a game can't be eventually overcome by effort, then it's not a hard game -- it's a broken game.
I mean, I also died 3 times trying to listen to more official advice about how to beat Ornstein and Smough and then I went in and "did it my way", and I won. Which is I think a strength of the Dark Souls games that Bloodborne sort of lacks; I don't have to play a Dark Souls game in the way the dev intends except in a few scant fights. I've beaten every boss in the first two games, and the few that I hate the most are the ones others seem to love, like Artorias, because there's really only one solution to some of those fights where your only window is between endless dodging and minor hits.
I also commonly play what folks call hybrid classes in Dark Souls games; sorcery magic, a bit of pyromancy, a main Int main weapon and a shield, with multiple other weapons including a bow, several other shields . . . basically, the tools are optimal, my play almost certainly isn't. But it's gotten me through all of the first two games and a good chunk of the third thus far, and every boss and secret in between. The issue is that Bloodborne doesn't have a ton of that wiggle room, and I'm not actually going to get much good . . . er than I already am, so it's more about being able to put in the time to refine what I can already do and "get" the game.
Which, when we talk about difficult games, it needs to be understood that the difficulty can come from multiple angles, and much like "this game is the best for me", there's also, "this game isn't difficult for me". I've beaten Artorias. I understand that boss, I get what it's trying to do, and honestly? Though I get the design language in that, it's honestly way harder and way much more work than I'd ever want to put in to a whole game. Thankfully, Bloodborne does have some wiggle room, and I've finally gotten (last time I played) into a point where I've got the melee weapon I want and think I can get some of the spell items I want.
And also also, I started Bloodborne and then Dark Souls 3, and my mediocre talent with the counter system in Bloodborne made for a much better counter attempt rate in Dark Souls 3. I still have my shield in 3, but I wasn't always blocking. But I was still eating a hit, like, at least 50% of the time I was trying to counter, so dodge or more commonly roll the fuck away or block are still my main tactics.
Kind of like how I beat the Bloodstarved Beast not with the recommended strats, but by farming souls for oil and firebombs, summoning an NPC ally, and having them distract while I soaked the bastard in oil and then lit his ass on fire. A few hits from a serrated weapon with the fire paper I had and down it went.
I wish the Souls fandom hadn't cultivated the "gut gud" cretins that rallied around those games, because as much as I know you meant nothing by "If you just want mindless, easy to get in to fun, From's games are probably not for you." it's still difficult to see it as anything other than an insult.
It's the attitude of "These games are for SMART, SKILLED gamers, so if you are having trouble, you must be STUPID and BAD AT GAMES" that puts a bad taste in my mouth for the entire genre.
That and I think they're unnecessarily difficult and would attract a much larger, healthier fandom if they had some difficulty options.
But that discussion has been had, and by people more eloquent than me.
Sometimes it's just shitty about telling players
The 'Get gud' crowd are . . . just A holes. Put them on ignore.
Bloodborne has plenty of shortcuts that makes you feel good about finding them ... and they aren't hard to find ... but the game is really shitty about telling you that you need to do a), b), c) in order to unlock the real [fun of the] game...
Personally I just want to be able to ask "is this game Dark Souls hard or Bayonetta hard" and not get subjected to multiple paragraphs about how Souls games aren't actually hard as long as you're smart and use the dodge button etc. Just tell me how hard the damn game is, christ.
I do find it interesting though that people only seem to get this way about video games. If you tried to, for instance, play the piano and were very bad at it, and a great player told you that to enjoy it to it's fullest you need to practice and get better, would you feel equally insulted?
Learning to play the piano is not only a skill, it's an art. I think a serious comparison between these two gives Souls games a laughable amount of unearned credit. I disagree with the analogy on principle. It's an entertainment product.
No, we'd though feel insulted if the piano teacher told us that we can only be considered good at playing the piano if we didn't play those easy, mindless songs we actually enjoy.
Also that implies that people who aren't into Souls games aren't good video game players.
Yeah, for me it's more like I'm an excellent pianist and tried to play the violin and didn't enjoy it, and then was told by other violinists that I'm just a shitty musician and I just need to put more hours into practicing the violin in order to properly enjoy it.
Could I do that? Sure. With enough time and effort you can "git gud" at most anything (within reason). Whether or not I want to put in that investment or I will find the end result actually enjoyable is a separate question.
I don't think anyone here has that kind of attitude, though. It sounds like we're all on the same page that tastes can differ and assholes are just assholes.
But fun discovery.
I . . . hm. I don't think the comparison is apt here, as video gaming can be a skill, but it's rare that a gamer uses a game and creates what would commonly be called art.
But let's take a look at art for a moment because I am an artist, so it's an interesting thing to look at as a metaphor. Art comes from the Latin word for skill, and generally referred for the longest time to the crafting anything like a tapestry, pottery, painting, etc. Throughout the years it's morphed into something more general, to the point where it's more about the idea of the creation than the skill put into it. That's not to say you don't benefit from some skill, but that commonly art is more about what it's trying to say and at what time in history. Like, Duchamp's Fountain, where he signed a urinal that was moved to a gallery, and the assertion was that changing the context around an object changes its worth as an object.
I'm not a fan of Duchamp's Fountain, but it is totally art. Because that's what art means now. I may not like it, but that doesn't mean it's not art.
Much like Bloodborne is art, you don't have to like it. And so is Super Mario Odyssey. And technically, so is Bad Rats.
But to the concept of a player as an artist: there are many classes and many teachers that tried to mold me into an artist that did what they considered art. To force me into their concept of art. I didn't, I was lightly ridiculed for it and now . . . I'm not known at all. I've never sold anything beyond a painting in high school. But I make the art I want to, I get to the destination I want to be in. Those teachers expected a certain thing from we or I wasn't doing art right, if I didn't use and develop my skill, and suffer as an artist and . . . etc.
I suppose my point is we don't just get this way about video games, it's just the easiest cultural example, because as an entertainment source it's the only thing that can deny you more entertainment if you are below a certain skill level or willingness to cheese the system as presented to get the ending. But in terms of even just the act of learning to make paintings, or music, or writing, or any other kind of art ther will be people who say that you just have to "get better" or "just do it my way", and invariable as more of them are wrong as they are right, and it turns out "get better" is rarely a good type of advice for anything because of course "get better" is probably part of the element, but it in itself isn't helpful. And it always comes off as gatekeeping and condescension. Just saying more and better and my way is the least helpful advice I've ever been given, by a teacher or a fellow student, because it lacks any communicative weight to it. Now, that can come either from the person saying it or it can have an impact because of a general question being non-specific enough to warrant a general answer, but if someone asks, "how do I get better at Bloodborne?", for example, the best answer would be another question, something like, "what parts are you having trouble with?", and if someone throws their hands up and says all of it, then is when you do your best to ask leading questions such as "what weapon did you pick/what kind of weapons do you usually try to play games with?" or "what is it that you want to do that you're not able to do?". Example in another game: I wanted to reflect the Guardian eye beam in Breath of the Wild, I looked up a bunch of things that simply said "do it when it's about to hit" which was useful for me, but then found one that said "from a medium distance if you hit the button the moment the power up for the beam does X, you'll reflect it every time", and if I'm at the right range I can still do it every time because I know exactly what to watch for. The specific tell.
And I want to be clear, I'm not trying to claim you specifically are being gatekeeping nor condescending. But quite commonly, a game player (or an artist) saying, "it's so easy, why don't you just do it this way?" is because the person speaking has a skill in that very specific game style and type (or that specific medium, in art).
So I think that yes, if I was just trying to play a piano to enjoy it, and to find my own way, but also asked "what can I do to make this better", the answer of "git gud" would make me assume the person was being a pompous jackass. Of course part of the answer is play more. That's beside the point. That's the general thrust. The question is more of how to help someone with your knowledge, and not simply say "it's hard, life's hard, buck up and just do it", because that's the least helpful advice on the planet.
But in that analogy, the player is not the artist. The player is the spectator of the play, the viewer of the movie, the partron perusing the museum, the reader of the story. It's hard to tell a reader, "You're doing it wrong" if they don't enjoy a book. Even for something as divisive as the final Star Wars trilogy where some people felt it was terrible and others really enjoyed it, I can't imagine that any rational person would say "you just have to get into the rhythm of the plot and then it becomes a lot more fun".
I guess my points are:
- Games are art, but we, the players, are the consumers of the medium, not the creators, and
- preferences are entirely subjective and there is no definitive "good" or "bad"
Yes, to be 100% clear, I wasn't trying to say that Bloodborne shouldn't be considered art. I don't think playing Bloodborne is art in any way, shape, or form though.
Art cannot exist in a vacuum without the person perceiving/consuming it. My experience of playing the game is the art.
Counterpoint: Death of the author in today's day and age is almost impossible, what with living actors, directors, game studios, etc having a near-constant social media presence.
The audience is part of what makes art what it is, but they themselves are not making art, but rather what gives the art external meaning. The art's internal meaning is always the "meaning of the author". If we really wanted to engage in "death of the author", no one would quote Miyazaki's comments on difficulty in order to bolster their own opinions on the difficulty of Miyazaki's games, but in our current social system we don't really have a death of the author unless that author is already long dead and we have literally no way of knowing what is or isn't their intent, and honestly that hasn't happened for decades but that's a whole other kettle of fish.
Basically, death of the author is a questionable concept at its heart, and the best that can be said is probably more that you don't need to know an artist's intent to enjoy a work. But with much of our current artwork and especially current games even back to the beginning of games the intent of the author is pretty easy to find, from Shigeru Miyamoto claiming that Zelda was inspired by his exploration as a kid, up to the creative director of Assassin's Creed Odyssey saying that the intended default character is Kassandra. Since the 80s we have only gotten more information on author intent, not less, and so death of the author is almost a privilege or an intended ignorance rather than a form of art observation.
There is and always will we a difference in playing something well and playing something effectively, because the former is a matter of general skill, and the latter is a subjective measure of how the player interacts with a game. You can play differently, and even play as intended, or break every rule, and as long as the strategy is effective and the player is enjoying the experience, that experience is "right" for them. It certainly might not match the intent of the developer, (and we could and often do hear about the actual intended way to play a game from devs), but at the end of the day the player determines their experience. Now, yes, there's nothing like playing a game exactly as it was designed, but the beauty of most games is the ability of a player to take the systems presented and play in a different way than intended and be successful.
I agree that it is more accessible then the other from soft games. No arcane weapon upgrade system with limited upgrade materials, no weapons that seem useful but are traps, no bosses that are obviously designed for one play style over the other, no poorly explained stat system. Accessible compared to other main stream games? Eh maybe not. But definitely compared to other From games.
PSN:Furlion
Nope.
Not at all. Every Dark Souls game and even Bloodborne were considerably easier to play than Sekiro was. In Sekiro, once you hit certain bosses you are 100% completely committed to the fact you have to learn how to play well to get past them. In every Souls game, you can power level or use a completely broken build to easily bypass it. In Sekiro, you're going to have to get good at what the game wants to get past Lady Butterfly, Genichiro or the final boss, Sword Saint. In Dark Souls, you can grind enemies to level your health and abilities, so that you can basically power your way past. Sekiro does not have the option to level up your health and attack power* substantially higher than any boss that gives you trouble.
Also in Souls/Bloodborne you have the option to call in other players to help you beat any boss in the game if you're really struggling with them. Sekiro does not have this option. I have never spent more than an hour trying to beat a boss in Dark Souls or Bloodborne (or Demon Souls for that matter). In Sekiro, I had to spend 3-4 hours on some of the harder bosses, because there isn't an option to just come back and laugh at them with considerably better equipment and stats.
Souls/Bloodborne are thus infinitely more accessible than Sekiro.
*Albeit, possible with one item but you're going to spend longer grinding to make your attack power high than you will actually beating the boss and it's only a very late game item.
Edit: Unless we are talking about very different meanings of accessible!
Was this a thing aside from the final boss?
Yes. It's surprising how many bosses you can beat like that. Albeit, it's not a great strategy, but it does work quite a bit more often than it should. A couple of bosses are really good at punishing it though, but running away and slashing in some rare "safe" times is a way you can do it.
Returning to before and to make sure I'm not confusing the terms here, what are people meaning by "accessible"? I've always understood the term to refer to people being able to get through a game, despite major difficulty barriers, disabilities or similar. Fromsoft games are notoriously bad at this, but at least Souls have grinding RPG mechanics and the ability to call in other players, which mean players can overpower/get help for difficult fights. Sekiro, from what I played, has neither of those and is thus considerably more inaccessible than any other Fromsoft game before it. Sekiros lack of accessibility is a frequent and much discussed topic in fact!
I personally wouldn't use "accessible" in that way.
I interpret "accessibility" as a gauge of how difficult it is for a person to pick up a game and have an understanding of what they're supposed to do and how they're supposed to do it. In this sense, something like Crusader Kings 2 would be the epitome ("difficult to learn, easy to master") of an "inaccessible" game.
By that standard, I can see how someone might say that Sekiro was more accessible than the Dark Souls series as you have fewer gameplay options presented to you (especially at the beginning before you start unlocking more and more arm upgrades).
It does not mean "This game is easy to play because it has limited options at the start", because Sekiro is - by absolutely no meaningful definition - accessible under the way it's used currently in the games industry. Dark Souls and Bloodborne aren't really either, but they have huge asterisk's because of the multiplayer and the fact you can just outgrind a problem if you put the time in. This article will give you a good start as to what this discussion is about.
A good example for me is that I am actually colorblind and have trouble with some games because of it. In Sekiro, there is a particular boss whose color pallet matches the color pallet used for the danger symbol. This meant a very fast and really annoying attack I couldn't see the visual cue for, meaning it was very hard for me to dodge - because I learned to dodge on the display of the symbol and not the sound. This meant that boss was incredibly frustrating and significantly more difficult, because you can't do something as simple as change the color of the symbol so I could see it against the boss' color pallet. In fairness though, that boss also has an easily accomplished exploit that lets you instantly kill it and just move on :P
Edit: I also recommend reading
Accessibility has never and will never be a compromise to my vision (God of War directors opinion)
and
Accessibility and Difficult aren't the same thing
I have played and loved all of the Souls games, Bloodborne and Sekiro, but I do wonder about some of my current health issues that may one day start to impact my ability to play these games. I'm starting to find it hard to hear certain things and audio cues for example, something that has become a major problem for me in the past few years.
I believe that when Zoku Gojira and furlion referred to Sekiro as being more accessible than the Souls titles, they were doing so more in line with the meaning that I laid out.
But that is not the way it is used in discussion currently, especially in the discussion of games like Sekiro. If the game is easy to learn, which Sekiro arguably is does not make it accessible. Crusader Kings presents you with a nigh overwhelming amount of information, but 20 hours in there are no significant barriers to actually playing it. 20 hours into Sekiro, the game is not accessible anymore and there are major actual barriers to continuing to play the game successfully that are entirely lacking in Crusader Kings. "Accessibility" has a specific meaning that has been adopted when talking about games.
Crusader Kings III has done several things for accessibility, such as font sizes, different difficulty options and so on actually. It's much easier to play now and they're constantly improving things, like the originally nightmarish interface, to make things better.
Edit: To give you an example used from an article above, Sekiro could very well have chosen not to translate any of the Japanese. If people played it without the ability to speak or read Japanese, imagine someone responded by saying "Git gud at Japanese". That's the discussion around accessibility.
Games with systems that are relatively clear and easy to grasp are routinely described as “accessible”. Or, to fall back on a tired old cliche, easy to learn but hard to master. Whereas a game easy to learn and easy to master, we would presumably just call an easy game and have done with it.
Now, I agree that today, “accessibility” tends to refer, more so than the root word, to options that make a user interface more intuitive and practical for differently-abled people. But in written use, the term goes back more than 250 years.
And for the record, I make extensive use of the accessibility options on mobile devices and in software, because they often enhance the UI even for someone capable of the full range of motions and visual or auditory cues the default settings were designed around. Likewise, I run with colorblind settings enabled in some games, where and when I find the adjusted color warmth and/or palette to be useful and/or visually appealing.
I also find closed captions very useful for previewing content in a video with the sound down (or off), and indispensable for enjoying in-flight entertainment, where having the volume up means being subjected to cabin announcements at ear-splitting volume directly through my headphones.
The fact that I find these features useful, despite being technically able to make full use of the device or application without them, should speak to both “accessible” and “accessibility” having meanings not rigidly defined as pertaining only to the adaptation of a user experience for ease of use or access by those with a disability.
In terms of those options though, I also use them and have been in Last of Us 2. I've basically been playing the entire game in monochrome blue, because the weird collectables - like cards and coins - stand out much more easily when you do this.