Dude, Ninja Gaiden 1 was an all time punishing favorite for me. The controls were more than responsive, and the enemies would surround u and go to work. They were very smart. Did u beat the original Hurricane Pack (one of the first DLC pieces on Live)? They had u run up the stairs in the final level, and once u reach the top there was a portal, that led to a closed room full of enemies, giving ur hands no time to rest. Darn I love NG1, and 2 was good also. Wish Itagaki never left. But I understand why.

They could just progress differently , Souls is typically very hard in the beginning for casuals so they get frustrated and quit right away. If they get people to play 3-5 hours without total frustration and ramp up the difficulty as they go, maybe more people will enjoy it. I love it the way it is, but I have several frien s who got pissed at souls and saidf it I hate this game, tho they really hate their skills and impatience . :p

prolly not, never get cross platform saves i tink

I haven’t no but I definitely will. I can’t upgrade my PC till March. So I’ll get it on one of the consoles and then eventually I’ll get it on pc during a steam sale.

I beat 1&2 on PC so I have a story to continue and I beat 2 again on 360. I’ve been hoping they announce a save continuation for the 360 version but I’m not holding my breathe.

yeah spose it would be better if they can incorporate something for both types of players but like you said hard to strike a balance. Have you seen the uncompressed version of witcher 3 trailer? its stunning, would be well worth a GPU upgrade. i hope they do a console uncompressed comparison to see how much better the PC version really is.

http://www.gamersyde.com/download_the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_gc_downwarren_gameplay-32758_en.html

Good combat AI is the main reason I really enjoy ninja gaiden 1&2 (modern not nes). Throw that game on hard and you can duel with AI all day. If you don’t know how to properly fight and defend they will pick you apart.
It’s a hard line to tow for a Dev and publisher. Make it too hard and you limit your audience. Make it cheaply hard and you limit it further. Make it somewhat easy for the average person and you gain audience but alienate the gamers who will stand by you regardless of genre.

CD projeckt red is really good in that regard. They don’t dumb down anything. Even in easy mode which is really easy all the complexity is there you just die less and kill faster but ramp the difficulty up and the AI will fight back much like a person would. They win over fans with a really mature complex story and world with rewarding combat but also make that story accessible to people who aren’t good at combat or dont understand/care to understand how traps or signs work or don’t Want to craft mutagens for modifying their stats when leveling up.

I think with the surge in popularity of the souls series and some of the old school hard indies we might start seeing developers making games that can please both sides of the argument but its going to take timetime cause doing it well it so hard

yeah tis true but for fans of dark souls and demon souls might be a blow but i read something somewhere that the reason why AI hasnt advanced that much in difficulty is because no one wants it. The majority seem to love dumb easily killable AI that makes them feel good and not frustrate them so guess its gamers to blame to

That’s gaming in general and it has everything to do with attracting the masses and nothing to do with consoles.

It goes in cycles and has for all long as gaming has been around.

the games difficulty is dumbed down for a wider audience so they dont get annoyed and quit

Games like dark souls need to be around but they also need to be spaced out. If we play punishing games too often it will get old fast especially since it takes true talent to make a hard game good instead of making it cheap.