The Souls series is known for its crushing difficulty, but don't let that fool you. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls were rarely unfair. Instead, they deferred to harsh punishment for even minor mistakes by the player. Learning from mistakes and avoiding new ones was the key to success
Dark Souls 2 has two new directors, both of which feel a sense of responsibility for carrying over the well-tuned difficulty balance of previous titles. Speaking to GameInformer, director Yui Tanimura shared his commitment to providing a challenge in Dark Souls 2 that doesn't stray from the series' award-winning formula. He said:
Balance is probably the most important part of this game and I feel responsible in balancing the game, and tuning it to the finest details so that Dark Souls II will be the best experience so far in the series that we’ve created.
At Namco's booth at E3 you could see players trying out Dark Souls 2 and dying within 15 seconds of starting the demo. It was actually quite hilarious. Most of that is due to their unfamiliarity with the game, something that leaves players vulnerable to agonizing deaths. Nonetheless, Dark Souls 2 is going to be hard… very hard. Whether or not it'll be considered more challenging than Dark Souls is yet to be determined, but as long as it carries the same level of reward with it fans will find a way to jump through its fiery hoops.
