Dark Souls 2 tried to change up quite a lot of game mechanics to keep the series fresh, but one thing that was not welcomed was the way that your maximum health decreases every time you die, with a bottom limit of 50% of your health. What newer players may not have realised is that this mechanic is actually a throwback to Demon's Souls, the game that Dark Souls was a spiritual successor to. For some reason, Dark Souls 2 decided that this abandoned mechanic was worth reviving. It was widely criticised for unfairly penalising players, due to it literally meaning the worse you were at the game, the harder it got by default. Dark Souls is already a hard - if not one of the hardest - games out there, but it had previously been praised for the fact that despite the level of difficulty, if you died it was generally fair. The health penalty was seen as difficulty for the sake of difficulty.
Currently living the dream by studying in Wales and writing articles about the things I love for beer money. My proudest achievements are teaching myself Accordion and getting my head round the off-side rule.
