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Dark Souls 2 (Dark Souls successor (Demon's Souls successor))

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Demon's Souls - False King Allant

Dark Souls - Gwyn

Dark Souls 2 - Looking Glass Knight

Bloodborne -

Mergo's Wet Nurse

 

Of those I think False King is still my favourite, dude is brutal. Gwyn is there as I can't parry and he took me 40+ attempts (I could tell by all the upgrade stones I had when I finished as I killed the knights on the way there every time for some reason :lol:) rather than for being a great boss, it was just a great feeling.

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Artorias is so fucking cool in all the ways. He's also the only boss I needed help to beat haha. ):

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The Pursuer is probably my favorite boss of all four games, in a large part because he managed to scare the crap out of me three different times.  Especially when he shows up in the Iron Keep.   Runners up would be both Artorias and Magus.  From Demon's Souls, I actually have a fondness for the Tower Knight.  Not so much because the fight was that hard, but for the awe of walking into his arena for the first time and seeing this sky scraper sized knight waiting on me, having no clue how to even approach him let alone win.

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I haven't played Demon's Souls or Bloodborne, and probably never will.

 

Anyway, here's my 5 picks from t'other games

 

Ornstein & Smough

Gargoyles (I like a fight where you have to manage two enemies(but I really didn't like the gargoyle fight from DS2))

Artorias, because he's agressive and powerful and has a good range of attacks.

The Smelter Demon. Okay, his weapon's hitbox is a bit obscene, but fighting him was always a challenge and felt like an event, which can't be said of many bosses from DS2

The Ruin Sentinels

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Artorias is great in the DLC but I also think the fight with Kalameet is one of the best fights with a dragon in any game. (And apparently a reference to the final boss in King's Field I believe)

 

Quelaag also has a special place for me because she's the first tough but fair boss in Dark Souls that I had a good deal of trouble with and just barely beat. I'm sure if you played a Souls game before she's not that challenging, but she took me a good number of tries and got me hooked on the series.

 

I know the Ancient Dragon is a fight in Dark Souls 2 that's broken and frustrating in many ways, but at times the spectacle of fighting a giant dragon is worth it. Especially if you use the strategy of baiting his frontal attacks instead of trying to just hide underneath him. 

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The Kalameet fight was poisoned for me by how hard the tail is to get. It's cool besides that in every respect.

I think the Giant bosses in DS2 are also amazing just because of the story arc to them; on revisiting The Last Giant you finally realise why he goes berserk the moment he sees you.

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I never got Kalameet's tail, it's the only thing in Dark Souls 1 I wasn't able to pull off. 

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 (I like a fight where you have to manage two enemies(but I really didn't like the gargoyle fight from DS2))

 

I do too. It adds a whole different dimension to the combat and makes it shine.

 

There's a fight in Bloodborne where you manage 3 enemies which I found incredibly disappointing because it was way too easy. The AI is such that 1 rushes you, one comes forward at a decent pace but stops to cast a short range spell, and the third barely moves and throws fireballs from a distance. 

In an arena with 2 large columns it was the easiest AI to exploit for a divide and conquer strategy. Compared to O&S where there was similar AI - one rushes you (or sits back and casts) while the other moves much more slowly but constantly comes at you. That fight was so much harder because the arena didn't allow you to simply block line of site for a long time. The pillars were small and would break, plus as far as I know it's impossible to parry O&S. And finally, in Dark Souls, you can't move and heal, so those pillars are vital to letting you heal up in relative safety, while in bloodborne you can run off while healing.

 

Rant over.

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I prefer the physical duels in Dark Souls to any special type bossfights. If what I fight ends up spitting poison, breathing fire or tossing magic, I just feel like I'm being punished for not researching in advance which shield I was supposed to bring. Or not having the right kind of shield at all. Giant humanoids are more impressive than regular sized foes in that regard, but the games always walk a kind of line there with how badass something looks and how lumbering and ineffectual that makes it. Not as impressive when you learn that you just kind of have to walk under it and towards the side to make it flail ineffectually.

 

Ornstein and Smough was pretty good, so was Artorias. Also that big guy on top of Sen's Fortress.

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Oh God that Steel Golem at the end of Sen's Fortress. Awesome.

 

My favourite on Dark Souls has to be the Lost Kings (or whatever they were called) because they made me play them completely differently (I had to charge in and go crazy and just suck up the damage). Dark Souls II is a tougher one because so many of them fused into one another but at a pinch I would go with the Sentinels as I helped so many people beat them and saw dozens of others stumble and fail.

 

I also like that I commented on Lords of Fallen thread to realise that the top threads are the Darks Souls games and a Dark Souls rip-off.

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My favourite on Dark Souls has to be the Lost Kings (or whatever they were called) because they made me play them completely differently (I had to charge in and go crazy and just suck up the damage)

 

The Four Kings, and I absolutely agree that speed and agression is key to that fight. If you haven't seen Emarrel (on Youtube) fighting them at SL1 on NG+7, it's pretty electifying 'cos he/she can't afford to make any mistakes at all.

 

I just fought and beat them on NG+, and breathed a huge sigh of relief when it was done. Superb boss.

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I watched some of GiantBomb's QL for the re-release and after having played a ton of Bloodborne the animation looks so bad in comparison. I mean, it's not bad but there's something about it that makes it look slightly off.

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never played the blood demon dark souls borne games,

 

but from what I have heard, they seem to be celebrated for being very hard but teaching the player how to overcome challenges et. al.

 

is it similar in a way to games like nethack or ADOM, or is it very different? 

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They're real-time action RPG's and benefit from a shared skill set of a background in both RPG's and character action games and perhaps even a background in fighting games. (Lots of familiar fighting game nuance can surface in the pvp.) Coming at the series without that broad skill set can make it more difficult as things that are absolutely crucial won't be surface-level apparent on their own. (Like the invincibility frames in the dodge, for example, and how the best way to use that is to counter-intuitively dodge towards an enemy and through an attack, positioning yourself to punish on the attacker's recovery frames.)

 

The extent to which they are "hard" tends to be oversold, i feel. Those i-frame windows will feel very generous if you come to the series from fighting games, for example. The series punishes mistakes fiercely and quickly though, but the games also provide you more than ample tools to overcome the challenge. The real difficulty lies in recognizing those tools, whether they be expendable items, facets of your weapon's moveset, or quirks of the character sheet. It is entirely up to you to recognize and utilize your character's strengths. (Don't expect to guided towards those solutions, you very much have to find your own path.) They're games that reward a deep understanding of both the underlying statistical systems and the mechanical nuances to the combat, and that's - i personally suspect - why they're so loved. Since flailing aimlessly tends to be punished so harshly, they're games that give people a genuine opportunity to apply the skills the game forces them to develop, and it's done without being difficult to an arbitrarily and completely bullshit degree. (Usually.)

 

They're games that also encourage a methodical and careful approach, both in exploring the world and attempting to unravel the abilities of the enemies contained within.

 

They're games where failing is not an actual fail state, but an opportunity to have learned more about the game.

 

They're also games that present seemingly opaque narratives that are only revealed in all their layered complexity through attentive observation of details that other games may have taught you to ignore.

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The difficulty is massively overstated in the souls games. They are punishing to people used to modern games, but once you understand the mechanics a little, they're not that hard. Every combat encounter revolves around waiting for the enemy to attack, dodging, then attacking before retreating. Once you have that loop down, the difficulty comes from understanding the enemy's tells. It's also important to understand that dying isn't really a big deal. It generally costs you time, as the lost XP can be gained back pretty quickly if you need it that badly. 

 

One thing Sno missed as to the appeal of the games is how they use environmental story telling, and tiny fragments of information that are required to piece together the extremely well realised world. The story in each game is actually great, and if you're anything like me, you'll entirely miss it on your first play through, only when you start subsequent play throughs will you take the time to understand what's going on.

The community is also necessary to help piece together the lore. I find that part amazing, as so many things are open to interpretation. 

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never played the blood demon dark souls borne games,

 

but from what I have heard, they seem to be celebrated for being very hard but teaching the player how to overcome challenges et. al.

 

is it similar in a way to games like nethack or ADOM, or is it very different?

The Souls game for me definitely tickle a similar part of my brain as roguelikes do. Every time you die, your world is mostly reset, and you get to try again.

The realtime combat is an obvious difference, but I got used to it.

They're also similar to Nethack and ADoM specifically in that you really need to look some stuff up on wikis if you want to see everything. Things like NPC quests etc. are opaque by design and the idea that they would be mysterious and only solved by collaborative effort by the community was part of the Souls idea from the start.

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Spent quite a bit of time over the last few days with Scholar of the First Sin. 

 

I've got a great narrative going for the new character I built.  He's a peasant, inspired by this fabulous

from last year.  I always wanted to mess around with the Pickaxe, but the amusing yet pain-in-the-ass method of getting it always stopped me. 

 

So Pickaxe Pete is just a normal joe who all these folks have mistaken for some great hero.  First he tries to go home, but finds all his old friends to be mindlessly pantomiming their old jobs, oblivious to the world around him and the village is overrun with some bizarre moving soldiers (the Falconeer's animation is hilariously terrible).  The only solace is that one of the old village pigs remembers him and starts following him around.  He also scavenges up some proper clothes, the warriors armor he had picked up was heavy and chafing.  He makes his way to the church, to find his old joyous building of celebration has been overrun by some evil cult worshiping dark magic.  They give him no choice but to defend himself, and with tears streaming down his face he puts his old hand axe to work.  They're weak, more sick than dangerous.  When the dust and blood settle, he finds the pig, still there, still following. 

 

He must see the Duke, if there is anyone in the land who is smart enough fix whatever has happened to his village, Pete is sure it's the Duke.  When he reaches the old adobe villages, they are overrun with bizarre spider monsters and mages.  Thinking he may be able to sneak through the back way, Pete jumps from ledge to ledge, his nimble friend the pig following.  When he reaches the bottom, spiders and monsters and more erupt from the sand!  Overwhelmed, Pete dashes through them.  The Duke's building is in sight!  He's never been there, but he's heard stories of it's grandeur and seen it from afar.  There must be soldiers there, Pete thinks.  There must be, the Duke would be protected.  Pig and man sprint across bridge over strange, spikey crystals, oblivious to more mindless villagers pounding away at the rocks, harvesting them.  Pete practically leaps through the door, sure to find safety...and instead finds a dozen more of the giant spiders.  Spiders in front, spiders in back, this is the end.  Pete is strong from his life's labors, but he's no warrior.  The pig, strangely having no fear, starts rooting around in a batch of mushrooms.  Out of the corner of his eye, Pete spots a glowing symbol on the floor.  He doesn't know what it is, but hopes it may be some alarm or trap he can activate.  As his hand reaches down and touches it, the spiders skitter, skitter, skitter ever closer towards him. 

 

And then a burst of light!  Pete falls on his ass, warrior that he is not, and as his vision clears, he finds himself staring up at a woman.  But not like the girls he used to flirt with at the pub, or the severe women who used to serve the church.  This is a hunter, with crossbow in one hand and greatbow in the other.  She takes just a single glance across the room and bursts into action.  The crossbow fires and one spider explodes.  She whips the greatbow around like a club, crushing two more.  She plants the bow and fires an arrow that could better be called a spear, pinning a spider-man beast to the wall.  Pete recovers his senses, he can't just let this stranger save him without helping.  With his axe, he watches her back, hacking away at spiders who try to get the jump on her, while she deals death in more ways than Pete's ever imagined, let alone seen.   Finally, everything is dead.  Both heaving, the hunter and peasant look at one another.  The stranger smiles and bows.  And then she's gone, vanished as quickly as she appeared.  Pete has no idea what's going on. 

 

He takes another look around the room, and finds his pig, dead next to a fairly good sized hole it had dug in the middle of the mushroom patch.  In the hole is a pickaxe.  It's Pete's Pickaxe.  Why?  What?  How did his pickaxe come to be buried under the floor of the Duke's residence?  Pete picks it up, and it fits as well as it always did, perfectly shaped to his hands.  He's lost in thought when another spider-man-thing lumbers through the door.  Pete's seen them in action now.  They're slow, predictable.  He waits, until it's practically on top of him, and then brings his pickaxe down upon the crown of it's head, driving the head of the axe through it's skull, then chest, almost splitting it in half.  Pete used to split boulders for a living, but he's never felt this strong before. 

 

Pete kindles a fire in the corner of the room.  He's exhausted and starving, but also elated.  Perhaps he can survive in this world afterall.  Once the fire is hot, he'll fry up some bacon and mushrooms.  Then on to find the Duke. 

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I'm really digging the Scholar of the First Sin release.  If you want to play more Dark Souls 2, this is the version to play, especially if you never bought the DLC (which I hadn't). 

 

The Good:

 

Enemy placement - People whining about how enemies are now hordes are full of shit.  Some areas have more enemies, some have less.  Some places just having completely remixed enemies.  I honestly really miss the old ruins with the Lion Warriors.  They really cut down on the number of warriors.  You can now sprint straight to the boss and only aggro a single enemy.  There is a new enemy there though, which I won't describe.  A couple of the setpiece minibosses have been removed, while a couple of others have been added (the Flexile Sentry scared the shit out of me showing up somewhere unexpectedly).  Which, the ones who were removed seem to be the ones that were almost always cheesed with arrows.  Some of the most annoying enemies are moved, like the Alonne Archer on the ledge in the big lava room in the Iron Keep.  He's been brought down to the main level, making it easier to break line of sight and eventually engage him in melee.  I've also noticed a couple of other enemies who previously needed a ranged attack or good jumping skills have been moved, more easily allowing for pure melee runs.  Overall I think the enemy remix is *mostly* superior to the vanilla version, barring a few places.   I've also been summoned into NG+ a couple of times, and the enemy placement is different there as well.  Going through Sinner's Rise surprised the shit out of me, because I didn't know I had been summoned into an upgraded world. 

 

New phantoms - There are a BUNCH of more NPC invaders.  These have mostly been both surprising and challenging.  The AI feels much smarter on these than the old phantom invaders.  Definitely an overall improvement.

 

New NPC summons - There are at least a half dozen more summons, that show up in more places, and I really dig several of them.  They just look cool.  I really wish the hunter I mentioned in my story above was a character you could talk to. 

 

The DLC (its new to me, even though it's been out for awhile) - I've only gone deep into the Sunken King, but holy shit is it good.  Apparently the original director of DS2 was replaced by a guy who finished the main game, designed the DLC and oversaw the remaster.  I really hope he gets to helm a Souls game of his own from the start after seeing what a team under his direction can do.

 

New Item Placement - This is not as severe as the enemy placement, but there are a few changes that are pretty big, including being able to pickup what was previously a super late game weapon (the Testicle, aka the Dragon Tooth) surprisingly early.  I wish the power stanced great hammer moveset was better, I would totally run dual Teeth if there was the slightest value to it (and I still might just for the giggles).  Oh, and the Dull Ember isn't in the Iron Keep anymore!  Fuck yeah!  If you want a build that requires infusion, you no longer have to prioritize getting to the keep. 

 

Agape Ring - I think this was eventually patched into the vanilla game, but it's a ring that lets you have some control over your Soul Memory, allowing for you to cap yourself in a particular tier for jolly co-op or PvP.

 

The Bad

 

Durability - Weapon degradation continues to be atrocious on PC (and I hear on consoles).  The issues with geography and body collision have been compounded by a fixed 60FPS, making some weapons completely unusable. I basically have to reserve my Pickaxe for bosses or use co-op/Repair Powder to fix it after a long run.  A patch is supposed to be incoming, but given the durability issues that have existed since launch, I'm not holding my breath that it will actually be fixed.

 

6-Player Max - So far this is not good.  Maybe in NG++ and on it will be.  Having 3 people already trivialized every boss/area.  Having 4+ is even worse.  I really like being summoned into other people's worlds, but when I come in and already see 2 summons, I know we're just going to roflstomp. 

 

Bell Tower - Related to that max.  I feel like they ruined my favorite PvP area.  You can now be invaded by at least 3 BellBros, which is like, WHAT THE FUCK?!  2v1 PvP is already the most challenging thing in the game.  I loved taking a serious PvP build in against two BellBros who were just trying to farm chunks/covenant levels.  I'm not sure there is a boss fight in the game that equals the rush of beating two people.  But 3v1 is just impossible.  If you could get for sure a summon or two, it might be fun.  But that's hardly guaranteed.  There is a tanky NPC summon on the second floor, but I'm not sure his health makes up for the skill of a human. 

 

Enemy Placement - While mostly good, there are a few moved/missing enemies whose loss bums me out.  Not anyone who made a real challenge, just more like a buddy that I was used to saying hi to passing through an area. 

 

The statues - This feels completely arbitrary to me.  There are now a bunch of the petrified statues around.  There are also more branches, so it just seems dumb.  It's about forcing you to remember and backtrack to a few early areas.  The enemies unlocked are mostly really weak versions of the thieves from Huntsman's Copse, which narratively is kind of interesting.  Since there is usually treasure behind them, obviously they were trying to steal it and got petrified.  But it feels like if this was going to happen, some more creativity could have been applied. 

 

The Whatever

 

The Pursuer - It's funny how the narrative of this guy basically flips now.  Previously he showed up 3 times, and scared the crap out of you each time.  Now he feels like a stalker who's pissed that you keep rejecting him.   He probably needed his moveset to be updated, since once you understand when/how to dodge, he's completely ineffectual.  But still, I like the Pursuer, so getting to fight him more isn't necessarily a bad thing, just could have been handled better.  And he's still managed to startle me every time he's shown up. 

 

Graphics - It's a crisper game, and some textures are certainly better, but it doesn't feel like some huge overhaul to me.  Just a bit nicer.

 

Progression - Maybe DS2 was always this way, or maybe the DLC or new enemies compound it, but progression feels really broken to me.  I just hit Drangleic with my Peasant, and I'm already level 130.  To be fair, I know what I'm doing and this build really only has to spend souls on levels, upgrading equipment and a couple of rings.  If I had to buy a bunch of arrows, spells, boss weapons and consumables, I'd be 10-20 levels lower.  But still.  It feels like I'm going to hit 150 well before the end of the game. 

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Enjoyed the summary. I've been umming and ahhing about getting it, and I think you pushed me over the edge. Once I'm done with Bloodborne though.

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Two things:

 

The Bad

 

The statues - This feels completely arbitrary to me.  There are now a bunch of the petrified statues around.  There are also more branches, so it just seems dumb.  It's about forcing you to remember and backtrack to a few early areas.  The enemies unlocked are mostly really weak versions of the thieves from Huntsman's Copse, which narratively is kind of interesting.  Since there is usually treasure behind them, obviously they were trying to steal it and got petrified.  But it feels like if this was going to happen, some more creativity could have been applied. 

 

I know that, in the only review that I read about Dark Souls 2 translated from Japanese, the game got slammed horribly for the fragrant branches being a clumsy gating mechanism rather than a puzzle or a mystery. The decision to use one on a statue was trivial once you knew that there were more branches (two more, I think) than statues. With that knowledge, I'm not surprised that the remix tries to muddy the waters, although to not much avail.

 

The Bad

 

6-Player Max - So far this is not good.  Maybe in NG++ and on it will be.  Having 3 people already trivialized every boss/area.  Having 4+ is even worse.  I really like being summoned into other people's worlds, but when I come in and already see 2 summons, I know we're just going to roflstomp.

 

I know that "bigger multiplayer" is always a high-selling bullet point, but I have no clue why you'd actually go through with increasing player count in a game praised largely for its sense of loneliness and isolation.

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I know that "bigger multiplayer" is always a high-selling bullet point, but I have no clue why you'd actually go through with increasing player count in a game praised largely for its sense of loneliness and isolation.

 

Yeah, I'm really not sure what the logic was there, if it was just a bullet point thing, if someone genuinely thought it was a good idea, if they wanted a chance to experiment with more people in MP (and doing that in a re-release makes more sense than dropping it into a new game with limited data).  It might also have some interesting possibilities with 3v3 fights in the organized fight clubs, but that's such a small niche compared to how it degrades the core experience. 

 

 

 

 

One thing I didn't do is say anything about the overall difficulty, because I have no idea how hard this game is.  I've read some forum posts of people really struggling, and I'm sailing through it like it's baby's first game.  But I've collectively put close to 1,000 hours into the 4 Souls games at this point.  Bashing my head against that wall, for that long, had to impart some knowledge at some point.  I've also realized how crushingly good the Pickaxe is as a boss nuker, it's the highest single hit damage weapon I've used in DkS2, provided you nail a counter hit.  I've taken out some of the easy to mid tier bosses in as little as 4 hits.  I came within a sliver of damage of 1-shotting the Royal Rat Vanguard.  If I was willing to use the new, super rare buff consumable (temporarily doubles damage), I think I could one-shot multiple bosses with a slightly different setup. 

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I've read that the 60fps durability bug will allegedly be fixed in an upcoming patch. From apparently didn't mean to ignore it for the re-release, it just somehow slipped through still intact. Nevertheless, kind of ridiculous that a widely known issue like that from the PC version ended up in all three versions of the re-release.

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It's ridiculous that they'd base anything important to game-play on FPS at all. I wonder if I locked it to 10 FPS if I'd be a god.

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It's ridiculous that they'd base anything important to game-play on FPS at all. I wonder if I locked it to 10 FPS if I'd be a god.

 

No, your weapons would just last forever.  There's actually multiple compounding bugs/features going on.  Weapons degrade on all contact (geography, enemies, and dead bodies).  At 60FPS, it's registering 2 hits per actual hit for durability degradation (but not for damage, natch).  This would be bad, but the compounding factor is that for some reason dead bodies cause 2x-4x more durability loss than anything else.  So if you swing an extra time or two after the killing blow, you'll take way more durability loss.  It gets worse for certain weapons that can score multiple hits naturally (halberd spin-to-win and great clubs 2HR2 combo), which can demolish their durability if you execute them at the wrong time on a group of enemies.  And finally, other weapons have multiple hitboxes (scythes, halberds and whips all have different hitboxes that determine how much damage they do).  Each of those hitboxes might register as a durability hit during an attack.  That's why some weapons fare so much worse than others.  The durability system is geared to make you depend on 2-3 weapons.  Repair powder is rare and expensive so you can't always depend on your favorite weapon.  The problem is that as it currently stands, it's possible to break 3+ weapons going through a long area.

 

I don't know enough about game engines to know if this is bad design, an unintended consequence, or just harder to fix.  In Mass Effect 3 MP, there was an interaction between framerate and enemy accuracy that they were never able to fix.  At like 120FPS, every enemy was a sniper and at 15FPS, every enemy was a Stormtrooper.  Because it had been designed and optimized for 30FPS on consoles, and the effect was fairly subtle, it took awhile even for the community to figure out why the PC version felt a lot more challenging than the console versions. 

 

Someone has modded both vanilla and SotFS to eliminate the 60FPS portion of the durability bug.  But there have been a few reports of people being softbanned for it (though realistically, these people might have been using other mods as well, the mod developer and others have reported using it for awhile now without problem).  But I've erred on the safe side of not using it. 

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