Smouldering Lake/Demon Ruins fucked me up real good for a while. But I finished it with 70 Titanite Shards because enemies drop that shit like candy there.

Not so much areas but equipment for me. I found some twinswords pretty quickly (Swamp area) and thought that dual wielding might be a fun build so I went hard into the dex stat but haven't found much to replace my twinswords. Finding high Str great swords/hammers/etc or many caster items just makes me wonder whether I chose correctly. Also haven't found a weapon that could be made out of boss souls that would work well with a Dex build so that seems disappointing as well.

I haven't found anything to top my Longsword. Makes me wonder if they gave all weapons a similar base and just let you stick with one, like Bloodborne did.

Not until the last four bosses but then pretty heavily. Once again the last bosses in a Souls game that isn't DeS screw you over when you're trying to play a mage and at that point I realized just how fragile my 24 vig/below 25% equip load character truly was, so when I'm up against someone like Dragon Armour who forces me to go full melee-and-dodge with a character that get's pretty much oneshot at any bigger mistake, I start losing my temper a bit.

I'm through now though, gonna try a quality build or a high vit miracle tank next.

Definitely the catacombs and smouldering lake areas. Not so much the enemies just the fact that I would always keep getting lost.

@otterchaos: I totally get where you're coming from, but it's worth remembering that you can infuse weapons to scale better with certain stats.

Sure I added a Sharp enhancement so my Dex scaling is at "A" now so that helps but it gets old using the same weapon for hours and hours with nothing looking to replace it soon. If I had a Str build I would have many things to chose from, I just didn't realize that the dual wielding weapons were so infrequently found. I've looked up some info to see if there is a possibility of better twin swords and there are but it requires some unfathomable set of prerequisites in order for them to drop and I'm not sure that I can still get that done and even if I want to spoil parts of the game to make sure I get it right. I have lots of shards to upgrade weapons but since I only use the twin swords and my bow the titanite just sits in inventory with me hoping to get a chance to upgrade something someday. I do have a rapier made from a boss soul that might be ok to upgrade but I'm always afraid that I'll find something better after wasting the rare upgrade materials on the rapier. Ah I think I'll just bite the bullet and upgrade the rapier for some thing different to work with.

Yeah, that's what I ended up doing. Those guys are still real dicks though.

And the cherry on top is that after I got through them, up the ladder I go and hey! It's another walk along small rooftops while assholes fire homing arrows at you. Because I just adored that part in Dark Souls and SO wanted to do something like it again.

Dancer was the first thing that genuinely made me feel that frustration. That fight took me about seven hours, and it was mostly because it was tilting me so damn hard and I didn't want to summon anyone for it. I finally gave in, and with someone summoned, it was too damn easy.

Nameless King was the other time that I felt that frustration, but it was mainly because I KNEW I knew the patterns, and I KNEW I could beat him. I just wasn't. Then again, I also had an issue during the first phase with the camera lock-on. That fight was NOT made for that shit AT ALL. Absolutely infuriating, but once I finally figured out how to manipulate that thing properly, it was simply just getting my dodges down properly for the second phase. It took three sessions over the course of about twelve hours, but I did it finally. Felt fucking AWESOME afterwards! To juxtapose that, I went and killed the Lord of Cinder in a one-shot afterwards. Talk about anti-fucking-climactic!

@otterchaos: Dunno if you've found anything yet, but I used the sellswords for most of the game and they are fine to beat it with. I did however switch to the Chaos Blade towards the last few bosses and that thing is fantastic for a pure dex build. S scaling dog. Any other katana style weapons should do you well if you choose to switch, you can get the Uchigatana in firelink. (It's pretty obvious where if you look around). I also think Rapiers are mainly Dex weapons? Though those generally seem like low damage weapons no matter what. Really cool moveset though.

Pontiff and the city he is in. Hardest part of the game for me hands down.

Ok, Cathedral of the Deep got to me. For one, it just got extremely confusing to navigate. And two, I was about to enter this really cool-looking area before that, but I was missing a certain item, so I had to spend a good 3 hours doing other crap just to get in. Bummer times.

I got really frustrated last night doing post game before going to NG+. Trying farm some covenant items. I'm way too leveled to get auto summoned. And trying to farm the items from enemies is very frustrating and boring.

I didn't really get frustrated at all in this game, to be honest. The poison area in this game is the most lenient, easy one they've ever had. Coming from the Demon Souls Valley of Defilement, to Blighttown, its rainbows and butterflies comparably. There isn't that area that I just really dread in this game.

I'd just like to say fuck you to whoever decided to put in an enemy with a giant fuck-off axe on a fucking chain. You'll know the enemy if you've been there.

Kings Garden is the first area I've really had trouble with so far. Maybe I'm under leveled?

Man Irithyll or whatever is really driving me fucking insane, I was 34 hours in and I've been fighting those curvesword assholes for 3 hours now, havent even passed the second bonfire and just good fucking lord I dont feel like spending another second in that goshdarn place! So far the rest has been perfect imo difficulty wise with the exception of the demon ruin, got a tad frustrated there as well. I bet its just psychological though....HMMMMm...I should use my head and think!....if only...HmmMm EDIT: I totally beat the whole of central irythill area inc pontif the morning after I posted this and before going to work that day. A good night sleep and a couple of points in vitality can apparently do wonders : )

I made it through demon and dark souls in the few past months and those definitely didn't get THAT hard imo. After struggling through bloodborne for 76hours(I've bought all souls games on release but never gave em the proper time/attention till bloodborne so it was kiiiiiinda my first souls game) it really felt like I just cruised through the older souls games without any major roadbumps. Until somewhere in dark souls 2 (+DLC, man I dislike the DS2 dlc except for shulva) . Just so you guys know where im coming from :P

I don't bother to scour areas like farron keep. I do my best, but if I see the end goal I'm going for that instead of some item that's probably shit. This helps with the anxiety these types of "fuck you" areas induce.

Smouldering lake, directly followed by the Demon Ruins as a Farron Greatsword user, the constant fireballs and general other bullshit got pretty infuriating. Old Demon King was also pretty rough. Everything else after has felt like smooth sailing and the amazing slow reveal up to Anor Londo was just incredible.

My only frustrations have come from summoning making bosses a bit too easy, (i wanted to try it having not done so in DS1&2 or Bloodborne) and a bit in the Irithyll dungeon before dumping some titanite into a fire-based weapon.

It was all worth it once I reached Anor Lando.

Frustrating part? Running through the Catacombs. Wolnir was easy though, but man did the Old Demon King kick my ass.

For me that was the last Lord of Cinder (The 2 princes), I've been unable, for the life of me, to beat him once without invoking another player to help me in NG and NG+. I've even tried with an NPC but nothing worked. The irony is I was able to kill the Nameless King in 6 tries and quite easily.

Speaking as a watchdog:

stay the fuck outta my forest.

And hands down the prettiest area From has ever produced. During the first couple of hours I spent there I would get distracted by the scenery while fighting the Pontiff Knights.

Yeah, I was frustrated. I was frustrated trying to shove that damn sword into the Shrine bonfire because the prompt wouldn't come up for ages. It only came up the third time I ran around it after giving up the first two and exploring some more. Took me a good 20 minutes at least after I had reached it to realize the prompt just wasn't showing up for whatever reason.

Ok what I said before is a lie, the Nameless King is really breaking me right now. I can beat the first part easy as but I'm doing not even 5% damage before he kills me with the ridiculous three hit combo which apparently I'm always half a second too late to dodge. Anyone have any tips for me?

My main frustration with the game so far only has to do with the input lag and massive frame rate drops on PS4. It gets so bad at times because of the frame-rate dipping that after I take an action it registers 2 seconds later. Otherwise I love the setting and lore of this game.

I've finished the game and still never really felt frustrated. Just starting a sorcerer now, though, so we'll see how that changes things. I also feel obliged to note that the one enemy I really hated dealing with was this chain-axe thing mentioned below. Those guys are The Worst.

@mysteriousfawx: I agree about Farron Keep - not a pleasant place. But yes I definitely smiled when I learned that there was yet another area where the floor is poison and everything is crazy dangerous.

Actually I have had a relatively smooth time in all of Bloodborne (including DLC) and in Dark Souls III. I've stayed calm when losing to bosses over and over and trying to learn them (fuck that Crystal Sage). But my first ever "Souls" huge moment of Brad-level frustration was just yesterday when fighting the boss in the optional area of the game.

Jesus Christ this boss is fucking insanely hard.

It almost ruined my whole day of spending hours bashing my head against this boss, even with co-op partners.

But if I've learned anything about these games, you gotta take a break, reset, and come back when you're fresh. I decided to navigate my way through the rest of the game, and just before the final boss I'm going to come back stronger and more upgraded and kick this guy's ass once and for all.

I am the Champion of Ash, goddammit. Lothric is MY house.

I finished the game before it came out internationally, so there might have been patches that rebalance certain things and make the game harder? I remember hearing something to that effect in the days before April 12th. In any case, I thought the game was challenging, but always fair, so I never truly felt frustrated, aside from the Nameless King. I thought the Dragonslayer's Armour (or whatever his name is in English) was equally hard, in that both hit incredibly hard when you mess up a dodge, but the fact that you have to go through a first phase of the fight that is, quite honestly just badly designed, made it incredibly frustrating. He was the only boss I had to fight more than 5 or 6 times. The first phase is annoying in the same way uselessly long boss runs with lots of practically unskippable enemies are. They make the game frustrating, as opposed to challenging and fun.

I finished Dark Souls III, thought it was one of the best games I'd ever played and decided to dive right into Dark Souls II: SotFS (I hadn't played DSII in any capacity) and man, some of the runs to the bosses in that game are so rough. Rough, as in, unrefined, and often not fun. Dark Souls II... is a fantastic game in its own way, but it pales in comparison to DS and DSIII for me so far. Fucking Smelter Demon that has a million guys in front of him on tight walkways.

Not much frustration for me but I did feel something far worse after going back to Lothric and defeating the dancer. Boredom. I left the game there for a week before pushing through to the end.

Never got frustrated with the game, there's a couple of bad enemies (Jailers obviously) but they're not that big of a deal. The first encounter with Silver Knights is just a giant dick move for no reason, but they didn't really do anything worse after that so whatever. I imagine the game is pretty difficult with a caster build in most situations which is kind of interesting, but I always start with a Fluted Knight traditionalist build. I don't think I got frustrated with Dark Souls 2 though I died almost 5 times as much in that game as I did in this one. The learning curve of Bloodborne remains by far the harshest (though once you're over it the game becomes fairly easy).

As far as general complaints: Too many puzzle bosses, though basically every non Puzzle boss is at least pretty good so that part's nice. I imagine Dragonslayer Armour is going to be a huge bitch on NG+7 if the auxiliary damage scales, so that'll be fun. Nothing is harder than Darklurker/Smelter. Notgwyn doesn't jump enough, wish he pursued and punished you more. A good number of puzzle bosses to have is probably 1 out of 10.

@frodobaggins: Use firebombs doe.

I errr ... just ruined a damn fine effort at Champion. One hit would've done it. He had many more hits in the chamber. Its the KICK, man. THE KICK!

Is there any area with mandatory pvp? Those were the sections I hated most in Dark Souls 2. Currently playing in Offline Mode, but I want to start tag-teaming bosses soon.

@inevpatoria: One area early on where it's been 50/50 whether I'd be invaded or not. One area late in the game where I'm 100% guaranteed to be invaded.

Both because of covenants.

@strangestories: @inevpatoria: If you're not embered then you won't be invaded, even by covenants. There is no mandatory PVP.

I've raged against the knights in the high wall a few times. When you can pull a string of attacks against me, block a string of my attacks, then immediately start attacking me again, it just feels cheap. I don't feel like the enemies in Dark Souls 1 needed to resort to cheap spammy, I-don't-have-no-stamina-bar tactics to make the combat difficult or exciting. Dark Souls 2 enemies did that shit all the time, and I hated the game for it. Thankfully, it mostly seems absent here, but fuck those knights and their near-infinite stamina.

I say this now, but probably a few levels down the line, they'll be a joke.

I got lost in Smoldering Lake for like four hours. I would get really far into the area, die to a weird fire demon, and then forget how I got there while I'd get sidetracked by an item or an illusory wall or fighting the knight dude.

I'm definitely with you on this. The Lothric Knights feel like a weirdly sudden difficulty spike, especially when enemies in the following area--the Undead Settlement--all seem much easier to overcome and have fewer offensive tactics to throw at you. I'm sure the player will eventually outmuscle the Lothric Knights with impunity. But early on, they're probably the most frustrating enemy I've fought.

Unrelated: I'm realizing a little that the worst thing I could have done before playing Dark Souls III was go back through a complete run of the original game. Everything from the evade to the attack wind ups in Dark Souls 3 feel floaty and ungainly coming from the heavy responsiveness of the original. Dodges I would've made against Manus or Artorias are failed evasions against Vordt or the Lothric Knights. There's a slight and faintly perceptible delay between the dodge input and the dodge animation in Dark Souls 3 that I'm not taking into account yet, no matter my lightness of Equip Load, and it's been the direct cause for some deaths.

I don't think it's necessarily good or bad, the difference in feel, but I do think being so freshly acquainted and accustomed to the rhythm of the first game has negatively influenced my ability to manage expectations for Dark Souls 3.

There are only two spots in the entire game that REALLY started to piss me off, and surprisingly, neither of them were bosses. The first is the Irithyll Dungeon. There's an enemy there that can shrink your health bar just by looking at you. These guys were incredibly dumb and horrible to fight, and they also have this one attack I could never figure out, where they sort of stun you and then slam their hot iron onto your back on the ground. It killed my every single time and seriously FUCK these guys. The final room of this place is the worst though, because there's like 12 of these assholes patrolling around. It takes forever to clear them out.

The second spot is the boss run to The Twin Princes. There's a spot here where you pretty much HAVE to fight 3 dark knights at once. The moment you pull one of them, ALL of them start to advance on your position, it was a nightmare. It wouldn't have been so bad if I could just run by them, but I couldn't, because there's a freaking door you have to open at the end of it all that leaves you completely open for like 10 seconds. Once you clear all of the enemies and open the door, you CAN just run pass on every subsequent run through the area, but man that first time was dumb as hell.

@random45: There's an elevator on the right past the big bridge.

The first mage boss was no fun and just felt like running around and getting lucky with no skill involved at all. Most frustrated ive ever been even more than the tree boss in the first game.

Archdragon Peak. I want to throw my controller at my TV.

I started yesterday morning, and have played seven hours of it, I think Farron Keep is the next place I go to. I looked at a wiki to see how far I was so I could say, and I've done seven of the 18 places. The game is, by comparison of the other ones, extremely easy. I've more or less been running through it without complications, so no grinding/farming, or times where bosses or enemies held me back from progressing for the most part. Also, as some stated before as I've seen, there are a lot of bonfires. I'm liking it, but the difficulty for how easy it is, so far that is, is noteworthy.

For those red-eyed knights - run past them and look to the right at the top of the stairs. You'll see a corridor, at the end of this corridor is an elevator. Go down it. You'll wind up in the room right before you fought the Dragonslayer Armour. You can go down another elevator on the opposite side of the room and you'll be right next to a bonfire. This way involves two elevators, sure, but no enemies on the way to the Princes Lothric.

I just finished this game last night. I played Dark Souls I and II as more tanky builds. I basically focused on wearing the heaviest armor I could, wielding the biggest weapon I could, and still fast rolling. I found the latter half of both games pretty easy, with the exception of Artorias in DS1 and Smelter Demon in DS2. It's also worth mentioning that I only finished DS1 twice and almost finished DS2 twice, and neither on NG+, so I don't have seven playthroughs of each game under my belt. I never finished Demon's Souls and don't have a PS4 to play Bloodborne. In Dark Souls III, going for a tanky build doesn't seem particularly useful and the Ultra Greatswords that used to be so useful now seem like a bad choice. I wound up finishing the game wearing Fallen armor, holding the Black Knight's shield and wielding the Wolf Knight's Greatsword, which wound up being a compromise between my older playstyle and the faster playstyle that Dark Souls III almost demands, which is not how I'm used to playing these games. It wound up being a more difficult game for me, especially Irithyll.

Oddly enough, I found most of the bosses somewhere in the middle of my personal "hardest bosses" ranking. Oceiros and Pontiff Sullyvahn were challenging but not exceptionally so. Dragonslayer Armour wasn't a huge problem for me. Neither was the Soul of Cinder. The Nameless King took me quite a few tries, though, probably twenty or so. I also found the Abyss Watchers tough, I'm not sure if the Nameless King of the Abyss Watchers took me more tries, but I felt like both were equally as tough for me to beat.

The knights in Irithyll, the Nameless King, the Abyss Watchers, and that stairway leading up to the Twin Princes were all the most difficult parts for me.

This game is frustrating far more than any of the other games. I think I'm just tired of the series. Demon and Dark Souls were frustrating, but it at least felt good when you finally succeeded. At this point, that feeling is gone and I find myself angrily muttering "fuck this game" when I finally successfully beat a boss rather than joyously celebrating. Kinda sucks considering Dark Souls 1 is one of my favorite games of all time.

Nothing in this game compares to my heart-pounding victories over Orphan of Kos or Ornstein and Smough, both of which had me stuck for days. Combat encounters were challenging in this game, but I've found that at least in regular new game I can salvage HORRIBLE runs where I'm getting hit constantly into victories just by backing off and estus-ing at a decent time. That's probably just experience talking, but I honestly never hit any major brick walls in Dark Souls 3, I felt like I could just power through the game and that made it kind of boring at times.

Nameless King definitely took me the most tries but he didn't have me pulling my hair out, he gave plenty of opportunities to counter attack unlike some bosses. Anyone else feel like Pontiff is super messed up in that regard? Felt like he could just decide to side swipe at random, regardless of any previous massive combo chain he just peformed. Still not sure how you do that fight without getting hit.

Abyss Watcher boss. Fuck that guy. I stopped playing completely at Pontiff Sulyvahn.

Same. The satisfaction I got from beating the first few games came from the series being a real unknown thing. I would just watch videos of Vinny or other people dying again and again so I wondered if it could beat it too. Now I know the drill, it doesn't feel as special.

No major brick walls here--most bosses took me one or two tries solo after summoning myself in to a handful of encounters for each one to get practice, with the exception of Dancer. She's really rad but her attacks are counter to the roll timing that I have by muscle memory I guess. (By contrast, Nameless King and Twin Princes had attacks that I could easily time rolls through and it felt amazing) She took me 3 or 4 attempts solo, I want to say.

The major frustration here is that, for the platinum trophy, all I have left is the Darkmoon Ring (10 Cop/Darkmoon ears), the miracle Darkmoon Blade (rank 2 of the same covenant, so 30 ears total) and the pyromancy Warmth (30 Vertebra Shackle).

I need to grab a couple Pale Tongues so I can respec my character into stupid amounts of luck (some 70+, since Gilles Doutweeb is level 197, killing any hopes of meaningful pvp which I'm garbage at anyway) in conjunction with item discovery-boosting equipment and coins. Farming Pale Tongues and wolf grass was fairly easy, but those cop ears do not want to drop, even at 445+ item discovery.