Did you get to play the Dark Souls 2 beta? Did you find it difficult? Well, brace yourself, because there is reason to believe the game is going to get even harder than that when it finally releases.
This information comes from a recent Edge interview with one of the game’s producers, Takeshi Miyazoe. Miyazoe explained that after they looked at the player data collated from the beta, Dark Souls 2 is somehow still not hard enough. Subsequently, they are looking into raising the default difficulty even further. At the time of the interview, From Software was still unsure how high they intended to raise the bar, but it may lean more towards Hard Difficulty, as some players were able to experience in the 2nd US beta test session.
To be clear, there is a dissenting opinion here on the interpretation of that article. He believes Miyazoe said From raised the difficulty but they are still debating if the game is too hard or not. A response to that post contradicted that interpretation as well, stating that From is more likely to be debating whether the initial difficulty was too hard, but that they think that hard mode was closer to the target they had in mind.
We don’t want to be putting words in Miyazoe’s mouth here, but if Dark Souls 2 is going to raise the difficulty up a notch, it will really be an interesting experience, especially with the larger fanbase. Will fans like the changes, especially those who couldn’t go that far in the first games anyway? Or is this bordering on a serious misstep? You can find out for yourself when Dark Souls 2 releases March 11 to Windows, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.