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    Dark Souls II

    Game » consists of 12 releases. Released Mar 11, 2014

    Blood, souls, and tears are continually spent as players traverse the land of Drangleic in FromSoftware's third entry in the Souls series.

    Dark Souls II PC Thoughts

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    JasonR86

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    @gaspower:

    It's running at 60 on high. So I'll take the resolution hit. It's still better then the consoles.

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    beardfish

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    Definitely noticing that the sound effects are at a low bit rate, the voice sounds normal however.

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    JasonR86

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    @beardfish:

    I noticed that walking through grass sounds terrible. It's way too trebly and pronounced.

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    Counterclockwork87

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    @jasonr86 said:

    @beardfish:

    I noticed that walking through grass sounds terrible. It's way too trebly and pronounced.

    That's what vinny complained about on the other versions too. It's just bad sound design I guess.

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    ripelivejam

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    #55  Edited By ripelivejam

    so i guess forest of fallen giants is a good place to start?

    what's weird is the anti-aliasing in game seems to be better than what i can get in Catalyst Control Center forced. little/no jaggies and solid 60fps.

    edit: i hate to be all "WORKS FOR ME" but i've had almost no issues playing this, although along with forcing AA in CCC i got these weird blue outlines. no crashes though. i did preemptively go to CCC -> My Digital Flat Panels -> Properties and checked Enable GPU Scaling, so if you have ATI and are having issues may want to try that first.

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    Vextroid

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    @jasonr86 said:

    @beardfish:

    I noticed that walking through grass sounds terrible. It's way too trebly and pronounced.

    That's what vinny complained about on the other versions too. It's just bad sound design I guess.

    Speaking of weird sounds, Is it just me or is there a weird 'errrrrrr'-ish sound when you slide down ladders. I don't remember hearing it on the PS3 version.

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    pr1mus

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    #57  Edited By pr1mus

    Running it at max settings on a 4 years old rig and it's silky smooth. Game looks sharp if a bit dated but the souls game shine in the art direction not the amount of polygons they push anyway. It looks a good deal better than the 1st one too and better in person than previews made it look like.

    No issues of any kind so far on an i5 760 and GTX460 and the game doesn't have any problem with steam going offline and back online.

    I was able to summon people in 3 out of 3 attempts too which is about 100% better than in Dark Souls 1. I can't recall the last time a summon went through in the first game.

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    mrmud

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    Game crashes at startup, tried every workaround I have found on the steam forums (there is a 1300 post thread on the crash at startup issue) and nothing seems to work. Pretty pissed right now...

    @rethla said:

    @mrmud said:

    Game crashes at startup, tried every workaround I have found on the steam forums (there is a 1300 post thread on the crash at startup issue) and nothing seems to work. Pretty pissed right now...

    What computer setup do you have?

    AMD card with 3 screen setup (120hz main monitor duplicated onto a TV through HDMI and then extended to a third screen). So basically everything needed to make this particular game never start.

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    GaspoweR

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    @jasonr86: Same here though it really depends on the game but most of the time I'd go for better frame rates > resolution.

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    GaspoweR

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    @mrmud said:

    Game crashes at startup, tried every workaround I have found on the steam forums (there is a 1300 post thread on the crash at startup issue) and nothing seems to work. Pretty pissed right now...

    @rethla said:

    @mrmud said:

    Game crashes at startup, tried every workaround I have found on the steam forums (there is a 1300 post thread on the crash at startup issue) and nothing seems to work. Pretty pissed right now...

    What computer setup do you have?

    AMD card with 3 screen setup (120hz main monitor duplicated onto a TV through HDMI and then extended to a third screen). So basically everything needed to make this particular game never start.

    Did you test it out with just your main monitor and disconnecting the other two?

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    Zevvion

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    @mrmud said:

    Game crashes at startup, tried every workaround I have found on the steam forums (there is a 1300 post thread on the crash at startup issue) and nothing seems to work. Pretty pissed right now...

    @rethla said:

    @mrmud said:

    Game crashes at startup, tried every workaround I have found on the steam forums (there is a 1300 post thread on the crash at startup issue) and nothing seems to work. Pretty pissed right now...

    What computer setup do you have?

    AMD card with 3 screen setup (120hz main monitor duplicated onto a TV through HDMI and then extended to a third screen). So basically everything needed to make this particular game never start.

    You also tried the HDMI thing? Probably as you've said you tried everything.

    It did work for me though. Mine also crashed, I disconnected HDMI and booted it up that way, then reconnected it. Note that you can also just shut your monitor on or off, that has the same effect. You don't actually need to unplug the entire HDMI cable.

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    beardfish

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    #62  Edited By beardfish

    @vextroid: absolutely, I was trying to figure out how to slide down the ladder at the beginning and that struck me as weird. IMO all the sound design was funneled through a Talkboy.

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    ShaggE

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    @rethla said:

    @shagge said:

    Just loaded it up before bed, impressed at its low-end scaling. Rare is the modern game that is playable on this laptop at its native resolution (or anything above 1024x768, for that matter). I'm sure it'll chug more in large/intricate areas and require a resolution drop, but I'm quite pleased. Doesn't look horrible with everything set to low, either.

    Its not low end scaling its just low end graphics.

    That's what I'm saying. It has the options to set the graphics low enough for an Intel HD. Dark Souls 1, even with DSFix, was not nearly as smooth with stuff turned down. Since posting that I did have to drop the res to the usual 1024x768, though.

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    Skyrider

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    The lack of cloud saves is a bummer since this game runs well on both my laptop and my desktop. Looks great on my desktop, and comparable to console on my laptop with similar performance (seems to be slightly better perfomance on my laptop compared to ps3, methinks).

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    korwin

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    #65  Edited By korwin

    @skyrider said:

    The lack of cloud saves is a bummer since this game runs well on both my laptop and my desktop. Looks great on my desktop, and comparable to console on my laptop with similar performance (seems to be slightly better perfomance on my laptop compared to ps3, methinks).

    It almost seems like an accidental oversight, since the rest of the games online stuff is all steam works. I wouldn't be surprised if the switch was flicked to enable that stuff at some point, after all they had cloud saves for DS1.

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    super2j

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    I am super impressed by how well it runs on my laptop. I Am using a 360 controller but I am not a fan of how my primary attack buttons are on the bumpers. It feels wrong. Anyone have any suggestions for me? A way to flip them?

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    iamjin04

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    check your hardware drivers

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    Karkarov

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    @rethla said:

    What do you think about the HBAO+ tweak with this sentence in mind?

    ... works almost perfectly in the game. Sadly, just almost, as the effect gets applied after UI elements have been rendered, so you get strange “shadow” effects on the UI.

    Also with all the fiddling that will happen in menus in this game i cant stand to play this game with the bad 360 controller D-pad.

    I have seen the shadow effect but it isn't that terrible, I can tolerate it just fine.

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    granderojo

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    #69  Edited By granderojo

    I'm running it at max and I haven't had a single frame drop. To say it's a vast improvement on the first game is a considerable understatement.

    As for the changes. I'm getting used to them. I feel a lot more mobile in this game as opposed to the first Dark Souls earlier on, so I don't get people complaining about the parrying. Also the AI routines seem a lot better already, at least for sword wielding enemies.

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    Zevvion

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    I'm running it at max and I haven't had a single frame drop. To say it's a vast improvement on the first game is a considerable understatement.

    As for the changes. I'm getting used to them. I feel a lot more mobile in this game as opposed to the first Dark Souls earlier on, so I don't get people complaining about the parrying. Also the AI routines seem a lot better already, at least for sword wielding enemies.

    The combat system is better in Dark Souls II. People are upset about parrying because it is no longer ridiculously easy to do. You can still do it. I did it in my first playthrough and pulled it off about 4 out of 5 times. But in Dark Souls I could do it 1000 out of 1000 times. The window is smaller now, which I think is better. You now have to take some minor risk for the rewarding result of parrying.

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    mordukai

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    #71  Edited By mordukai

    Maybe it's just me but I noticed that my character moves as if she had no weight at all. I'm finding it that navigating narrow terrain can be a bit if hassle as you are more likely to fall to your death as movement speed seems to be faster this time. Previous souls game the character felt like it had more weight to it. Either then that, looks good.

    For AMD users. If it you get the crash bug and you are using HDMI, just go to your catalyst and make sure GPU scaling and ITC Processing is marked off. It kept crashing on me right at start up but once I did that it ran as it should.

    As far as downsampling. You can only do it if you revert to CCC 12.1. It will not work on 13.1 and above. If anyone here knows how to bypass that problem please PM me.

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    RedRavN

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    #72  Edited By RedRavN

    The game seems technically rock solid for me so far. The only thing Im a little bothered by is that some of the audio sounds inconsistent. Like for example, moving through grass and sliding down ladders the sound assets seem much more low quality then other sounds. But the game is running perfect maxed out on my aging laptop which is just great. For comparison the laptop runs BF3 at 60 fps only if I turn down most of the settings to medium. But ds2 seems both not very demanding for hardware and also well optimized this time around.

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    development

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    #73  Edited By development

    Wow, I'm suuuuuuper impressed with how well optimized it is. I use the controller like a civilized person so I haven't had to mess around with the shitty keyboard controls. It runs better than DS1 by farrr on my computer, even with DSFix. Kinda nuts. 60 frames and 3 second loads are sooooooo nice compared to the PS3. Never goin' back.

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    amafi

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    #74  Edited By amafi

    Something weird's happened with my system. DS4 was working perfectly once I chose to hide the DS4 controller in the drivers, but yesterday it stopped working.

    Same drivers, no changes to the system as far as I know at all. And what's even weirder is that X is recognized as the A button on the very first screen, but once I get to "hit start" its a directinput controller again and I have to hit the square button for start and X no longer works for closing dialog boxes and when I get in the game the axis are all messed up and whatnot.

    Tried reinstalling the bus driver, the MS 360 pad drivers,tried different versions of the DS4 xinput wrapper, started the system again, shit will just not work. Really strange.

    Sorted it. Had to disconnect the wireless 360 receiver, the fight stick, the kickbox and the HOTAS, quit steam and restart the tool. Using the DS4Windows tool version 1.0 beta 8.

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    mrmud

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    #75  Edited By mrmud

    Todays patch seems to have fixed the startup bug for most people (me included). There was a lot of whining on the forums but I am impressed by how quickly they were able to put it out.

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    PeezMachine

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    Totally agree that the sound design is a bit off. Bad mixes and a lot of short and abruptly ending effects. Worst example so far was walking through tall grass, which came with one of the worst audio loops I've ever heard.

    Running at 60 FPS makes this game feels entirely different from the PC version of Dark Souls, was locked at 30. While the combat is a bit more responsive as a result, I kind of miss that slight bit of clunkiness. I think it really fit in with the rest of the Dark Souls package, and was minor enough that it felt more like flavoring than limitation.

    I read an article (by the person who made the DSFix patch for PC Dark Souls) that praised the visual quality of Dark Souls 2, but honestly I think it's ugly and often empty. If Dark Souls 2 does, in fact, feature better textures and models and antialiasing or whatever then I guess I could chalk it up to lackluster visual design, but whatever it is, the visuals aren't grabbing me like they did last time. But hey, I'm only 10 hours in, so maybe there are some great environments around the corner.

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    wolf_blitzer85

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    I'm absolutely loving it again after playing a ton of it on PS3. Just hooked my Dual Shock 3 up to the PC and continued on my merry way. Did use a 360 controller at first, but man that d-pad was a little too frustrating to use whilst diddling around in the menus.

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