So if you're still awake and have the Dark Souls II client installed and didn't get to play last time due to server issues the next beta test starts in about 1hr 15 minutes at 2am est / 11pm pst

Just giving a heads up because I nearly forgot about this myself! Hopefully things go well tonight.

Christ man. This game is brutal! Like what the fuck I go around this one corner and a army literally 4-5 red phantoms come pouring out at me. Holy shit.

Well, I've slept through about an hour of the beta so far and now I'm sitting through updates. At least I'll be able to play some of it.

I spent most of my time helping people out with the fat red phantoms by the cliffside. What are the benefits of helping people beat a boss this time around? I didn't seem to get anything out of it besides souls.

Yeah I spent he majority of my time being summoned into others games. The time limit doesn't seem like that big a deal providing it doesn't change by the final release

I played for about an hour until I couldn't really stay awake any longer. I really just wanted to check out the new enemy attack patterns anyway. One of those red phantoms had a big surprise for me as I was turtling to figure him out. Seems like they're definitely trying to break some old habits.

Damn totally forgot this was happening.

I played it for about 2 and a half hours. I fucking love what they did with heavy weapons. It's so satisfying to swing those things around. Also resistance is gdlk in that demo. Not sure how well it will work in later areas but as the soldier class I only leveled Resistance to about 35-40 and was unable to see the damage the thieves were doing in the forest area. I got cornered by about 5 of them all attacking at once and it looked like they were doing 0 damage. Probably more like 1 damage though.

@superwristbands: The sound design is pretty great on the big weapons. Really feels like your smashing that sword into the ground.

Seriously love what they did with the big-ass swords too. The violent force behind every swing of the Zwei was just great. The Warrior, which I started with, had his own greatsword that seemed to kind of pick up dirt on its follow-up attack.

I'm not sure how long I spent trying to two-handed parry with one. I mean, I think I got one, but I couldn't really tell everything was just so dark. Should be lots of fun either way.

I loved every second of it ... I defeated the 2 bosses and got some victories (and many loses :P) on PVP with the temple knight ... loved the new attack patterns of the Halberd. Also I was able to parry a lot more frecuently in this than on Demon/Dark Souls despite the slow start up. Also liked the mage , never been a fan of sorceries but in this one they are cool. Also stuck around when they implemented the hard mode on. All my fears have dissipated and I cant hardly wait for the game noe :/ March is still a longs ways.

yep they got a hit on their hands.

game is fucked hard as the 1st one, they streamlined the UI, made the weapons and attacks feel better.

Shield and rolling feel a bit stiffer compared to the first game,

Apparently the agility stat will help with that. Makes you move faster and roll faster if I recall correctly.

As for the UI, I don't know, I thought it was much more difficult to find what I was looking for. It may be because I am just far too familiar with the Dark Souls UI but I had to use the select button a lot. Stats aren't labeled by default and the icons were very small on a 32" TV sitting about 3 feet away. I'm struggling to remember as it was a sort of sleepy two hours (and only the first few minutes were dedicated to learning the UI) but I don't think anything was labeled. Like, no label on the Strength attribute, agility, etc. and attack power, stability, weight, etc. were all represented by icons that are meaningless until you take the time to remember them.

Damn, there was a hard mode? When did that happen? Bummed I missed it.

For the last 45 minutes or so, an experimental hard mode was enabled. A server message appeared on screen for all players, announcing it had been activated and was being used to test difficulty levels for the game. It seemed to me that it made enemies do about double damage, possibly more. Everything else seemed to be the same, including enemy health, enemy positions, enemy AI patterns, etc.

@savage: yeah I was literally seconds away from turning it off when that message popped up. I didn't think the difficulty felt right until the hard mode started.

@savage: Nice. That sounds like a different approach to the NG+ mechanic. I wouldn't mind a hard mode instead. Maybe that way it could be a toggle on/off type thing.

Oh that sounds interesting the hard mode :)

Here is a video showing off resistance

He is pretty much immune to normal attack damage and some enemies can deal tiny amounts of damage with harder hits. He has something like 35 res in the first part and 40 or so by the end (it's in the description but I already forgot the numbers and I'm too lazy to double check).

Whaaaat. I'm an idiot. I thought it was tonight. Fuck.

@superwristbands: It's either a bug or Resistance actually matters this time.

@superwristbands: Yep at the last half hour of the test

As far as I know (which is just hearsay) resistance scales with armour. So a heavily armoured character can probably benefit more from resistance than vigor (vigor being the new HP stat).

Though the amount of scaling it is capable of could still be adjusted before release if they feel it is too powerful (which is hard to tell since the area is early in the game and the stat was pumped very high).

Resistance definitely does something this time around though, which is cool.

@superwristbands: Good. Now we can make even more interesting character builds.

The Dual-wielding felt a bit lackluster. The big weapons on the other hand felt AMAZING.