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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.

    What did we learn from the Japan Beta footage leaks?

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    announakis

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    Edited By announakis

    the last 48hours gave us much more to see from the core mechanics of multiplayer in DaS2 than what we had so far.

    First off, if you want to hear about facts without gameplay footage I strongly suggest you listen to what EpicNameBro aka Marcus has to say. He is sort of a reference in the souls community for those who do not know him:

    Now, about the gameplay footage: what can we learn from those so far? I highlighted important stuff in the comment under each video in bold.

    1. some old armor sets have been conserved: the "soldier" outfit is the Knight in DaS. the Hunter outfit is conserved unaltered. Some new outfits also with the warrior, sorcerer, temple knight and dual swordsman totally fresh.
    2. as announced by EpicNameBro a few days ago, the parry mechanic and timing has been altered: At 01:11, the player performs a successful parry but the riposte does not land: the parry knocks the enemy to the ground rather than pushing his weapon aside as it was previously the case. the riposte therefore does not hit. EpicNameBro mentioned that you had to wait a tiny bit before landing a successful riposte, slashing the enemy on the ground...not seen here.
    3. the torch wielding is paramount. the phantom summoned named Gachapin wields a torch all along...it is very nice to see that this brings an interesting twist to cooperation because only one person is required to sacrifice his off-hand to the lighting, while other enjoy the light radius produced...this creates an incentive to play coordinated, grouped and organized.
    4. the locking system is largely unchanged.
    5. rolling speeds exhibited here are around the medium in DaS. The sorcerer and the other armored phantom seem to roll slightly faster than medium but not as fast as the fast troll in DaS. then again, EpicNameBro mentioned in his video that it seems that the new spec "agility" that is different from the "dexterity" affects the rolling speed, and possibly the movement speed.
    6. NEW spells! the sorcerer has a souls sword-like spells he uses all the time that totally kick ass (02:40) ! he also has a fireball that has a 2 time explosion: first hit damaging only the enemy, second damaging massively both the enemy and the caster if he still lingers in the area of effect (08:08)! It does not seem to affect the allies though.
    7. enemies switch weapons! at 02:53, the mob attacks with melee weapons...the player goes away only to get an arrow in his ass from this same mob at 02:57!
    8. healing is now up to the phantoms...they can use estus flasks by themselves and are not healed by the summoner anymore
    9. enemies appear from remote places like at 03:57. and at 04.01 the sorcerer casts a big souls ball that ends up as a rain of souls arrows hitting the mob located a level below the caster ! cool...
    10. 04:37: you can break the environment with tangible results: he breaks the planks blocking the opening of a window so that light comes in, alleviating the need of a torch in this part of the room.
    11. 06:03 yes this is a tree..."Boards don't hit back" guys ^_-
    12. 06:18 You can light a bonfire with phantoms in your world ! this is a big deal ! and the bonfire allows everyone to light their torch as well.
    13. 07:55 phantoms get loot! you see the sorcerer getting loot off the corpse of the big "barbarian" wielding the two giant Shotels.
    14. 10:40 the inventory has changed for a grid based oneand preserves visibility of your character by shifting the character centered view to the side while the inventory window is opened. not sure if you can still move while the inventory is opened though.
    15. as soon as you are alone, you get killed much more easily ^^
    1. 00:32 nice backstab animation with the spear as seen in the TGS trailer show about a week ago.
    2. 01:50 the weapons menus is organized by type now.
    3. 04:04 : it seems that even if you can be invaded in hollow form, you have to be fully human to summon phantoms...he uses a human effigy to restore his human form and only then can he see the summon signs on the ground.
    4. 12:40 AI red phantoms are back like in Demons souls
    1. first this player is actually fairly decent compared to the previous ones clumsily poking with the spear and plays most of the time alone.
    2. He starts as dual swordsman but at 01:40 he shifts to a greatsword that is very similar to the bastard sword / claymore weapons in previous games in regard to size...the moveset is also much better: no more smashing such a beautiful weapon on the ground like a monkey as in previous installements. moveset ressembles vaguely the r2 from the flamberge in DaS. I like that the end of the movement keeps the tip of the blade towards the opponent after coming back to a proper "Pflug" through the short edge in HEMA longsword terms...*sigh* *love*
    3. 05:06 elements of the environment (in this case the trees) become partially transparent when they are between the camera viewpoint and your character ! YES, at long last !

    this last video features some boss battle (or player slaughter by bosses if you prefer a more accurate description).

    1. 04:22 as stated by the uploader of this version, the player is not the best: he manages to miss 5 times a zombie that does not move ^_-
    2. 07:40 the player is summoned as a white phantom joining slightly better players. 08:40 he manages to attack about 5 times his summoner rather than the mob attacking him T_T this makes me regret the absence of friendly fire in this game....anyways...
    3. 10:50 the phantom hunter performs yet another backstab and you see him getting loot off the corpse.
    4. 11:40 BOSS BATTLE BEGINS I cannot help it but to think Pinwheel here: 3 necromancers, freaking bone wheel skeletons...really?
    5. then nothing happens for ages up until 13:57: he writes down his white summoning sign with the small soapstone instead of the big one (he must have no idea). at 14:43 he gets summoned again as a phantom. at 17:13, he gets a "TASK COMPLETED" message before being send back to his world. This confirms that the small soapstone gives you a much shorter time to coop before sending you back indeed.

    that's all I can spot from these footage. Please leave your thoughts to add your insights and share!

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