Dark Souls II PC Thoughts

So Dark Souls II is finally out on PC. Strangely, it released at three o'clock Pacific, so it caught me off guard. In a state of frantic confusion, I ended up impulse buying it on Amazon and preloading just an hour or so before it was released. Anyway, I figure there are some things to talk about here.

Dual Shock 4 compatibility — If you guys are looking to use a Dual Shock 4, it seems you'll have to enable the "Hide DS4 Controller" setting within the DS4 to Xinput wrapper. This apparently gives the DS4 exclusive read/write rights, which should fix incorrect button mapping as well as allow the controller to function over bluetooth. Thanks to Amafi for pointing this out to me.

Sound Design — Is it just me, or does everything sound a little off? In some sections, the mixing seems poor with some things being too loud or too soft. Other times the sound effects just seem to have a noticeably low fidelity to me. Maybe I'm crazy.

Graphics Tweaks — Has anyone tried downsampling or anything crazy? I'm about to try tweaking some settings in the Nvidia Control Panel to see if I can get some better AA without going through too much effort, so we'll see how that goes. Honestly, despite some jaggy edges, I think the game looks pretty good stock.

Otherwise, I've just been exploring. Despite having seen a good bit of the game via Giant Bomb by now, I still have that sense of wonder and discovery in the very early sections thus far, which has been fun.

How are you all liking it?

I also had to turn off the touch pad to get it to fully work. before I did L1 and L2 did the same thing.

A lot of people are having issues playing through HDMI, if that happens just play through your monitor unless its also going through that. Other than those really bizarre issues it seems great. Framerate is smooth and the game looks nice.

Good tip with the touchpad. I usually always keep mine disabled due to such issues.

Hm. I have my monitor hooked up through DVI and my TV through HDMI, so far no issues with either. Is it just not displaying at all for some people? That seems strange. I know @starfoxa was having issues just launching the game earlier; hopefully whatever that issue was has been resolved.

Seems a little rough overall, but I hope this all gets ironed out.

Yeah, DS2 PC version crashes on startup for me and a lot of other people, problem with HDMI apparently. There's a thread on Steam forums regarding this, what the hell From Software?

Wow, will go check steam. I thought the 25th, tomorrow come to think. I'm playing something else right now, but nothing wrong in getting the game loaded. Thanks for the heads up, it would have really mattered a while ago when I was almost sitting still in the water.

Edit-downloading now.

Fired it up this morning, working well which is nice. Unfortunately I've now broken all of my weapons and as such I'm totally screwed.

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.

Plays a lot smoother than my PS3 copy, which is great. Sunk about 3 hours in so far, everything feels good except for some really weird stuttering only in Heide Tower of Flame, otherwise smooth 60 FPS.

I cleared my schedule and dropped about 6 hours into the game (2 1/2~ hours on two characters and one hour on another character I promptly deleted). I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going, but I've been enjoying it so far.

The 60FPS is great and it looks nicer then the PS3 version (hoping for Better Texture mods to come out soon). I am having a harder time doing jumping attacks and guard breaks, but it could be my controller.

Been digging the PC version; it's pretty. Main gripe so far is the PC version feels really weird on the PC XBox Controller vs. on the 360 (played through that version, now starting over on PC). I wonder if this is because of the frame rate? It feels like there's no acceleration/easing to the camera anymore which makes looking around feel a bit robotic. Tried playing with the sensitivity but that doesn't seem to be what feels off.

I'm running it on a three year old laptop really well. It pretty awesome. I'm glad I waited and that it runs so well with everything on high (granted, on 1366x768 but still).

Seems like an awesome port so far, glad I waited. Solid 60FPS, looks really nice and the load times are short. A much better job than the last one. There looks to be loads of people playing at the moment too, it's comforting to see all the other ghosts running around. I'm looking forward to a bit of multiplayer once I've sussed out how it all works.

As for the game, so far it seems to be doing a pretty good job of capturing that Souls feeling. The agonising mystery of what's around the next corner when you're carrying a big load of souls, the feelings of loneliness punctuated by small moments of fellowship when you find an NPC, the overwhelming desire to explore every nook and cranny, and that satisfaction of defeating a difficult boss. No other game is quite like it.

I played for about 2 hours this morning and still hadnt reached the point where I could level up, it was time to stop playing when I lost all the mornings souls. Nothing quite like the feeling of frustration at losing everything you've worked for and then the feeling of liberation once you stop worrying about it.

You're supposed to get weapons and armor when you create your character at the hags' place in Things Betwixt, right? Cause I got the pre-order weapons there, but no weapons I can use with my stats. Kinda makes the whole thing fairly tricky.

Sit rep: works fine on my other computer (GTX 770 and DVI to monitor) but not on my living room computer that's hooked up to my TV (Radeon 7870 and HDMI).

Looks great on PC and runs smooth, loving the DS4 controller.

Damn. I only have HDMI and now I'm scared of buying this game. I know they will fix it someday but it's gonna suck if I can't get it to work today.

HDMI to DVI seems fine. I can't get it to work with a HDMI to HDMI connection with my TV.

I have it running HDMI to HDMI with no problems. 560 TI. Who knows?

Can't speak for the quality of the port, since I haven't seen the console version in person. Enjoying the game itself though.

This is the Steam discussion on the crashing problem: http://steamcommunity.com/app/236430/discussions/0/558754259683457381/. It seems the game does work with HDMI and TV, just not for everyone.

Well, I got my Ps4 controller working thanks to this thread. I've put in about half an hour and I'm sure glad I held of for the Pc version.

I have nothing between today and next Tuesday, so I burned 8 hours playing alongside four goofballs I play other games with. It's just a great port, from what I can tell based on no experience with the console version. 360 pad seems fine after a weird hitch at the start, 60fps constantly, and looks pretty good considering that it was a 360/ps3 game.

From what I can tell it seems to be a problem with Radeon cards, haven't had any drama's with any of my machines and I don't have and AMD cards to test at the moment.

Yeah it's kind of a bummer, you can only really use the starting gear from your class for a while (at least all I could use properly were the Explorer class gear).

I just blew 6 hours playing this. Spent about 2 being summoned and being awesome. This was most certainly worth the wait...this weekend is going to be a blur. It ran just fine through all that. Granted I only killed one boss so far on my own game, but I've helped kill some about 5-6 times (while dying, or the host dying, the same).

Been using a Wireless 360 controller and it's been fine.

And as a proud owner of a Radeon 7850, I can confirm that "Dark Souls 2 has quit unexpectedly."

Shouldn't have got my hopes up. :(

The repair cost is very low though. You'll be able to repair them very quickly.

You can farm the group of Hollows at the first Forest of Fallen Giants bonfire with just your fists. I was punching them all until I got tired of doing so every time I died further on and switched, temporarily, to daggers to make it go by faster. Kill 'em all by the creek, rest, repeat.

Alternatively, if you can get to a boss gate, start dropping your white soapstone and help dudes kill 'em.

The game crashes at startup if you connect to a TV over HDMI. You can get around it but that seems like a HUGE oversight.

I used the recommended tweaks from PC gamer for AA and HBAO+. Looks great!

i hope people don't get too bent up over the technical issues, which i'm sure will be resolved post-haste (Bandai's made it clear they're working on fixes). considering i haven't beaten the first i shouldn't even be worrying about playing this one.

honestly the only times i can recall a AAA release remaining fundamentally broken for more than like three days were the EA debacles of Simcity and, to a lesser extent, BF4. maybe Diablo III as well but my personal experience wasn't ever bad at all with that game.

edit: it is very slowly downloading the unlock part of the game atm.

The controls feel weird to me for some reason, compared to when I played on PS3. Turning at diagonals feels off or something, like it's not analogue. It's really off-putting.

Several hours in,finished my first boss battle.A few things I've noticed so far:

1. Framerate jump is really nice.So far everything seems to run smoothly,haven't encountered a single hiccup,let alone turn into molasses stew like Dark Souls I.
2. Mapping jump button to left stick still feels a bit odd,but works better than double tapping run.Curious to try out dual wielding,but having a shield has been a bit of a lifesaver early on.
3. In regards to some of the graphical/crash issues (HDMI,AMD,etc.) I haven't noticed much.At the moment I haven't tried playing via HDMI,but at the moment my Radeon card hasn't had any problems.I wouldn't mind testing out via HDMI,as well as running the game at different settings to see what happens.
4. Messaging:Best upgrade of the game by far! that is... Praise the Sun!

As it stands,I've really enjoyed what I've played so far,looking forward to what lies ahead and to what everyone else's thoughts are.

I was nervous about not being able to run the game on my three year old laptop but with low settings/everything turned off it still runs better than the PS3 version. I think I might just stick with this version.

@cale: I'm pretty sure it was like that on the console versions. It felt like the horizontal camera look moves way faster/more sensitive than vertical. Do not like this change at all.

Edit: Just realised you were talking about completely separate issues, nevermind!

@drjota: You should totally try dual wielding something. I haven't even equipped a shield yet in 6~ hours. At first I was just punching things to death with my hands, then I switched to dual starting daggers just to get through some sections faster, and then I bought two Cestus and now I punch things again. It's...an incredible feeling going up against everything like that. I've killed one boss so far, and have helped kill that same one and another boss a few times in jolly cooperation.

You will probably find at some point that shields are a little less effective this time around. Dodging will be key. I used a shield for half of my first playthrough, then kept it on my back for the second half. My other 5 characters, I've never even equipped with a shield. There are too many enemies/bosses that pierce through your shield or deal way too much stamina damage for it to make sense. It works on others, but I like to use the same equipment for most things I encounter. You can dodge everything in the game, you can't block everything in the game.

man i'm surprised at how smooth this is running.

It's impressive, my 680 on my living room PC doesn't even go into full boost and sits around 30% usage. I can enable 4x SGSSA in this game without a worry framerate wise but it looks like the SSAO solution doesn't like down -sampling from 4K.

Oh I'm fine, I just slogged through and got myself sorted out once I unlocked the smith. Just beat the Giant and am trying to figure out where to go next.

I used a shield for my entire playthrough, and found the stamina loss from blocking to be very manageable apart from a few specific occasions, and those could be compensated for by other means. Though I did play a heavy strength build with the Tower Shield for almost the entire game.

@jjweatherman said:

Also known as midnight Central European Time. Europe is the biggest market for Steam. Daily sales are also timed around European prime time since that is when the most users are online.

My summon sign seems to show my Character name instead of my Steam name, so that's neat.

@jacksukeru: Really? That's awesome. I'll make another Smelter Demon build at some point then. That's pretty funny.

I did the graphic tweaks using the NVidia Inspector that are advised right off the steam news posts. Game looks great and no real performance loss, still run at high 50's to 60 fps consistent. I have noticed the game is frame capped at 60 by default, which I think works fine. For a game like this consistent FPS is better than getting the best of the best frames but only for like 3 seconds then 20 frames less for the next 5.

I find doing all you need to to get dual shock 4 to work right now is just too much of a hassle when the 360 controller works perfectly with no effort at all. The 360 controller also works great, no response or lag issues here. I am using the wired version. Had no problem getting the game running either though I do see some strange graphical weirdness here and there, it could be the tweaks causing it though for all I know. I am connected using a 670gtx and a dvi to hdmi cable.

Also shields work fine. Tons of people discounted them outright apparently because you can't get a stand out shield outright early in the game. Once you find a 100% cut shield you will find they work great. Yes you lose more stamina than you used to but they are still totally serviceable.

Played for a little last night after it unlocked. Loving it so far, though as a few people have said previously something about the camera movement just feels a little off... Meh, maybe it's the fact its running at a higher framerate than DS1. Able to max it on my laptop and have it run nice and smooth, which is great.

Also, when I checked the statue in Majula about 25 minutes after the game unlocked there had already been 50521 worldwide deaths. Dark Souls!

It runs smooth. Glad I can finally jump into it.

The mouse cursor popping up in the center of the screen whenever I enter a menu is a bit annoying, though. I'm also hearing word of a lot of people getting VAC banned for editing textures. I'm sure what exactly is happening there will filter out, eventually.

This is an impressive port considering how poor the last one was. I say kudos to FROM for keeping their word and creating a good port. It's really really well optimized. I can play at MAX setting with very little hitching and I have a mid-range PC. I'm gonna play far too much of this game.

Its not low end scaling its just low end graphics.

Game looks and runs great for me so far.

Two weird issues though and wondering if they've popped up for anyone else:

1. The opening cinematic hitched up and stuttered any time dialogue was spoken

2. The mouse cursor appears anytime I open a menu, even though I've been using the controller from the start

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.

You take what you can get. As long as its not slide showing and crashing to the desktop then it's cool. :D

Thoughts? Can't wait 'til it's done downloading.

I got robbed (no, literally) so I can't play the PS3 version anymore.

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?