Let's Talk Dark Souls II

There is totally a damage/weapons stats comparison in the menu. When you go to change your equipped weapon it tell your very clearly everything you want to know. Innate and scaling damage differences, weight difference etc.

I guess you can be mad about the icons for bleeding/poison/stat scaling but it takes about all of 2 minutes to figure out. RTFM right?

Edit: err sorry to the dude I replied to, i don't know how that happened, this wasn't meant for you

I meant in the shops menus. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I thought I mentioned that.

Patrick was referring to how when you are in a shop menu, there is no indication whether the equipment available for purchase is better or worse than your current stuff (unless you know the exact numbers), which is true. There is a way to compare stats but only if you own the equipment wholesale, which can make buying similar weapons or armor a hassle.

Regardless, I'm excited for the game, far more so than I rightfully should be.

@patrickklepek: Yeah I was only half listening while playing monster hunter, my bad

This will most likely be the first Souls game I'll play

Shoutout to Vinny's "ball and chain" look.

Simply put, true gamers play Dark Souls or at least appreciate it for what it does. Look forward to Dark Souls II.

Don't. Play through Demon's Souls.

While always being at risk of invasion sounds bad, they are at least putting stat requirements on gear so anyone invading you will be at your level and in similarly powered equipment. No more being invaded at SL1 by some asshole with later game gear, or flipping around with full Havels.

Rorie and his not hearing something that was just said.

totally disappointing. =[ the video isn't even up yet too!

ever figure out what the problem was? having the same problem myself

This is going to be quite a year for games. Looking forward to it!

...so the world might be mended. -____-

Uhhhhhh, animations... so pretty...

Methodical, baby.

@bipa: Not to mention they're comparing players based on Soul History (sounds like the total number of souls used) rather than just their Soul Level. So an SL1 with fully-upgraded gear would be matched with an SL15 with moderately-upgraded gear, sounds like.

As someone who has been avoiding as much Dark Souls 2 information as possible, the existence of this video is providing me with an internal conflict.

@patrickklepek said:

Shops only ever sell unupgraded weapons, so it would be pointless. Your +5 Longsword is probably better than anything any shop ever sells in any souls game.

Unupgraded weapons = practically always worse than upgraded weapons. It's the nature of the game that often locks players into using only one or two weapons throughout their entire playthrough.

If you want to be criticizing anything it's all the different upgrade paths, which I had to use a wiki for (in my early souls days) to completely understand.

@likeassur: The Souls series has always been a very methodical game until you hit a boss.

I was never a big fan of the Soul's game weapon upgrade mechanic. It is interesting how I can beat the game with my starting weapons, which I kind of did with Demon's Souls where I spend majority of the game with my +7 long sword and applying sticky white stuff...

OMG they got rid of the ragdoll? pre-order cancelled

Dude, the UI is not good. At all. It doesn't mean it's not a great game but the UI is absolutely a weak spot. You don't need to defend every aspect of the game you like.

EpicNameBro mention right out of the gate! Hype level increasing!

Don't. Play through both.

Video craps out at 12 seconds

@milkman said:

I guess the part where I point out where the UI is in fact weak is defending every aspect of the game? That while all the actual information is there, it is not as conveniently surfaced as people want, making it lack elegance and accessibility, but not basic functionality?

I feel like we have, the two of us specifically, been having this same argument over Souls games since Demon's Souls, and you always seem to fall back on accusing anyone not as hard on the game as a fanboy. It's quite tiresome.

The video wouldn't work with streaming, crapped out about 12 seconds in for me too, but progressive seems to be working.

Agree with Turambar, all the information you could possibly need is there in the dark souls UI. Except how to decipher that information.

to be honest I'm surprised Patrick has beaten the game, it doesn't seem like he understands anything about it, like asking for respeccing and other casual shit.

Play Demon's Souls 2.

This Video keeps dieing on me like 15 seconds in.

Jeff is secretly Giant Bomb's own Sage Freke, secretly tempting the other staff members with the unimaginable power of the Old One and luring them into playing the Souls series.

I think there are certainly one or two things that could be improved in terms of better-surfacing information. But this shouldn't apply to everything - I think someone mentioned the Lost Soul items not telling you how many souls they give, and to me that makes complete sense. You should have to experiment and find out, that's part of the fun!

I definitely think a good explanation in-game of a few things like what the stats screen means (such as a quick note of what each stat is for and how scaling works) would be helpful to encourage new players to enjoy their first few hours. But I'm also cautious that they don't oversimplify things, because the Souls games are definitely more about discovery over time than anything else to me.

EDIT: Wait, one class starts with a monocle? Sold. Also, I wonder if that first covenant is a little like world tendency - makes stuff harder, but increases drops and such slightly?

Also a big fan of @rorie's socks. Very stylin', sir.

I was hoping someone would ask if there was still a gender slide bar.

Thanks for the vid guys I have zero interest in playing this series myself but it certainly makes for some of the best content on the site. Looking forward to more vinny and brad souls shenanigans.

And to think it was only a couple of years ago I swear the entire gb staff was shitting on this franchise constantly. lol

I'm not sure i like fact that you can now teleport between bonfires from the start. The fact that fast travel wasnt possible so you had to find your way out yourself was kind of an unique and "joyful" part for me.

I forgot to ask them about the camera in the game. I think fall to death very often when the camera was zooming right on to me

@turambar said:

There was a way to directly compare the stats of a weapon in a shop with weapons that you own/have equipped?

@bicycle_repairman: I really don't agree with this sentiment everyone seems to be in love with this whole interconnected world Ideal but honestly making the game easier by making me traipse through fodder and thus ending up with more souls; to acend weapons, or try a different area, or get new spells was a big point of annoyance for me.

Never mind the fact that not having more bonfires warpable means that a lot of the Metroid prime connection hallway crap won't get overly exposed.

Also amazon has given 2 pc dates the one in may is a saturday and the other was in an email to a customer that said March 25th.http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/20098/article/report-amazon-confirms-dark-souls-2-pc-release-date/

I bet it is super late but I'm a pessimist.

The thing I'm concerned about in Dark Souls 2 is how they handle split damage and damage resistance given how much post patch pve and bosses seemed to favor weapons of greatsword size or larger. Damage resistance not being a straight percentage or number but some byzantine mechanism that favors really high single resistance hitting damage. Which Is why a Moonlight Greatsword +5 on NG+ will massively outdamge an MLGS +3 on NG becasue those extra attack points don't translate in a linear fashion.

http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=396507

(No I don't understand the maths just the concept behind this blog post)

This is high order bullshit because It isn't immediately obvious and makes faster weapons a joke against many of the bosses. From what I've seen of the beta footage it seems they might have simply mafe the larger weapons worse in moveset to compensate for the trend.

While I think resistance was the same in Demons that game had more and better option for medium and small weapon builds, the Blue Blood sword especially sticking in the mind.

@patrickklepek They made some adjustments to Dark Souls that made the game easier mostly with regard to amount of souls dropped and how good scaling weapons are.

I also have suspicions that they made Four Kings and O & S easier in some ways, Four Kings in how quickly they spawn in and O & S in that Smough isn't constantly doing his ham slam->charge->uppercut the entire battle.

Then again both you and vinny picked strength specialised which is a good way to go. The end of Dark Souls feels rushed and a little easy anyway, Gwyn is also I suspect not meant to be that hard, his death being more of a formality, like the grosness in the belly of the beast at the end of Demons Souls.

(Not in any way impugning Patricks skill in completing the game his videos made it clear he was way better at it than me even on my third go round.)

Maybe the areas ended up being less connected than Dark Souls 1, so they thought it was necessary? Or maybe a lot o people complained about being stuck in Blighttown after beating Quelaag or something.

Vinny's watch certainly is jaunty

Aww look at Brad talking excitedly about getting in at the groung floor and exploring DSII. Warms my heart.

@turambar: I agree with you. The UI could definitely use some improvement, but it's not "total shit", and never actually impeded my experience with the game. Patrick's complaining about comparing items in SHOPS, for fuck's sake. What kind of moran buys equipment?

And I didn't really like Dark Souls, so I'm not a fanboy. Of all of that game's problems, the UI is far from the biggest.

@bicycle_repairman: This actually made me about 200x more likely to play DS2 on release.

Agreed. I'm really opposed to fast-travel in most RPGs in general. It hinders the development of a sense of place.

I'm also concerned about the supposed ability to respec. That aspect was already one of the things that ruined Diablo 3 for me since part of the fun of levelling up is the consequential nature of the character progression. When there are little to no consequences to your decisions, that shit all becomes meaningless and less engaging for me.

Armchair designers who want their games evermore comfortable in order to devour as much content as possible while investing as little time as possible often don't understand what makes certain games, such as the Souls games for example, such engrossing experiences. The Souls games became popular because they did things differently from the mainstream, and now that many "mainstream gamers" (and gaming "journalists" who often naturally aren't willing or able to invest a lot of time into a single game) want to be part of the latest thing, they want these games to become more mainstream as well. Many people will bitch at this assertion but it's the truth. I say: if the Souls games don't fit your needs, there's an endless offering of games out there that will. Go play those, let the Souls games do their own unique thing.

edit: I'm not opposed to some improvements such as better explanations for upgrading mechanics and so on. And, for example, I'm glad they changed the stats back to text since I hated the symbols in the network test beta. But many things people criticize don't need fixing, it's just not their cup of tea.

Thanks for this video duders. I think Dark Souls 2 has an honest shot at being a legitimately great game. The previous games were okay but they were also sloppy in a lot of ways both graphically and mechanically. At least now they have a lot of lessons to learn from to make it what it needs to be. I'm going to try to be a sorcerer again even though it wasn't very satisfying in the first two what with the lack of spell variety. I'm worried this is going to turn into a Mass Effect scenario where I played all three games as an Adept but found it rather boring and only stuck with it to maintain thematic consistency with my character. Heck I might give these Hex spells they're talking about a shot. Here's to hoping that this game turns out okay.

Yes, if you have one weapon equipped, selecting the other weapon will show you whether certain attack/defense powers are higher/lower. There is no way to have both stats be present on the screen simultaneously however, which is a matter of presentation, not core functionality.

I can confirm that as well. The game didn't do a good job of communicating what all the grade rankings on strength, dexterity, etc. did to your overall damage on weapons, but it totally communicated everything to you. Much better than Demon's Souls in that regard.

@mormonwarrior said:

In shops?

I have yet to play the first one. I saw it on the Steam Summer Sale last year and I didn't bite - I regret that now. I've seen it cheaper on PS3 lately... decisions, decisions.

Ugh. I want to watch, but I want to be completely blind when the game comes out.