I came everything.
EVERYTHING.

This ^ The only thing that's really bad about 3-2 is maneaters, but it doesn't take that long to get back there after you unlock all of the shortcuts. Valley of Defilement is a whole new level of awful with the poison, the swamp where you can't block, and enemies that plague and some you can't even block without getting killed.

Makes me want to jump back into Dark Souls for another go. So excited!

also: Quadavs

LOL oh man, two sentences in and your comment is already looking like a disaster waiting to happen.

It looks so much better than Dark Souls 1, it's crazy.

Anyway, really excited about the game, I really hope that it's coming out this year. That ogre smashing through the wall looked amazing, I love the creature designs already.

Yeah from a gameplay perspective totally it was terrible. Especially 5-2 as it's this big open swamp that keeps constantly poisoning you, limiting your movement and there isn't that clear of an indication on where to go - and it's a long stage before 5-3. From the purely aesthetic side though man 5-1 is really cool. You enter and you can almost smell it. The flies, the enemies, the architecture of the level - they captured the title Valley of Defilement perfectly.

@babychoochoo:

...huh. That was a really weird preview. That translator, i don't think he was doing a very good job. Some of those sentences didn't make sense.

Anyway. Looks cool. Appears to play the same, which is good. Textures are looking incomplete in this build, so hard to say whether I am a fan of some of the graphical changes. I could say it looks a little cartoony but that tends to be true of early dev builds before the last few passes on the textures.

HYPE

\[T]/

You're all forgetting the true enemy of Demon's Souls. 4-2! That stage is my kryptonite. Whoever thought narrow rockside encounters with both normal and gold skeletons, accompanied by an artillery worthy barrage from those bastard flying manta rays, with a topping of ghost-geth hybrids and grim reapers every which way must've lost some sleep for their misdeeds, right?. It leads me to a theory that this/these designer(s) left to work at CyberConnect 2 on Asura's Wrath as a redemption, because there is plenty of good flying manta ray murder to be had in that game.

Agreed the atmosphere is amazing but man playing it is kind of a pain. Particulary 5-2, mainly because the level is so long like you said and there's about 1,000 ways you can get killed. I've gotten to the point that when I go do that level i say fuck it and try to fight as few enemies as humanly possible and bring a crap ton of lotus.

Yeah, 4-2 can be a pain if you don't have a bow, especially for the grim reapers and the manta rays. The one that always gets me is that invisible backstabbing grim reaper. I can never quite remember where they hide until its too late.

Honestly, these guys should just make every video game world ever. Their world/level design is phenomenal.

Yea I agree, tough to top perfection. Also there is a new game director heading DS2 so anything could happen.

Someone on the internet said that the dudes who led the Demon's and Dark Souls projects are working on Deep Down. Is this truth?

I'm interested to see how the online will work this time around. It was pretty different from Demon's to Dark Souls. I'd also like to see what happens with death. I never really saw the down side in Dark Souls whereas you took a massive hit on your health in Demon's Souls.

Down side was that you were fugly.

you can't get co-op help if you're a hollow.

I found Dark Souls ridiculously difficult and unplayable and I hate each and every one of you for playing and enjoying/beating it. It took me DAYS to reach the furry monster living on the city wall (where you have to climb and jump down on him) and took me a few more days trying to beat him, to no avail. That game is way too much.

No seriously I want to kill all of you, grab your swords.

days to reach taurus demon? eh... sounds like this game series isn't for you.

granted it took me 5 damn hours to beat sens fortress because i couldnt find the damn bonfire since its hidden so well. i just did it again on my new character, took me like half an hour to do it without dying once.

i LOVE dark souls. i'm actually pretty good at it, took me a long time mind you, but i now consider myself pretty good at it, but i still die even to pretty weak enemies. those super weak hollows with torches, omg, if you let your guard down, they can rip off 3/4ths of your health in one little rush attack.

Thoughts about the demonstration:

• It wasn't a live demo as all footage was prerecorded, not that this means anything, it's a perfectly viable way to show off a game.
• When opening doors or climbing ladders a small "put away" animation for the weapons has been added.
• I wonder if that enemy they thought was dead was invincible during his "getting up" animation.
• When that turtle knight backdropped I immediately got what they were showing off, very cool.
• You can move while healing, at least with the items used in the demo.
• What's with the multiple types of healing items anyway? Maybe you don't start off as Undead with estus, though they would lose their in game death justification. Curious, very curious.
• Dual wielding improved? Yes please, just don't make it OP.
• "Light the torch" sounds akward to me, is it just me?
• You can move while shooting a bow (!) but it takes a huge chunk of stamina for every shot.
• They flipped through 3 items held in the left hand at one point: shield, off-hand weapon and bow. Hopefully not just a demo feature.
• I was just thinking the other day how I should be able to deflect arrows with the "shield parry" I hope the axe thing is a sign of that.
• The UI looks a little bit better with you apparently being able to see what other things you currently have equipped in you item slot. Curious how improved the rest of the menus will be, catiously optimistic?
• The effect when falling into bottomless pits looks weird but I guess they didn't want you to disappear like you did in Dark Souls 1. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get used to seeing it..
• The death message still looks and sounds the same for now, which felt a little weird in contrast to all the new.
• Rope bridge scene was awesome but cinematic scenes like that feel a bit undarksoulsy. Acknowledging that though it didn't really bother me as I'm sure will be sparse and only used where approriate.

Overall things moved a little slower and a lot smoother, animations looked different enough that my instinctual reaction was "CHANGE BAD!" after having played hundreds of hours of Dark Souls, but now I'm excited for it to have a different feel.

The Pendant was a joke, the developers admitted as much, though in a way they were only being truthful because the Pendant always said "no effect". As for the Pygmy all that can be said for sure was that it was humanity's progenitor that found the Dark Soul at the dawn of the age of fire and decided to split it up amongst its kin.

\[T]/ Praise the Souls!

My DS instincts were on fire just watching that video. I was already sussing out details to keep an eye out for or wanting the camera to check blind spots. Looks amazing and more of the same(which is great).

You Defeated!

Honestly I hope you're joking. The game really isn't that difficult and there's plenty of helpful resources online. Maybe you might want to consider a change of playstyle?

Pff! with skill like that in Dark Souls we won't even need our hands.

Oh sh**, that's actually really significant. Heal while getting out of the way! That better stay in the final game.

I need it.... The game looks beautiful but for gods sake, can we not have another blight town situation? Thanks, that would be great....

Blighttown is so long and arduous. So many damn obstacles in the way.

You're right. I should just blindly praise every new mechanic even when it looks like it won't be a fun gameplay mechanic. And I can't help it if the game looks like Dark Souls 1.5 instead of Dark Souls 2. This is Saint's Row 4 all over again...I'm sorry I mean Saint's Row 3.5. I've said from the get go this is going to be the game in the series where the fans turn. Hopefully I'm wrong, but everything I'm seeing and hearing is telling me otherwise. It just reeks of a cheap cash in.

I pointed out problems I had and made legit criticisms. I'm sorry I didn't ejaculate all over it blindly like others are doing.

I heard it as they want to make the controls simpler or something to that effect. I probably did hear it wrong though. I don't think Dark Souls has simple controls though, if you're talking from a super casual perspective though.

I'm also uneasy by the fact that we haven't seen character creation yet, nor a stat screen, nor an inventory, nor any form of magical attacks. Those wouldn't have been very difficult to show off super quick. I still have this odd feeling you'll be playing as this one dude and won't be able to customize him like you could originally.

The link I provided you mean? If you check the comments one of the guys reuploaded it I believe. ^_^

Does calling that IGN dude a douche really count as legit criticism? Also, it's perfectly fine to have some reservations when it comes to highly anticipated sequels; you shouldn't be buying something just because it has a big fat 2 slapped on at the end of its title. I just find it a bit silly that you're trying to suss out the quality of this game as a whole and the direction in which the series is heading, just from that short early demo. I do apologize for the dickish response though and going forward I will try to refrain from 'calling people out' or whatever it was that I though I was doing, as you're free to say whatever you want, this is the internet after all.

No game nails atmosphere like the Souls series

While 4-2 was pretty tough it was still way better than Tomb of the Giants which was really an entire area of bullshit.

Well - now I've spoiled that Skeletal Dragon jump scare for me. That's the point I tuned out. I don't need to know more about it, I'm going to play Dark Souls II *knocks on wood*.

I kinda expected them to go full-hog on next generation systems, to much more deeply penetrate the market - and in doing so potentially broaden their audience plentyfold, just like Bethesda Softworks did with Oblivion on the 360 - but I guess I'm just as fine with it being as iterative as it seems to be, and play it on current gen systems.

Any word on a PC version?

My only real concern after watching the demo is the framerate. They say they want the game to look better but the original could hardly keep it together as it was. Hopefully they release a decent PC version day 1 or it's available on next gen consoles.

@kishinfoulux: To be fair Dark Souls was just Demon's Souls 1.5 but it was still pretty good. I think a lot of people (critics included) let the little things slide because there arent any other games like this anymore.

Personally i'm caustiously optimistic. I doubted Dark Souls and nitpicked over all the changes but it ended up feeling a lot different to Demon's Souls and in most cases for the better.

Can't wait!

I really appreciate that they seem to be focusing less on just trying to refine visuals and really improve and iterate on the gameplay. Looks like what I want from a sequel.

Though, a PC version announcement would be nice. ;)

For those of you wondering about Lordran.... don't be stunned if it has nothing to do with Lordran... at all. From Software's RPG's is not well known for making RPG's that have strong connections to their earlier entries. So yeah...

As for the trailer I liked it and all but I didn't like the focus on death at the end. It makes me feel like either the dev's don't even understand why the game is good, or they think the fans like the game for some reason that I think may be different from most what most fans actually enjoy. I like the game for the world design, immersion, gameplay, and From's style of RPG which has been pretty consistent since PS1. I don't care about silly one hit kill gimmicks, how many ways I can die, or cheap encounter design made with the entire purpose of killing you 1-2 times for the sake of a false sense of challenge.

"I was just thinking the other day how I should be able to deflect arrows with the "shield parry" I hope the axe thing is a sign of that."

You can already do that in Dark Souls. Whenever I come across someone who uses a bow I'll always parry several of their arrows. It's even better when they use dragon slayer arrows because it blows their mind. You can also parry sorcery and miracles. I've been able to parry Wrath of the Gods when someone tried to combo me with the Tranquil Walk of Peace and Wrath of the Gods combo. I still took damage, but they didn't knock me over and I didn't stagger from the hits.

it was 12 fucking minutes get off your high horse

I've basically perfected the run through on TotG. No item is worth dealing with all of the bs enemies in that place. So I just run straight through now. I can probably do Catacombs/TotG in half an hour now.

I always wanted to try parrying arrows and spells but I never have the balls to do it. I usually either just block or try to roll forward into a r1/r2 combo and hope it at least makes them think twice about about doing it.

I just came.

Remember when the EDGE article said that the game looked fucking fabutastical? Like, Star Wars 1313 good?

What little respect I had for EDGE was just smashed to pieces. It was already an obvious exaggeration, but this is just a decent looking current gen game for fuck sake. It's not even an amazing looking current gen game.

In fact, the textures look muddy and the "reflections" on the armor look pretty plastic. I loved the way they nailed the look of metal armor in Dark Souls, this looks significantly worse in that regard, though it may be just because there's not a lot of metal there.

Gameplay seems hardly changed at all, which is a bummer, but it was a short clip, so hopefully there's a lot more to it.

And fuck the guy with like 0/20 vision that decides how big the god damned interface should be. Oh well. PC version is going to be fixed by the community I'm sure. lol. It'll probably look really sharp on PC. Maybe it'll be a proper PC release and it'll be easier to do texture packs and stuff. I'd dig doing a texture pack for a Dark Souls game.

@mordeaniischaos: I'm scared that doing a proper PC release is going to make it harder to mod it. :c

Hopefully you are right.

I don't think you understand what proper PC release means, first of all. Second of all, the textures were previously locked up and just basically named with hashes. I don't think anyone ever figured out how to mess with the meshes.

Aaaaaaand now I'll be playing Dark Souls tonight when I get home.

I really like the whole bit with the cyclops busting through the wall. The environments seem more destructible in general, which I think is a cool addition. I feel good about what I saw as a whole. We obviously don't know everything but it seems to have that DS feel.

Speaking of which, I know it's called Dark Souls...but I felt like it was just a little too dark in the environments shown. Of course dimly lit caverns and such are a big part of the game, but I like the bright outdoor areas too!

@clonedzero: Oh yea, that was it. It's been a while since I've played and that was actually something I don't think I ever really touched upon during the time I played it.

@mordeaniischaos: Ah you mean a proper PC release from our perspective. I just immediately started thinking of what they would consider proper. Which is probably locking things up harder. I didn't say the original was unprotected, just that it was badly protected. Some kind of screwing around with the files is gonna end up happening no matter what they do, I just don't want it more limited than before.

And no, there are still no messing with the meshes. Delaying our inevitable Cloud vs Sephiroth mods. :P

@mordeaniischaos said:

I am in no way a "high level" Dark Souls player, but I could tell there were a lot of small, subtle changes to the nature of combat by the encounters they showed off. From mini-bosses being able to "block" backstabs to the movement speed of the player character being doubled (it seemed to be twice as fast anyhow), to swing animations being shorter and dodge rolls seemingly easier to pull off (and bloody quick, too). If anything it seems like Dark Souls 2 is going to be a faster playing game, but From Software isn't sacrificing the core nature of the combat in order to get there.

I didn't think the demo was mind blowing, but I was pretty happy when I saw it and the game looked, well, like Dark Souls. And the little touches like the dynamic camera angle during the walk on the bridge were nice. I don't think they'll do those little flourishes all the time, but it certainly seems like they're picking their spots for maximum effectiveness.

Also the UI is better in DS2 hands down. Then again it's not hard to beat the shit-flung UI of Dark Souls.

So excited!

@oldirtybearon: A couple things: Speed of just about everything you do depends on your gear. If you're not wearing the really heavy stuff, you aren't that slow in Dark Souls. This is certainly faster, but it's not that much faster than if you went light in Dark Souls. That being said, changing the pace isn't doing anything. That's just making maybe the timing a little easier/difficult, but it's not a fundamental change at all. The only real change (tweaking numbers in relatively small ways means jack shit to me. It may improve the game minorly, but it's not real change to the combat) was the behavior stuff, but that looks like it could just mean every enemy has a single gimmick. Those fat things will fall onto you if you get behind em. I bet there'll be an enemy that flips around a bunch like the thieves in Dark Souls. A single gimmick move isn't going to revolutionize the combat. Maybe it'll add a bit of flair, but not much.

My comments about how the game looked were directed at the complete fucking disgrace that was the EDGE announcement article. Basically, the guy went on and on about how mind-blowingly gorgeous and next gen the game looked and how it was going to suck your cock, cook you dinner, and heal your wounds when it came out.

And the UI is looks functionally identical. I like it better aesthetically, but I cannot stand how massive it is. It just has different fluff around the edges, that's about it. It still takes up a third of the screen and is about an inch off from the border of your screen.

All in all, it looks fine as a Souls game. But I want to see more of a departure/evolution. And that EDGE asshole should still be ashamed of that article, unless there is some secret next gen version we don't know about.

This thread has basically single-handedly made me want to play Dark Souls, seems like a good summer break game.