Quick Look: Dark Souls II

It's funny how the Gbomb crew have gone from brushing off the Demon Souls/Dark Souls games to becoming one of Giantbomb's most covered/streamed series.

@darkest4: yeah really, I mean they've always had an interest in the game but Jeff still kinda brushes it off entirely from what I've seen. At least most of them appreciate the awesomeness of souls series

I don't know why, but this video made the game seem really boring.

Watching this is making me jelly (just came out of South Park Stick of Truth) that PC gamers, like myself, have to wait another month and a half for this. By then, everyone will have figured out how all the mechanics work, secrets, and strategies. Better keep off the Dark Souls II wikis and guides until then :)

Dark Souls II, The Last of Us and Ni No Kuni are the only games that have really made me wish I hadn't sold my PS3 years back...

This doesn't make any difference at all. I won't look at guides so them being available or not doesn't change anything so I don't really get the argument. What I do get is people wanting to play it earlier for the sake of really liking the games. I'll wait a month to play it with better visuals and framerate, there's no lack of games to play.

Yeah, I suppose you're right. I should have mentioned avoiding all my friends from spoiling stuff within the next month and a half before the PC release. It will be much harder avoiding them than any web site spoilers.

It'd just be nice to be apart of all this DSII madness, but then again, it'll still likely be there when the PC version comes out.

While I think that's mostly true, the dev team will straight up troll you at times too.

This QL just sold another copy of the game. I was pretty worried about how the console versions would perform, but it looks fine here, so let's do this!

this is painful watching Brad play...

So..... where is the fun?

Waiting for Xbox One version, hope they have started work on it already!

So, what happens when you light all of the braziers/sconces in an area? Does it do anything?

The real Vinny's Trolls starts here.

I've been playing tantric Dark Souls 2. Consuming just enough media to keep me on the edge before I get my copy and explode over my ps3. I don't think it's safe to watch this.

Hella endurance.

Well, in Dark Souls, there was that ring that said it would regenerate health but really it just raises it slightly. Probably just a translation issue but misinformation nonetheless.

Misinformation is totally part of the game though even if it's not from the developers themselves. I can't tell you how many times I blindly trusted player messages and jumped off of ledges and cliffs in Demon's Souls before I learned not to blindly trust the messages. Now that I'm experienced, sometimes I leave them because that's the game, man. Sometimes it's fun to put a message like "be wary of liar" in front of a friendly character because you just know some poor schmuck is gonna be like, "Oh ho ho ho! Nice try, but it appears that I have the upper hand on you this time, Dark Souls!" and totally murder the guy.

So I've played about an hour of this game so far. I didn't get very far because I was really trying to take it all in and search every corner. I came on here just to see if anyone had noticed or complained about what I was feeling while playing it for that hour.

Right away I felt like there was something wrong with the controller settings. For some reason my character was flying all over the screen and I felt like I had very little control over him. Even after trying to adjust the settings, I realized that it's not the settings, but a significant change in the feel of the control in general. It feels loose, floaty, and inaccurate.

One of the reasons I absolutely love the combat in Dark Souls is that the character feels weighty and the controls feel tight. How precise it is makes it all about your skill and reaction time. With this new loose feel in Dark Souls II, I'm worried it will open the door to the bad kind of frustration, rather than the good kind that Dark Souls and Demon's Souls have been known for.

Maybe I'm just jumping the gun a little and I need to get used to it or something, but it feel significantly different than Dark Souls and that automatically worries me.

Then you REALLY don't understand. Both games are "RPGs," and contain statistics and fantasy tropes, but that's about where the similarities end.

Well, I can't say for sure, but DaS was REALLY popular. It seems like people have a reflex now to be incredibly suspicious of sequels to things they liked. And that's pretty justified, I guess. So they get nitpicky.

The thing is, I felt that way a little myself for maybe the first hour or two I played. But I got over it for two reasons (I've played like 16 hours at this point):

1) the game is really, really good. Like, it's probably better than the other two, although there's no accounting for taste.

2) Some of the people complaining about control are probably used to the old games, and there are significant differences in this one. Even after 16 hours, I'm still getting used to the differences in the Estus Flask. And if you expect to not put points into the right stats and still be able to block/roll efficiently, well... better get used to that too.

The mechanics are a lot less abusable this time. That's a good thing... it's just going to really piss off some people that used I-frames and instant blocking/estus to get through DaS.

It's definitely different, but I think it's just because they finally forced a real separation of stats in regards to movement. There's poise and agility governing movement speed and recovery from actions like blocking with the shield; equip load is its own stat to upgrade completely. It takes time to get back to the kind of freewheeling quickness we had in Dark and Demon's Souls.

That's just my hunch though. I'm still relatively early on but it seems like all the help descriptions make it sound that way, so I've been trying to get my agility up because I like being fast. I think the base character is just worse in Dark Souls II to start out to give a more pronounced curve upward.

Ah man what's with all the screen tearing? I bought the PS3 version and I haven't noticed any tearing but if you're not in a tight corridor the frame rate runs in the 20s and lower. Guess I'll put it down and wait for that PC but man I wanna play it so bad. That nauseating framerate is just too much though. I think I'd rather have the tearing.

Not sure I like the whole thing where enemies don't respawn. It seems like you can really put yourself in a position where you can't progress at all and need to start over. That goes past difficult and just becomes cheap.

PS3 is vsynced, 360 is not. However I haven't had too many framerate issues on the PS3. It's often noticeably less then 30, but never so bad that it chugs.

Finally got this game for xbox 360 at the request of my friend. We got on xbox chat and started playing. I've beat the Last Giant boss and I'm back in the swing of dark souls. In my opinion the game runs and looks fine. Then again I don't come here ready to shit on anything that isn't running on PC. Definitely better than the last dark souls, which is all I really wanted. So glad I picked this up.

I have it on ps3 and i agree, the thing is half the time you have so much tunnel vision that the graphics dont matter, all you are seeing is movement. Anything that moves triggers your flight or fight, and the grahpics are the last thing on your mind.

GREAT game so far

I totally lured that big guy to the giant crossbows and killed him with those. But I thought he was some super tough enemy that I managed to outsmart and felt really good about myself, but then I was kinda bummed when I learned he's easy.

Couldn't agree more. I started the game out trying to make my same build from the first game. A spear-wielding medium-armor, medium-roll shield turtle with high poise. Didn't work out. The spears felt instantly off and I felt like I wasted 1400 souls on the stupid thing which early on meant a lot and I couldn't beat the first boss after 15+ tries. Restarted with a sorcerer and had an amazing time (just beat it) in robes and with 30 adaptability. I can't imagine not leveling that stat or wearing super heavy armor. The weird thing about adaptability is that you get more points of agility from it between 10-20 than the previous levels, and even more from 20-30. The difference in lifegem/estus use time is SO noticeable between 20 and 30.

I've played a lot of the game now, and I can say that is not an issue. For one, an area never seems to entirely depopulate, and I've never been in a position where I needed to get souls to progress anyway, but also there are also always other areas you can visit, there doesn't seem to ever be only one single direction you can go

brad not putting his helmet on is making me mad heh. also it would be cool if vinny's theory about the fire were true but i'm pretty sure that stuff does nothing at all.