We're Playing Dark Souls Too! - Part 01

I need this game. Right now.

Watching Brad play this (and a lot of other things) is like waiting for someone with a bad stutter to finish a sentence, soooo frustrating and you just want to take over and do it for them but you can't.

lol, wow. Brad is terrible... and also apparently an X-bot. ("Wow, this looks terrible!") Gimme a break, Brad.

Vinny's Mace tip was actually pretty good. I was skeptical it would fare much better but I was impressed.

I think Black Gulch was better partially because it was brighter, but mostly because I was so fucking sick of that entire area (Gutter and Gulch) at that point that I just summoned in some dudes to help me almost immediately upon seeing what that area looked like. The heartbeat noise was really cool upon entering, and the green glow was visually interesting, but both those areas totally pushed beyond the tipping point of "this sucks but it's great because Dark Souls" to "no, this just legitimately sucks." If they had removed 90% of the statues, both areas would've been in the former category.

Then again, I played a melee guy with no magic, which I'd imagine is how most people play those games (same way most people play Mass Effect as a standard third-person shooter, myself included) and after beating the game today, I 100% feel like they went out of their way in the back half of the game to make things harder for that kind of build. So many sections just felt like "wow if I had magic this whole area would be a joke but I don't so let me try it again for the 20th time."

I don't know. All in all, it's still a fantastic game and I had a ton of fun. But it's definitely not as good as Dark Souls.

@whatisdelicious: I like Dark Souls II a lot better than the first. It's less forgiving and less exploitable, so far. Like you said, you could just wear heavy armor and a strong sword and beat the game by hitting the attack button over and over and you can't do that anymore.

I didn't have a problem with the stuff you mentioned. Seems like good Dark Souls design. I had fun with it.

@zevvion: For me it comes down to the divide between magic and non-magic players, and I feel like this game has more of a gap than either previous game, which really gets exacerbated in the last third. Dudes started tearing through my Pursuer's Greatshield +3 like it was nothing and seemingly had enough stamina that they could just keep on swinging basically indefinitely. Enemies are supposed to be subject to the same rule set you are.

Plus, the final boss paled in comparison to Gwyn. Without the curse stuff, she would've been yet another boring, easy "big dude" variant, but all the cursing just made the fight annoying, not satisfying, and it would've been super easy from a distance. Gwyn, on the other hand, forced me to be perfect with my dodges, block only if necessary (I was using the Grass Crest Shield), and be surgical with my slashes, all in concert otherwise I'd get punished relentlessly. That fight was so intense and fun. He closed in on you so quickly.

I'm gonna do new game plus once I'm done with inFamous and I'm going to go back to a much lighter character who dodges rather than blocks. That Alva armor is pretty incredible. I might try out a bit of magic while I'm at it.

@whatisdelicious: And the enemies are subject to the same rules as you. They do not have infinite stamina, you can break their guards just like they do yours. Your tactic of 'just block everything and then hit the attack button' that worked in Dark Souls doesn't work as well anymore. They changed subtle things about the combat to have it be more challenging. You can still block, but you cannot block forever like you used to. I think that's a good change.

I'm not sure I'm following you on Gwyn. I mean, you kill him in 2 or 3 ripostes. It's one of the easiest boss fights in Dark Souls. Yeah, the final boss in DSII isn't extremely hard, but at least you can't shut her down and steamroll her as easily as you could Gwyn.

I'll take Vinny's Mace tip any day.... yeah...

I mean, holding his mace with two hands.

Wait... that's not helping.

@zevvion: The guys on the steps leading up near the end all had a heck of a stamina bar then, because for me they were basically unleashing a flurry of about ten slashes, then they'd guard for about two seconds, so I'd take a swipe to try and break their guard, to which they'd answer with "fuck that how about another ten swipes oh wait now you're dead." It's good to force people out of their comfort zones now and again, but that area was just brutal for the sake of it, not as an interesting challenge. The whole last third just got nasty, like putting those stupid exploding enemies in Dragon Aerie. There's a difference between challenging the player and killing the mood.

In Dark Souls, I didn't rely on blocking. I was using the Grass Crest Shield for the stamina so I could roll and dodge. Like seemingly most players, I never really got parrying down, so Gwyn was a tough fight. If you've mastered parrying though, basically nothing can touch you anyway so that's a criticism you can level at the entire game, not just one boss. In Dark Souls II, I just wasn't finding good lightweight armor and I wasn't used to a lot of the changes they had made yet, so I started building a heavier dude. Now I have a lot of good lightweight stuff so I'll be back to dodging in NG+.

@whatisdelicious: I don't know. I'm having kind of a hard time visualizing how you played the game. But everything you say is a tactic or solution for. The exploding guys never even damaged me. You can just roll out of the way of the explosion.

Again, I don't know, but it just sounds like you want to defeat enemies a certain way and blame the game when it throws enemies at you where that one tactic doesn't work. Different enemies require different tactics. It's a game about learning. You can't just do whatever and expect to win.

@zevvion: In DS, I just rolled out of the way of incoming attacks, then rolled in to punish. In DSII, I played more like Vinny, I suppose. I had heavier armor because I didn't know how quickly you could get the Elite Knight set until much later, so I'd just strafe around dudes, manage my stamina, that sort of thing. By the end, I tacked on a greatbow because I wasn't just trying to bend the game to my play style; I adapted to it and I started taking dudes down from a distance. It was the only way my character was ever going to be able to get through areas like Shrine of Amana.

With the exploding guys, I beat the game so obviously I adapted. I'm not just still stuck on every roadblock I came to because I stubbornly refused to learn or whatever. I threw on lighter armor and started rolling out of the way, same as you, or just slashing them before they could explode. They weren't a bummer because I couldn't beat them; they were a bummer because they ruined the moment.

What.

The.

Fuck.

I never knew you could homeward bone out of boss fights! Could you do it in DS1? Did I miss this fact for the hundreds of hours I've put into these games!? lol

@talon64: yeah i did it a ton of times in ds1 but the bosses in 2 are kind of too wily for it for the most part

Part 2