I got that first thing (wouldn't be able to play and take half decent screenshots without borderless windowed), I just didn't do research to find optimal graphics settings or anything else.
Which seems even sillier in hindsight, since I should have wanted to take the best screenshots possible.
I probably just got unlucky. I only have a couple more Eyes, so I'll throw them out and see who pops up. Chances are I just lose the next 2 fights and have to find some other means of PvP. I'm much more interested in seeing if I can get any coop stuff going on.
Well people can invade your realm at random, so your pvp experience wont be completely gone when you run out of eyes. its been on sale so there probably will be an uptick of people playing the game, hopefully some good volume for your experience.
Darkroot Garden has some good PvP. Either wander until forest guardians invade, or go join the cat's covenant and do it yourself.
NG+ people will have stats far in excess of your new character's. That restriction is there because the cursed monsters are too great a challenge for new game players.
Co-op is much easier though! Drop your sign near a bonfire while hollowed (esp the one before a boss) or wait for others' signs while human.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Just a tip about Blighttown's swamp: you totally don't need Purple Moss to get around there. So long as you have a decently upgraded Estus Flask and you have higher than the starting value for health, you should be able to roam around down there without ever curing yourself of the poison. It eats your health so slowly and the enemies (for the most part) are so not dangerous that you can survive a farm run of all the leeches on Estus pops alone.
+1
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Hopefully you run into Quelaana this time.
Also, you can get a capture device for ~$15 for SD, ~$25 for HD, or thereabouts, if you want to go that route. Even if not, DS is well worth playing.
I think Blighttown was actually a combination of having the gold-hemmed robes, which have very good poison resistance, on top of plenty of purple moss. I don't think I even got poisoned by the swamp water the first time through, since wearing the iron ring meant I could run half way across it before my poison bar filled up.
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited June 2014
Even naked it doesn't really matter. You are only ever running through there to get to something in particular. Then you head back to the nearest bonfire and "Poison? What poison? Wait I was poisoned? Huh."
My last few characters sauntered through there with nothing but default drops.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Couldn't sleep last night, so decided to try some streaming. I think I'll have to play around with my setting a bit, because I was getting some noticeable frame loss (for me, stream ran smoothly).
Did Lower Undead Burg, Undead Asylum, The Depths, Darkroot Basin, Darkroot Garden (Butterfly and Sif, skipped most of the rest of it, also got invaded again there, and that went as poorly as expected), then the rest of the Depths, and Blighttown, up to the 2nd bonfire, where I managed to get summoned for the first time and beat up on Quelaag, which was enjoyable enough.
Going through Blighttown at a more reasonable level (stayed at level 30, even though I had enough Souls to get to my mid 40s) and the right way was interesting. In fact, that entire section of the game was neat. I appreciate its reputation a bit more now.
When I started writing about Dark Souls it was as much an excuse to write as it was a desire to write about Dark Souls in particular. I have always had difficulty completing things that I start writing, partly because coming up with ideas is much easier than putting them down in words, and partly because I am that certain type of lazy perfectionist that grows to dislike anything I work on for too long, to the point where I'd rather trash them than finish them, or get it out before I get to that point.
Initially, writing about Dark Souls was everything I hoped it would be. I could sit down, play for a few hours, and then simply write about what I had done, what I had been thinking while I did it, and what I expected to happen to next. I didn't have to worry about formulating ideas, whether I had enough of them to make something complete and coherent, or how long I would have to sit on it before it would be done. Every update was fire and forget, and I was happy with that.
I did think I had an interesting angle on the game, as most Let's Plays I've seen are written (or recorded) by someone who is experienced with the game for an audience that is less experienced, or by someone who isn't very experienced with the game for an audience that is nearly as inexperienced, or wants to see someone play before they decide whether to play themselves. Those are either guides or personality-driven documentations--the reader is interested because they want to learn more about the game, or because they want to see a particular player go through it. I had neither of those options available, but what I ended up with was also unique, in that I got to the game so late that practically everyone who would be reading knew more about it than I did. I think that helped recapture many player's initial experiences with the game.
I wasn't sure what to expect from the game itself. Initial impressions from others were that I was coming off as a terrible cynic, which is probably true. The problem was that all I had for the game was hype--keep in mind that I had never even seen the game in motion before playing. I knew less about the combat and characters than I did about its supposed difficulty, which was a problem. The main reason I was dumb enough to go through the Catacombs first was because I expected the game to be that hard, so I was not cowed by an army of invincible skeletons when I really should have been.
My first major hiccup was the New Londo Ruins. Before going there, I had always been making some sort of progress. Even the baby steps I took through the Catacombs were such a big learning process that I had plenty to discuss. New Londo, though, was a big problem for me. I sat on those notes for days, I rewrote the entry at least 3 times, trying to find an angle that would instill any sort of meaning to it. I tried every sort of gimmick that came to mind, even going so far as to write a diary within my diary, where I documented every death as an hour of game-world time. Finally, I decided to just put down what happened and admit my defeat. Any worry that a lack of progress would be a turn-off was unfounded, which was nice. I suppose that was actually something that I should have included regardless, as everyone who played the game blind would have run into a wall at some point.
My progress through the game also informed how I would write. In the Catacombs, where I was dying often, I would write as I played. After every death I could tab out and put words to what just happened, what I learned, and where I was going. By the time I made it to Undead Burg, though, I was not dying often enough to make that feasible, and I was more and more eager to get to the next bit of content (usually a boss) that I could use as a chapter break, so I began to take notes instead. I played with a text file open, and would enter basic information, along with screenshot names (so that I could keep them in the correct order). Later, I could go back and use the notes and my screenshots to flesh things out. My memory works very well with such simple reminders, so I wasn't missing as much as it may seem. The only time that failed me was my run through Anor Londo (after the Painted World, up to Ornstein and Smough). I accidentally erased parts of those notes and ended up writing small chunks of it purely from memory and screenshots, but at that point I was making such progress that I felt less awkward about glossing over every little action.
Here are some sample notes from my trip through Blighttown and the swamp below it. I ended up not using them, since I felt like exploring Demon Ruins instead, hoping that I could find a boss down there--another bit of panic play because I thought that just running through Blighttown backwards, and well after I had overlevelled it, wouldn't be at all interesting to read about.
"more swamp more tape worms. i still have plenty of red moss. why couldn't this be a field of broken glass instead?
one of the tapeworms drops an item, but i have trouble getting at it as the body flops around. i end up kicking it half way across the swamp before i can pick the item up. large titanite shard. i was thinking of leaving them alone if they weren't guarding bodies, but maybe i should kill them if they have useful drops."
About the tree that has the secret entrance to the Great Hollow (because I did notice it, but was in a hurry to get moving at the time).
"inside the tree is a lone body. plank shield, like the one i started with. could this have been me, in another life? it's quiet in here. eerie. i think if i stayed here too long i would begin to hear my own thoughts. i leave."
As for how I approached the lore in the game, that was also a matter of necessity. Up till my trip into the Tomb of the Giants, I would only glance at new items and then file them away, more concerned with stats and bonuses than what they had to say about the world. What I wrote about the things I saw was based mostly on what I actually saw: I wrote about Undead Parish from the layout and the atmosphere of the place, not from any descriptions of it. The possibility of getting details wrong was high, so I tried to keep it loose like that.
Then Tomb of the Giants happened, and I killed Rhea before I even met her. I knew who she was from dialogue with other characters, but that was about it.
It's important for me when I'm writing that I enjoy the process, because otherwise I would never do it; I am a very slow write, and not a very good editor.
I drew inspiration from my time in Darkroot Garden. Even after writing that, I cringed, but in the moment it felt appropriate, so I don't regret it. I thought I could extend that somewhat, so I wrote about Rhea and Patches, figuring that Rhea was probably the type of NPC that players liked, so I should do something special to make up for murdering her in the dark. I'd never written fan fiction before, and I still didn't know anything about Rhea, so I did google her to make sure I had the right NPC and spelling. I also sampled a bit of her dialogue, to get a small idea of what her character was like. That's when I discovered that Dark Souls doesn't do a lot of explaining: none of what she says has anything much to do with where she came from, or her previous life. To me, that's an invitation to put my own spin on things, as I was less worried about missing some crucial background information once I'd seen that there probably wasn't any to miss. Even so, I tried to focus more on the characters and atmosphere over specific details, in my own attempt to mirror the feeling of the game. Not sure how successful I was, but it was fun.
Later, once I'd gotten further into the game and figured more of it out, I cheated again. Astute readers would have noticed that while writing about Smough I mentioned his cannibalism, yet that is only mentioned in his hammer's description. Because I killed Ornstein last, I had no way of seeing Smough's hammer. However, by the time I felt like writing that, I had killed Smough long ago, I had even beaten the DLC, I'd already figured out how to make boss weapons, and I knew how the rest of the game was going to play out. It didn't seem like much to read a couple of item descriptions for a boss I had already killed.
All in all, writing about Dark Souls was a singular experience for me. I am not a player who cares about story in my games, or even atmosphere; I will happily skip through cut-scenes and dialogue in pretty much any setting. On my own, I would have muted the music, turned down the sound effects, and listened to late 90s Phil Hendrie while I mashed monsters without concern for flavour text. Having to pay attention, initially because I wanted to explain my reasoning, and later because I wanted to spice things up with some lore, changed how I played the game, which changed how I viewed it over time.
The most direct way writing about the game changed how I played it was how I distributed stats and the weapons I ended up using. At the beginning of the game, when I was still working them out, my main concern with stats was identifying traps, because there is always at least one totally worthless stat in every game. It wasn't hard to see that Resistance was that stat in Dark Souls, so I knew right away to avoid it. Later, stats became a means to an end. Without foreknowledge, I could only test weapons as they came, so that every new find meant a new set of stats I would need if I wanted to try that weapon out. It so happens that most Dark Souls weapons require Strength rather than Dexterity, Faith, or Intelligence, so that I had new goalposts on a constant basis. I kept putting points into Strength because I kept finding new weapons that required more Strength, and I felt that I should give them due diligence. On my own, I probably would have stuck with something simple like the Winged Spear for most of the game and not even bothered to try other weapons. Eventually, I became stuck in what would be called a Strength build. At least I have a reason to play the game again with a build and weapons of my own choosing.
Was doing this Let's Play fun? Yes, it was. I also think I got more out of some parts of the game than I would have otherwise, which is only slightly offset by it taking me about x400 longer to beat it than necessary. I would do it again, and perhaps, once all of the Dark Souls 2 DLC has been released, I'd give it another shot.
I don't know much about game reviews, except that they're generally useless. Or at least that's how they were when I stopped reading them, which was years. On top of that, after all the words I've already written, I should hope it's clear enough whether or not I enjoyed the game by now.
At the same time, I can't help myself from critiquing the things that I experience. So I like to think about what I would do if I had been a game's director. And it's a good thing I'm not, because I'm also well aware that I would make games that nobody else would want to play.
The World
Dark Souls has an interesting, fairly well-realized world with plenty of atmosphere and personality. While graphically it is hampered by the constraints of last-gen consoles, has a distinct and cohesive art style, combined with imaginative area designs, help it stand out despite how generic it seems at first. Dark Souls also has weighty combat mechanics that make encounters feel meaningful (at first), and a wonderfully minimalist plot that is nearly optional, which is something that I particularly enjoyed.
For me, though, it was hampered as much as it was helped by the non-linear parts, something that I'll get into later.
Mostly I would have fleshed some of them out, but I imagine that the developers would have as well, if they'd had the resources. Specifically, Demon Ruins, Lost Izalith, and parts of Undead Burg (it seems like there are a lot of paths that go nowhere down there), Tomb of the Giants (I wanted more!), and Ash Lake.
It would also have been nice if a couple of the environments were more interactive, but that would damaged the sense of decay in Lordran. Still, it might have been interesting to find a small enclave or band of non-Hollowed Undead who to work against, or maybe even one that had decided to make themselves a little kingdom. There are many references to a cavalcade of adventurers passing through Lordran near and around the protagonist, but we never get to see them. Sure, some of that is Gwyn's time warping, but even that should amount to the same thing. It shouldn't have been a constant thing, but it would have been a good contrast to the rest of the game.
Even having another frequent invader, like Kirk, but with a more interactive persona, like Marvellous Chester, but have him only found at the end of an area. It would have been neat to use more of the online components like that; they could even leave Orange Guidance Soapstone messages as taunts before invading--or, even better, their invasions would be slightly randomized, to add a bit of flavour.
That would have taken a lot of extra work, and maybe I was just feeling that way because I played offline and didn't have regular human invasions to deal with.
AI
Though bosses are particularly sad, every enemy in the game is as dumb as a brick, which is a problem when they're what I spent most of my time fighting. As with the bosses, normal enemies only have a couple of attacks, and most of those are pretty bad. Enemies are dangerous primarily because they do a lot of damage or are an unknown quantity, not because they are smart. Generally, that's just how action-RPGs work, so it wasn't much of a surprise, but it was disappointing.
To make matters worse, almost every enemy is fought one on one, and those that aren't are usually pathetic to begin with. In both starting areas, the Graveyard and Undead Burg, as well as the Catacombs and Undead Parish, it was common to fight small groups of skeletons and Hollowed, even in the Depths and the upper parts of Blighttown there were times where enemies came in pairs or trios, but soon after, that stopped. Of course, the flip side of is that, as a non-linear game, a lot of backtracking is required, so it would quickly become tedious to have to keep thinking every time the player was just passing through.
I suspect the developers realized that was a problem, because it was changed for the better in the DLC. Those monsters had much more aggressive move sets, and would also pull in groups, so that trying to fight one meant fighting his buddies as well. That was fun and exciting, because individually they were pretty worthless. It also made all of those weapons with broad, sweeping attacks seem superfluous when there's only a single target and it isn't moving around very much.
At the very least, sub-bosses, like the Black Knights, should have had more dangerous and aggressive personas.
Bosses
There is no getting around this: the bosses in Dark Souls are its weakest link. It was almost always a let down to arrive at the end of a dungeon only to be faced with weak-willed and flaccid opposition. It didn't help that the first real boss I faced was Pinwheel, who is a true sad sack even by Dark Souls standards, but after that it didn't get much better.
The Taurus Demon was not a great threat, even though I didn't use plunging attacks on him. Sure, I had the benefit of my time in the Catacombs, but I still didn't know what I was doing (if I did, I might have used said plunging attacks), so I didn't exactly make good use of my advantages. After that was the fight with the Gargoyles, and I'll admit that I died a fair few times to them, but then I was still finding my feet and wasn't doing much with my upgrades. The problem was that almost every subsequent boss was easier than the last.
Even without their ease, the real problem was that they're dull and dumb, which is unfortunate because there were some neat designs with evident personality. They're marred by only having 2 or 3 attacks and very simple patterns, so that there ends up being little to the fights except finding the easiest to exploit attack and then running it into the ground. Most other games will mix those weaknesses in amongst escalating patterns of more difficult attacks, but Dark Souls has bosses that are just big damage sponges with better stats.
What I think is missing is any sort of creativity about the fights themselves. Most games will try to make them a set-piece for a unique or interesting mechanic. There were weak attempts at this, but they're few and far between. I'm thinking of Seath, who had that crystal keeping him alive--in any other game I would have broken it, been able to do some damage, and then it would have reformed, probably on the other side of the room. In Dark Souls I break (or he breaks it) once, and then it's a straight fight for the rest of it. There was the Ornstein and Smough fight, which had multiple opponents and a second stage, but those guys were also on the simple side, and didn't do enough to work together. The fight with Gwyndolin was unique, but optional, and still could have used a little something extra. As I said, other bosses are simply larger than normal monsters that have extra HP, and that only worked a few times (Gwyn, Artorias, Manus).
As I said earlier, it would have been nice to have a couple of bosses who had more presence in their areas. I thought the bridge Drake in Undead Burg would be that way, but it only shows up once, and then ends up being an optional (and awful) fight. I went all the way to Anor Londo convinced that the Drake would show up again for a real fight, but it never did, and it turned something memorable into a forgettable bit of scenery--do most players even bother killing it, or do they just shoot its tail off and leave it alone for the rest of the game?
I'll allow that the way the game is designed around death, may have prevented the developers from going all-out. The surprise of a multi-staged, multi-area boss is lost when the first couple of stages have to be repeated many times, and how does that work if the monster is wrecking the environment? The closest the game came to that was Bed of Chaos, which many seem to think is the worst boss in the game, and certainly the strangest, with how each stage carries over if the player dies. (It probably would have worked better if instead of dropping the player to their deaths, the boss flung them away to a different area, so that they would have to fight their way back to the boss, maybe going through a Daughter of Chaos each time.)
This will seem strange after all of that, but there were also fewer bosses than I wanted. I could have done with more sub-bosses, and more area bosses as well, optional or not. Just sticking a big knight in the corner isn't quite enough. It's a scatter-shot solution, but more of them would also mean a higher chance of another Nito, even if that also meant another Ceaseless Discharge.
As the DLC was much denser and had more varied and interesting boss encounters, I assume the developers are in partial agreement with me. I know nothing about Dark Souls 2, but I would expect plenty more bosses in general.
Stats
First, there was the Resistance trap, which I was fine with; I expected it. Not every stat is going to be useful for every build, and not every stat is going to be useful at all. That's just how it is.
For the most part, stats had a decent give and take. Investing in something felt like an investment, and the decisions felt somewhat meaningful. Of course, I made a build without being able to plan ahead. I don't hold that against the game.
There is one stat (well, it's a sub-stat) that I didn't like very much, and that was weight.
The problem wasn't that weight existed and was a thing, nor was it that being encumbered slows the player down and alters their roll animation. It was that, more than any other stat, weight was too negative. Being encumbered is always bad, and the game tries to relate that with poise (heavier armour has more poise), but even that was something that could be corrected, in time. Want to walk around with Havel's set? Sure, you can do that, and if you wear the right rings and pump some iron to raise your Endurance, you can do it will still rolling around like a ninja.
What I would have liked is for weight to actually make me heavier. This is related to poise, deflection, and stability, so maybe adding another sub-stat in there would be too complicated, but it was something that bothered me in a few situations.
When I was going through Demon Ruins for the first time and fighting all of those Taurus Demons, what got to me was how they smacked me around even while I was blocking. My initial assumption was that heavier shields with more stability would do more than just reduce my stamina loss. The problem was that even with a solid shield, if I block an attack I still get knocked half way across the room. There were slightly different animations, but the effect was the same: I would be too far away to retaliate. Stability doesn't help, poise doesn't help--I'm not being hit, after all--but what if weight did? What if how heavy I was changed how far I could be knocked back? In that case, it would be beneficial, in some situations, to be heavy. I know I'm supposed to just roll instead, but it would be nice to have an alternative. That's a pipe dream, though, so it's not something I expect to change in Dark Souls 2 or Bloodborne.
Scaling
I don't mean damage scaling on weapons, or the soft caps every stat has, I mean scaling the enemies and areas.
Perhaps I'll come off as a masochist, and perhaps this is entirely my own fault for playing the game how I did, but I enjoyed the Catacombs, from a pure gameplay perspective, more than any other area aside from some bits of the DLC and Tomb of the Giants. Going through that place at the beginning was hard, and that's what I like. I wouldn't have been turned off if the rest of the game had ended up being just as difficult.
This is something I always struggle with in games like this, ones that give me the chance to take forks to different areas. Inevitably, one of those areas is meant to be first, and is designed to be the easiest. For me, that's not interesting. If every area had a little colour-coded sign outside telling me what its terror alert status was, I would surely head for the most dangerous every time, as long as I could actually beat it (no passages that can't be accessed till later in the game, like the golden doorways which require the Lordvessel to pass). The problem with that is going from hard, to medium, to easy only makes the contrast greater. Should I assume that every area is designed to be as difficult as possible for a character of a certain level, and tackle them like that? Even if I do, how am I supposed to know which is which before doing them? I could sample the enemies, but as I think I've demonstrated, it takes more than getting gang molested by a bunch of skeletons that can kill me in 2 hits to turn me around.
I know that I missed out on things that were supposed to be really tough, like the Capra Demon in Lower Undead Burg. By the time I got to him, I killed him and his dogs in 1 hit. Would I have enjoyed that more if I'd gone straight to him while still relatively weak? Certainly. Just as I'd have had more fun with Blighttown if I wasn't already packing all the tools I needed to breeze through it.
At a certain point, I should expect the game to catch up with me, but that never quite happened. Nothing I did compared to the Catacombs, or going through Tomb of the Giants with crappy gear and no light. Expecting it to would have been setting the bar much too high, but that's only because of the way the game is designed, with non-linear branching paths and no scaling.
I felt let down when, after a while, each new monster was smashed to a pulp before it could even do anything to me.
I think it would have been interesting if the game accounted for the fact that players can go through it via different routes. Even if it was a flat scaling like Diablo 3's former Inferno difficulty, where every area is as tough as every other other, in terms of monster levels. That could have been a new game+ option.
Ideally, going one route would cause the others to compensate. It seemed especially necessary because there is less and less indication of which area is next as the game goes on. Sure, Undead Burg before the Catacombs, but Tomb of the Giants or Lost Izalith? Duke's Archives or New Londo Ruins? What ends up happening is that I get to the boss fight that I liked the most (Nito), but I'm so far ahead of it that I smash through on my first try. What if for every Lord Soul I acquired, the other bosses deployed extra defences and toughened themselves up?
That sort of thing would take careful balancing, and many would hate it. It removes the benefit of casual grinding, which is a problem. If a player can't tackle an area with their current gear and their own skills, how will they feel if leaving it for later only made it that much more impossible? From what I've heard, games with scaling monsters, outside of loot-based ARPGs like Diablo, are not very popular with players, and making it an optional "hard mode" would only rub it in the faces of those who felt like completionists.
Finally, there's new game+. I've only played a bit of it, but I looked up the differences and apparently it's nothing more than extra HP and more damage for enemies. I find that strange, because Dark Souls seems like a game that encourages repeat plays with the same character. I would have loved to see them do what the Tales games or the Ninja Gaiden games do, where new game+ means bosses have new attacks, enemies are in different formations and locations, and new dungeons and bosses become available.What if new game+ Pinwheel had a couple of giant skeletons in there with him? Would make him a bit less of a joke at least.
But again, that's a lot of work, so it's not something I expect many games to do. (I know there are the Gravelord Covenant's black phantoms, but even those are just monsters with even higher HP and damage, and getting infected with a curse is not a sure thing.)
Combat
Suffice it to say, I'm not that big a fan. It feels like Monster Hunters, but with fewer options, which I didn't like. I get that it works for most people, but too much of how the weapons and actions worked seemed to be based on things that I wasn't doing, like PvP. There was a lot of wasted space on my controller, buttons I never pressed and never felt the need to press. I'm not expecting even simple Ninja Gaiden movelists, but it would have been nice to have a couple more moves.
It also goes back to the AI being dumb as a bag of rocks. The vast majority of enemies are simply zoned, baited into whiffing something with lots of recovery frames, and then stabbed or clobbered. If there had been more variance in how they fought, there might have been more variance in how I fought back, but I doubt that just because of the type of player I am. I tend to bulldoze AI with whatever is most effective for me, and only mix things up when I'm forced to by circumstances. Thing is, I was almost never forced to mix things up in Dark Souls--though I did go out of my way to try some new things, for the sake of experimenting.
There were 3 basic weapons and tactics that I used throughout the game. My spears, my club, and my great hammers and ultra greatswords. The spear was all about baiting attacks and then using my range to punish them. The club was all about baiting attacks and then using the jumping overhead heavy attack to punish them. The big hammers and swords were all about baiting attacks and then using the heavy smashes to punish them. The only difference between each weapon was which attacks I was able to punish and how many hits it took to kill things. (There were also occasions where the opening provided was big enough that I would just go 2-handed and whack away, but those were few and far between.) If the game doesn't stop me from doing that type of thing, I will just keep doing it. That's how it's done in fighting games, and I have trouble shaking that off, even against AIs.
Would I have liked it more if I'd done some PvP? Probably not. I've watched some videos of PvP and it doesn't look very interesting to me, but does look like there's plenty of lag involved. That's not my bag. Nothing wrong with people who enjoy it, though.
Thing is, I don't just want more moves for the sake of it. Like I said, I will happily use whatever works forever, because it works. Giving me extra options won't change that. It's a 2-way street, so my enemies would need more as well. Which goes back to improving the AI, or at least giving them more they can do.
That's about all I can think of to say about Dark Souls. Again, it's a good game. I have heard that Dark Souls 2 is an easier game, which is too bad, but I still look forward to playing it after the DLC is out.
All respect lost. He is now the millie vanillie of lets play.
Dark souls 2 is easier? ehhh i dunno about that. I think the only reason its perceived as easier is because its basically more dark souls 1 and people have had time to understand the mechanics. People knew early on which stats were the ones you wanted due to the early beta tests leaking information...even with myself trying hard to avoid spoilers, I could enter an old DS1 thread and see people talking about how x stat was king and I really dont blame people for wanting to know that.
The first time i played Demon souls It was a very odd experience. I had heard it was hard but it was more then hard it was oppressive and punishing. the storyline bits in souls games are so rationed that it was hard to see that Demon souls (being the first of these games) had a coherant story that was worth figuring out. I remember fumbling my way through the first area, encountering a dark spirit and getting my ass kicked by regular guards. The first boss of the game was not hard and for the most part you kept the game from destroying your spirit by opening shortcuts so you wouldnt have to run through the entire level to get to the boss for another attempt...but damn it was rewarding to finish that first big slime.
Then i kinda gave up playing it for a while. When dark souls came out i picked it up and again just couldnt make it through until much later when it came out on sale on PC and I had heard about DSFix, i decided to give it another try. By then i had time to see how much people loved the first two games and i had looked at wiki's to understand some of the story and gameplay without having to experiment. It changed the way i looked at the game and I finally beat dark souls. Then went back and beat demon souls on my ps3. and I beat dark souls 2 on PC when it came out but not without admitting to quite a lot of summoning assitance on bosses.
Dark souls games are not about story - The Story is so sparse that while you can pull a coherent narrative out of it, a lot of that narrative is based on your own imagination putting pieces together in a way that is your own idea, and not everyone elses.
Dark souls games are not just about difficulty no matter what people say. The Difficulty is on a slider of your own setting. Want to farm souls and make the game easier, or maybe you want to deny yourself any ranged weapons or limit your soul level or hell...beat the game on soul level 1 using only a broken sword hilt. Chances are its been done.
....they are about a great combined gameplay experience. The setting, the graphics, the imagination you have to put into the game...
Stercus, Stercus, Stercus, Morituri Sum
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Weapons in dark souls are the variety in the combat. They ARE the move sets. If all you used was three basic weapon types, that's why you feel a lack of variety. Weapons are basically categorized by their move set, even more so than their other stats. Most people who have played a lot of Dark Souls will choose their weapon based more on the move set and the weight then they will the damage numbers.
Weapons in dark souls are the variety in the combat. They ARE the move sets. If all you used was three basic weapon types, that's why you feel a lack of variety. Weapons are basically categorized by their move set, even more so than their other stats. Most people who have played a lot of Dark Souls will choose their weapon based more on the move set and the weight then they will the damage numbers.
Right, but that variety does not change your overall approach. Bait the enemy into an attack they'll miss and hit as much as you can during their recovery time. Magic is even easier since you don't need to bait, just lock on from far away and shoot.
That said, I had far more trouble with the game than Page because I let the atmosphere affect me, intimidate me and don't act methodically. I panic and I miss attacks. I mash buttons when I need that last hit. I do all the things that this game likes to punish and I'm probably not alone in that. That's why the game has the reputation it does. It punishes emotional, non-pro gaming behavior.
I love it.
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"You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."
Weapons in dark souls are the variety in the combat. They ARE the move sets. If all you used was three basic weapon types, that's why you feel a lack of variety. Weapons are basically categorized by their move set, even more so than their other stats. Most people who have played a lot of Dark Souls will choose their weapon based more on the move set and the weight then they will the damage numbers.
Those are the 3 main weapon types that I used for great lengths, but I actually killed things with every weapon except for bows and crossbows. Pretty much every time I found a new weapon I would use it for a while. It's not comprehensive, but I made sure to experience everything--that's kind of why I ended up with so much strength and dexterity.
Like I said, it's so easy to react to what enemies do that, in general, it doesn't seem to matter very much that every weapon has half a dozen different moves or more. One of two of them will be useful in 99% of situations, and another will be necessary (a rolling attack, for example). That's strictly for PvE, though. I'm sure that in PvP all sorts of things become more or less useful.
It's unfair, but I was just comparing it to a game like Ninja Gaiden Black in my mind. Even in that game there are obviously much better (or more efficient) moves for every weapon, but enemies and environments are set up in such a way that a larger variety of moves and actions become useful.
Weapons in dark souls are the variety in the combat. They ARE the move sets. If all you used was three basic weapon types, that's why you feel a lack of variety. Weapons are basically categorized by their move set, even more so than their other stats. Most people who have played a lot of Dark Souls will choose their weapon based more on the move set and the weight then they will the damage numbers.
Right, but that variety does not change your overall approach. Bait the enemy into an attack they'll miss and hit as much as you can during their recovery time. Magic is even easier since you don't need to bait, just lock on from far away and shoot.
That said, I had far more trouble with the game than Page because I let the atmosphere affect me, intimidate me and don't act methodically. I panic and I miss attacks. I mash buttons when I need that last hit. I do all the things that this game likes to punish and I'm probably not alone in that. That's why the game has the reputation it does. It punishes emotional, non-pro gaming behavior.
I love it.
If you use thrust / pierce weapons you want to hit during swing and just after, but not during recovery to get the counter damage bonus.
People haven't mentioned the stagger differences that enemies have based on the class/deflection level of shield they hit. Silver knights are a great example, with a great shield they are staggered for ages making them very easy, compared to using a light shield with 100% physical protection.
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited June 2014
It's based on the stability rating of the shield. I can't remember if DaS1 shows that value, but I know DaS2 does. Effects how much stamina a block uses (and thus how easy you are to stagger), and how much an enemy staggers upon you blocking their shot.
Stability is how much stamina you lose, deflection is based on the shield's class (small, medium, greatshield). A medium shield with higher stability than a greatshield will still deflect less than the greatshield.
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited June 2014
Dark Souls is mostly impressive for having everything at once rather than any singular spectacular component.
Even with all this awesome rpg shit they still have pretty solid action mechanics. They might be simple, but they are solid.
It has incredible atmosphere, diverse rpg options, simple but solid mechanics, a large variety of those mechanics to learn, and most importantly, the majority of the time, you feel like dying is your fault.
It's not something you buy expecting DMC level options. It's something you buy to experience.
Ripping it down to its bare fundamentals and analysing them singly doesn't really do it justice. It is through the combination and interaction of all these elements that the game shines.
I think even the most die hard players of all the souls games can point out problems with any particular element. But ask them if they like the overall package and you are going to get a yes.
I don't play these games anywhere near as much as I do a dedicated action game. That is because, for the most part, it is the action component of a game that is my primary interest. Eventually the other parts of Dark Souls lose their novelty and I run out of things to learn in the action component.
But I still think all three are fantastic games.
I'm glad I played all of them.
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I never felt Dark Souls was too easy, but this is in part because I only played with characters that were built to suffer. Weak armor, small or no shields, generally inferior / niche weapon groups, lots of reliance on spells (which, while they could trivialize certain instances, would utterly fail in other circumstances), etc.
However, I did feel that a lot of the difficulty was false. Specifically, you died because many of the enemies in the game (especially bosses) could wipe you out in one or two hits (maybe a couple more if you spec'd for heavy armor and some extra HP). And the first time you encountered them, you had no idea what their attack patterns looked like. So, it was just a test of how many times you were willing to die in order to get a complete picture of the patterns. Once you had that picture, it was rarely difficult to capitalize and win the battle.
I might have to try four or five times to beat a given boss, but only one or two of those tries were legitimate-feeling fights where I actually had any sort of idea at all how to handle the thing.
In that way, Dark Souls honors patience above skill. It's much like a grind-focused RPG in that manner, actually, only it replaces walking in circles for random encounter XP with repeatedly treading the boss approach section.
Ironically, my favorite parts of the game wound up being the exact same stuff I like from more traditional RPGs: exploring, finding stuff, and upgrading my character to fulfill my vision for it. By tossing in traps and some assorted high-level black knight type enemies, the exploration stayed tense, which did a lot to keep me from getting bored.
EDIT: Nope, that's wrong. My absolute favorite thing to do was invade other people's games (or lure them with Gravelord), turn into a fuckin' bush, wait for them to walk by, and ambush them with Wrath of the Gods. Preferably right next to a cliff. Maybe I'm just a troll at heart, but it was absolutely hilarious every single time.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
That's not false difficulty.
It's still difficulty.
Lets throw all the subjective, personal definitions of "it's not real difficulty" over the cliff please.
It just starts really silly arguments.
Intending you to die to learn is a valid approach to difficulty.
It's a different one to most contemporary approaches.
This does not make it false.
It's not something that can be True or False.
That doesn't make any sense as a classification.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
It's not as if Dark Souls isn't a great game just the way it is. I would have liked things to be a bit different, but it's likely that would have altered the formula too much. It's not really an action game, and doesn't need to play like one, since it has different aspects to it that are just as important as beating up monsters. I mean, a lot of people can't get in to Monster Hunters because that's all you do.
Changing anything about the combat would have required a complete overhaul of how it worked, and probably wouldn't have been worth it in the end.
Repetition is a valid form of difficulty, and learning the patterns doesn't take away from it. It's no longer popular in big games, and the genres that depend on it (shmups, beat 'em ups, side-scrolling action games) have mostly died.
It's like, I learned how to 1cc almost every Contra game. Learning how to do each of them required hours of painstaking experimentation, pattern processing, and patience. Once I had that all in my head, and had established the muscle memory, actually beating them is a cinch. Does the fact that I could 1cc Contra 3 make it easy, or even easier? I don't think so at all. It's like learning how to do anything, and practice is always the key. You get better at it if you're willing to put in the work, and become more efficient, but the difficulty is always there, waiting for a mistake.
That repetition is also, I think, what damaged those genres. Your average Metal Slug game is an arcade game, and can be completed in one sitting, taking maybe an hour at most. That it takes most players weeks to reach that point--and those weeks are full of endless repetition of areas and enemies that they've already beaten--is harder to sell them on when there are other games that can take 8-12 hours to beat and doesn't require playing the same areas over and over again.
That repetitive nature is why I totally understand why Dark Soul's AI is not that advanced. Bad enough that players have to run through an area 30 times to get to a boss that's kicking their asses, it would be much, much worse if every enemy they faced (enemies they've already killed multiple times) also required them to stop what they were doing and directly mentally engage with. Action games aren't designed that way. On top of that, there's the feeling of progression and power required to make an RPG work. If you're still worried about little pink Hollowed at level 50 because they're going to parry and riposte, that's an issue for most players.
However, I still don't think the game scales quite well enough for my tastes (though I freely admit that I did everything wrong, so I don't have much room to judge). That's also something that happens in RPGs, and metriodvanias, so it's not like I was surprised.
Plus, just like those genres, it has that annoying phenomena where xp, currency, and the punishment for dying starts to disappear once you've reached the desired power curve. Early on, running around with 10k Souls is invigorating, because you need every single one of them, and it makes the potential death and dangers sharper. Once I'd reached my desired level and had the weapons and armour I wanted, death and losing Souls lost its sting.
The price of death is the main benefit Demon's Souls has over Dark Souls.
In Demon's Souls, if you die and become that game's version of hollowed, your HP is set to 40% of its normal maximum (60% if you eat a ring slot). Unless you're seriously pro, it means you're going to go look for a way to un-hollow before trying to progress. And that means going co-op to help someone else beat a boss.
If you go back to a boss you've already defeated, then you can use the co-op method to help show the host player how to beat the boss (though, with your reduced HP total, you still have to be super careful, even more than when you beat it previously). Or you can get summoned for the boss you haven't yet beaten so you can see how to do it without worrying about losing anything (because you'll simply reappear back in your game at the spot you dropped your sign). And many of those bosses could be challenging even if you knew the trick; knowing how to do it was just part 1. Actually pulling it off is part 2, which is the part that "feels" like "true" difficulty for me personally.
The game had a bit fewer death traps, I think, but since death was substantially more harsh, it felt like a harder game regardless. The only thing about Dark Souls that was comparably more difficult that Demon's Souls was figuring out where to go, since Demon's used a standard hub level progression system instead of a connected world.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
My... my exact phrase was "I did feel that a lot of the difficulty was false"
That's going out of my way to avoid pretending to make objective statements and start arguments and stuff
It's really, totally cool if you got a different experience from the game
I still really liked it!
Reading this I understand what you meant to convey there. I'll explain why it did not work.
If I said "I feel that you are an idiot" would you not get offended?
Some words have meanings so strong they transform the meaning of an entire sentence. (I am not calling you an idiot. It's just a good example.)
It's best to be careful with them.
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IceBurnerIt's cold and there are penguins.Registered Userregular
edited June 2014
When the terms of the difficulty don't agree with you, there really isn't anything in it for you. So, it's empty but does have form, and thus ... it's hollow, in your eyes.
Page, I thank you for your time and commitment. You made what could've been a stock-standard Let's Play into something truly special. I checked back every day for updates throughout your run. It was a joy to explore, die, explore, die again, fail and finally succeed vicariously through you. You're a champ.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Just occurred to me that I haven't told you how much I enjoyed your Let's Play Page-.
It was very well done.
In particular, thankyou for not holding back on your fan fiction. I enjoyed it all.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I'm glad others enjoyed it. It was fun enough for me that I will probably do it again at some point.
I also thought it would be neat if I streamed the rest of my current play through with some sort of writer's commentary, where I talked about what I went through the first time in each area. I'll see how that goes.
I think it would really work with your type of writing. especially if you never played it. Do you have a steam account? I will gift you a copy if your interested.
I do have a steam account, and that's probably more reasonable than finding a copy of Demon's Souls right now (did they not print that many or something, because I've been to a few places so far and can't find a copy new or used).
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Which seems even sillier in hindsight, since I should have wanted to take the best screenshots possible.
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I... don't think it's the right covenant for you with a new character. Not until right before you kill Nito at least.
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NG+ people will have stats far in excess of your new character's. That restriction is there because the cursed monsters are too great a challenge for new game players.
Co-op is much easier though! Drop your sign near a bonfire while hollowed (esp the one before a boss) or wait for others' signs while human.
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I just usually did it when Hollowed because I wanted the Humanity...
SteamID: edgruberman GOG Galaxy: EdGruberman
Also, you can get a capture device for ~$15 for SD, ~$25 for HD, or thereabouts, if you want to go that route. Even if not, DS is well worth playing.
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My last few characters sauntered through there with nothing but default drops.
http://www.twitch.tv/page0rz/b/541933596
Did Lower Undead Burg, Undead Asylum, The Depths, Darkroot Basin, Darkroot Garden (Butterfly and Sif, skipped most of the rest of it, also got invaded again there, and that went as poorly as expected), then the rest of the Depths, and Blighttown, up to the 2nd bonfire, where I managed to get summoned for the first time and beat up on Quelaag, which was enjoyable enough.
Going through Blighttown at a more reasonable level (stayed at level 30, even though I had enough Souls to get to my mid 40s) and the right way was interesting. In fact, that entire section of the game was neat. I appreciate its reputation a bit more now.
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When I started writing about Dark Souls it was as much an excuse to write as it was a desire to write about Dark Souls in particular. I have always had difficulty completing things that I start writing, partly because coming up with ideas is much easier than putting them down in words, and partly because I am that certain type of lazy perfectionist that grows to dislike anything I work on for too long, to the point where I'd rather trash them than finish them, or get it out before I get to that point.
Initially, writing about Dark Souls was everything I hoped it would be. I could sit down, play for a few hours, and then simply write about what I had done, what I had been thinking while I did it, and what I expected to happen to next. I didn't have to worry about formulating ideas, whether I had enough of them to make something complete and coherent, or how long I would have to sit on it before it would be done. Every update was fire and forget, and I was happy with that.
I did think I had an interesting angle on the game, as most Let's Plays I've seen are written (or recorded) by someone who is experienced with the game for an audience that is less experienced, or by someone who isn't very experienced with the game for an audience that is nearly as inexperienced, or wants to see someone play before they decide whether to play themselves. Those are either guides or personality-driven documentations--the reader is interested because they want to learn more about the game, or because they want to see a particular player go through it. I had neither of those options available, but what I ended up with was also unique, in that I got to the game so late that practically everyone who would be reading knew more about it than I did. I think that helped recapture many player's initial experiences with the game.
I wasn't sure what to expect from the game itself. Initial impressions from others were that I was coming off as a terrible cynic, which is probably true. The problem was that all I had for the game was hype--keep in mind that I had never even seen the game in motion before playing. I knew less about the combat and characters than I did about its supposed difficulty, which was a problem. The main reason I was dumb enough to go through the Catacombs first was because I expected the game to be that hard, so I was not cowed by an army of invincible skeletons when I really should have been.
My first major hiccup was the New Londo Ruins. Before going there, I had always been making some sort of progress. Even the baby steps I took through the Catacombs were such a big learning process that I had plenty to discuss. New Londo, though, was a big problem for me. I sat on those notes for days, I rewrote the entry at least 3 times, trying to find an angle that would instill any sort of meaning to it. I tried every sort of gimmick that came to mind, even going so far as to write a diary within my diary, where I documented every death as an hour of game-world time. Finally, I decided to just put down what happened and admit my defeat. Any worry that a lack of progress would be a turn-off was unfounded, which was nice. I suppose that was actually something that I should have included regardless, as everyone who played the game blind would have run into a wall at some point.
My progress through the game also informed how I would write. In the Catacombs, where I was dying often, I would write as I played. After every death I could tab out and put words to what just happened, what I learned, and where I was going. By the time I made it to Undead Burg, though, I was not dying often enough to make that feasible, and I was more and more eager to get to the next bit of content (usually a boss) that I could use as a chapter break, so I began to take notes instead. I played with a text file open, and would enter basic information, along with screenshot names (so that I could keep them in the correct order). Later, I could go back and use the notes and my screenshots to flesh things out. My memory works very well with such simple reminders, so I wasn't missing as much as it may seem. The only time that failed me was my run through Anor Londo (after the Painted World, up to Ornstein and Smough). I accidentally erased parts of those notes and ended up writing small chunks of it purely from memory and screenshots, but at that point I was making such progress that I felt less awkward about glossing over every little action.
Here are some sample notes from my trip through Blighttown and the swamp below it. I ended up not using them, since I felt like exploring Demon Ruins instead, hoping that I could find a boss down there--another bit of panic play because I thought that just running through Blighttown backwards, and well after I had overlevelled it, wouldn't be at all interesting to read about.
"more swamp more tape worms. i still have plenty of red moss. why couldn't this be a field of broken glass instead?
one of the tapeworms drops an item, but i have trouble getting at it as the body flops around. i end up kicking it half way across the swamp before i can pick the item up. large titanite shard. i was thinking of leaving them alone if they weren't guarding bodies, but maybe i should kill them if they have useful drops."
About the tree that has the secret entrance to the Great Hollow (because I did notice it, but was in a hurry to get moving at the time).
"inside the tree is a lone body. plank shield, like the one i started with. could this have been me, in another life? it's quiet in here. eerie. i think if i stayed here too long i would begin to hear my own thoughts. i leave."
As for how I approached the lore in the game, that was also a matter of necessity. Up till my trip into the Tomb of the Giants, I would only glance at new items and then file them away, more concerned with stats and bonuses than what they had to say about the world. What I wrote about the things I saw was based mostly on what I actually saw: I wrote about Undead Parish from the layout and the atmosphere of the place, not from any descriptions of it. The possibility of getting details wrong was high, so I tried to keep it loose like that.
Then Tomb of the Giants happened, and I killed Rhea before I even met her. I knew who she was from dialogue with other characters, but that was about it.
It's important for me when I'm writing that I enjoy the process, because otherwise I would never do it; I am a very slow write, and not a very good editor.
I drew inspiration from my time in Darkroot Garden. Even after writing that, I cringed, but in the moment it felt appropriate, so I don't regret it. I thought I could extend that somewhat, so I wrote about Rhea and Patches, figuring that Rhea was probably the type of NPC that players liked, so I should do something special to make up for murdering her in the dark. I'd never written fan fiction before, and I still didn't know anything about Rhea, so I did google her to make sure I had the right NPC and spelling. I also sampled a bit of her dialogue, to get a small idea of what her character was like. That's when I discovered that Dark Souls doesn't do a lot of explaining: none of what she says has anything much to do with where she came from, or her previous life. To me, that's an invitation to put my own spin on things, as I was less worried about missing some crucial background information once I'd seen that there probably wasn't any to miss. Even so, I tried to focus more on the characters and atmosphere over specific details, in my own attempt to mirror the feeling of the game. Not sure how successful I was, but it was fun.
Later, once I'd gotten further into the game and figured more of it out, I cheated again. Astute readers would have noticed that while writing about Smough I mentioned his cannibalism, yet that is only mentioned in his hammer's description. Because I killed Ornstein last, I had no way of seeing Smough's hammer. However, by the time I felt like writing that, I had killed Smough long ago, I had even beaten the DLC, I'd already figured out how to make boss weapons, and I knew how the rest of the game was going to play out. It didn't seem like much to read a couple of item descriptions for a boss I had already killed.
All in all, writing about Dark Souls was a singular experience for me. I am not a player who cares about story in my games, or even atmosphere; I will happily skip through cut-scenes and dialogue in pretty much any setting. On my own, I would have muted the music, turned down the sound effects, and listened to late 90s Phil Hendrie while I mashed monsters without concern for flavour text. Having to pay attention, initially because I wanted to explain my reasoning, and later because I wanted to spice things up with some lore, changed how I played the game, which changed how I viewed it over time.
The most direct way writing about the game changed how I played it was how I distributed stats and the weapons I ended up using. At the beginning of the game, when I was still working them out, my main concern with stats was identifying traps, because there is always at least one totally worthless stat in every game. It wasn't hard to see that Resistance was that stat in Dark Souls, so I knew right away to avoid it. Later, stats became a means to an end. Without foreknowledge, I could only test weapons as they came, so that every new find meant a new set of stats I would need if I wanted to try that weapon out. It so happens that most Dark Souls weapons require Strength rather than Dexterity, Faith, or Intelligence, so that I had new goalposts on a constant basis. I kept putting points into Strength because I kept finding new weapons that required more Strength, and I felt that I should give them due diligence. On my own, I probably would have stuck with something simple like the Winged Spear for most of the game and not even bothered to try other weapons. Eventually, I became stuck in what would be called a Strength build. At least I have a reason to play the game again with a build and weapons of my own choosing.
Was doing this Let's Play fun? Yes, it was. I also think I got more out of some parts of the game than I would have otherwise, which is only slightly offset by it taking me about x400 longer to beat it than necessary. I would do it again, and perhaps, once all of the Dark Souls 2 DLC has been released, I'd give it another shot.
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I don't know much about game reviews, except that they're generally useless. Or at least that's how they were when I stopped reading them, which was years. On top of that, after all the words I've already written, I should hope it's clear enough whether or not I enjoyed the game by now.
At the same time, I can't help myself from critiquing the things that I experience. So I like to think about what I would do if I had been a game's director. And it's a good thing I'm not, because I'm also well aware that I would make games that nobody else would want to play.
The World
Dark Souls has an interesting, fairly well-realized world with plenty of atmosphere and personality. While graphically it is hampered by the constraints of last-gen consoles, has a distinct and cohesive art style, combined with imaginative area designs, help it stand out despite how generic it seems at first. Dark Souls also has weighty combat mechanics that make encounters feel meaningful (at first), and a wonderfully minimalist plot that is nearly optional, which is something that I particularly enjoyed.
For me, though, it was hampered as much as it was helped by the non-linear parts, something that I'll get into later.
Mostly I would have fleshed some of them out, but I imagine that the developers would have as well, if they'd had the resources. Specifically, Demon Ruins, Lost Izalith, and parts of Undead Burg (it seems like there are a lot of paths that go nowhere down there), Tomb of the Giants (I wanted more!), and Ash Lake.
It would also have been nice if a couple of the environments were more interactive, but that would damaged the sense of decay in Lordran. Still, it might have been interesting to find a small enclave or band of non-Hollowed Undead who to work against, or maybe even one that had decided to make themselves a little kingdom. There are many references to a cavalcade of adventurers passing through Lordran near and around the protagonist, but we never get to see them. Sure, some of that is Gwyn's time warping, but even that should amount to the same thing. It shouldn't have been a constant thing, but it would have been a good contrast to the rest of the game.
Even having another frequent invader, like Kirk, but with a more interactive persona, like Marvellous Chester, but have him only found at the end of an area. It would have been neat to use more of the online components like that; they could even leave Orange Guidance Soapstone messages as taunts before invading--or, even better, their invasions would be slightly randomized, to add a bit of flavour.
That would have taken a lot of extra work, and maybe I was just feeling that way because I played offline and didn't have regular human invasions to deal with.
AI
Though bosses are particularly sad, every enemy in the game is as dumb as a brick, which is a problem when they're what I spent most of my time fighting. As with the bosses, normal enemies only have a couple of attacks, and most of those are pretty bad. Enemies are dangerous primarily because they do a lot of damage or are an unknown quantity, not because they are smart. Generally, that's just how action-RPGs work, so it wasn't much of a surprise, but it was disappointing.
To make matters worse, almost every enemy is fought one on one, and those that aren't are usually pathetic to begin with. In both starting areas, the Graveyard and Undead Burg, as well as the Catacombs and Undead Parish, it was common to fight small groups of skeletons and Hollowed, even in the Depths and the upper parts of Blighttown there were times where enemies came in pairs or trios, but soon after, that stopped. Of course, the flip side of is that, as a non-linear game, a lot of backtracking is required, so it would quickly become tedious to have to keep thinking every time the player was just passing through.
I suspect the developers realized that was a problem, because it was changed for the better in the DLC. Those monsters had much more aggressive move sets, and would also pull in groups, so that trying to fight one meant fighting his buddies as well. That was fun and exciting, because individually they were pretty worthless. It also made all of those weapons with broad, sweeping attacks seem superfluous when there's only a single target and it isn't moving around very much.
At the very least, sub-bosses, like the Black Knights, should have had more dangerous and aggressive personas.
Bosses
There is no getting around this: the bosses in Dark Souls are its weakest link. It was almost always a let down to arrive at the end of a dungeon only to be faced with weak-willed and flaccid opposition. It didn't help that the first real boss I faced was Pinwheel, who is a true sad sack even by Dark Souls standards, but after that it didn't get much better.
The Taurus Demon was not a great threat, even though I didn't use plunging attacks on him. Sure, I had the benefit of my time in the Catacombs, but I still didn't know what I was doing (if I did, I might have used said plunging attacks), so I didn't exactly make good use of my advantages. After that was the fight with the Gargoyles, and I'll admit that I died a fair few times to them, but then I was still finding my feet and wasn't doing much with my upgrades. The problem was that almost every subsequent boss was easier than the last.
Even without their ease, the real problem was that they're dull and dumb, which is unfortunate because there were some neat designs with evident personality. They're marred by only having 2 or 3 attacks and very simple patterns, so that there ends up being little to the fights except finding the easiest to exploit attack and then running it into the ground. Most other games will mix those weaknesses in amongst escalating patterns of more difficult attacks, but Dark Souls has bosses that are just big damage sponges with better stats.
What I think is missing is any sort of creativity about the fights themselves. Most games will try to make them a set-piece for a unique or interesting mechanic. There were weak attempts at this, but they're few and far between. I'm thinking of Seath, who had that crystal keeping him alive--in any other game I would have broken it, been able to do some damage, and then it would have reformed, probably on the other side of the room. In Dark Souls I break (or he breaks it) once, and then it's a straight fight for the rest of it. There was the Ornstein and Smough fight, which had multiple opponents and a second stage, but those guys were also on the simple side, and didn't do enough to work together. The fight with Gwyndolin was unique, but optional, and still could have used a little something extra. As I said, other bosses are simply larger than normal monsters that have extra HP, and that only worked a few times (Gwyn, Artorias, Manus).
As I said earlier, it would have been nice to have a couple of bosses who had more presence in their areas. I thought the bridge Drake in Undead Burg would be that way, but it only shows up once, and then ends up being an optional (and awful) fight. I went all the way to Anor Londo convinced that the Drake would show up again for a real fight, but it never did, and it turned something memorable into a forgettable bit of scenery--do most players even bother killing it, or do they just shoot its tail off and leave it alone for the rest of the game?
I'll allow that the way the game is designed around death, may have prevented the developers from going all-out. The surprise of a multi-staged, multi-area boss is lost when the first couple of stages have to be repeated many times, and how does that work if the monster is wrecking the environment? The closest the game came to that was Bed of Chaos, which many seem to think is the worst boss in the game, and certainly the strangest, with how each stage carries over if the player dies. (It probably would have worked better if instead of dropping the player to their deaths, the boss flung them away to a different area, so that they would have to fight their way back to the boss, maybe going through a Daughter of Chaos each time.)
This will seem strange after all of that, but there were also fewer bosses than I wanted. I could have done with more sub-bosses, and more area bosses as well, optional or not. Just sticking a big knight in the corner isn't quite enough. It's a scatter-shot solution, but more of them would also mean a higher chance of another Nito, even if that also meant another Ceaseless Discharge.
As the DLC was much denser and had more varied and interesting boss encounters, I assume the developers are in partial agreement with me. I know nothing about Dark Souls 2, but I would expect plenty more bosses in general.
Stats
First, there was the Resistance trap, which I was fine with; I expected it. Not every stat is going to be useful for every build, and not every stat is going to be useful at all. That's just how it is.
For the most part, stats had a decent give and take. Investing in something felt like an investment, and the decisions felt somewhat meaningful. Of course, I made a build without being able to plan ahead. I don't hold that against the game.
There is one stat (well, it's a sub-stat) that I didn't like very much, and that was weight.
The problem wasn't that weight existed and was a thing, nor was it that being encumbered slows the player down and alters their roll animation. It was that, more than any other stat, weight was too negative. Being encumbered is always bad, and the game tries to relate that with poise (heavier armour has more poise), but even that was something that could be corrected, in time. Want to walk around with Havel's set? Sure, you can do that, and if you wear the right rings and pump some iron to raise your Endurance, you can do it will still rolling around like a ninja.
What I would have liked is for weight to actually make me heavier. This is related to poise, deflection, and stability, so maybe adding another sub-stat in there would be too complicated, but it was something that bothered me in a few situations.
When I was going through Demon Ruins for the first time and fighting all of those Taurus Demons, what got to me was how they smacked me around even while I was blocking. My initial assumption was that heavier shields with more stability would do more than just reduce my stamina loss. The problem was that even with a solid shield, if I block an attack I still get knocked half way across the room. There were slightly different animations, but the effect was the same: I would be too far away to retaliate. Stability doesn't help, poise doesn't help--I'm not being hit, after all--but what if weight did? What if how heavy I was changed how far I could be knocked back? In that case, it would be beneficial, in some situations, to be heavy. I know I'm supposed to just roll instead, but it would be nice to have an alternative. That's a pipe dream, though, so it's not something I expect to change in Dark Souls 2 or Bloodborne.
Scaling
I don't mean damage scaling on weapons, or the soft caps every stat has, I mean scaling the enemies and areas.
Perhaps I'll come off as a masochist, and perhaps this is entirely my own fault for playing the game how I did, but I enjoyed the Catacombs, from a pure gameplay perspective, more than any other area aside from some bits of the DLC and Tomb of the Giants. Going through that place at the beginning was hard, and that's what I like. I wouldn't have been turned off if the rest of the game had ended up being just as difficult.
This is something I always struggle with in games like this, ones that give me the chance to take forks to different areas. Inevitably, one of those areas is meant to be first, and is designed to be the easiest. For me, that's not interesting. If every area had a little colour-coded sign outside telling me what its terror alert status was, I would surely head for the most dangerous every time, as long as I could actually beat it (no passages that can't be accessed till later in the game, like the golden doorways which require the Lordvessel to pass). The problem with that is going from hard, to medium, to easy only makes the contrast greater. Should I assume that every area is designed to be as difficult as possible for a character of a certain level, and tackle them like that? Even if I do, how am I supposed to know which is which before doing them? I could sample the enemies, but as I think I've demonstrated, it takes more than getting gang molested by a bunch of skeletons that can kill me in 2 hits to turn me around.
I know that I missed out on things that were supposed to be really tough, like the Capra Demon in Lower Undead Burg. By the time I got to him, I killed him and his dogs in 1 hit. Would I have enjoyed that more if I'd gone straight to him while still relatively weak? Certainly. Just as I'd have had more fun with Blighttown if I wasn't already packing all the tools I needed to breeze through it.
At a certain point, I should expect the game to catch up with me, but that never quite happened. Nothing I did compared to the Catacombs, or going through Tomb of the Giants with crappy gear and no light. Expecting it to would have been setting the bar much too high, but that's only because of the way the game is designed, with non-linear branching paths and no scaling.
I felt let down when, after a while, each new monster was smashed to a pulp before it could even do anything to me.
I think it would have been interesting if the game accounted for the fact that players can go through it via different routes. Even if it was a flat scaling like Diablo 3's former Inferno difficulty, where every area is as tough as every other other, in terms of monster levels. That could have been a new game+ option.
Ideally, going one route would cause the others to compensate. It seemed especially necessary because there is less and less indication of which area is next as the game goes on. Sure, Undead Burg before the Catacombs, but Tomb of the Giants or Lost Izalith? Duke's Archives or New Londo Ruins? What ends up happening is that I get to the boss fight that I liked the most (Nito), but I'm so far ahead of it that I smash through on my first try. What if for every Lord Soul I acquired, the other bosses deployed extra defences and toughened themselves up?
That sort of thing would take careful balancing, and many would hate it. It removes the benefit of casual grinding, which is a problem. If a player can't tackle an area with their current gear and their own skills, how will they feel if leaving it for later only made it that much more impossible? From what I've heard, games with scaling monsters, outside of loot-based ARPGs like Diablo, are not very popular with players, and making it an optional "hard mode" would only rub it in the faces of those who felt like completionists.
Finally, there's new game+. I've only played a bit of it, but I looked up the differences and apparently it's nothing more than extra HP and more damage for enemies. I find that strange, because Dark Souls seems like a game that encourages repeat plays with the same character. I would have loved to see them do what the Tales games or the Ninja Gaiden games do, where new game+ means bosses have new attacks, enemies are in different formations and locations, and new dungeons and bosses become available.What if new game+ Pinwheel had a couple of giant skeletons in there with him? Would make him a bit less of a joke at least.
But again, that's a lot of work, so it's not something I expect many games to do. (I know there are the Gravelord Covenant's black phantoms, but even those are just monsters with even higher HP and damage, and getting infected with a curse is not a sure thing.)
Combat
Suffice it to say, I'm not that big a fan. It feels like Monster Hunters, but with fewer options, which I didn't like. I get that it works for most people, but too much of how the weapons and actions worked seemed to be based on things that I wasn't doing, like PvP. There was a lot of wasted space on my controller, buttons I never pressed and never felt the need to press. I'm not expecting even simple Ninja Gaiden movelists, but it would have been nice to have a couple more moves.
It also goes back to the AI being dumb as a bag of rocks. The vast majority of enemies are simply zoned, baited into whiffing something with lots of recovery frames, and then stabbed or clobbered. If there had been more variance in how they fought, there might have been more variance in how I fought back, but I doubt that just because of the type of player I am. I tend to bulldoze AI with whatever is most effective for me, and only mix things up when I'm forced to by circumstances. Thing is, I was almost never forced to mix things up in Dark Souls--though I did go out of my way to try some new things, for the sake of experimenting.
There were 3 basic weapons and tactics that I used throughout the game. My spears, my club, and my great hammers and ultra greatswords. The spear was all about baiting attacks and then using my range to punish them. The club was all about baiting attacks and then using the jumping overhead heavy attack to punish them. The big hammers and swords were all about baiting attacks and then using the heavy smashes to punish them. The only difference between each weapon was which attacks I was able to punish and how many hits it took to kill things. (There were also occasions where the opening provided was big enough that I would just go 2-handed and whack away, but those were few and far between.) If the game doesn't stop me from doing that type of thing, I will just keep doing it. That's how it's done in fighting games, and I have trouble shaking that off, even against AIs.
Would I have liked it more if I'd done some PvP? Probably not. I've watched some videos of PvP and it doesn't look very interesting to me, but does look like there's plenty of lag involved. That's not my bag. Nothing wrong with people who enjoy it, though.
Thing is, I don't just want more moves for the sake of it. Like I said, I will happily use whatever works forever, because it works. Giving me extra options won't change that. It's a 2-way street, so my enemies would need more as well. Which goes back to improving the AI, or at least giving them more they can do.
That's about all I can think of to say about Dark Souls. Again, it's a good game. I have heard that Dark Souls 2 is an easier game, which is too bad, but I still look forward to playing it after the DLC is out.
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Page cheated. he looked at items he didnt earn.
All respect lost. He is now the millie vanillie of lets play.
Dark souls 2 is easier? ehhh i dunno about that. I think the only reason its perceived as easier is because its basically more dark souls 1 and people have had time to understand the mechanics. People knew early on which stats were the ones you wanted due to the early beta tests leaking information...even with myself trying hard to avoid spoilers, I could enter an old DS1 thread and see people talking about how x stat was king and I really dont blame people for wanting to know that.
The first time i played Demon souls It was a very odd experience. I had heard it was hard but it was more then hard it was oppressive and punishing. the storyline bits in souls games are so rationed that it was hard to see that Demon souls (being the first of these games) had a coherant story that was worth figuring out. I remember fumbling my way through the first area, encountering a dark spirit and getting my ass kicked by regular guards. The first boss of the game was not hard and for the most part you kept the game from destroying your spirit by opening shortcuts so you wouldnt have to run through the entire level to get to the boss for another attempt...but damn it was rewarding to finish that first big slime.
Then i kinda gave up playing it for a while. When dark souls came out i picked it up and again just couldnt make it through until much later when it came out on sale on PC and I had heard about DSFix, i decided to give it another try. By then i had time to see how much people loved the first two games and i had looked at wiki's to understand some of the story and gameplay without having to experiment. It changed the way i looked at the game and I finally beat dark souls. Then went back and beat demon souls on my ps3. and I beat dark souls 2 on PC when it came out but not without admitting to quite a lot of summoning assitance on bosses.
Dark souls games are not about story - The Story is so sparse that while you can pull a coherent narrative out of it, a lot of that narrative is based on your own imagination putting pieces together in a way that is your own idea, and not everyone elses.
Dark souls games are not just about difficulty no matter what people say. The Difficulty is on a slider of your own setting. Want to farm souls and make the game easier, or maybe you want to deny yourself any ranged weapons or limit your soul level or hell...beat the game on soul level 1 using only a broken sword hilt. Chances are its been done.
....they are about a great combined gameplay experience. The setting, the graphics, the imagination you have to put into the game...
Right, but that variety does not change your overall approach. Bait the enemy into an attack they'll miss and hit as much as you can during their recovery time. Magic is even easier since you don't need to bait, just lock on from far away and shoot.
That said, I had far more trouble with the game than Page because I let the atmosphere affect me, intimidate me and don't act methodically. I panic and I miss attacks. I mash buttons when I need that last hit. I do all the things that this game likes to punish and I'm probably not alone in that. That's why the game has the reputation it does. It punishes emotional, non-pro gaming behavior.
I love it.
"You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."
Those are the 3 main weapon types that I used for great lengths, but I actually killed things with every weapon except for bows and crossbows. Pretty much every time I found a new weapon I would use it for a while. It's not comprehensive, but I made sure to experience everything--that's kind of why I ended up with so much strength and dexterity.
Like I said, it's so easy to react to what enemies do that, in general, it doesn't seem to matter very much that every weapon has half a dozen different moves or more. One of two of them will be useful in 99% of situations, and another will be necessary (a rolling attack, for example). That's strictly for PvE, though. I'm sure that in PvP all sorts of things become more or less useful.
It's unfair, but I was just comparing it to a game like Ninja Gaiden Black in my mind. Even in that game there are obviously much better (or more efficient) moves for every weapon, but enemies and environments are set up in such a way that a larger variety of moves and actions become useful.
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If you use thrust / pierce weapons you want to hit during swing and just after, but not during recovery to get the counter damage bonus.
People haven't mentioned the stagger differences that enemies have based on the class/deflection level of shield they hit. Silver knights are a great example, with a great shield they are staggered for ages making them very easy, compared to using a light shield with 100% physical protection.
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Even with all this awesome rpg shit they still have pretty solid action mechanics. They might be simple, but they are solid.
It has incredible atmosphere, diverse rpg options, simple but solid mechanics, a large variety of those mechanics to learn, and most importantly, the majority of the time, you feel like dying is your fault.
It's not something you buy expecting DMC level options. It's something you buy to experience.
Ripping it down to its bare fundamentals and analysing them singly doesn't really do it justice. It is through the combination and interaction of all these elements that the game shines.
I think even the most die hard players of all the souls games can point out problems with any particular element. But ask them if they like the overall package and you are going to get a yes.
I don't play these games anywhere near as much as I do a dedicated action game. That is because, for the most part, it is the action component of a game that is my primary interest. Eventually the other parts of Dark Souls lose their novelty and I run out of things to learn in the action component.
But I still think all three are fantastic games.
I'm glad I played all of them.
However, I did feel that a lot of the difficulty was false. Specifically, you died because many of the enemies in the game (especially bosses) could wipe you out in one or two hits (maybe a couple more if you spec'd for heavy armor and some extra HP). And the first time you encountered them, you had no idea what their attack patterns looked like. So, it was just a test of how many times you were willing to die in order to get a complete picture of the patterns. Once you had that picture, it was rarely difficult to capitalize and win the battle.
I might have to try four or five times to beat a given boss, but only one or two of those tries were legitimate-feeling fights where I actually had any sort of idea at all how to handle the thing.
In that way, Dark Souls honors patience above skill. It's much like a grind-focused RPG in that manner, actually, only it replaces walking in circles for random encounter XP with repeatedly treading the boss approach section.
Ironically, my favorite parts of the game wound up being the exact same stuff I like from more traditional RPGs: exploring, finding stuff, and upgrading my character to fulfill my vision for it. By tossing in traps and some assorted high-level black knight type enemies, the exploration stayed tense, which did a lot to keep me from getting bored.
EDIT: Nope, that's wrong. My absolute favorite thing to do was invade other people's games (or lure them with Gravelord), turn into a fuckin' bush, wait for them to walk by, and ambush them with Wrath of the Gods. Preferably right next to a cliff. Maybe I'm just a troll at heart, but it was absolutely hilarious every single time.
It's still difficulty.
Lets throw all the subjective, personal definitions of "it's not real difficulty" over the cliff please.
It just starts really silly arguments.
Intending you to die to learn is a valid approach to difficulty.
It's a different one to most contemporary approaches.
This does not make it false.
It's not something that can be True or False.
That doesn't make any sense as a classification.
Changing anything about the combat would have required a complete overhaul of how it worked, and probably wouldn't have been worth it in the end.
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That's going out of my way to avoid pretending to make objective statements and start arguments and stuff
It's really, totally cool if you got a different experience from the game
I still really liked it!
It's like, I learned how to 1cc almost every Contra game. Learning how to do each of them required hours of painstaking experimentation, pattern processing, and patience. Once I had that all in my head, and had established the muscle memory, actually beating them is a cinch. Does the fact that I could 1cc Contra 3 make it easy, or even easier? I don't think so at all. It's like learning how to do anything, and practice is always the key. You get better at it if you're willing to put in the work, and become more efficient, but the difficulty is always there, waiting for a mistake.
That repetition is also, I think, what damaged those genres. Your average Metal Slug game is an arcade game, and can be completed in one sitting, taking maybe an hour at most. That it takes most players weeks to reach that point--and those weeks are full of endless repetition of areas and enemies that they've already beaten--is harder to sell them on when there are other games that can take 8-12 hours to beat and doesn't require playing the same areas over and over again.
That repetitive nature is why I totally understand why Dark Soul's AI is not that advanced. Bad enough that players have to run through an area 30 times to get to a boss that's kicking their asses, it would be much, much worse if every enemy they faced (enemies they've already killed multiple times) also required them to stop what they were doing and directly mentally engage with. Action games aren't designed that way. On top of that, there's the feeling of progression and power required to make an RPG work. If you're still worried about little pink Hollowed at level 50 because they're going to parry and riposte, that's an issue for most players.
However, I still don't think the game scales quite well enough for my tastes (though I freely admit that I did everything wrong, so I don't have much room to judge). That's also something that happens in RPGs, and metriodvanias, so it's not like I was surprised.
Plus, just like those genres, it has that annoying phenomena where xp, currency, and the punishment for dying starts to disappear once you've reached the desired power curve. Early on, running around with 10k Souls is invigorating, because you need every single one of them, and it makes the potential death and dangers sharper. Once I'd reached my desired level and had the weapons and armour I wanted, death and losing Souls lost its sting.
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In Demon's Souls, if you die and become that game's version of hollowed, your HP is set to 40% of its normal maximum (60% if you eat a ring slot). Unless you're seriously pro, it means you're going to go look for a way to un-hollow before trying to progress. And that means going co-op to help someone else beat a boss.
If you go back to a boss you've already defeated, then you can use the co-op method to help show the host player how to beat the boss (though, with your reduced HP total, you still have to be super careful, even more than when you beat it previously). Or you can get summoned for the boss you haven't yet beaten so you can see how to do it without worrying about losing anything (because you'll simply reappear back in your game at the spot you dropped your sign). And many of those bosses could be challenging even if you knew the trick; knowing how to do it was just part 1. Actually pulling it off is part 2, which is the part that "feels" like "true" difficulty for me personally.
The game had a bit fewer death traps, I think, but since death was substantially more harsh, it felt like a harder game regardless. The only thing about Dark Souls that was comparably more difficult that Demon's Souls was figuring out where to go, since Demon's used a standard hub level progression system instead of a connected world.
Reading this I understand what you meant to convey there. I'll explain why it did not work.
If I said "I feel that you are an idiot" would you not get offended?
Some words have meanings so strong they transform the meaning of an entire sentence. (I am not calling you an idiot. It's just a good example.)
It's best to be careful with them.
Great storytelling, @Page-. Thanks for sharing.
PSN: theIceBurner, IceBurnerEU, IceBurner-JP | X-Link Kai: TheIceBurner
Dragon's Dogma: 192 Warrior Linty | 80 Strider Alicia | 32 Mage Terra
It was very well done.
In particular, thankyou for not holding back on your fan fiction. I enjoyed it all.
I also thought it would be neat if I streamed the rest of my current play through with some sort of writer's commentary, where I talked about what I went through the first time in each area. I'll see how that goes.
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Oooh i just had an idea. I'd love to see you do a lets play for System Shock 2.
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http:// steamcommunitydotcom / id / page0rz/
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