Dark Souls 2: YOU DIED HARDER

as noted above, I restarted the game and have been building a stupidly balanced (all skills at level 21 at the moment) character... not even sure why i'm doing it.

no no, you can access it without ng+. it's way harder to access if you started ng+, because doing so clears out all of your bonfire checkpoints.

Stupidly balanced builds are perfect for Mundane infused weapons, right?

DLC is aug 28 for PS3, yes?

26

the big thing in the new dlc seems to be using the environment to get through situations that would otherwise be near-impossible. and by "environment" i mean things that explode.

This was $30 in Best Buy. I picked up. Need to beat the first one after dropping 50 or so hours into it. Probably don't need this in my life right now.

this sounds like it will be good

http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/18/6359181/dark-souls-2-crown-of-the-ivory-king-tgs-2014

Over the course of the downloadable content, players can gradually accrue followers — allied, AI-controlled characters — who will help them in a battle against a tough boss character.

this is good news, since i cancelled XBL and summoning human help is out.

new dlc is awesome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6OvKFwIza8

Currently on sale for $20 on PSN with PS+.

yeah i will def get the new version on ps4. prob should get a ps4 at some point between now and then

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-iUcZyEtZc

amazing

i will probably get this for ps4 cuz i can't help myself

yeah me too :(

Bloodborne imminent too!

yeah both. i was skeptical about next-gen ds2 but watched recent footage of it and it looks good in 60fps. the dark areas are actually dark now!

yeah i will 100% get it eventually, have played zero add content, but bloodborne first by god

huh i have no desire to go back to DS2, even with fancy graphics. very excited about Bloodborne though.

Trying to get into this, not sure I liked the changes from DS. Running through empty hallways because I have killed everything in them is giving me flashbacks to the worst and most boring parts of Castlevanias. Level design......eh..... there are some gorgeous areas but on the whole it is way worse than DS, which felt like real places. Seems like they went more Open World with this one, and it feels a bit aimless as a result. From the opening area in DS you could access 2 other areas but from the opening area in DS2 it feels like there are half a dozen paths I could take, almost all of which lead to a locked door. I'm going to try and stick w it as long as I can (currently in Heides Tower of Flame) but at least in the beginning it feels rather slapped together compared to the first game's artful construction.

There are much more pronounced highs and lows in the quality of the area design with this. It probably gets by a lot on how much the base mechanics stand up to repeat play

Heide's Tower is pretty cool looking as an area even though there's not really that much of note there

the transition from Earthen Peak --> Bowser's castle is the most dispiritingly shit bit of world design in the game

I'll probably pick up this new deluxe version once it comes down in price. Never played the add-ons and they're supposedly pretty tite.

the dlcs were better than the main game. still kinda like this one but i feel like i can steamroll through it at this point even with the re-mixed areas of the remaster. the new high framerate is really nice, wish bloodborne had it

it's clear that from software's b-team did most of the work on this but i'd still take a second-rate souls game over virtually anything else. i need to go back and work my way through the dlc once i've finished with bloodborne.

best part of sotfs update so far is the pool of blood mechanic. works the same as a bloodstain however when multiple people have died in the same spot it becomes a 'pool of blood' that when clicked activates all the bloodstains simultaneously. so you get multiple phantoms missing a cliff jump or this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxMw5L4R-aY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQyF7I8Fanc

lol, that's evocative

I'm stuck at the three Sentinels in the Lost Bastille. Haven't beaten the Pursuer either, cos he is REALLY tough and I read he's harder than the Sentinels.

Doesn't feel entirely fair to be fighting three guys at once. I mean you had the Anor Londo duo in Dark Souls but it was a nice big space and the two of them had different moves. I can take down the first Sentinel without a scratch, but the next two is a tough battle. Should I go do something else? The DSII world is way more confusing than the first game so I have no idea where to go next aside from this.

i think you can summon an NPC for that fight (and i'm pretty sure i summoned human help).

you want to take the first guy out on the platform as quick as possible. Definitely do summon an NPC or two; let one of them pull one of the last two enemies away and then focus on the other on the ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xrPkE-LWqY
Later in the game, you run two of these at once so you kinda need to learn how to play these guys.

LOL i have to talk to the cat to leave a covenant and then the NPC will be there.

Hmmm that's not it I'm not in any covenants. I found the cell but the summon isn't there.

are you human?

i recall bringing players down and needing to get them over by the prior save point.

Oh yeah I won! The key is to keep both of them in view and taunt them into jumping at you, then dodge and attack whoever's nearest. Also throwing a bunch of firebombs down on them before they jump up to that platform.

Ok now Dark Souls 2 is starting to piss me off. It isn't playing by the rules anymore! The last bonfire I was at _started_ with me getting shot at by crossbow. That never happened in Dark Souls 1. Now I am fighting the same 2-gargoyle boss from Dark Souls 1, only it is FIVE gargoyles. WTF?

heh, i know where you're at. if you stay still, you won't be shot. the instant you start to move, you're fair game.

This game is losing me. The magic is gone from the first one. Level design is through the floor. It's unfair in lots of ways the first one wasn't.

Ok just gave it another shot and made it to the boss w all the skeletons and skeleton wheels. Everyone goes on about how hard the first game is but at least it is fair. This one feels more like going through a room blindly in the dark. I appreciate the more open-ended approach but it also results in some confusing and unrealistic level design. I can think of The Catacombs in Dark Souls and it is pretty clear what area that entails: winding underground burial tunnels where the deeper you go, the more darkness surrounds you. Or the Darkroot Garden: misty forests with tree creatures and sleeping stone giants, with spare ruins and bridges marking places where humans once made their mark. Thinking back to the levels in Dark Souls 2, they all sort of blur together, they may end up going outside or featuring a cave or a ruins or a forest area or sometimes all of the above. Some areas stand out by looking vastly different but most of this is muddy, dark, and very similar-looking. The enemies are more generic, seeming less like a real monster ecology and more like generic bad guys to sprinkle throughout a video game. In the face of the non-linear level design the shortcuts seem to be there mainly for tradition. In the Huntman's Copse I made my way through skeleton caves and came upon a gate that I could not pass. Luckily there were several other exits and I wandered around, snaking behind a waterfall, eventually stumbling upon the other side of the gate, and a switch to open it. Not only did the shortcut open up a passageway that I had only just discovered 2-3 minutes before, but it shaved off a whole 10 seconds of time from my trip. Ugh.

Still, the combat is a lot of fun. Haven't figured out the new parry system yet, but in the first game that took me dozens of hours before I began learning it in earnest. Crowd control can be super annoying but it is a new approach and most of the good things about this game are the new things is tries. I'm sure the more I play this the more I will like it, but the level design in the first game was almost always thoughtful and inspiring.

problem is you're following up with sequel directly after mainlining the first one. not saying the criticisms aren't valid. are you playing the scholar of the first sin upgraded version? they did make subtle improvements of areas, not design-wise but the enemy placement changes make the game seem more thought out

Made it to Drangelic Castle, which looks really nice w the rain, maybe one of the best-looking Souls areas, like the exit from the Asylum in Dark Souls. These F&$%^KING stone soldiers that all come alive and fight you alongside an earlier BOSS BATTLE is bullshit. This game is way cheaper w difficulty than Dark Souls 1.

I am having trouble because there are too many of them and they are all designed to be fought one-on-one, most of them having shields that will block your attacks and thus necessitating melee dodge rolling. Which wouldn't be a problem if the level design wasn't just small boxes stuck together. URGH.

The bosses in Dark Souls 2 are easier than the ones in 1 and a bit lacking in originality. Once I've figured out a few patterns I can take a boss in 1 or 2 tries w most of my health.

It sounds like the production was really chaotic, multiple versions of the game being combined hurriedly, visual elements like the new lighting system falling through, etc. But it's not a bad game, and it sounds like many people like it, so good on From for pulling out all the stops to make it as polished as it is.

It's generally a fair game and still up there on the level with 1. It just has its problem areas. With Miyazaki coming back for the 3rd it is also kind of cool to have a weird entry in the trilogy, like Super Mario Bros. 2 or something.

RE: Drangelic Castle. I know I know I just need to get gud.

you wanna section them off in each room and deal with them carefully one at a time. it's doable.

otm thanks i guess it isn't so cheap after all esp that room w the stairs going around the corner its a good place to trap one or two, the big ones usually get bored and walk away

you're talking about the room with all the Ruin Sentinels, right? that one's crazy, and i didn't realize at first that killing the soldiers was the trigger for opening the doors and unleashing the sentinels. could have handled them one-on-one, but i don't think i ever cleared that room (just did suicide runs to get the items).

i did a lot of farming in that room.

Yeah it's a nice room. Also did a lot of farming w the mastodons, they were a fun enemy to fight.

Kinda sad that the big castle-w-lightning-flashin-across-the-floor scene was only for one hallway leading to the boss. I thought it was going to be a whole big area. Looks really cool in still shots but kinda underwhelming implementation.

Looking Glass Knight was a fun bosses. Most of the bosses are fun and easier than those in Dark Souls. Farmed a little bit, saved up for some Gold Pine Resin, and went on a LONG sidequest back through the foggy forest to find the needed merchant. He was a skull on a pile of dead bodies(?). I love it. After that LGK fell in two attempts.

Currently in the Shrine of Amana. Big jump in difficulty. I hate those magic homing arrows, and the fact that you can't move fast in the water. And the invisible drop offs. And the seemingly random places where you will be moving through and suddenly your armor is broken, or your rings, or something equally upsetting.

It's a beautiful area though! You can tell they tried to put better levels towards the end of the game. At one point I was in a cave and thought there was some music playing in another window. It was crazy noise coming out of a giant mushroom, I think.

you can see the drop offs better w/ a torch

At Aldias Keep I was building up a lot of souls, like 60k, from running up the stairs and killing that large caged basilisk then pulling the dragon statue and taking out the orcs in the long dark hallway with the inhabited paintings. The orcs got me a lot by grabbing and eating me, but it was easy to run in and grab souls before they attacked. Then the large one at the start stopped appearing, cutting down the amount of souls per run by 3000.

I cleared the dark hallway and went down into an acidic pit that destroyed my rings then my armor. I was going to remove my equipment but there were some monsters and I didn't want them to kill me when I was in the menu. They didn't attack me. So I did the stupidest thing, I attacked them, and they all turned and promptly destroyed me, leaving 60,000+ souls in a pit of acid.

Respawned at the bonfire and ran to the entrance of the building. Went to go fill up my coffee. When I got back a swarm of cursed animals destroyed me and my chance to get those souls.

You don't turn your back on these games.