Dark Souls 2: YOU DIED HARDER

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.

I beat the game tonight and the final boss went down in one attempt. My +10 Halberd and dodging skills made short work of whatever that one monster was.

By the end some of those giant enemies got really annoying. The ones in the Dragon Shrine, the giant ones w infinite stamina. They suck.

Picked up Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin on the cheap from Steam last week. Graphically it looks way more impressive, and I appreciate a lot of changes to enemy placement. At least I was, until I ended up in the basement of Sinner's Rise and what was once a giant pain-in-the-butt monster has now been swapped out for a much faster model that has 4 ARMS each with swords and can attack from the front and the rear.

Made it to the DLC areas in SOTFS. They are really really good! I knew they were hyped to be better than the vanilla game but that is definitely the case.

Now only if I can kill this giant sabertooth tiger...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kr7KDCsIws

i've tried like all of these games inc most recently bloodborne and idk why but there's something about them that just doesn't click with me. i really think it's something about the way it handles - it feels so cumbersome + lumbering. it's def not the difficulty bc there are lots of difficult games that i greatly enjoy. but they tend to feel more kinetic and rapid maybe instead of methodical? anyone have any insight into this bc i'd love to love them but idk they're so dreary and the gameplay is just not fun to me :( :( :(

DS3 and Bloodborne are the fastest, movement and gameplay-wise, but they're not for everybody I guess. Although maybe you're trying to use a slow weapon/build with a fast playstyle? Have you tried using small weapons and light armor?

1) starting with Dark Souls 2 is the worst idea. either start with 1 for the incredible world design or 3 for the modern gameplay (and incredible world design). DS2 is the cheapest, most frustrating entry.

2) moves are slow because they are deliberate. everything you do has weight, there is a commitment to your actions, not unlike the first Castlevania, where the slow yet powerful whip & jump stopped you from slashy slashy your way through the game. you can't play Castlevania like it is Ninja Gaiden.

Dreary is part-n-parcel with this series tho. Love it or leave it!

the feeling of dread and isolation is one of the most special things about this series. they evoke it through the game mechanics themselves, not just the art design. this is where DS2 fails (you can actually perma-kill enemies & the world is unconnected - it is fundamentally different from the other games) but the other games succeed so well. it is in not having a world map, insta saves, or fast travel. it is in how you learn the world and experience it. being at the isolated bottom of Blighttown and being so far from the start of the game, so far from the safety of home. if you traverse to Blighttown via the usual route then you experience a similar panic at The Depths when getting cursed and having your HP now cut in half. yet the game provides a number of methods for the player to overcomes this challenge, it is not unfair about it. fwiw Demon's Souls (the true origin of the series) already featured this cruel misfortune, a penalty it incurs at any death.

in DS2 you are not limited to a scant few healing items (up-gradable via boss challenge ala DS1) but can buy and stockpile hundreds of healing & buff items (tbf Demon's Souls had this too but was much more stingier about it). DS2 has warp-able bonfires from the start of the game because the levels are not holistically planned out in that way (and the other way around). you never get a sense that everything is connected because it isn't.

DS1 is about discovering a world which has a coherent architecture and an integrity to it on both gameplay & story levels. DS2 is about playing more and more levels, more and more variations on the Dark Souls gameplay. which is not a bad thing, and people are free to prefer it. personally i like the first more.

Something I don't know the answer to but would love to learn before (if) the first game finally comes to Switch: if you are, say, cursed by a giant rat or farting frog or whatever, and your HP is halved, do you know how to fix that? Do you know to head back to Stumpville and find the magic orange vine, or is it totally blind trial and error?

good question

For (another) example, I've seen a little bit of youtube gameplay, and someone might say "this enemy is easy to dispatch if you apply the magic flame to the giant sword you could have picked up from the merchant at the bottom of the well," which (in this made up example) would require you to have not only found the merchant, but bought the giant sword, found the magic flame and known to apply it to the sword to fight this specific enemy. How would you know to do that?

trial and error, look it up, or just play the game without trying to min-max every encounter. i haven't played these games still but i've never gotten the impression that they're about that.

It's just that I've seen a couple of examples of (per the above) getting cursed or poisoned and basically being stuck like that until you do (xyz). That seems no fun.

It lightens up in the later games, but there is a for real unforgiving, sadistic, arcane (how does any of this work?!) quality to Dark Souls 1 that won’t appeal to everyone but is absolutely what makes it special.

I was cursed (permanent half health until cured) in the deepest depths against a boss and just could not do it. A zillion tries. Researched online/talked to some friends and found out about the cure. Brutally worked my way back to the top. Got it. Explored some other areas, powered up, and cut my way back down and did it.

Some of this was legitimately painful and dread inducing but the fucking satisfaction you get when you accomplish it has been nothing like I’ve ever felt in video games before or since.

There were legitimately times I couldn’t face that game unless I was drunk.

Curse in DS1 is really the only thing that persists like this, and you meet an NPC early on who can fix it (or sell you can item that can). The only trick might be getting back to him.

I definitely had a similar experience getting cursed in the Depths and having to trek back to get un-cursed, but hey, it taught me you can run by all the enemies if necessary!

getting cursed early on and feeling like this stupid fucking game is actively trying to get you to ragequit is one of the fundamental masochistic pleasures of dark souls imo

curing the Curse is done via the NPC in the church, which is one of the main destinations you are given upon arriving. talk to all NPCs you see and if they are merchants browse their wares. you don't really make it to the curse place without getting to this church. the basement key is actually on some stairs on the way to the church. the game world is layed out in a logistic order, if you are progressing as normally, you will come across the cure long before the curse itself.

as for "this enemy is easy if you apply magic flame to giant sword" imo this is never really the case. if you don't know how to fight and enemy you will get wrecked no matter what item you use. furthermore the time you spend chasing down X "OP weapon" is much better spent fighting the boss, learning how to dodge their attacks.

Well, yeah. There are people who can beat this game in their undies with no weapons ... just like their characters! (Har.) What I don't get is how people figure shit out. Is it just OCD trial and error ad infinitum? For example, if there is a NPC merchant selling a curse cure, do you know that? How? Will he tell you? Is it called "Curse-be-Gone" or something, or is it vague, like Frogsbane or something like that? If you are cursed, how do you know to go back to the merchant? Again, trial and error? How in the world would someone know that?

there are large and extremely well documented wikis for all of this stuff

https://darksouls.wiki.fextralife.com/Dark+Souls+Wiki
http://darksouls.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Souls_Wiki

NPC merchant selling the cure for curse needs only to be talked to. a list comes up w all his items and each item has descriptive text that tells the lore and the game function, telling you exactly what it does.

OK, that clears it up. So you just have to be aware of who has what, should it be needed, and be thorough in your interactions.

there are definitely some bosses with e.g. elemental weaknesses or resistances that make a significant difference. and, as far as getting a powerful weapon, for DS1 in particular if you don't know how to get a strong weapon e.g. drake sword or astora straight sword, the early part of the game is so much harder. doing undead parish with a regular weapon on my first playthru still haunts me.

wikis are an essential (and surely intended) resource for some of the more involved parts of the game. i am sure you could muddle through without them but really no reason.

yeah why bother trying to remember which merchant carries what when you can just check online

Well, for example, I am playing Doom for the first time, and it's tons of fun, but I have been very careful about balancing how much I look up versus how much I discover. Discovery is part of the game, but of course it can be frustrating, and you can lose a lot as well. Looking things up helps, but you ruin that element of exploration and surprise. I guess the challenge is knowing when to stop and look something up and when to just keep pushing through.

My favorite DS1 wiki, it has the appropriate level of austerity:

http://darksouls.wikidot.com/purging-stone

(^looking at that item's in-game text should give you an idea if what you're in for -- the game isn't going to hold your hand, but it's not willfully obscure either)

On my first playthrough I made rules for myself about looking up mechanics but not areas or strategies, unless I got stuck.

The thing that always gets me with all sorts of games is the feeling that I'm missing really awesome and fun parts of the game just because I don't know they exist without looking them up!

You're definitely not going to find or do everything the first time through. Better to surrender to that, the sense of discovery when you do find secrets on your own is great. Althouuuugh I guess I am glad that I looked up certain things (like the Painted World...although that can be a tough cul-de-sac to get out of, so maybe you're not meant to find it the first time through?).

I tend to explore as much as I can then use wikis when stuck/baffled, and to try not to feel bad about doing so! Later runs can be tried with no assistance or with trying to find everything or joining certain covenants etc.

I didn't do much of anything online or with covenants in the original, so that's gonna be the thing in the remaster.

its all about exploring. you always hear about the difficulty or combat but exploring is at least 50% of the game. the world is built so that there are paths of least resistance but also a ton of entirely optional areas that make going back and replaying a joy.

I have a friend who plays a lot of video games and still won't try DS because of its reputation as 'the hardest game ever'. It's really not that hard!

It's very rare that I read a book a second time, let alone several times, and it's a lot easier and faster to read a book than to play many of these games. The idea of finishing Dark Souls or anything like that and thinking hey, that was fun, I'm going to do it all over again from the beginning for 140 hours to see what I missed ... that seems unlikely. That's why I get fomo.

I'm usually the same way, but by the end you've gotten so much better and learned everything, so it's actually really tempting to go back to the beginning and cruise through it. You'll see!

no need for NG when you get to the final boss in DS. as long as you don't kill him you can explore to your heart's content.

Dipped a toe into Dark Souls 2 (First Sin edition, or whatever they call it). Already it just feels and looks ... different from DS1 and DS2.

DS3, I meant.

This game really leans into large groups of enemies, doesn't it? And dark rooms? At least it does so far. Bad reputation or no, it's fine so far (very early game still, haven't hit a boss yet), and I like how even the least loved From game still had some new ideas that made their way into future From games.

There was meant to be a much heavier gameplay emphasis on using torches to light up dark rooms that was somewhat present in one fairly difficult early area, but had to be scaled back because of technical challenges for the rest of the game

Is that why there are things to light everywhere? I think I'm at a dark room area that I should probably light up before exploring.