Dark Souls 2: YOU DIED HARDER

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.

Huh, so enemies stop respawning after a certain number of kills? Is that to stop you from farming? That's kinda annoying.

Killed the giant, which is a weird first boss. Noticing more glitches and odd janky stuff in this than in any other From game. Between those and the look/design and some aspects of game play, this feels almost like an off-brand knockoff Dark Souls. Still enjoying it so far.

I think it was to make it easier for someone who just couldn't get past a certain section?

I noticed with "Wolfenstein: New Order" (which I finished; it was dumb) that if you die at a certain spot enough times it gives you a prompt reminding you that you can change the difficulty at any time. I think I like that better. But "Dark Souls," to just decide at a certain arbitrary point to make it "easier" (you still have to beat the bosses!) without asking kind of misses the point of "Dark Souls." I'd rather them offer a more powerful weapon or ring you can save up to buy early game than just get rid of spawning, especially since farming, in all these games, is a thing, not least ... to make things easier, by leveling up. I guess there's a reason the no-spawning thing was dropped in later From games.

Is this no-spawning thing the case for the whole game, or just early game? And if they wanted to make things easier for players, then why have the health bar shrink every time you die? I'd much rather have *more* enemies and a full health bar. And honestly, who would play DS2 if they didn't play any of the other games first? And if they played any of the other games, they should know what they're in for.

There's weapon degradation in this too, right? I've been using the fire longsword I got in a cave as I build up my levels, and I could have sworn at one point its life meter was decreasing, but then it seemed to be full again.

It's the whole game, but you can use an item to reset the area (and make them harder!): http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/bonfire-ascetic

I think this was when the conversation around Dark Souls being a difficult game was at its height, so they experimented with a bunch of weird mechanics around it. There's also the 'Covenant of champions', where you can opt in to making the game much harder off the bat, lol: http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/company-of-champions

I think you need to repair weapons at a blacksmith in this game? Which is a pain. Possibly intended to encourage you to carry and use multiple weapons?

That said, I did appreciate the lack of spawning when it came to the Pursuer. I died to him enough times that it was a relief when I didn't have to bother killing enemies at bottlenecks on the way back to the fight.

Still, I still think From got rid of the respawning to make things *harder*, to prevent too much farming. I mean, why would they do this one thing to make things harder, when dying enough to prevent enemies from spawning also means your health bar has been shrinking? Especially at this stage in the game, when humanity is limited, and that (afaict) is the only thing you can use to restore the health bar to its full capacity. And even then, it doesn't even top it off for you! I've also encountered a bunch of glitches and other bullshit that have messed with the game. For example, screwy hit boxes: I've been damaged by enemies when I'm *behind* them! Also, as I was struggling with the Pursuer I learned there was indeed a summon, so I used one of my precious humanities, led him to the battle ... and he got stuck behind the fog gate. Wtf?

The most shocking thing is that this *is* the "fixed" version of the game.

("make things easier" I meant.)

OK, "Sekiro" is still my least favorite, for now, so far, but at least it runs well. This one, the design and execution is just so ... like a Dark Souls knockoff. And speaking of which, at the start of Heide Tower of Flame Power, I'm pretty sure I fell off the path to my death as much of if not more than I died to the giant knights and the white knights (all with pretty impressive homing blades). I need to crank up ADP to get i-frames, right? Because my rolling ain't really getting me far.

Oh, another thing that seems new/annoying with this is ... infinite aggro range? That is, once you engage an enemy, they basically follow you wherever you go, forcing you either to fight them again and again, or (if you're insane) all at once. There's no more option of just running through areas you've had enough of, afaict. I thought I could do that when I was running to the Pursuer fight, and then I learned that you're not invulnerable when you enter fog gates. They just swarmed and killed me before I even got to the boss.

My current strategy, at least at this tower of fire stage, which doesn't seem that long, is to repeatedly clear out an area specifically to stop the enemies from spawning. if they're going to have infinite aggro range, and if the game's going to make you fight them over and over again before you get to the boss, and not let you run past them, and not even give you invincibility when you open the fog gate, then I'm just going to kill them aall and use it for farming until it won't let me anymore. and then I'll have a clear run to the boss.

Invaders loved being able to backstab someone as they were going into the fog gate, lol.

And yeah, you need to level adaptability just to get a normal Dark Souls roll, which was dumb.

Yeah, add that to the litany of pain in the butt stuff that seems to be there just to be a pain in the butt.

Oh, I see, the Pursuer is just going to randomly pop up now and kill me? And now he's got magic ranged attacks? Good one, Dark Souls 2.

Speaking of which, this game seems to punish you for melee builds. Lots of advantages to ranged attacks in general. I guess I should buy a bunch more arrows.

Well, he is called the Pursuer for a reason.

He should be called the Just Randomly Shows Upper Because he is Too Fat to Pursuer Me Through Doorways