Agreed. I actually thought WT was pretty cool, I just got sick of unplugging my PS3 to shift it how I wanted.
Humanity seems a bit blander than WT, though I guess I find Dark Souls in general a bit Blander than Demon’s Souls. Though I think that is largely because Demon’s Souls was so fresh. It’s a bit Like Skate and Skate 2, in that while the second game is clearly better, you can never recreate the joy of learning for the first time.
curst
2702
I agree with most of this (IMO Tower Knight and Adjudicator are remarkably similar), but I have to give Dark Souls the nod if only because of Sif. That is easily my favorite single battle in the entire series to date. Everything about it clicked for me: great challenge, great environment, great music, an OMG-sized wolf wielding a WTF-sized sword in its teeth getting all wire-fu on you… perfect stuff.
You make me sad that I had such an easy time with him. :/
I think the boss design was more varied in Demon’s Souls then it was Dark Souls.
I’d say it was about the same. Dark Souls just has a lot more bosses overall, with a few being remixes, and a couple being common enemies later, and a lot being optional.
Boss stuff
[spoiler]Sif is a great boss, and really fucks you up if your playstyle up to that point involved blocking attacks and rebuking. Shit doesn’t work.
Same can be said for the last boss which is unlike anything in both games.
Iron Golem is essentially Tower Knight 2.0, subtract massive area attacks, subtracted arena space, add falls on all sides. Ankle weakness remains the same.
O&S was unique(and cruel), two totally different bosses at the same time, two stages with two different outcomes depending on which you killed first.
There is also Invisible Chick and Infinite Hallway Man.
[/spoiler]
TimJames
2705
With this world tendency event going on until January 2nd, is now the best time to jump into Demon’s Souls? I’d prefer to wait another month or two so I can wrap up some PC games, but I’m flexible.
I’ll be borrowing a PS3 from a friend. To use the online features, does he need to set up an account himself and associate it with the console or anything? I’m not sure he’s done that since he just uses it to watch Blu-rays. If the answer is yes, I’ll ask him to do that first.
spoilerish if you don’t want to know anything about the game before you play some specifics regarding tendency below!
Game stuff
The tendency events are… strange and in my experience a little buggy. White tendency makes the game a little easier and usually opens up areas you can’t get to otherwise (if 100% pure white tendency is reached). It’s good if you want to explore these areas (usually very small but open access to items you can’t get otherwise) though you’ll likely want to follow the wiki to take much advantage of it.
The issue with white tendency is that you only have one chance to achieve it in a world in any single play through. Screw it up and you might not be able to recover.
If you’d rather go at it blind then it probably won’t make too much difference as your world tendency generally moves towards white (or remains neutral) as you progress, unless you do things that you should probably know otherwise if you’ve played Dark Souls.
I always found the events buggy in that they wouldn’t always result in 100% tendency so most of the effects of the event were often lost for me.
You will need to log into a PSN account to play online. I would be surprised if he hasn’t done this as I believe the initial setup process has you do it. Also if he uses Netflix on his PS3 he’ll already have an account as you need to be logged into your PSN account to use Netflix on the PS3.
I was just looking for either an overwhelming “yes!” or any other response, which would mean I’d probably wait.
But your spoiler tag brings up another question: for the best experience, should I avoid the wiki? I know that’s a tricky question that each player must answer. On many games I’m quick to check a FAQ any time I have a question or I’m stuck on a quest. That’s probably what I’ll do unless someone wants to make a strong case against it. Otherwise I might be on my own, since I don’t usually like to ask a bunch of gameplay questions in forum threads.
That really is a question each player has to answer himself. For me it was easy, Demon’s Souls (and Dark Souls) is a game of mood, theme and ambiance, not really of story. I don’t particularly find much joy in discovering obtuse hidden mechanics either. Lastly, I know my gaming habits, when I finish a game I don’t often go back to it (multiplayer centrict games excluded), even when I’ve tried in the past I rarely stick with it for long. With that it was a no brainer for me and I used the wiki, I’d rather experience all those features the first time as there likely wouldn’t be a second for me.
If you don’t have a problem missing out on significant parts of the game or don’t mind replaying again later then skip it. If you’d rather have more information to plan out your first play through then check up on it. Personally I don’t feel like using a guide for these games loses much, you still step through the game scared shitless that death is around the next corner either way.
Thanks. I think I’m the same way as you. I’ll probably give it my best shot and then consult the wiki as soon as I get frustrated, kind of like playing an adventure game.
I do worry about missing important parts since I’ll only play this once. I’ll ask more about that when I’m closer to playing it, along with build advice. I was just curious about the spoiler question.
FWIW, world tendency is probably the reason I finished Dark Souls and not Demon’s Souls. I made it a moderate way into Demon’s Souls, read too much about the tendency system, and found myself with an uncomfortable choice between ignoring it entirely and knowing I was missing out on something or trying to obsessively game it. Paralysis won out, and I was distracted by other things.
So count that as a vote to stay the hell away from world tendency if you’re anything like me. :> OTOH, if you’re already familiar with the general mechanics from Dark Souls, gaming the world tendency system may not be as much of a burden.
As I said, in some ways, Demon’s Souls is quite a bit more punishing than Dark Souls and what makes it worse is that you may never know that you screwed yourself out of something and won’t be able to get that item, spell, NPC, whatever, until you complete the game and start your next play through. Also the game forces you to make choices that means certain items or spells will be unavailable to you until a subsequent playthrough (I think a minimum of 3 complete and a partial fourth playthrough is required to get everything in the game on a single character).
I’ve tried to keep up with the Demon’s vs. Dark debate. Regardless of which one is “better,” perhaps it’d be smarter to start with Dark Souls specifically for this reason? Or will it be too hard to go back for other reasons?
Feel free to ask questions here. Besides, most of us haven’t played Demon’s Souls in a while, so it’ll be like getting ancient lore filtered through leaky memories that may not be accurate.
Overall, I’d say you should avoid the wiki, since I assume you aren’t going to try to 100% the game, and probably won’t mind if you miss something here and there. However, a couple exceptions:
- I would look up where the various shortcuts are, because those will make your experience less frustrating. Since you can re-visit areas, there isn’t much you can completely miss that isn’t tendency related, and the discovery process is part of the fun.
- There are a couple things you can miss forever, like an NPC who can get himself killed and therefore you lose the items he was carrying forever, or until new game+ (Ostrava, if you want to look him up), but it’s not very common.
- I would also look up Yurt, because he has a related side quest that can make the game a lot harder.
- When you get body form, just suicide in the Nexus. Read up on the World Tendency system if you want to understand why.
- If you really fuck up, like accidentally aggro-ing an NPC in the Nexus, shut off your PS3 immediately (PS button menu), before the game saves. Yes, it’s save-scumming, but you can really screw yourself because you accidentally pushed the wrong button. I always face away from NPCs after I talk to them in case I accidentally hit an attack button too.
- There’s no shame in reading the wiki of an area if you’re stuck or you’ve completed it though, just to see what you missed. Keep in mind that the levels aren’t supposed to be done in order (1-1, 1-2, 1-3, etc.), so stuck in one level might mean you should try a different level for a while.
Anyways, that’s all the unsolicited advice I’ll force upon you.
If you educate yourself about the system BEFORE you start playing it’s not hard to take advantage of it and get the tendency events you want. To make this easier you mostly have to play completely offline though.
What I’m saying is deciding to play without the knowledge from the beginning (thinking you’ll get to it when you hit a stumbling block) really means accepting that you’ll likely screw yourself on your first playthrough. Completely unbeknownst to you, you’ll do something, seemingly inconsequential that might make some part of the game very difficult or unachievable later on in the same playthrough.
I might add that you may want to look up the weapon upgrade system and look up the paths for individual weapons, they differ, which is a annoying and was changed in Dark Souls.
Dave47
2716
Personally, I think you’re far more likely to “miss important parts” by reading the wiki. The emotional response triggered by the danger and uncertainty was a big part of what made my first gaming sessions so memorable. The wiki negates that feeling completely.
If you hit some major stumbling points, you can ask for help in this thread, and hopefully get a response tailored to not give too much else away. The wiki doesn’t do a good job providing you “the bare minimum” information to get past hurdles, and often throws tons of excess “spoilerish” information at you. It’s a great resource, but I would avoid the wiki during your first play-though.
Yeah, weapon upgrades are one of the big, unexplained black boxes, and really can’t be understood without some help from outside sources.
At the very least, look up what the boss souls can do. Most have multiple uses, so you don’t want to use up a boss soul on a sword that you’ll never use, when it could’ve become a miracle you would use, etc.
Is that so different than Dark Souls? I’m now literally unable to upgrade my Pyro flame higher than +9 because one trainer left, I killed the second one, and the third one doesn’t show up until you get to +10. And the Soul of Sif gets used in three separate items.
Well, for the pyro flame, I mean, you killed a trainer. If you’re killing NPCs, you should expect to get a little screwed.
(BTW, the conditions for Quelana appearing apparently aren’t well understood, so it’s possible that she could still show up without flame +10. To be fair, it’s easy to assume you’re supposed to kill Eiyingi)
Ostrava is really the worst in Demon’s Souls, in my opinion. He can die offscreen, without you even seeing him, at which point if you die more than once, his items are lost forever. On new game+ I just killed the sucker right off the bat to make sure I got his key.
He didn’t seem like a very useful NPC when I first met him, he looked like a monster I’d just been killing repeatedly, and he was blocking a bonfire. What did he expect?
