2861

The invisible things? That’s so far into the level! By that point, I’d not call it farming anymore. In the hunter-gatherer vs farmer analogy, I’d call that hunting more than farming. :)

Is the Blessed Hammer a Miranda hammer? You should be able to find or buy a mace pretty cheap.

I think it’s just a leveled up Mace basically. Not sure what a Miranda hammer is.

2862

He’ll be King Obama if he’s still in office in 2018. ;)

Be truly badass and 2-hand your mace, lol. Btw, it’s fun playing vicariously through you. Thanks for your updates. :)

2863

Not the ghosty things. Aren’t there slugs beneath the walkways after the reapers? Where those explodey guys are. Unless that’s in 4-3.

I meant Mirdan hammer, the big 2 handed spike hammer thing.

2864

I think it’s fire that the skeletons are weak to, have you tried a fireball spell or are your spell slots all full up.

2865

Well, it all ended in tears. I almost made it past the 3rd Grim Reaper in the level several times, but that ambush is set up so awkwardly, and if you target the wrong thing, or mistime it even a little, you’re either dead to the beam in front of you or the homing soulstrike behind you. Very infuriating. By the end of the night, I was dying repeatedly to the golden skeletons because I was so impatient I couldn’t even separate them properly to take them out one by one anymore.

My night ended with me landing on the first reaper as he zapped me in mid air as I was jumping towards him. The first reaper! I knew that was the perfect time to call it a night. With no souls to my name. Goodbye Demon’s Souls. I will miss thee.

Some final thoughts for now.

A few things I absolutely love about this game that I hope Dark Souls keeps:

  1. The intro movie. Not since Fallout 2 has there been an intro movie I watch Every. Single. Time. (At least up to the title card). Such a great intro. It sets up the world, the atmosphere and gets me in the mood so effectively.

  2. The loading screens. Those loading screens filled with details showing various characters that I’ve never noticed within the game (though upon reflection, I have met quite a few of them by now) look so much more life like and interesting in the loading screens. It really again brings life to the world.

  3. The big interconnected level building with walkways and cliffs and tunnels and overhangs and ramparts. The world building and design here is so much more than a simple corridor like Bioware games. In essence, that might be what it boils down to, but it never feels like that. It feels like so much more.

The only time the game kind of breaks that illusion is when I fall down a cliff. Suddenly the cheesy effect breaks the illusion and I’m suddenly in a Bioware corridor RPG. Noooooo! Never fall down cliffs!

2866

Yeah, it’s important to walk away once in a while. I don’t mean to imply its easy, I probably took weeks on that part, all told.
Also, I never learned to bounce between the lasers quite right. I just got the dark silver(?) shield, which has huge magic resist, and ate a face of laser each time.

2867

I watched that Demon’s Souls intro every single time I played. Dark Souls doesn’t have one :(

2868

That is one of the hardest moments in the game imo. Kinda like the archers in Dark Souls. I eventually learned that you can easily run past them. You can even come back and snipe them from behind.

2869

Thanks for all the tips, which definitely helped me to get started. I like that each Gecko is important and unique - that said, I have done a pretty terrible job at getting them. I had killed all of them in my first few encounters, then I made a disaster out of 2-2, especially the nest, which I completely blew twice. Haven’t tried the last 2 times yet.

I’ve always played online, and I didn’t have much trouble handling world tendency. It’s absolutely possible to trigger all white and black tendency events in a single playthrough if you know what you’re doing. You should also know that tendency shifts won’t take effect until you return to the Nexus.

Given the game’s age, and the lack of summoning opportunities currently, and being bound by online server settings, that it seems very hard to get pure white (at least) tendencies. Black is more malleable since you can just keep commiting suicide in body form. I think I’ll play my first playthrough online, just to get as complete an experience as currently possible, and then try NG+ offline to ensure I get to see the tendency events (which sound awesome). I think it’s highly likely that I’ll stick with this now for the required playthroughs to get the 100% trophy.

But I haven’t seen any summoning signs the entire time I’ve been playing, and haven’t been invaded at all despite being in body form for the first bunch of worlds after phalanx - cleared out my first 4 worlds without dying until I made a mistake on an elevator (doh), so it was nice that some Dark Souls skills are portable. That said, I started getting my butt handed to me in 1-3 by the Ninjas, so I jumped to 3-1 instead. Haven’t died there yet, but the Mind Flayers freak me out - so cool to see that D&D icon in a game.

Some other thoughts:

  • I actually really like the equipment load restriction (separate from carry restriction) and think it adds a lot in a game of this nature. Surprised that was changed for Dark Souls

  • I’m not really a fan of the soul form HP penalty. That said, I haven’t bothered to use any ephemeral eyes, so maybe I should - but I hate wearing the Cling Ring, since I’m playing predominately a mage so I like the MP regen and the Thief Ring (which I never used in Dark Souls, but it seems almost vital in Demon’s Souls).

  • I actually like the fact that there aren’t as many items, no armor upgrades, etc. Loot always feels like busywork for me. That said, I have encountered virtually none (!) despite being level 40 and traveling through what seems like the most logical path through the game (1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 1-3). Almost no weapons, zero armor, zero talisman so no ability to cast Miracles, only 3-4 shields and two of those with Str requirements that put them out of reach, 1 bow with a fairly high dex requirement). That seems unduly limiting for supporting multiple playing styles.

I don’t think vitality is that important in either game, though, it’s more important in Demon’s Souls than Dark Souls because vitality increases your item burden (how much you can carry, not equip). But you really should be avoiding attacks, not tanking them. Endurance is the most important stat to me, and I always prioritize pumping that up to 40 as quickly as possible, usually only deviating to strength, dexterity, magic, or faith because I want to equip a specific weapon or spell.

It wasn’t great for PvP, but heavy armor/vitality builds in Dark Souls did well in PvE. In that game I always pumped up my END to 40, and then once you had whatever requirements for your primary weapons/shields, my points all went into Vitality to 40, since there didn’t seem to be anywhere better for them to go (I completely skipped magic though, because I hated buying spell uses).

  • In Demon’s Souls, I’m loving magic - in part because it’s new to me, but it also does so well in the early levels because MPs can be replenished freely (slowly). It also seems really powerful in those early levels, as you and others have said. Now I have a +5 Dragon Long Sword to be more balanced. Still don’t have a bow though, which hurt in 1-3.

  • miss Estus flasks, but not as much as I expected, since the world is generous with herbs. It has one noticeable effect though - when you were in an area that was too difficult for you in Dark Souls, there was no real downside to just hanging out there and experimenting and trying to break through the brick wall — in Demon’s Souls, you can quickly clean out your inventory since your healing supply doesn’t auto-replenish. Somewhat balanced by the MP regeneration mechanic, but not entirely.

  • backstabbing seems far easier than in Dark Souls, at least in terms of size of hitbox. Seems like locking on, rolling towards an opponent and swinging is almost an auto-backstab - glad they toned that down a bit in Dark Souls. Mobility and rolling around is clearly the “right” way to play Demon’s Souls too, while Dark Souls accommodated more varied styles (although you still wanted to avoid the “fat roll”).

  • level design has been excellent so far – it’s a real strength of this series.

  • The environments/setting are made relevant, and you need to prepare/act differently based upon your location. In many RPGs, location is only relevant for temporarily offering different graphics. You need to figure out the enviroments in D. Souls.

  • I also love how everything feels “life-sized” instead of diminished in scale. That may limit the overall land mass that can be included, but it adds so much immersion that the compromise is worthwhile. More than anything, thise series has really changed my perspective on “scale” – how much more I enjoy a realistic scale, and wish more RPGs didn’t shy away from rendering enviroments in that manner.

2870

A little warning: the Dragon weapons don’t scale with stats at all. So, keep in mind that now that you hit +5, you might hit a wall with it damage-wise, and might eventually want to explore something else.

2871

Yeah, I was happy to find one for that reason, since I didn’t want to put more than the minimum into strength or dex. The plan is definitely to use magic-scaling weapons as my primaries.

2872

Blueblood Sword now and forever!

2873

You beat 2-3? My mind, it is officially boggled. But don’t tell me anything. I’m sure when I play the game again one day, I’ll notice something about 2-3 that I’ve never noticed before. Still, it seems so impossible.

2874

Yeah, there’s at least one similar level in Dark Souls, so I did that one pretty quickly - in fact, I did all of the levels quickly, until hitting 1-3, and then took my time in 3-1 because of anxiety, lol. I also missed the last key in 3-1 for a while, which took me a long time to find, but the Flayers never got me.

For 2-3, watch blood stains for clues, if you don’t otherwise want any help. It’s pretty straight-forward, so don’t over think it.

2875

So it’s been great to finally catch up on this game - I’m basically done; just stalling to do some of the black world tendency encounters. Getting the white world tendency has been impossible online given the current state of the game - you’d basically have to blast through several worlds in one go. White character tendency is also difficult.

I basically went through the worlds in order, with a diversion at the end: 1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 1-3, 3-1, 3-2, 3-3, 4-1 then skipped to 5-1, 5-2, 5-3, so I have the remains of 1-4 and 4-2/4-3 left.

Given my extensive Dark Souls experience, I didn’t really have any difficulty – the NPC version of the 3-3 boss was actually the most difficult for my almost pure mage build. I think I killed all of the others first try, with the exception of 4-1 who killed me once because I didn’t realize his ranged capabilities (even though he’s actually a breeze), and Flamelurker, who took 3 or 4 tries given my character stats at the time.

1-3 is probably my favorite - as in Dark Souls Undead Parish/Burg - the engine is really fantastic at battles with armed opponents. I didn’t mind world 5 as much as I expected, but its reputation had lowered my expectations - it’s basically a better Blighttown. Great level design overall - most consistent in quality than Dark Souls (although the only levels in Dark Souls I find uninspired are the ones in the expansion pack and the lava portions of Lost Izalith).

Other things I like about Demon’s Souls - I grew to like the herbs more than I expected, as rather than weakening you by imposing a cost on retries, they actually allow you to be much more capable since farming herbs is so easy in 1-3. I do love MPs too - using spells on common enemies in Dark Souls seems far too costly. The “black phantom” and Nexus NPC intrigue stuff seems more polished than anything comparable in Dark Souls. I do like that there’s more enemies in Dark Souls that don’t respawn, giving an additional sense of progress - I was really happy to discover that some enemies didn’t respawn in 5-2, and wish there were more “killable” enemies.

It’ll be interesting to see how Dark Souls 2 evolves the series - while I’m concerned about the stated focus on greater accessibility, there’s no denying that a lot of this series actually depends upon wiki access to be comprehensible – tendencies, upgrade quirks, the secret doors in Dark Souls, rare farming items, sparky tradeables, crystal lizards, access to many special items/weapo ns. What I don’t want are NPC “exclamation marks” and other tools to make NPC motivations, etc. more apparent.

2876

Wow, loved the game, but it definitely has the most annoying requirement for the platinum trophy that I’ve seen – the pure Bladestone isn’t even in the game, other than as a 0.05% drop in pure black tendency on World 4.2? …that might be too annoying, even for my OCD. Bad enough the game takes almost 4 playthroughs to get all the other trophies.

2877

Well, after 4 playthroughs and 160 hours, I’m finally done with Demon’s Souls. Overall, I think I like its simplicity and level design better than Dark Souls. Its upgrade system wasn’t as well designed though - far too many ores, most with almost no utility - and farming Bladestone and Pulp/Marrowstone was remarkably inconvenient.

Going back to Demon’s Souls did give me the opportunity to enjoy spell-casting and miracles – were those even really viable in Dark Souls, without magic points? It seems like it would have been a real pain to have to buy every spell cast, with the most powerful spells very limited in availability per playthrough. Certainly seems like it would play differently than just spamming Soul Ray, and I used that or Homing Soul Arrow to get rid of most bosses quickly, even on 4th playthrough. And 2nd chance and anti-magic field were also pretty crucial, and I also used Hiding a lot for Crystal Gecko hunting. Makes me wonder how different my experience with Dark Souls would have been if I’d tried to incorporate some magic, but I played that game through 4 times as well and never felt the need.

Ultimately, I grew to like the tendency systems and didn’t care much about body/soul form, as my character was essentially a glass cannon so I grew accustomed to expecting to die if hit, so I just ensured I was hit infreqruently. Also liked the herbs better than the Estus flasks, in the end, and the shorter travel distances to locations.

Both fantastic games.

2878

Wow! Well you really got your money’s worth with this game I guess.

I’m a few hours into the game and still trying to work out what’s going on. I just beat the big black ooze thing (Phalanx) so finally feel like I’ve made some progress. The first couple of hours were spent playing the same section repeatedly.

2879

As you may have seen as a message “the real demon’s souls starts here.”. It took me hours to make it to that first boss, but so great once things click and you realize that you, the player, are leveling up, not just your character.

2880

I also preferred the story of Demon’s Souls to that in Dark Souls, which I found inconsistent and far too convoluted and self referential. I read an interview with the lead designer who in translation stated part of the inspiration for Dark Souls’ narrative were memories as a child of the confusion and miscomprehension of reading poorly translated or understood Western mythological literature. The sense that Dark Souls conceals from the player even the most basic motivations and narrative elements made it just to opaque for me to care. And this with both games despite being almost completely western in “theme” nevertheless giving the sense of this being a veneer for an undoubtedly Japanese game.