If you are curious about the bosses… after the first one they are more like the bosses from the DLC.
I have my first complaint, fuck the way they changed durability. I just had an almost controller smashing moment because of it.
Just found out someone scheduled a wedding the weekend of the 25th. That’s like a 20-something planning a wedding during college football season.
Another party foul: Dark Souls on Steam is spelled normally, but Dark Souls II is all in caps. Tsk.
Good news about the bosses, thanks.
Have they confirmed retail copies will be Steamworks? Since (As far as I’ve seen) online sellers are all selling Steam keys I would be inclined to believe so, but since I haven’t seen it confirmed anywhere I figured I’d ask.
Mainly curious since it’s being released right around my birthday and if I can finagle a Steam copy that’d be keen. But if retail isn’t Steam then I’d probably just buy it for myself.
Steamworks is more or less the only viable solution for the multiplayer stuff with GFWL going down. Namco Bandai isn’t about to us Uplay or Origin, or try and roll their own. Supposedly Dark Souls 1 should be getting a Steamworks update soon, too.
I snuck a peek at the Edge review. There are a couple of very minor mechanical spoilers for people going in blind. What I thought was interesting is they said the game got better toward the end, rather than puttering along a little too long like Dark Souls did (before the DLC). I like games that get better as they go along like that. It’s a pleasant surprise.
I just hope no one ruins that surprise for us!
That is mostly true. Your opinion of the game will change every 10 hours or so. And you opinion after 20 hours will be different than my opinion after 20 hours depending on which parts you’ve done. This game is fucking massive. I am at around the 50 hour mark and still don’t know what to make of it.
I am about 60 hours in (on two characters though) and haven’t finished the game yet but so far, for me personally, it’s a better game than DS1. I guess, that’s all I can say without getting into spoilers. :)
Tim, you asked about invasions. Regular “red” invasions are very rare at the moment. They are not bugged either, they technically work but due to a bunch of reasons they don’t occur that often. I haven’t been “red” invaded once, for example. Other people I know, they’ve been invaded 1-2 times in about 40 hours.
There are 2 other kinds PvP invasions, they are area specific and occur all the time. One of them pulls you into their world and, regardless of the result, does not affect your progress - once PvP encounter is over, it drops you back into your world as you were. The second kind invades your world (similar to the forest area in DS1) and does affect your progress but is located in a completely optional area, so it’s more of a consensual PvP.
Personally, I like how PvP and invasions are handled this time around. So far. :)
The combat definitely has some subtle differences and requires more investment to do what you want, which makes me think that a second run through the game could be pretty rewarding once you know what you want to do. Apparently there is an item so you can respec as well, not sure if that’s true, but it’s interesting if it is there.
Anyway, I feel like DS2 requires you to specialize more in a fashion. In DS1, going with a STR scaled weapon also meant that you would probably get the stats needed for a great shield. That’s sort of the case with DS2, but you probably also want to dump points into AGL to get your poise higher and maybe affect how fast you get that shield up when it starts lowered. I feel like whatever I want to do, there’s an extra stat in there somewhere that proves useful. In DS1, END would cover stamina and equipment load, VIT now covers that. The nice thing is that stats seem to have side benefits that incrementally help other things - like VIT giving a little bit to HP.
Maybe my gut reaction is off but it feels like I have to more carefully craft my build than just going with the STR END build or whatever.
Think about it like this. Most people seem to think that the new consensual PvP level is going to be 150 instead of 120. It seems most people finish regular NG at around 150 as well. Most “old” stats’ thresholds remain pretty much the same (e.g. 40 for STR), so that’s 30 more points that you will have to either invest into VIT (to allow for heavier equipment) or ADP for better rolls, resistances, etc. Or some kind of mix depending on your planned armor and the amount of Poise you want to have. That’s why ADP also gives some Poise, just like the armor you get to wear from raising VIT.
There are more nuances, of course, but that’s the general sense I am getting from the new attribute system - take your old DS1 build and think how you are going to split your extra ~30 points between the 2 new attributes.
Now Giaddon, you can’t taunt me as I scroll through Tapatalk by posting in the spoiler thread that you really like the bosses in this game. Are you talking about the designs or is it more fun to fight them?
Angrycoder, do you still think they feel more like the DLC bosses? I might have to go back to my posts to remember how I broke down why I liked them better.
A bit of column A, a bit of Column B.
Let me think, the first five bosses I fought in Dark Souls 1, not counting the Asylum Demon, were the Taurus Demon, the Bell Gargoyles, The Capra Demon, The Gaping Dragon, and Quelaag.
In Dark Souls 2, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, and xxxxx.
Comparing them like that, my thoughts are: in Dark Souls 1, bosses were incredibly tough capstone encounters that often required you to think differently than typical fights (for example, cheesing the environment in the Capra Demon fight). They pushed you. Like, remember that second bell gargoyle joining the fight? Fuck that sucked (in the best way)
In Dark Souls 2, bosses are more like tough, unique enemies. There are more of them, and while they require discipline, patience, and observation, they haven’t pushed me to think differently the way the Dark Souls 1 bosses did, because we fight with same rules. There’s only one of those five that was Dark Souls 1 hard.
The designs are excellent, more… sinister for lack of a better word. The fight design is a lot more like the DLC, but much, MUCH easier. Jesus Christ, I must have fought Artorias dozens of times before I beat him. Nothing like that in 2.
Musings on bosses…
The highs aren’t as a high, but the lows aren’t anywhere near as low (I would say the same thing about the game as whole as well). So, there is nothing like the Capra Demon (cheesy bullshit where you fight in a closet) or Bed of Chaos. But, I also don’t think the bosses are as good as Artorias or Manus. Most of the bosses are straight up scrums all about evading and counterattacking against slightly larger than human sized opponents, which in my opinion is what makes for the most interesting fights. So overall the bosses are less gimmicky, and more just straight up fights.
There are a couple of bosses that are heavily RNG based, so if you get bad pattern they will seem almost unbeatable.
That sounds wonderful. I like the base combat a lot, and all I ever wanted was a supercharged version of that. I always come back to the word “duel,” as opposed to the original DS1 bosses. They wanted to stomp right into you.
It’s okay if they’re easy. I think Artorias took me one or two tries but it was my favorite moment in the game. I still get chills thinking about it. The design and the flow of the encounter mean more than brute force difficulty.
Oops ninja post.
This is a bummer though. I look at highs and lows a lot like you do. I generally play games for the highs and can look past the lows. However, the initial lows in DS1 were so bad (for various reasons) that they had too much of a negative impact on the rest of the game. I wouldn’t mind curbing that. Maybe I will find some highs that didn’t work for you.
Thanks for the feedback. This helps a lot.
Anyone playing as a straight-up Sorcerer? I’m curious if there has been much change to playing as a magic-user (different spells? Differing difficulty then DS1?)
In new game plus I’ve seen 2 different mages take half the health off a boss during co-op before I could even get through the boss door. This combined with the fact that you don’t have to deal with any of the needless complex shit they introduced with additional melee stats and durability makes me think magic is easy mode.
This is further backed up by my anecdotal experiences that 75% of the mages I met doing co-op before NG+ were complete garbage who understood nothing about how to avoid boss attacks or do anything but stand at point blank range and spam their strongest spell until they die.
People are already throwing down sub 2 hour speedruns. God I love the internet.
That’s amazing. I can’t even imagine that at this point.
Are these all bosses speedruns, or just the required ones? Because it seems like there are an awful lot of optional bosses in DS2, and I can’t imagine finishing every boss in the game in two hours. Though having watched a fair number of DS1 speedruns, I probably shouldn’t be surprised, hehe.
They are any % runs. But in DS1 there is only a half hour difference between the any % and the all bosses WR.
In the bit of the one I watched he took down the first 3 bosses in 12 minutes, naked, and didn’t even get his estus flask until after.