Nioh has ruined you.
I know…
Nice! Looks lovely. I’m penciling that in for my Summer 2017.
The key to the crabs, and most things in this game, is to get right up in their business. I mean crawl up in there and swing away.
On my quest to eventually finish this game, I finally soloed this guy after 4 tries.
Overall still not sure how I feel about this game, all these months later.
I liked the Pontiff, it’s a good boss. I’d say there’s definitely some good stuff ahead of you.
Amazingly, FROM is actually releasing PS4 Pro support with the new DLC, despite all indications to the contrary previously. Details are sketchy, but it seems like it will both unlock FPS from 30 and be closer to 60, although not locked consistently, in addition to other improvements, which is amazing.
Maybe there’s also still hope for Bloodborne to get a similar patch then?
The DLC is not off to a good start in the first 45 minutes. A bunch of overwrought filth and decay with one fun enemy to fight.
minor spoilers/sarcastic bitching
Oh, enemies crawling around and stabbing your ankles! And look, a swamp! But here’s something new, an annoying aerial enemy that prevents you from exploring.
Maybe they ran out of ideas. I’ve barely scratched it yet so I’ll go to bed and give it a try tomorrow.
I don’t get it. I don’t see the bonfires that lead to the DLC. Is the DLC not out for PS4 yet?
EDIT: Uh, no I get it I’m dumb, you have to select to download the DLC separately from the store even if you have the season pass and even if there was a 3GB patch on monday.
I had the season pass and didn’t have to do anything extra - I just launched the game and went into the new boss of the last expansion and the new bonfire was there.
I’m finding it really challenging. I only played for 15 minutes to just poke around (@ShivaX and I are going to play tomorrow night in earnest) but I’m finding it really difficult - probably because I’m rusty as fuck though. I can clear out the creepy skeleton mages and crawler things but there is a big dude that is crushing me. I ran into that brick wall 3 or 4 times but having to clear out the skeletons each time was getting annoying, so I’ll wait until I can co-op this stuff, which should make it hundreds of times more enjoyable.
Oh just wait until you get to the next part. And then the first boss.
So I played the DLC up to the final boss. Ugh. @TimJames is perfectly right: there is such a thing as a Dark Souls burn out and I’m feeling it bad! Nioh is also to blame. Nioh is an easier game, but it’s partly because movement is so much better and everything in the world is much easier to “read”. Some of my thoughts on coming back to Dark Souls:
- Why is running bound to the circle button and not x?
- Why has the kick move not been given a decent prompt instead of forward+attack that fires off when it feels like it, often when you don’t want it to?
- Again, why is everything is so much harder to read? Aldrich’s roiling mass of stuff with weird hit detection is a good example… I hate him even more than I used to. Attacks leave particles that make it hard to judge distances and how far a monster’s long range move goes is a matter of trial and error. Rolling through attacks does not quite have the same charm anymore compared to just not being there when something hits you.
- Why is the camera going this crazy during bosses?
- Why is everything going so much more slowly?
- Why do you have to spend 30 levels to cast a spell that’s barely worth using in the first place?
- Why do I have to go back to the hub to level up and have the game load twice?
- Why does it take 20 seconds to load instead of one second?
As for the Ringed City itself it’s good (I mean it’s more Dark Souls!) but it’s nothing special. I haven’t killed the last boss yet, but I read the wiki. For shame, I know, but it’s annoying to go back to the hardest content in the game when you’re rusty and not feeling the passion anyway. Don’t worry, I’ll get back to the boss, it’ll get what it deserves.
Quick thoughts on the DLC. Super ultra spoilers open at your own risk:
- Dreg Heap is okay, but it’s annoyingly vertical. You NEED to jump in precise spots, so you can’t explore that much. It’s also recycled.
- Dark Souls II finally gets some (recycled) love, but of all the areas they could bring back, did it have to be Earthen Peak? Does the series need one more poison swamp?
- The Ringed City proper is in general a really solid area. Really great Souls stuff.
- Turtle clerics are really creative. Ringed knights are well-designed strong enemies and the big summoner guy is genius.
- The ol’ Pvp boss battle is back and that’s always fun.
- The only notable NPC is… Patches. Again. Why? Look, I wasn’t fooled. Nobody is. Listen to that voice!
- In fact, the only really interesting NPC dies the second you come in contact with her. Sigh.
- Meeting that NPC opens up a spectacularly large third area, which contains nothing but the final boss. Odd. Kind of a waste too.
- There’s one puzzle and it’s ridiculously dumb, as in impossible to figure out. I wonder if the youtubers really came up with the solution on their own?
- There’s a new store, which sells nothing interesting.
- Beating the final boss gets you paint for the girl in Ariandel, which does… nothing! What a finale, eh?
Like I said, I’m only one zone into it, but I can’t fathom what possessed them to lead off with that for their triumphant finale.
It only takes me a short time to get used to the controls again. It’s nothing like trying to remember the button prompts for the damn WiiU.
Got to the next area. Oh, this looks promising…
SIGH.
Seriously though, this should be pretty good.
Ok, I took down that final boss… like a baws! He’s not that bad, but he’s a tough cookie.
Ok, since this is supposedly the super end of the end of Dark Souls… some more SPOILER thoughts about the lore:
[spoiler]
I still think seeing Patches again is a dumb idea. He did the whole “hiding” in heavy armor in the same game before. C’mon! I get it, he’s kind of a mascot, he’s been in every Soulsborne except DSII, but at least in DSII they mixed the formula a bit by making you choose between two characters, both equally untrustworthy, as it turns out. The only thing interesting about this quest is that Patches does something nice for you for no particular reason, before remembering who he is, that is. If anything, it would have been a real “moment” if Patches didn’t screw you over while remembering himself, maybe adding that’s he’s being nice this time only. That would have been one for the books.
On another topic, it’s super weird that Shira asks you “who is your God” and the answers are either Gwyn of nothing at all (which does nothing). First, it’s a bit too on the nose to have your character name Gwyn outright when the game’s been playing coy up to now. Plus, hasn’t Gwyn been dead for hundreds of years or milennia or whatever? How is he anybody’s god anymore? Lastly, if the world’s time and space is so messed up, why can’t there be more than one option (Aldia, the Dragons, whatever)? Why not have Shira give a bunch of different answers depending on what option you choose? Now that would have been pretty cool.
The gobbledygook the locusts are going on about. It’s just some more blah, blah, blah oblique references to characters or something, but I get the feeling it sounded much better in Japanese. Almost sounds like the locusts are making poems, but it doesn’t rhyme. Hmm.
Slave Knight Gael sort of makes sense as a final boss, he ties the two DLCs together, but he’s literally just some guy you meet only once and says nothing special. Not much of an ultimate final boss. People have been going nuts about the “pygmy” since the intro of Dark Souls. The pygmy as a final boss would have been appropriate: a tiny “Gollum”-like creature that’s nonetheless unbelievably powerful and is able to warp darkness around it. That would have been a nice contrast to the usual huge boss with a chunk of HP.
And I still can’t believe it: why does nothing happen when you bring the Dark Soul to the painter??? How dumb is that? They’ve been building this up for two DLCs now. At least let the player go into the painting and see a glimpse of a new world. Something. Anything. I’m sort of thinking they’ll patch something in, but I’m not crossing my fingers.
I’m starting to think that From never really had much of a grasp on how to make a good story, even one that’s sort of hiding in the background.[/spoiler]
This may be the dumbest boss fight in all of Souls.
@ShivaX and I are getting pretty fucking tired of constant invasions. The worst part isn’t even the invasions themselves, though that’s pretty fucking annoying, but when a blue player comes in to help (which we appreciate so we’re staying in that covenent) and then “helpfully” runs through an area we’ve never seen before and just does a bunch of stuff for us. It took ages for us to figure out how to handle a particular enemy type early on because a blue player did it for us in my game and we didn’t know how for awhile. Frustrating way to experience a new area for the first time, and because we are constantly invaded, almost ALL of the new areas have been experience like this. It’s not much fun, to be honest, but I also found it just merciless to try it on my own (and it’s a lot less fun by myself, too).
Do you mean the final boss of the DLC? What’s your take on it?
[quote=“Scott_Lufkin, post:1107, topic:76962, full:true”]@ShivaX and I are getting pretty fucking tired of constant invasions. The worst part isn’t even the invasions themselves, though that’s pretty fucking annoying, but when a blue player comes in to help (which we appreciate so we’re staying in that covenent) and then “helpfully” runs through an area we’ve never seen before and just does a bunch of stuff for us. It took ages for us to figure out how to handle a particular enemy type early on because a blue player did it for us in my game and we didn’t know how for awhile. Frustrating way to experience a new area for the first time, and because we are constantly invaded, almost ALL of the new areas have been experience like this. It’s not much fun, to be honest, but I also found it just merciless to try it on my own (and it’s a lot less fun by myself, too).
[/quote]
Yeah, I forgot to add another bullet point to my list. Invasions were kind of a novelty in Demon’s Souls, but now I think they’re neither tense nor exciting. They just feel like an annoyance, especially if you’re trying to explore an area for the first time. It’s not even fun for the invaders, who are most often 2v1 or 3v1. Anyway, better let these people whack at each other and lag out in their own arenas.
No, the one before it. Just constant leg-humping. I decided to move on with co-op help after 2 attempts.
[details=finale]I thought the final boss was okay. We’ve seen some of these effects before, and he has too much HP, but he was pretty fun to dodge. I guess it’s saying something that even dancing around him can’t rekindle the old Souls magic.
Like you, I was disappointed that there was no cutscene or anything to end the series. WTF?
I haven’t beaten the optional boss or started the puzzle. I just looked up where to go for that.[/details]
reddit helped me understand the reasoning behind the finale. I like it better now.