I upgraded a halberd and finished up the Darkroot areas. I killed that hydra thing that reminded me a ton of Dragon’s Dogma after a couple tries. I kept drowning the first two times. I don’t know if I got too close and fell in a hole or what, but I’d be fighting and then I’d fall through and die. I got a ring close by there that raised my equip limit so I can now roll quickly. Did anyone exclusively use heavy armor? I used my halberd to stick the Moonlight Butterfly with the pointy end.
After Darkroot I went through the Depths again and into Blighttown. I hated those blow dart assholes, but I’m glad they stayed dead. I’m still freaked out by those fat guys with the clubs. They aren’t too difficult, but their placement makes it hard to maneuver. The poison swamp wasn’t so bad and I brought down Quelaag with a Server sword I had upgraded. I died to her a couple times and had no idea why I died for awhile. Eventually I fought her using flash sweat and managed to survive the attack which I realized was sort of an explosion. Once I knew when she was going to use that attack the fight became easy. I also found some badass red light armor so I’m all geared up in that and I also rang the second bell. Awesome.
I attacked Eingyi by mistake which sucked. I hope this kind of bullshit doesn’t make it into Dark Souls 2 where they put non-hostile npcs in the game that look like the enemies you just fought. I thought he was an enemy and approached with my shield up. When you have your shield up it disables the talk option so I ended up attacking him. When I realized he was an npc I went and spent some time grinding to get absolved. Very annoying.
I did the same to another shopkeeper. I went into a full-on nerd tantrum. I should’ve just killed the little shit and saved some of my lifetime. I knew it wouldn’t ruin my game, but I’m programmed by 20+ years of gaming to worry about these things.
What do you mean by “look like the enemies you just killed”? You killed those poor little sick creatures, most of which don’t even attack you, except for a couple deep in Demons Ruins? You deserve the grinding then, you ruthless monster! :)
I doubt they will remove this kind of stuff from DS2 and I hope they won’t. Ability to kill and loot everyone in the game is one of the DS’ signature features and IMO it is a nice feature as it forces the player to make some tough choices like “do I kill this NPC for his really awesome sword or do I keep him alive for the stuff he is selling?”. Freedom baby. Games need more tough permanent choices IMO.
There’s no need to go that far. All they need is the yield mechanic from Skyrim (heh) so you don’t have to duel to the death against a neutral NPC. Wait, I forgot you can run away and grind for forgiveness. I remember at the time I only thought that value needed to be lower out of respect for players’ time. So it’s as easy as changing a multiplier.
Anyway, in our case it was an accident, not a choice.
I ended up heading back to Darkroot because Sen’s Fortress scared me the first time I went in. Found Alvina and joined the forest covenant. Managed to kill a couple other players while getting my ass handed to me by others. Eventually I headed back to Sen’s Fortress and discovered the critical weakness of the lizardmen…having a 6 foot long halberd forcefully shoved up their ass from behind. Once I realized backstabs are the way to go with them, they weren’t too bad. I loved using the traps against them. The first time I reached the bonfire here I had just been hit with one of those explodey cannonballs and when I dropped down to the bonfire I died of fall damage. I made it to the boss and grinded a bit before taking him on. I managed to bring him down on my first try. I got him down to about half health and was stabbing his ankles when he fell off the bridge and died. Quite an unexpected resolution to the fight. By then I had accumulated a bunch of those large titanite shards and upgraded a gargoyle halberd to +10 which gave me a much needed boost to damage.
I went through Anor Londo and ended up in the Painted World where I spent quite a bit of time. I must of gotten 10 levels there since even the weakest enemies gave plenty of souls. I’d get far and then I would head back to the bonfire to level up instead of advancing for awhile. The harpies freak me out. My first encounter with them was when I dropped down to get an item and suddenly two were on me and beat me down. The second encounter was one on one and it grabbed me and slashed me to death even though I was at full health. It’s interesting how you can talk to the boss and choose not to fight her. I had a pretty intense fight with her which lasted quite awhile since she is invisible the whole time.
Now I’m back in Anor Londo and there is one section here which is complete bullshit. There are these two black knight snipers that shoot super powerful arrows at you far away. I must of died to them at least a dozen times and each time it takes awhile to get back to them for another chance. I’d make it to the ledge one of them is on and either get stun locked by his arrows or he’d switch to a sword and knock me off the ledge. So frustrating how I couldn’t budge him to try and push him off, but he could knock me back easily. I even hit him with a great club and he deflected it no problem. Finally I managed to roll underneath two of his arrows while on that tiny ledge and for some reason he decided to use weak attacks that time which let me halberd him to death. Guess I wasn’t the only one to have problems with them.
marxeil
1986
So this is now on sale at Steam. Can someone explain what’s the appeal. How is this different from Skyrim or any other 3rd person fantasy RPG like 2 Worlds, Amalur etc?
Wolff
1987
Read any random 3 pages of this thread?
A few people talked about why they liked it a few pages ago. It’s not really a modern open world RPG. Think more like an NES game with great combat and a cool world.
Now I’m back in Anor Londo and there is one section here which is complete bullshit. There are these two black knight snipers that shoot super powerful arrows at you far away. I must of died to them at least a dozen times and each time it takes awhile to get back to them for another chance.
In DS, when you die many times trying to do something, it usually means there are other ways to do it. In this particular case, poison arrows make the entire encounter trivial and 100% safe. Note how they can’t hit you when you position yourself well on the ledge leading to their wall (when you are at the beginning of the longer branch of the “T” and they are on the opposite ends of the shorter one) due to the fence but you can shoot over that fence.
Don’t bang your head against walls repeatedly, think outside of the box. Often it involves poison arrows :) but, depending on your build, equipment and environment, you might have other options. Although brute force also works. :)
nixon66
1990
Very different. It’s a game with, in my opinion, a great combat system, that while at first seems cheap and unfair and obtuse, really opens up once you get the hang of it and try out different weapons. It’s got a world that could care less that you are there, but slowly changes due to your actions and it has an incredible sense of exploration and discovery.
Elsewhere, I’ve discussed with others how it’s a fantastic modern take on something like the original Zelda or Metroid. Very open world, in which you take things at your own pace, are rewarded for exploration, lots of challenge everywhere and very little guidance. It can be hard. But it plays by it’s rules, as frustrating as those can be.
marxeil
1991
Thanks for taking the time for this. Its probably not for me though. Seems like lots of patience is a requirement, and my rage quit level is very low these days.
Mr_Zero
1992
And as a counterbalance to some of the positive reviews, here’s why I regret buying it on sale – the art direction is dreary and I don’t have a high tolerance for games that feature a lot of rote learning. Since the game’s about experimentation and discovery (which is what appealed to me), you’ll be in Groundhog Day a lot, running up the same patch of corridor. I’m much more satisfied to do this kind of repetition within a roguelike’s randomized content.
One caveat: I hardly got into the game at all, so that’s all I can say, and maybe it’d improve if I sank more time into it.
Probably wise. I can psyche myself up for one game per year like this. I stupidly played it right after La-Mulana.
pg1
1994
This game was tough to break into, but once I did that, it was great. Where as most games you played 10-20 hours then you are done with them, in Dark Souls I played 20 hours before I started to master and enjoy everything. Took 60 hours total to beat everything but the sense of accomplishment was amplified by the initial learning curve. One of my favorite games in a long time but it took quite a while to grow on me. The more time I spent with the game the more I liked it.
I’m going through Anor Londo right now, too and yeah, that part was BS. I almost hate to admit it, but eventually I cheesed my way through. I ran up the ramp, turned right at the one knight, rolled to get underneath his shot, got close enough for him to draw his sword, turned and ran back for the ramp. He tried to follow and fell to his death. I ran back up and around his corner, and never looked back again.
In Anor Londo I invaded Lautrec and avenged the mute girl. Unfortunately I used her soul to upgrade my flask…sigh. I then took on Ornstein and Smough. I did pretty well on my first attempt, I was able to kill Ornstein by being patient and letting him run ahead of Smough, but the powered up Smough hammered me into dust. Then I changed my strategy and tried to lower each of their hp bars equally. This wasn’t the right thing to do since I hear once you kill one the other heals completely. Died a couple times being reckless, but then went back to my original strategy and won. Broken pillars ftmfw. Wish I killed Smough first though, Ornstein’s gear appeals to me more, but I didn’t know the loot changed based on who you killed first. Got to love the messages left behind by other players. For once “amazing chest ahead” was correct. I’ve also seen a few “Need head” messages. I remember in Demon’s Souls all the messages about “Sticky white stuff ahead” placed around the female NPC’s.
I went back to Blighttown and from there headed to The Great Hollow. It wasn’t that great. Thought I was playing a shitty Banjo-Kazooie for a moment. I ended up getting myself cursed by those geckos. Looted a whole bunch of stuff and made it to Ash Lake. I tried to kill the hyrda a few times, but since I was cursed he would just one shot me. For some reason I kept fighting him even though it seemed futile. I equipped the stone giant armor I think it’s called and rushed towards him on the beach. Instead of nuking me with magic like he always had, he started meleeing me with his heads and miraculously I won. Farmed a bit of the twinkling titanite and went back to Undead Parish to purge the curse on me. Apparently, I had sinned again at some point. Probably from breaking covenants, although I did get attacked by someone in Blighttown. It wasn’t Shiva or the Onion knight either. Just some random spirit dude ran up and started whacking me.
I traveled back to Darkroot again to take on Sif. At this point in the game he was a complete joke of a boss. I was sort of disappointed. Now to head to New Londo Ruins.
Probably from breaking covenants, although I did get attacked by someone in Blighttown. It wasn’t Shiva or the Onion knight either. Just some random spirit dude ran up and started whacking me.
In most of the zones, if you are going through in a human form, you will be attacked by an NPC red invader. You can get some interesting loot from those invaders and often, once you beat them, they will be available to summon as help for the zone’s boss. The boss of the zone needs to be alive for the invader to appear like with all other invaders.
Wolff
1998
I recently started a new playthrough inspired by epic amebro’s lets plays. Using the “baller” side sword dex build with power within and magic weapon. This game continues to impress and I haven’t even checked out the dlc areas yet. Another youtuber compared dark souls to diablo 2 in the way build ideas can come to you and you want to go check them out. I really hope the follow up contains as much depth.
Post your build because that’s exactly what I want to try: dex with some sort of magic.
Don’t be a Bethesda nerd about not checking out the DLC areas. Great boss fights.
Hansey
2000
Thought this might be appreciated here. It gave me a chuckle.
(Potential spoiler warning, if you consider a humorous categorization of the difficulty of all the bosses in the game to be a spoiler.)
