Dark Souls

[PrettyNier]

Oh and I finally reached Manus...anyone wanna help me take him down? He's ungodly on NG+

you bet your fuckin ass i will what level
ive got a level 120 something i can get to there

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and I'm also unable to read the clip Jason posted so... welp. Actually, think you could post it here, Marth?

“I personally am the sort of person who likes to be more direct than subtle,” he tells us. “[Dark Souls II] will be more straightforward and more understandable.” We sympathise if that sort of statement concerns you, but at the same time, we can surely agree that we would all like to see Dark Souls attain as great a presence as The Elder Scrolls. How it gets there is a worthy matter for debate, but it’s certainly a noble task......"

from the new director. miyazaki is only going to be supervising ):

[Marth]

I found this http://www.computerandvideogames.com/382...eps-aside/

After reading this it doesn't sound as completely awful as I initially thought but I'm still a little upset that they're phrasing "dumbed down" as "approachable". I also may have been over reacting. I'm on a short fuse with finals coming up, and my hectic work schedule.

Also I don't hate the name, I just think it's dumb haha. Sorry I'm having a bad day and came off as an asshole.

EDIT: Jason at level 92 Am I under leveled?

[Gaia]

Don't know, depends on the game.. So how does the leveling system work here?

[TomGuycott]

You collect souls of defeated enemies and at bonfires you can use them to level up your stats. Every time you raise a stat it takes more and more souls to increase your level, eventually becoming almost exponential, making it more difficult to gain levels when you are a high level.

[Marth]

It's also player skill oriented. You can have an extremely high level and still die from the lowliest enemy. Or be under leveled but play very well and strategically and beat an incredibly difficult boss (every boss is beyond difficult but some are just "wow I'm fucked" (other than Pinwheel...I love Pinwheel but he is the only actual pushover boss)).

[TomGuycott]

I read some more of the stuff regarding new co-directors, accessibility, etc etc. I can understand why some people are a little worried, and frankly I can foresee a couple of worst-case-scenarios in my head where the charm of the series could go down the crapper, but I don't think that will necessarily be the case with the original director supervising.

I have a feeling (no evidence to back it up whatsoever, obviously) that what they mean by accessibility could refer to two things: the open-ended nature of both the world, and the story. In Dark Souls you have a lot of freedom to explore the world, limited from finding only a few locations. You can even fight one of the possessors of Lords' Souls without even reaching the halfway point of the game where the rest are unlocked for you. Personally, I got screwed with this aspect (but I loved every second of it for some reason) when I was trapped in a lightless cavern trying to reach the end out of sheer curiosity, only to find that I couldn't go on and had to climb all the way back out. The whole ordeal was about 6 hours of gameplay.

As for the story, a vast majority of it was left for the player to FIND rather than it being presented to them. In fact, many interesting aspects of the story were only told through descriptions of various items. A prime example: it is implied that the Ceaseless Discharge was in fact the young son of the Witch of Izalith who constantly teemed with molten lava from his body. He was given a ring to suppress this, but he lost it, and when the ring dropped into the magma it formed into a Centipede Demon (the demon you find the ring from). Thus the Ceaseless Discharge became the monster that it was, constantly brimming with lava. This and countless other aspects of the game's story is presented in this way.

In terms of a more accessible world, I can see them making it more linear, something I would certainly not enjoy nearly as much as I did the original Dark Souls. Demon's Souls was alright because even though it was more linear you had five worlds to choose from that had some diversity in feeling. What I'd hate to see is the world being straight forward, go to one boss, then the next, then the next. However, I WOULDN'T mind if it was similar to the way Dark Souls was, but a little less cryptic. Granted, its not quite as grueling, but it wouldn't be the end of the world for me.

For accessible story... It's kind of a grey area for me at the moment. I love the story in Dark Souls, how you can't possibly get every little detail of it on a single playthrough, if only for the fact you simply cannot unlock EVERY single item in one go, and you can't unlock every single character dialogue string in one go (even though you get most pertinent dialogue strings). They could possibly make the game's story more straight forward, but I kind of liked going through alternate play paths in the game, discovering I may or may not be working on the side that is truly in the right. After all, after meeting people like Gwyndolyn and Kaathe the true nature of your character's quest becomes incredibly questionable in almost every regard.

All in all though I'm still excited for this. I want to see more.

[PrettyNier]

EDIT: Jason at level 92 Am I under leveled?

I dont know, it all really depends on what you want to do. After a certain point, I don't think there is such a thing as under-leveled or over-leveled. Just what you're doing with your class.

I'm not sure I really have a character close enough to your range. I have a level 122 and a level 62. Beneath that I've got a 56 or something, which I'm still actively leveling, but I dunno. If you want to co-op with me, I'd say you're under-leveled... but that's the only real qualification here.

Long image

[Marth]

I'll level up a tad so we can play haha.

[Gwen]

So I'm trying it out, and honestly I think people are really overselling it. Combat is kind of a bummer, the parry never ever works, like no matter how I time it, it never succeeds and it's fucking frustrating. Kind of like Skyrim everything up close is really ugly with textures, but since you don't really have a chance to zoom in on stuff it's not as noticeable as Skyrim can be, that I will give it. I don't get why Skyrim has such bad character design and enemy design and this doesn't, I mean the enemies I'm facing are rather bland, storytelling is admittedly better, but that's about all it's got going for it over Skyrim for me right now. And I've also got Dragon's Dogma which I'd say is better than this. I'll play it through though, because who knows, I might come to love it, but so far it's not the game people hyped it up to be.

[Marth]

Dylan the first time I played it I hated it too. You honestly need to get a solid 12 hours into it to gain an appreciation for it (115 hours in and it's now my favorite game of all time). Where are you now? Combat is lovely, just challenging and your shield might be the problem. Certain shields don't parry well, at least that's my understanding unless I just sucked at parrying that badly in the beginning. Also certain enemies can just whip through your parry like nothing.

Wait till another player invades haha, you'll see parries in action and you'll force yourself to learn how to do them properly.

[PrettyNier]

Combat is kind of a bummer, the parry never ever works, like no matter how I time it, it never succeeds and it's fucking frustrating.

i'll tell you right now its because you're doing it incorrectly
parrying works 90% of the time for me and when it doesn't its because i personally screwed up

and its not as if the combat at all requires or needs parrying, its something for you to do if you're comfortable with it and you want to push the waters/test the limits

I don't get why Skyrim has such bad character design and enemy design and this doesn't, I mean the enemies I'm facing are rather bland, storytelling is admittedly better, but that's about all it's got going for it over Skyrim for me right now.

this sentence isn't very clear
and why bother comparing it to skyrim, the two are fundamentally different

[Gwen]

Jason, because I constantly remember people telling me Skyrim is "teh ballz" and Dark Souls is not. And how saying Dark Souls enemy and character design is bland and Skyrim's isn't doesn't get much clearer to me.

I also love that you immediately go to "You're doing it wrong" After failing it I practiced it for awhile on some weaker enemies and no matter how I timed it and how I tried it, it never really worked, so I appreciate that Brandon mentioned it might just be the shield, because seeing as how it was a small shield that I had, I can see it being a bit more difficult to pull it off. I'm going to see Lincoln with my dad in awhile, so I'll probably plug some more time into the game tonight, I'm not very far, so hopefully it connects.

[water dog]

I'm level 70 something and I still haven't done a successful parry once, and I never get backstabs. I seriously don't get it. Like I align myself perfectly behind the enemy and nothing. I've played the whole game tank and spank style where I just hide behind my shield and poke the enemies butthole to death with my dragonslayer spear.

[Marth]

Actually Jason does have a point, you could just be doing it wrong. I was for a very long time. Experiment with a bunch of different shields though, get as many as you can, I personally favor bigger shields because I feel they parry easier. Maybe they don't, and it's just a placebo effect...but it just seems to work for me. Also the only backstabs I ever got were from parrying...just saying. I found it personally impossible to do it normally, so that's just that. I sucked at it, so I generally ignored the concept and focused on a blend of a melee rush and then spells to distance myself to heal while still getting some damage in.


Also all of the spells you find in the Abyss are godly for invasions.

[TomGuycott]

I've gotten to about NG+15 on my best game... and I still can't parry. =X