Dark Souls 2

[TomGuycott]

I've been too busy playing it to post about it, but who else is knee deep in this game right now?

When I get home from work I want this thread filled with your Dark Souls 2 experiences, that's an order from me, Tom G.

I just wish I could be home playing it so badly instead of being here at work. ;-; When I get home I'll post my own experiences, there's a lot of fun stuff to cover.

[Keychain]

Waiting for PC version!

[water dog]

I've beat the game 3 times as of right now. Twice on NG and once on NG+. Maxed rank in Sunlight and Abyss covenants, ranked 2 in Bell Keepers only so I could get Hidden Weapon for the achievement. I'm hesitant to say the game is not as good as the first but I can say with ease that I am enjoying myself more with this one.

I'm playing on Xbox if anyone else happens to be as well (doubt it). Gamer tag is im9today.

I've been invading people with two shields and butterfly wings/xanthous head today and dropping my spare channeler trident/demon great hammer/white rings for them. Only 2 people have received my gifts.. everyone else kills me on sight. :\

[TomGuycott]

Aww, I'm on PS3, can't play.

I'm currently on my NG+2. I just did a run without resting at bonfires, which allowed me to get a ring that always covers your right hand weapon. Sure, you get the same effect from Hidden Weapon, but this makes it permanent so long as you hold the ring. I am TRYING to prepare for a no-death run so I can get the left hand ring, just so I can be funny in PVP, but... I'm skeptical that I have what it takes.

Some of the things I like better in this game are the fact you can warp from ANY bonfire TO any bonfire, the fact that Hexes are now their own thing rather than "dark sorcery" and benefit both from Intelligence and Faith, and the fact that NG+ actually changes things the further you go. In fact, there are some things that don't show up into NG+2 or more. However, it also makes some of the bosses ball-bustingly hard by including smaller, dangerous mobs with them to clutter things up. Flexile Sentry went from being incredibly easy to one of the harder bosses I had to fight in NG+.

[Mag]

Man, super excited about Dark Souls 2 for PC. How's the invading working out on consoles? Are you guys getting a lot of action so far? Is the dragon covenant actually getting any duels or is it just red phantoms?

[TomGuycott]

Dragon covenant gets a TON of duels, and there are a ton of invasions too. There's actually two covenants that resemble the Forest Covenant of Dark Souls, one in which you get invaded constantly by players in two particular areas, and another where players draw YOU into their worlds as phantoms in two particular areas.

I hear mixed things about what people think about the PVP. I basically see it how it was in the original, just with different weapons, fighting styles and spells thrown in that people have to work around now. For the mostpart I enjoy it, but I recently had my no-death run ruined by an invader because I got super nervous and choked.

[Lemonray]

10 days.

[Lemonray]

12 hours.

Oh, and I've just had to buy the steam version because my physical copy won't be in stock until the damn second of may. So, even though I avoided the console version I'm still buying the game twice.

[Mag]

Is it me or is it coming early? On steam it say's it's only 5 hours away, but isn't the official release day the 25th? Too hyped for this!

[Lemonray]

It's going to unlock on april 25th at 00:00 BST. Which, would be in about 4 hours time.

Well, I'm going to go to sleep until it unlocks. Will report with first impressions later.

Raymond out.

[Solid_Spy]

I remember trying it out, fun game X3. Tried to play as a mage, got my ass kicked lol Xp.

[Mystie]

I've been wanting to play the Demon's/Dark Souls series for quite some time now.

One question though: Do I need to play the first Dark Souls in order to understand what's going on in Dark Souls 2, or can I jump right into Dark Souls 2 without having played the first?

[Random Talking Bush]

I've been wanting to play the Demon's/Dark Souls series for quite some time now.

One question though: Do I need to play the first Dark Souls in order to understand what's going on in Dark Souls 2, or can I jump right into Dark Souls 2 without having played the first?

Having played through the first Dark Souls to the end, I can say that yeah, you can jump right into DS2 without having played the original. Same goes for Demon's Souls to Dark Souls.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be channelling my inner Waluigi.

[Lemonray]

Hm, okay. Since last night I've spent about four hours messing around with DSII and everything seems pretty okay so far.
The first thing I noticed gameplay-wise was that combat, and movement in general, doesn't have as much weight to it as DS1 did. In comparison it feels somewhat floaty and uh, N64 like. On a few occasions I've even gotten hit without my character reacting whatsoever (this only seems to happen when I've been hit while trying to roll), which feels jarring. Maybe I just need more time to get used to it but so far, the game feels inferior in this aspect.

Otherwise, everything else has been fun. After a little exploring I discovered an area guarded by some stone knights- Which, by themselves were fairly harmless except when I was fighting 2-3 at once. Taking the most obvious path I encountered my first boss: The Dragonrider. He's about as difficult as the Asylum Demon from the first game, although he did manage to kill me once by shoving me off the side of the arena. Using the asylum demon strategy (circle, attack rear, repeat) I killed him then went on to discover a new location, which was easy enough until I ran into some... Things, that caused bleed damage, which killed me.
Exploring the stone knight zone some more, I ran into Ornstein, or rather, the Old Dragonslayer as he's called in this game. Without Smough, he was easier while still being harder if that even makes sense and dropped both the Leo ring and 20,000 souls upon death. Good times.

Oh, and brief thoughts on the animations. Most are okay. Some, however, look like they'd be more suited to C-3PO than an undead warrior.

Edit: More brief thoughts after several more hours playing the game.

Most visuals are good, in terms of design and technical quality.
The game sounds great in most aspects.
The weapons and armours are pretty cool.
Overall there should be more enemy variation.
Difficulty-wise, it feels easier than the previous game despite combat issues, greater numbers of enemies attacking at once, weapon durability, limited estus etc.

The changed combat has become less of an issue for me after getting more used to it, but, I still find it inferior to DS1 combat. I honestly don't know why they felt the need to mess with it. Besides the aforementioned floatiness, there have been a few other negative changes. Parrying is now more bothersome- I'm not sure why exactly, but it's just more finicky here than in the previous game. I'll have to look into this more.
Lock on tracking seems to have been gimped, this is most evident when trying to use thrusting attacks, or anything with a narrow hitbox, really.
And then there's the fact that half of everything can be killed by just strafing around it in circles.

[Lemonray]

Update

Spoiler

Final Boss status: Utterly destroyed

Well, I can say that I did start enjoying the game even more after I got several hours in and discovered more content.
Now that I've beaten it, I can also say that it does come rather close in terms of overall enjoyability to the first game, even if I did have doubts at times.