From Software 'n such

[Square_Air]

So when I started Remastered, my 8 year old decided he wanted to start. He'd previously messed around on the 360 version with a cheat file, but playing properly I fully expected him to hit a wall pretty early on, get bored and move on, particularly as I'm not on PSN so it's all solo. Gave him the tip about the Drake Sword at the beginning, and explained levelling up / weapon levelling to him, but haven't physically laid a hand on the pad for him myself. He''s got the Lord Vessel, done Smough and Ornstein, cleared the Demon Ruins, found Vamos (something that took me I don't know how long to remember), and currently making his way through the Duke's Archives. Go kid!

That's awesome. Goes to show that despite their naivety, kids are smarter than people give them credit for sometimes. Kind of goes against the developer mindset that kids need their hand to be held to absorb information; If they really want to figure something out, they'll just go for it. This shouldn't really come as too much of a surprise to the people here, as most of us grew up with punishing RPGs, platformers, and arcade games that didn't go easy us, and we always came back regardless of how insurmountable the challenge seemed.

[Necronopticous]

So how about that Sekiro gameplay footage coming out of Gamescom? Looks incredible to me. Super weird to see those kinds of UI elements on a Soulsy Fromsoft game, though!

I messed around a little with a level 1 game in King’s Field IV but it falls apart pretty quickly. Now that I am finished with it I’m going to be taking a break from the Fromsoft retrospective. (Dragon Quest XI is right around the corner, and I have been anxiously awaiting getting my hands on it.) When I return to it I will probably go straight into Kuon, but I do plan to figure out a solution for playing Shadow Tower Abyss in the meantime as well. I also have Lost Kingdoms and a few other one-off titles I’m curious about that came out for non-Sony consoles. I will get to all of them in time.

@Sumez how is Eternal Ring coming? Did you turn off the music yet?

[Sumez]

So far I'm enjoying the music. I haven't gotten to far into it, since I got my hands on Super Mario Odyssey, and that has been hard to put down. The time I'd use to play older games is currently spent playing Divinity Original Sin with my girlfriend. But I hope to get some more time to play it today. Last thing I did was get through the limestone caves.

[Sumez]

So how about that Sekiro gameplay footage coming out of Gamescom? Looks incredible to me. Super weird to see those kinds of UI elements on a Soulsy Fromsoft game, though!

Ooh, it's the FromSoft Twitter guy!
I was scouring the internet for new gameplay rom Gamescom just yesterday and didn't find any. Glad to finally see something!

I'm a little disappointed in how much this feels like Souls, but I get it's inevitable. At least it isn't Souls.
"From Software have always designed their games with verticality in mind" - Someone never played King's Field 2!

[Sumez]

Ok this video does away with some of my worries about the game feeling "too much" like Souls:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrd8R86CwPk

It still looks like it, but his experience is that the combat is much more dynamic and reaction based rather than having to rely on commiting to your attack animations and such. I love that aspect in Souls, but like I've stated I want this to be something different.

The posture thing sounds a lot like the stamina the enemies have in Nioh.

[Immryr]

i'm a little worried about the revive mechanic to be honest. the way it currently looks/sounds is that you just need to land some damage on enemies to be able to revive again. sure they say they're still figuring out exactly how the mechanic will work in the game, but the fact they haven't worked out exactly how something seemingly so central to the games identity this late in production doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

also i agree with necron about the UI icons for the grappling hook flashing up all the time looks/feels weird.

other than that it looks great.

[Sumez]

I think they are essentially using the resurrection system to finetune the balance of the game right up until completion. Nothing wrong with that.
I'm sure they did it similarly for the health regain in Bloodborne.

[Marc]

OK so from having been through with FROM games (purely a length thing), I've now just got Seath, Gwyn and DLC left on my no-summon play of Remaster, and it's gotten me interested in doing the same with the other two. It's strange actually, I've gone from looking at SL1 runs and going 'holy shit, how the hell do they do that', to understanding how it's feasible on this play through, and if anything I expected to be worse purely factoring in slowing reflexes. Though these days I am more patient, which is certainly a big help. My two roadblocks would be Smough & Ornstein which took ages and a stock of ten estus, and the Four Kings, because my approach to them was full Havel's and tank. Also realised I'd actually consumed two fire keeper souls before I remember I was supposed to hand them over, so my flasks are still only +3

[Necronopticous]

It's strange actually, I've gone from looking at SL1 runs and going 'holy shit, how the hell do they do that', to understanding how it's feasible on this play through

Welcome.

[Blinge]

Seath, Gwyn and DLC left on my no-summon play of Remaster, and it's gotten me interested in doing the same with the other two.

[Marc]

Sanctuary Guardian and Artorias down. Kalmeet..... ouch. May have hit a wall here.

[guigui]

^ Good luck on the Dragon. As usual, patterns are quite readable.

Bloodborne : still delaying the last boss and doing some Chalices. I must say they are quite fun when you reach some decent depth. Though I regret the best content is online only : get a glyph for a dungeon with good loot and go fetch it. I guess I'll try the free 14 days PSN subscription just for this.

Also the Rayuko is indeed a very good weapon, it keeps scaling for 4 damages at SKL between 40 and 50.

[Blinge]

You're needlessly delaying the final boss. Chalice progress is continuous across NG+ runs.

You might be overlevelled to enjoy final boss as a result.

[guigui]

You're needlessly delaying the final boss. Chalice progress is continuous across NG+ runs.

You might be overlevelled to enjoy final boss as a result.

Oh I did not realize this, thanks for pointing it out. I'm level 120 as of now, I guess this is about good for endgame, maybe a little too much.
Bloods are gained very quick in depth 5, especially with moon runes, I like it.

Also I wanted those 3 eye runes to make stone chunk farming easier, but I guess this will be useless when I can access that easy Chalice with the Brainsucker boss. This will only last as long as my free PS+ account goes on... Though I now remember this is the second time I get the free access, so maybe it resets sometimes ?

[Necronopticous]

Hahaha yeah blood level 120 is insanely overleveled for NG. You’ll just have to do a BL4 run afterward to atone!

[guigui]

Oops. I love to play overleveled and watch beasts fall
Guess I'll just beat that last boss on NG since I have nothing left to do here, though I only have 2 of the "3rd umbilical cords". Maybe this will affect my ending ?
I already tried those low level runs on Dark Souls, and am awfully bad at it.

[Blinge]

What if.. there was another way.
A way to play Soulsborne, without under levelling or over levelling..
You just play the game =P

To be fair if you were just digging into chalices you'd gain all those levels without grinding so yeah.
A lot of people reviled the chalice dungeons but I didn't mind, it was just more combat, more content, I'm always cool with that.
Especially as it's such a gorgeous game.

Delving deeper, uncovering layers, getting dem trophies. Ahhh.

[guigui]

Well I imagine this is what I did : play the game up to final boss. Then go into Chalices, realize that lower is better, so I did my best to rush to Isz. So I got to run depth 5 at about BL80, which helped me a lot to get to120. But I dont mind being overleveled since I'll go NG+ or more and get my ass raped nonetheless, and do not plan on playing PvP.

[Blinge]

You know I think my next BB run will be Bloodtinge run.

That seems like a major headfuck from here. How do you even get your damage early on..? Tinge scaling weapons seem to show up later. And weapons like the reiterpallasch seem quite uninteresting to me.

[okerlo]

I'm new to the Souls-Games, somehow managed to live behind the moon the last few years. In what order should I tackle them? Just start with Demon Souls and play my way up?

[guigui]

Welcome. Well, starting with Demon's Souls is what I would advise since this is what I did.
Though you may find the game a bit too rigid for a beginning, combat is not as polished as in sequels, though still very representative of the series.

So either start with Demon's Souls if you're not scared of some "retro" action, or with Dark Souls 1 for the regular Souls experience.

[Sumez]

Demon's souls and Dark Souls 1 are still two of the best games in the series. Though DS1 has some nice improvements, a lot of people still preferred the prior game when it came out, so it's not like it's archaic and unpolished or anything. It's a very good game, and the only "issue" that tends to occasionally hide it behind the Dark Souls series is the whole licensing thing with Sony.

I'd say definitely play Dark Souls 1 before DS3 and Bloodborne at least, but ideally I'd think you should just start at Demon's Souls and work your way up. Maybe skip DS2 if five games is too big a mouthful.


EDITS: Too hungover... corrected a ton of stuff that didn't come across as a real sentence

[Squire Grooktook]

Skip everything but Bloodborne



Demon's Souls is okay, comparatively speaking. Not counting 2 which I haven't played, I'd rank it the least of the franchise though tbh. Still a good game with some wonderful moments, but I personally wouldn't start with it (I know because I did and it put me off the entire franchise for like 2-3 years).

[Sumez]

To offer a different perspective, Demon's Souls made be preorder Dark Souls the moment it was possible.
I usually never preorder games.

You could say Demon's Souls might be divisive, but this is honestly the first time I've seen any sign of it being that.

[Squire Grooktook]

If it was the only game in the series I'd definitely look back on it fondly as a cult classic that deserved a sequel, but comparing it to its successors I think it's a bit uneven.

My personal rankings of archstone quality:

Shadowmen = 4/4 (one of the best areas in the franchise. Killer level design and enemy variety wrapped in an atmospheric and intriguing location.)
Castle = 3/4 (p.good, nothing special though if you've played the rest of the games and fought through this kind of area a million times. Meat and potatoes)
Tower/Prison = 2/4 (has its ups and downs. Both prison and tower feel a bit repetitive in terms of room and enemy layouts, but they got cool unique stuff and atmosphere too)
Mines = 1/4 (One of my least favorite areas in the franchise that isn't a fucking swamp)
Swamp = 1/4 (It's a fucking swamp, and it might actually be the worst one)

Personally I think that - imperfect as it also is - DS is the best intro to the franchise. I think that It's world, layout, and the options open to the player will keep a newcomer intrigued and stave off frustration enough until they get the hang of the series unique playstyle (as opposed to Demon's Souls linear Mega Man Archstone selection).

From there I'd go to Bloodborne for fast and fluid fun with the best atmosphere and theme, then either Demon's Souls (for something comparatively easy and rough, but with a lot of heart) or Dark Souls 3 (for the most polished combat and boss fights but with a bit of the soul gone).

Or skip all of them and just stick with Bloodborne. Probably the best choice.

[okerlo]

Thanks for the input, not a lot of love for Dark Souls 2, why is that?

[Sumez]

Because it's not a particularly good game compared to the others. Lots of details out there (and in here) about why, so I feel like I'd be repeating myself by going through it again.

The short story is that it was made by a somewhat different team (while the "A team" was working on Bloodborne), and you can tell. It's not terrible though, only parts of it are.

[Necronopticous]

Thanks for the input, not a lot of love for Dark Souls 2, why is that?

The least biased answer I can think of for this is that it simply does not feel like the other four games.

[Obscura]

I say start with Dark 3. Best of the series by far, also probably the most "user-friendly" with none of DS2's ADP/AGL nonsense or DS1's "endurance is the god stat", "lolcurse", ultimate in terrible weapon degradation schemes, silly three-tiered weight system, and overall jank.

Ignore the haters, Dark 2 is good. Of the three of the 5 I've played (the three Dark Souls games), DS3 > DS2 >>>>>>> DS1.

[Necronopticous]

I say start with Dark 3. Best of the series by far, also probably the most "user-friendly"

If you're looking purely at mechanics, it's hard to disagree. (Note that "user-friendly" does not mean "easy") I would put Bloodborne on about equal footing with one caveat: the healing system needlessly promotes grinding, especially if you're new to the series. The Souls series is a lot more than just mechanics to me, though, so I think "best of the series" ultimately boils down to which aspects of the games appeal most to you.

Also, I wouldn't necessarily recommend starting with the "best" if your plan is to play the entire series. Going from Dark Souls 3 to Demon's Souls is a huge mechanical downgrade. If you're the type of player who is easily spoiled by tight, refined gameplay you might find it hard to go backwards. If you're not too worried about that, then you can't go too wrong with any entry, really.

Definitely curious to know which you choose! Be sure to post your impressions.