DARK SOULS 2

[evil_ash_xero]

They're not connected by story at all.

A character may show up, or something like that (there's one from Demon's that shows up in Dark, and I know at least one shows up from Dark in Dark II), but it's kinda for the fans.

Play them in any order you like. But play them.

[amdiggywhut]

Play them in any order you like. But play them.

Cosign. The online/multiplayer/PvP will inevitably be most active on Dark Souls II, obviously. May want to start there.

[Octopod]

Thanks. I guess I'll put that Danky Kang on hold for the night and fire this up after the kids go to bed.

[MrOldSchoolCool]

Thanks. I guess I'll put that Danky Kang on hold for the night and fire this up after the kids go to bed.

You sir, are a gamer. 1-2 combo of the new Donkey Kong and Dark Souls? Awesome games.

[Acid King]

I guess I should get around to finishing the first game before I pick up 2. I'm nearing the end but I've been lazy. I think for part 2 I'm going to try to avoid faqs because even though I got a lot of useful tips out of them, I ended up seeing a lot of spoilers and shit and had a lot of surprises ruined.

[Some-Mist]

not terribly far yet, but not liking how the direction of the 2nd game is a bit more cinematic. Character creation cutscene intros and background music? I just want create my character and hop in and play the game like the first two.

the area I'm in right now seems kind of lame as well

Spoiler

a ship yard with a big ass ship and pirate zombies..

difficulty is spot on tho.

edit: also... I'm playing the game on PS3, and some textures look like straight garbage. I get the feeling that it's not properly optimized to promote buying a PS4 or XB1.

[Cagar]

I didn't read the thread yet but it's patching right behind me with dr. pepper and i'm hyped as fuck lets go

[Eaglet]

Can't wait to pick up my GF and the game after work today.
A night of good food, beer and Dark Souls. Just hope it's anywhere near as good as the previous one.

[Cagar]

Ok so it's like blighttown 24/7 on PS3.
Also, controller vibration is bugged and doesn't work.

[CMoon]

Ok so it's like blighttown 24/7 on PS3.
Also, controller vibration is bugged and doesn't work.

Hmmm...my ps3 must be better than yours.

For those interested, Epic Name Bro got around to posting a walkthrough on youtube. I'm not mentioning it to spoil your games but rather because he spends a lot of time to discussing game mechanics.

[rapoon]

first impressions 20+ hours in:

Spoiler

majority of these are complaints

- Mobs despawning. biggest complaint w/ the game atm. rumors: can burn an item in the bonfire and mobs will respawn. in NG+, enemies never despawn.

- difficulty through prohibition? I don't mind the death penalties. what I do have a problem with is robbing me of my ability to heal myself. gems aren't
that plentiful (random off mobs and remember, mobs despawn!) and vendor(s) sells a limited amount in the beginning. it's not difficult to get to the point
where you're suffering 50% health loss penalty, you're out of effigies and lifegems and you only have 2-3 swills from your flask.

- choke points. several areas and bosses are beyond "hard", they're "cheap as fuck" because it's the most accurate description. belfry tower? tanking the
gargoyles is almost impossible.
4 kings difficulty x 10.

- where's my weapon? a brilliant aspect of demon/dark souls was end game weapon accessibility early in the game but limiting their power through
lack of upgrade components. mechanic is absent now (particularly for pure str weapons) because many standard weapons are not accessible until much, much later.

- finite resources from vender? first blacksmith sells only 10 titanite shards? it's fucking stupid....

- rerolling stats. awesome feature. limited to 3 times per playthrough but it's much better than entirely rerolling if you fuck up your stats (and you will).

- fluid gameplay. I don't notice the slowdowns (360) that plagued the first game.

[guigui]

To rapoon spoilers, I thought

Spoiler

despawning mobs

was an option, was I mistaken ?

[Some-Mist]

I've been enjoying it more, but I have kind of a funny story

Spoiler

I completely ran through majula without knowing it was a rest stop. I feel like I went around the perimeter and I went directly to the tower of flame.

as you may or may not have guessed, running through majula means I had to clear the tower of flame without leveling, an estus flask, or a vendor to buy anything from. took me about a dozen tries to solo the dragonrider.

then I went to the no man's dwarf after.... took me about 4 hours of work to locate the boss, and then clear it. the funny part of the story is that, after about 20 attempts on the boss.... I was finally getting the attack patterns down to kill the boss without taking damage. Finally got the boss down to 20% before I realized the water was up to my waist and I was no longer able to get away... my roommate was dying laughing. The one good attempt I had was screwed by the environment.

I then realized that I was gaining estus upgrade shards yet I didn't have a flask... so I backtracked and found majula. I've killed a couple more bosses, but I'm stuck on the ruin sentinels... almost soloed it (had the 2nd one down to about 30%).

I also accidentally killed McGruff (or w/e) the blacksmith. He kept asking for a burning flame ember and I accidentally hit him with my torch twice causing him to attack me - so I went ahead and killed him.

probably my worst souls playthrough of any installment in the series. still can't believe I beat two somewhat difficult bosses without health potions or an estus flask lol.

[rapoon]

guigui
&
Some-Mist

Spoiler

guigui, unfortunately it's not an option.
supposedly you can burn an item called "Bonfire ascetic" which will respawn the enemies. they're harder and drop rate is higher.
I've only found one ascetic so far.

some-mist, a friend of mine also went tower of flame first and had similar results.

the sentinel's are tough. a lot of people struggled on them, myself included.
couple tips: if you have an effigy, go human and there's an NPC mage in one of the cells you can summon. he's a nutcase and blasts
everything in sight. great damage but he dies easily. also, if you run around a bit on the bottom, the sentinels will throw their shields
at you leaving themselves defenseless.

I still haven't found McGruff's flame. he just mumbles at me and refuses to help me.

my "first impressions" was rough. I was jaded when writing that. regardless, I hate being in a position where my ability to heal is
crippled and farming mobs for gems isn't an option because they despawn.

I just got the claymore and it's fantastic. I had been using the bastard sword and great sword. great sword has a bizarre moveset
and it's very easy to burn through it's durability.

[Some-Mist]

Some-Mist

Spoiler

some-mist, a friend of mine also went tower of flame first and had similar results.

the sentinel's are tough. a lot of people struggled on them, myself included.
couple tips: if you have an effigy, go human and there's an NPC mage in one of the cells you can summon. he's a nutcase and blasts
everything in sight. great damage but he dies easily. also, if you run around a bit on the bottom, the sentinels will throw their shields
at you leaving themselves defenseless.

I still haven't found McGruff's flame. he just mumbles at me and refuses to help me.

my "first impressions" was rough. I was jaded when writing that. regardless, I hate being in a position where my ability to heal is
crippled and farming mobs for gems isn't an option because they despawn.

I just got the claymore and it's fantastic. I had been using the bastard sword and great sword. great sword has a bizarre moveset
and it's very easy to burn through it's durability.

Spoiler

thanks for the advice
I actually haven't used a weapon other than the one they gave me for starting as a knight and I've reinforced it once. Crazy how many awesome weapons you're finding so far - though you're significantly farther as well.

my first impression was the same, but after you get used to it... it's still the same awesome gameplay at the core

[rapoon]

my first impression was the same, but after you get used to it... it's still the same awesome gameplay at the core

grievances aside, it's an amazing game.

[evil_ash_xero]

I'm having a good time, but I'm definitely not liking the art direction as much as the first 2. And that's a big deal.

No areas have wowed me yet, except for maybe the Tower of Flame. The Wharf was a real let down.

[iconoclast]

@rapoon

Spoiler

Have you picked up this game's equivalent of the Cling Ring? I forgot what it's called, but it gives you an extra 25% life in hollow form. It's somewhere in Heidi's Tower of Flame, after the room with the 3 giants IIRC.

It looks like this game has some interesting unlockables, too:

Spoiler

Illusory Ring of a Conqueror - Left hand weapon becomes invisible - Clear game without dying
Illusory Ring of the Exalted - Right hand weapon becomes invisible - Clear game without resting at bonfire
http://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Rings

Too bad they aren't tied to an achievement/trophy. It would've been interesting to see how rare it was.

[CMoon]

It is worth noting that some early frustration may come from not exploring thoroughly. For instance, before fighting the first boss you can have 4 flasks and a flask upgrade. Also, you can have several really important rings. Some elements of the game are pretty weird/obtuse--for instance, some doors that appeared to be locked can be triggered in other ways than having a key. Good luck!

[guigui]

... not exploring thoroughly.

Who does that
Thanks for the tips anyway.

[CMoon]

... not exploring thoroughly.

Who does that
Thanks for the tips anyway.

I guess that would be me. Maybe it is just me, but I feel like a few things were pretty well hidden. Dark Souls 2 seems a little craftier this time 'round.

[Octopod]

So I joined that covenant that makes the game harder. I only found out what it did after looking it up on the internet. Maybe that is why I have been unable to progress very much. At least I'll blame it on that.

[iconoclast]

I finished my first playthrough (with a pure melee dexterity character). I did everything I could think of (all sidequests and optional bosses) but I'm sure I missed plenty of secret areas and such. Going to do a simple +/- review because it's easier for me. I'll try to keep spoilers to the bare minimum, but I'll put it in tags just in case:

Spoiler

+ Combat is pretty much the same as always, but the enemies are a bit smarter. It seemed harder to run away from them and heal (and health recovery felt slower after drinking a flask), and it's definitely harder to avoid attacks when you're really close to someone. For example, when enemies do big overheard attacks, it seems to track you a lot better. If you try running behind them or roll too early, you're probably going to get smashed.
+ Backstabs seem harder to abuse. You can take damage during the animation now and it seemed harder to get behind most of the enemies. You also have to initiate backstabs with a punch or kick, so it's easier to miss them.
+ 4 ring slots make builds more customizable, as does the higher equip burden (fast roll until 70%).
+ Online play seems better. I only tried it for a couple hours, but everything felt nice and smooth (minus one or two laggy battles). You can also be invaded while hollow, which is a nice change (the more invasions, the better).
+ The weapon upgrade system is more straightforward, as are the boss soul weapons. (I kinda miss collecting the embers from all over the world, but that also became a nuisance after a while)
+ None of the areas feel rush or unfinished, like some of the final bits of the original.
+ The boss fights might be the best in the series (I'll have to play it a few more times to say for sure). A few of them are pointless because they're so easy, but none of them are bad like the Bed of Chaos, and several of them are really good.
+ Special rewards for challenge runs (rings for beating the game without dying and beating the game without using a bonfire). A good first step, but it would've been great if they had even more for beating the game at SL1, beating the game without equipping any armor/rings, beating the game under a certain time limit, etc.
+ Good performance on the 360. It seems to run at 30-40 fps pretty much the entire time, at the cost of some screen tearing (which typically doesn't bother me).
+ New Game+ is better. It's no longer a straight damage increase, there are new enemies, new items, and apparently new secrets to discover.

= The difficulty is about the same as the previous game. It's actually probably harder than the current version of Dark Souls, since that game got easier with every patch.
= You're no longer invincible during most of the animations (you can get hit while pulling a lever, opening a door, entering a fog gate, etc). I think this is a positive, but it can be annoying in certain areas because it's harder to run by the enemies and enter the fog without taking any damage. That will probably be painful in SL1 runs. (I think SL1 will be much harder in general, especially if you're doing a naked/no shield/melee only run)
= The lighting "downgrade". I'm actually glad that they backtracked on their emphasis on darkness. The early previews made me think this was going to be Tomb of Giants: The Game, and that never sounded any good to me. But on the other hand, the game looks pretty bad in some areas due to flat lighting or ugly textures that probably would have been masked by the darkness. The lighting/shadows do look really good when you light bonfires, use Pharros Stones in certain areas, or hold a torch, though.

- Soul Memory. Just seems like a pointless wall they put in place that further reduces the amount of players you can connect to.
- Most of the areas aren't as memorable to me as the last game's. They aren't bad by any means, but almost nothing stands out as being as awesome as Sen's Fortress, Anor Londo, Ash Lake, the Duke's Archives, etc.
- Likewise, most of the bosses aren't as impressive. (I'm not talking about their patterns, just the visual design and their significance in the world)
- I don't like the story or lore as much as the original's, but maybe that's just because I already know so much about that game and DS2 is brand new. I'm sure it'll grow on me over time.
- Maybe I missed it, but there doesn't seem to be an infinite-use item for invasions...

? None of the merchants sell somewhat essential items, like poison moss. It doesn't bother me because I'm always incredibly stingy about resources in RPGs, but that seems like an oversight.

Probably forgot a few things, but TLDR; It's a great game and a worthy successor to Dark Souls (which is probably my favorite RPG of all time). It didn't grab me as much as the original, but I think that's because Dark Souls was a complete evolution of the Demon's Souls formula, whereas DS2 is just a refinement.

[evil_ash_xero]

I'm losing interest. I hope that changes.

The world just is not as interesting as Demon's or Dark. The bosses, thus far, suck. The level design, for some of these stages, is way too straight forward.

I had problems with Demon's Souls, but it had a better world, better stages, better bosses(!), better characters, and better design.
Something is lacking here.

I could be eating my words later, but I just got jumped by those 3 knights....and wow....that's some lackluster shit. That boss in the pirate ship sucked too. The pirate ship was SOOO disappointing. I was really expecting some cool stuff...but nope.

So many of these stages start up kind of interesting, and then just....they just don't go anywhere like the other two's stages did.

I know this game is getting rave reviews, and people seem to really like it. But I dunno...

I get the feeling with Miyazaki kicked off, some of the soul has been removed from Souls.

[50Hz]

Completed Demon's a good 3-4 years ago, skipped Dark Souls due to money and being spoiled so DeS is the only thing I can compare it to.

Spoiler

Really enjoying the game so far, it captures that same sense of anxiety and discovery that DeS had which is all I really wanted in this game.
Going off the last point, I was surprised with the depth of secret shit you could find if you used your ingenuity (jump rolling onto a platform that looks like it should kill you, attacking a "locked" door so that the enemies behind it open it for you). Super rewarding.
Level design is pretty supurb and enemies seem to know what their doing (when up close anyway)
A bit disapointed with the enemy de-spawn as a good number of people have already stated. I had the perfect soul farming spot when I was low leveled (started as deprived, raised only intelligence, faith and occasionally attunement as I wanted to do hexes) where I'd just bait the old knight by the Heide's Tower of Flame bonfire into attacking me so he'd fall off the edge, gave me 400 souls per minute of the trick until he dissapeared from my life forever ;~;
Not too sure but I think magic is as abusable as it was in DeS, I've so far been sweeping through tough areas with tons of blood stains and only getting challenged when I have to tactically roll away from groups (I refuse to use shields to confront my problems)
Maybe I haven't been paying attention during them but the boss music hasn't caught me as much this time round, nothing as cool as the Tower Knight / Penetrator or as moving as Maiden Astraea. Come to think of it, there isn't as much foreshadowing of bosses in this game, most of the time they just seem to be there.

But yeah, I'm probably not doing it justice. Easily, the best game I've bought for the PS3 in the last 2 years.

Also, needing some advice
Really tempted to reinvest my build into some kind of spellsword, especially when I keep getting weapons with names as sexy as Old Knight Ultra Greatsword, you can do that with a soul vessel, right? If true what stats do you advise investing in?
Anyone have any idea where any of the other victor stones are located? I've only seen the one at Majula and you need to have seen 10 for Great Magic Weapon

[Cagar]

Spoiler

Completed!
As a whole, it's easily better than dark souls or demon's souls combined.
Everyone saying that it isn't a proper souls-game should pie. Seriously, I have no clue how could someone even think that. Is everyone skipping the forest of giants straight to flame tower, or is everyone just rushing without exploring and then wondering why the game doesn't feel so solid? Bizzare, I thought it was 100% souls experience from start to finish.
The design decisions are great.
Bosses were a little easy, though i think it's just the combat skills I've picked up from ds1 and des.
I'm still missing a few places and secrets, probably, will get to them now. Along with starting to get the story together..
11/10 would play again (and will do, as all of the classes are actually viable now)

EDIT:
About despawning mobs:
How come some people think that this is a 100% decrease to difficulty?
As far as I know, the developers did it to remove the possibility to farm souls and overlevel themselves to cheese through hard parts. Now you can get in even bigger trouble, if you die too much to lose your souls and then won't have enemies to get levels or humanity with.
It's a logical design decision, and one that clearly is not just "making the game more casual-friendly"

Spoiler

EDIT2:
Also, I hope that you guys didn't join the stone-covenant in majula. That makes enemies harder and disables co-op.

Spoiler

EDIT3:
Also, the shards and other resources are not limited/restricted. I won't spoil it, but you will get to buy infinite amount of them later on

[jepjepjep]

I've been playing for a few hours. I think I've reached the first challenging part.

Spoiler

The Pursuer is a big fucking asshole.

[evil_ash_xero]

All this praise it making me feel like I'm missing something.

Maybe it will click.

[CMoon]

I've been playing for a few hours. I think I've reached the first challenging part.

Spoiler

The Pursuer is a big fucking asshole.

That boss is very beatable, but he is incredibly intimidating, especially since he comes early and it is very likely when people meet him they are under equipped and under leveled. Hahaha, I think the big thing with him is close the distance and keep circling. He has one attack you have to dodge. I brought in human help the first time and got

Spoiler

shot in the back with a ballista!

All this praise it making me feel like I'm missing something.

Maybe it will click.

I really think Dark Souls 2 was designed for the metagame more than the 1st time through. Case in point

Spoiler

the bonfire asthetic changes everything, letting you get access to multiple powerful items early and rack up huge amounts of souls -- A German Spy has shown you can get around 40K just by farming Things Betwixt after using that item.

If things aren't clicking now, give it some time. I beat Dark Souls 1 the month it came out, then didn't play it again until 2012. I didn't stop playing it until last week

[jepjepjep]

I've been playing for a few hours. I think I've reached the first challenging part.

Spoiler

The Pursuer is a big fucking asshole.

That boss is very beatable, but he is incredibly intimidating, especially since he comes early and it is very likely when people meet him they are under equipped and under leveled. Hahaha, I think the big thing with him is close the distance and keep circling. He has one attack you have to dodge. I brought in human help the first time and got

Spoiler

shot in the back with a ballista!

Oh man, sabotage by a friend.

I wonder if I am under-equipped for him. This game is kind of like shmups where if I die I want to keep trying, but it sucks that the life bar keeps getting shorter. Overall I'm having fun so far.

iconoclast, how many hours did your first playthrough take?