DARK SOULS 2

[Pretas]

It's also likely that firearms as portrayed in the Souls universe would be crippled by long reload times, small clips, poor accuracy, and scarce ammunition.

[cj iwakura]

I want to stay down with the Blue Sentinels, as I LOVE the concept... but damn, no one ever needs me.

It should have been made to support anyone invaded by a Red.

[guigui]

How does exactly Blue Sentinels work then ?
I thought you actually were to be called anytime a Red invades someone, this is not the case ?

[50Hz]

Only works if there is a Way of the Blue member in need and you are forced to be both human and wearing the covenant ring.
Not worth the trouble IMO. Ranking up using the blood of the guilty is much more satisfying than being a crutch for the weak.
The guilty must pay the price after all.

[CMoon]

[Acid King]

I finished my first playthrough with my sorceror and started a new game with a melee character and the game's lack of character is starting to wear thin. I'm going to have to agree with what others have said and say that there just aren't as many memorable locales or enemies as the first game. The Iron Keep was pretty cool, Earthen Peak was ok, and I liked the idea behind Aldia's Keep, but nothing I'm really excited to play through again, unlike Anor Londo or Sen's Fortress. The dragon design is also totally generic and the lack of blood bothers me even more now that I'm playing with a straight melee build. Maybe I'll dig in NG+ and see how that feels before puttin it down for awhile.

[CMoon]

Yeah, DS2 is clearly a good game, but I feel so little motivation to play it because nothing about it is memorable. I mean, imagine a really super tight shmup with piss-ugly graphics, super generic design and blah music. Even knowing the game is good, it is hard not to want to play something more memorable. If everything about project beast is true, then this will be the in-betweener that was still pretty solid. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface with it, but already want to go back and check out vagrant story (given the current thread.) I so hope down the road I'm looking at this post and wondering what the hell was wrong with me, but I'm more worried that whole 'nothing is really grabbing me' feeling is pretty much dead on.

[guigui]

Sure, general consensus seems to be that the game is kind of meeeh compared to the preivous in the serie. Maybe the surprise effect is gone and those playing DkSII as their first game in the serie are really pleased.

Anyway, I have a really good time with it when I can, that is about one hour a week !

[BareKnuckleRoo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UScsme8didI

I watched this not too long ago, and I gotta say, I agree with most of the critique. DSII doesn't seem to live up to its predecessors in many ways. Hitboxes in particular can feel very wonky.

[MX7]

Up to the

Spoiler

Lost Bastille

boss and starting to get a little tired of the game.

Also, despite having no Gold account, the game was quite happy to see me play online last weekend, yet this 'privilege' has suddenly been revoked, bah. Loathe to buy a gold account as playing online isn't a massive deal for me, but wish I could get to the bottom why the game saw fit to let me play online at all...

[Marc]

Did you guys all play through Demon's? I ask because I'm wondering if it's just over familiarity with the series with the third game. After multiple runs on Souls, I tried to play Demon's but was a bit fatigued, and by the time I was hankering for more I'd gotten rid of the PS3, as such I've honestly enjoyed every minute of DS2. I'm surprised at the comments on level design, at its best (Iron Keep, Lost Bastille and Shrine of Amana IMO) it outstrips the first game completely, and even it's dull moments are nowhere near as throwaway as the Bed of Chaos. I miss the I interconnected world, but on the other hand there really are secrets rammed into every nook and cranny, and on the whole I'd say the combat is more enjoyable, though the tracking thing is annoying at times. Only real complaint is that it feels rushed visually in places. Feels to me like the best bits of (what I played of) Demon's and DS1 mashed together.

[cj iwakura]

I loved Demon's. I prefer five huge, well-designed, intricate areas to 30+ thrown together levels.

DS2 is good, very good even, but also flawed. There's lots more of everything, but less quality. The world felt like a bunch of cool ideas lazily cobbled together. My favorite areas were visually impressive(Lost Bastille, Drangleic Castle), but there was so little to do.

I enjoyed the fixes to sorcery(welcome back, Firestorm!) and the Hex system, but again, Sorcery Covenant? Shafted. At least in DkS1 they tried.

The core story was very good, lots of depth and deception, but I didn't feel too attached to any NPC shy of the Emerald Herald and the Pate/Creighton conflict. Well, and Sweet Shalquoir. I still remember nearly everyone from Demon's.

[guigui]

As for NPCs, I find they talk too much in DSII.
Everytime a dialogue occurs, there is a moment when I think "ok, this should end now". But it does not, and the 3 or 4 sentences following have no interest at all.
You NPC, just shut up and let me enjoy the game.

[nZero]

Bearer- Seek- Seek- Lest-

[guigui]

Bearer- Seek- Seek- Lest-

On my PS3, if I press X fast enough, the Herald does not even speak.

By the way, the Herald is lame compared to the Maiden in Black :



Soul of the mind, key to life’s ether.
Soul of the lost, withdrawn from its vessel.
Let strength be granted, so the world might be mended.
So the world might be mended.

[BulletMagnet]

In related news, the director of Demon's and Dark Souls has been named President of From Software.

[CMoon]

Yeah, saw that on Reddit. Assuming this allows him to make kick ass games versus being buried under drudgery, I'll take it as great news.

The idea that Dark Souls 2 is a filler game to get us through to project beast is very encouraging. I mean, if the B team can make a game as good as Dark Souls 2, From Soft pretty much has all my money.

[Marc]

Found the darklurker on my NG+. Ouch. My guy is a walking tank, not even put enough points in to other stuff to use pyro. Struggling here, but I'll be fucked if I'm gonna re spec for one damn boss. Never done a full magic build on either Souls, so going to go back to 1 and play through both that way next.

[Jon]

^^^I played through the game twice and the Darklurker was the biggest roadblock for my magic deficient character. I succeeded using a fully upgraded raw santier's spear with gold pine resin applied. It also helps to have your pyro glove maxed along with chaos storm to cast when he splits. It still took me over a dozen tries to put him down.

[Acid_Rain]

If I wanna play as a mixture of Pyro and fast CQC what starting class and gift would you recommend?

[evil_ash_xero]

Is Miyazaki directing Project Beast?

[slk486]

No one knows yet. We can only hope.

[guigui]

I'm about halfway through the game I think, not much time to play.

Found a malformed skull in sinner's rise, damned thing is amazing. Upgraded it to lightning +10 for quick max damage output, it one shots almost everything and breaks defense in almost every situation.

I spent a rusted coin to loot another and now am planning to powerstance both. Anyone in here tried to powerstance big weapons like this already ?

[BulletMagnet]

I haven't played the game and thus don't understand everything that's going on in this video, but most anything that has the Benny Hill theme in it somewhere amuses me by default, so there you go.

[Illyrian]

I'm about halfway through the game I think, not much time to play.

Found a malformed skull in sinner's rise, damned thing is amazing. Upgraded it to lightning +10 for quick max damage output, it one shots almost everything and breaks defense in almost every situation.

I spent a rusted coin to loot another and now am planning to powerstance both. Anyone in here tried to powerstance big weapons like this already ?

You'll get torn to pieces by magic, and have lots of stamina management problems in pvp anyway. In PVE you'll very rarely get to use both weapons on a boss etc. as you'll have no shield and so need to be dodge rolling all the time. It would be an interesting gimmick PVP build but that's about it.

Also that weapon has sod all durability, even with upgrades.

Edit: Furthermore, you'll need really high weight allowance and heavy armour to compensate for the lack of shield and stamina issues.

[guigui]

Yep, I already spent a Soul Vessel reallocating points for trying it and am kind of disappoint.
Not really interested in PVP, but PVE seems harder than before. I like to wear both skulls for hits and Smelter Demon armor for poise, so I had to invest a lot in VIT for carrying all of those and roll correctly.

After some minutes of play, what I actually miss the most is the minimal guard provided by a single 2-handed skull.
Damage is certainly better, but not that much : around 1000 for a strong double attack with lightning skull+10 and raw skull+6. Buffing the raw skull does not seem to add anything by the way...

I'll keep on playing this way for some time and see if I find it intersting. If no, back to Soul Vessel !

[Acid_Rain]

I'm going for a dex build right now, any recommendations regarding…
_skills
_weapons
_armor
_additional pyro?

[CMoon]

I'm going for a dex build right now, any recommendations regarding…
_skills
_weapons
_armor
_additional pyro?

Honestly melee feels rather gimped in DS2; I did a strength build and didn't see all those shield crushes they talked about. Magic>>>>melee. That said, if you're going DEX (which is apparently way more gimped than STR), definitely go for poison. Poison arrows, poison whips, poison daggers, etc. You're gonna need to pump dex, end and adp, so I don't know whether you want to make vanilla dex or go for a hybrid. Int will give you both magic and fire buffs and probably more versatility than faith, but faith is apparently really good now.

Sorry I'm can't be more helpful with this. Honestly feel like the scaling is not so great in this game and Str and Dex should mostly be used as support skills so you can use those awesome weapons, while focusing on stats for elemental infusions/buffs/spells.

[Weak Boson]

Beat the final boss I think the game was pretty much what I expected. It doesn't touch the first game but still has quite a bit to offer. I guess I agree with the critique bareknuckleroo posted. It's clearly not as well crafted as the first game - some of the areas of so simple as to be pointless, there are some agonizing enemy placements that result in whole stretches that feel like a chore - and all that does suck quite a bit. I remember when release was a long way off we got some gameplay showing

Spoiler

Aldia's Keep. To think I was expecting something like the Duke's Archives!

But that video doesn't mention any of the things they did right. I really like the hollowing system. It makes sense in the world and forces you to become human a bit more, which is something I hardly ever did in Dark Souls. Also I did like how you were forced to fight groups of enemies at a time more often. In Dark Souls it was too easy to lure things out and take them down one by one, and that wasn't always that fun. Having groups aggro together makes more sense and, while it wasn't always done perfectly, did result in a some cools fights. I also found it interesting how much more utility some moves have in group situations. For example,

Spoiler

he takes out the Royal Rat Authority's minions one by one when then complains about it when a few swings of a claymore will clear them up before the main man reaches you.

The combat system works well in a one on one situation but that doesn't mean it can't work in less balanced encounters.

The bosses were pretty uninspired, though. Most of the best ideas were already done in Dark Souls and there were a lot of samey fights. Some of them I beat first time, some of them took me too many attempts and some I just cheesed through with summons because I wanted to get on with the game. I guess overall the problem is that it's spread a bit thin, like they spent too much time making new areas instead of properly realizing the ones they'd started. More areas to visit, less to explore.

I'm going to hold off commenting on the story until I look a bit more closely at it. It would be unreasonable to expect my first playthrough of this game to match my cumulative experience of the first one. One thing I will say is that I have absolutely no idea what happened or why I did anything. To be honest I have a bit of sympathy for the game in this regard - it being set in the same world is an extremely tricky business considering how complete it was before, and I'm just assuming their hands were tied in that regard because it was a sequel - so we'll see how it goes.

Because despite it falling short I'm still up for round two. Still got to do NG+, challenge runs, pvp, general messing around as well as unlocking any outstanding secrets. Just need to remember that most games look bad in light of Dark Souls' shining brilliance.

[CMoon]

For those thinking about the no death, no bonfire run, this is a pretty nice guide: http://redd.it/26zo64