I’m mostly a melee character, but I’ve basically forgotten about all of my non-buff spells, whereas I expected them to be a much more useful crutch…
similarly, it seems like there are a lot more fights where dodging backwards is going to get you killed, which I approve of. almost every boss can close distance; you need to get around them.
I mean, the genius of DkS difficulty design has always been giving you a huge amount of tools with varying levels of cheesiness so that lateral thinking can get you out of most situations. Even what I’ve been doing by tailoring my melee equipment carefully to individual bosses is slightly in the direction of cheese, and if all else fails you can always farm a few levels, so there’s an intrinsic flexibility to the difficulty of an action-RPG.
That said I also perceive that co-op is in a qualitatively different category. It’s ridiculously strong in every case and almost tantamount to skipping the boss (hosts can stand back and let the white phantoms do the work, and in fact as I white phantom I typically prefer that they do instead of unnecessarily risking their skin). Mario 3d World has this mechanic where a shining golden leaf appears at the beginning of levels after 5 deaths, which gives you invincibility and infinite flight. Obviously that’s there to allow a frustrated player to effectively skip a particular area instead of giving up on the game. But there is no way to take that powerup while retaining a shred of mangamer self-respect, and it feels profoundly patronizing for it even to appear in the first place. Meanwhile From has slipped in a functionally very similar mechanic without losing any of its reputation for unforgiving difficulty – as booj said, it’s presented as “just another tool” – it’s very clever really.
(Come to think of it, 3d world also supports co-op which also makes the game much easier thanks to generous respawn mechanics, so I wonder why they even put in the condescension leaf. That mechanic made more sense in 3D Land which is single-player only – in World they should’ve realized the duplication and ditched it.)
I think it’s a false assumption to say that summoning is the same as cheating your way through the game. There have been many times when summoning was still difficult. Not only that but sometimes summons aren’t useful at all which in DS2 was worse because bosses had more HP with more summons. Sometimes I’ve had summons aggro bosses in ways that I did not want and ended up wiping the whole group.
That said, overall, the game is relatively easier with summons. But the summons aren’t 100% and that random chance you get a bad summon is enough for some players to never want them in their games in the first place.
Yes, sure. But when you start summoning, as long as you have a minimal knowledge of what you must dodge when the boss aims its fire at you, you can probably beat the boss within 3 or so attempts. It turns brick wall impossible bosses into ones that are a just a coin flip away from beaten.
All of the Souls game increase boss health by summon. (In fact, I’ve observed that in DkS3, summoning 3 phantoms is too much, the boss has too way much health and is harder than with 1 or 2 summons. I get irritated with hosts that make me wait around until they summon a third phantom.) That makes the boss not die within the first 20 seconds of the fight. Regardless, bosses are trivialized by having more than one target to split their attacks between, and no amount of extra health can compensate.
Yeah, I just have no compunction about co-oping. I usually phantom into other people’s games to learn a level/boss, then pop into mine, try it solo, and if i need to summon, just go for it. I don’t play games to intentionally frustrate myself by not using the tools the game presents me with.
Hey, the nice thing about video games is that people can want and get different things out of them!
My approach to bosses in these games is that if I die on my own a few times I’ll summon a helper or two from then on. Or, if I haven’t found a checkpoint, am worried about poking around further, and have arrived at a boss with nearby AI summon signs, I’ll employ them during the first encounter. It can be fun to learn a boss’ patterns and figure everything out on your own, but I’m way more interested in exploring and figuring out the best strategies for normal encounters. I don’t have any qualms about going into a boss and sloppily slamming it to death in a minute.
Oh yeah, totally. I think what bugs me about a lot of the Souls fan community is this pretending that there is a “right” way to play them that ignores large parts of what is in the game for the sake of some sort of constructed ideal of purity. It’s weird.
Don’t get how someone saying “i play with these restrictions” is worthy of derision or indicative of some tough guy gamer attitude. I know people who refuse to ever play these games with shields or magic and, y’know, good for them.
Git gud at reading tone? idk.
I’m just gonna end up having to treat this like every other SB thread on Souls games and peace out.
I sort of have a similar practice except in reverse, I put down white summon signs for bosses I’ve never fought before. I learn the boss patterns at zero risk to myself, and then respawn at the boss door with the same amount of estus regardless.
DkS3 has made this easier than ever because they finally fixed phantom estus to be entirely independent from your real estus, you always spawn with max (i.e. half) estus as a phantom. So you can always sit at the boss door and co-op repeatedly without the need for any refill runs. When I got a feel for it, I can confidently start to solo it without needing to have wasted so much time running back to the door, or with attempting the first phase over and over just to get to the second phase to start learning about it (which is in a way, the same thing as running back to the door).
I can understand the attitude of intentionally looking for a challenge. I used to play through Gradius 3 for SNES with minimal powerups, and I’ve refused to use overpowered weapons and things in certain games because it seemed to cheapen the experience.
That said, I summon help for many Dark Souls bosses. And I don’t hesitate to use cheap methods (such as poison arrows) when they are available, especially my first time through the game. In some cases, I retry a boss on my own later.
Aside from bosses, though, I never summon help my first time through an area. The one time I did that was 4-2 in Demon’s Souls, and I always felt as if I missed out on part of the experience that way. One of my favorite aspects of these games is slowly and methodically exploring a new place that’s unknown and feels genuinely dangerous.
this happens in just about every game, really. there’s an ‘honorable’ way of playing that a subset of people want to see happen. e.g.: everyone imagines street fighter 2 to be ryu mirrors. reality is, barlog and/or vega wins
personally I prefer trying to learn to solo melee fights in souls games just because it’s more fun for me, because magic has historically made stuff trivially easy throughout the franchise as they are not well equipped to deal with it. not gonna rag on anyone who plays that way though.
The more I think of it now, the more I admire the multipurpose nature of Souls coop. It’s a skip mode, training mode, replay mode, and soul farming mode all in one. Not to mention the intrinsic jolliness of cooperation. Only From approaches game design problems in such a holistic manner.
And also narratively coherent/enriching!
The other night, I did something I never thought I would do while playing video games. I used the little free microphone thing that comes with the PS4 to talk while playing Dark Souls 3 with my sister. I hope this doesn’t mean that I have to start drinking Mountain Dew now. It did make it easier to intentionally meet up and play co-op.
We couldn’t get that password thing to work (though a level gap might have been the real issue), so the next day we tried the old technique of putting signs in obscure places and that worked just fine. Years ago, I did this in Demon’s Souls with a couple members of this very forum (long after I had finished the game).
I always play a mage my first time through these games. For me it’s just tradition at this point, and I like casters. As for how I multiplayer first time through, it’s typically based on how much difficulty I have with the boss - first time (or even the first couple times) I tend to try and solo, but depending on frustration I’ll get help rather than bang my head against the wall (usually, sometimes there are bosses that I really want to beat solo because they’re just fun to fight solo - some bosses in the Souls series have a really good ratio of fairness and tension).
My second run through is usually melee though, and this is the first game that made me wonder about whether or not I should have done melee the first time - mostly because I enjoy the Farron Ultragreatsword a ton. I think it’s the first weapon where, when people say the weapon “feels good” to use, I understand that sentiment. Straight swords are practical and effective, and will easily get you through any Souls game, but they never really felt satisfying to me. Much as I wanted to like Halberds or Greatswords or other weapons, none of them ever really clicked. Moonlight Greatsword was good but gimmicky. So many weapons and finally one that I just like using. Spending a lot of time doing co-op with this char just to avoid progress.
Also working on Pyromancer and holy crap does pyromancy scale absurdly in this game. Certain enemies seem to insta-die to fire. I hit an enemy for 2500 damage yesterday, I’m pretty sure because the enemy was just automatically dying to fire. The spell normally does around 700, which is still quite good for a spell with considerable splash range (all the offensive fire spells have pretty good splash range).
I dunno about that one, there are gestures in that direction but I’ve always felt the series could do more to fully integrate it (and NG+ cycles) into the narrative. The plot uniformly assumes you’re the only one going through the world at this time. Like, in DkS1 it obviously raises questions as to whether you’re the Chosen One, and indeed the game handwaves in the general direction of doubting that, but there isn’t a single line of dialogue actually making the connection. There’s still a bit too much of “this is just a videogame mechanic, please ignore this for plot purposes” going on here.
Just want to jump in and say that I find the multiplayer fascinating from a lore perspective, even if it’s not very concrete. The idea of multiple universes overlapping in positive and negative ways is fantastic. The idea that whatever is going on is causing a thinness in the fabric of the universe is very Dark Tower. I’m a sucker for multiverse stuff though.
Of course, I’ve only played 1, and I’ve literally never done co-op or been invaded thanks to always lacking the humanity to do so. I find the messages on the ground idea wonderful though.
Apparently there’s a Dark Souls board game now?