The thing about Orphan was basically that I developed a rhythm and eventually just beat it on repeating that rhythm. I can’t find that with Friede and that’s the problem I’m having. I’m aware of the tells, phase 1 is very easy, it’s phase 2 and 3 that throw me off because I cannot for the life of me get the timing and distance down consistently. And after about 20 attempts I run out of patience, stop, only to come back the next day and find I feel like I’ve forgotten the fight. Orphan just seemed poorly designed, but Friede seems designed in a way that’s very intentionally made to be beaten and that’s what gets me about the fight. It’s not an obnoxious twitch fight, but I can’t get to a point where I feel like I’m making the phases (except 1) “regular”. And while I haven’t tried adding Dark Stoneplate, I found even with projectiles I couldn’t get to Friede fast enough during those heals and it’s super annoying as a result.
sorry for talking about ds2 in the ds3 thread so much, but i’ve been committed to finishing the dlc in sotfs before resuming in ds3. what would you guys consider the hardest boss(es) in sotfs and how do they stack up to orphan and freide, etc
Probably the knight with the big sword you have to circle strafe.
Keep us updated because I never got done with the Ivory King one so if times agree I would be up for some co-opping.
The DLC bosses are the best designed in DSII and in general I enjoy the environments of DSII in spite of their architecture not really being as up to snuff with the rest of the series. The game’s levels are simultaneously the most unfair and also probably more interesting because of it. Demon’s Souls really still is the best for presenting areas in a manner that gives off a certain character to the spaces themselves, with Bloodborne succeeding similarly until post-Rom. The Dark Souls series don’t really do this as much. The spaces seem more designed as a theme for how the enemies function but not really how they contribute to the space. It reminds me a lot more of Mega Man-styled level design, where the enemies are there to provide flavor to the area as much as they are obstacles. At the same time, Dark Souls 1-3 enemies very often seem like they are there only to provide flavor and their actual contribution to the space (as potential workers, or passers-by, or as those resurrected by the local sorcerers for experiments, etc.) is reduced greatly. The overabundance of knights in Dark 1-3 is a part of the issue, and enemies being much more densely packed and the leveling system becoming stricter also contributes.
I’ve always had a hard time killing the neutral enemies.
This first tower structure is really testing that feeling for me.
Also, fuckoff parasite snakedemon head dudes are… a thing.
fume knight is great
haven’t beaten sir alonne yet, but also great
smelter demon is great
sinh is great
(jester thomas is hilarious)
elana, the squalid queen is interesting! a fun fight, but not a highlight of the dlc
aava, the king’s pet is fantastic
gank squad i haven’t beaten and is kind of crappy imo (also kind of cool? but mostly “meh”)
haven’t beaten burnt ivory king but i love the fight
idk about the other pets yet (haven’t gotten there)
i’m not sure if fume or smelter is the harder fight. both are very, very good and took me many, many tries
I can’t remember either fight clearly, but I strongly remember hating Smelter more.
imo smelter is easier to dodge, but he does constant AoE around himself for 3/4 of the fight which is pretty tough to deal with
i feel like the DkS1 dlc bosses took “dodge real good and heal smart-like” to their highest-quality extreme, and then everything in DkS2 was like “OK just do the Oolacile bosses at varying levels of difficulty because i guess everyone liked those?”
i mean i love Punch-Out!! as much as anyone but this series can do better than “how do you dodge… THIS attack animation?! WHOOP shouldn’t have healed THERE”
idk i played Demon’s Souls AFTER Dark 1 and 2 and stuff like Old Hero or Storm King or False Idol stood out way more to me than Flamelurker or Maneaters or Allant. it sucks to me that the “easy” fights from that game aren’t looked on more fondly, i’m way with diplo re: looking more for tonally interesting, creative challenges than just pure Good Good Fastrollfests.
idk idk idk
when i’m properly engaging with boss fights in souls, it’s a beautiful and delicate ballet. i have to dance the designer’s choreography. the level of communication between the developers and the player when engaging with e.g. fume knight is meaningful and subtle and evocative. now, i never got past the first boss in ds1 dlc, so idk about that dlc bosses in that game, but none of the vanilla bosses except maybe sif and gwyn gave me anything near the satisfaction that many of the bosses in ds2 have given me.
i honestly give fewer shits regarding whether bosses are categorically similar, because i love to learn all the new dances. dancing is fun![quote=“sleepysmiles, post:842, topic:1250”]
“how do you dodge… THIS attack animation?! WHOOP shouldn’t have healed THERE”
[/quote]
just doesn’t ring true to me!
OMG the comparison w/ dancing does so much for me that i can really genuinely understand why you like these bosses you like, goddang!! Have you watched Princess Tutu? Please watch Princess Tutu.
Ultimately i’d guess we have different values when it comes to boss fights. I love it most when a boss feels like a conclusion to the area of a game it is finishing, and the challenge is less important to me. i often felt through Souls2 that the bosses were more supposed to be “big tough enemys” and that really didn’t do it for me.
i have not yet played DkS2 DLC bosses, or Bloodborne or DkS3, so maybe/probably my opinion dont mean shit, but my reasons for WANTING to play those games ain’t got shit to do with those bosses!
I’m actually still kind of puzzles that there are so many people on this forum whose last experience with the series was DkS2 and haven’t played 3 or boobarn. it makes sense, obviously, because that was the last game available on last-gen consoles, but it was also a bit of a design failure and an oddball in so many respects that to talk about it as the logical endpoint of anything is really lacking.
I fully agree with this, but also say that Maneaters and Flamelurkers are way better when there are Storm Kings and False Idols to compare them against.
boobarn has a ~$300+ paywall
i have played ds3 (maybe up to the halfway point? maybe more?) but am taking a hiatus while i complete 2
Well sure! and thats partly my point. It is neat when you have rollfast dodgegood bosses to contrast bosses that tell a cool story, and/or ask different things of you than the other parts of the game did.
yeah there it is!
i have a hard time engaging with Dark Souls 2, it is simultaneously treated as “Obviously the Worst Souls Game” and “BUT STILL A GOOD GAME ANYWAY DONT BE SO PICKY” in a way that i find frustrating to navigate. It’s not a bad game, but it’s a terrible Souls game.
DkS3 sounds like a wildly better game, but still not a great Souls game (assuming you care about the lore being interesting (which you fucking should)). So i don’t feel too uncomfortable extrapolating from my experiences of the first two Dark Souls games because 3 is quite obviously an evolution and in no way a revolution.
If i woke up tomorrow and a PS4 was in my home i’d hope a copy of Bloodborne was sitting there next to it, because it sounds like a much more exciting sequel to Dark Souls than 2 was!
Dark Souls 2’s controls are so clunky that, especially now with having played BB and DS3, each of which is a fairly speedy-feeling game somewhat comparable to Demon’s Souls, getting acquainted with the bosses’ behaviors never felt like a dance as much as bumblingly trying to come to terms with a thing in spite of its design.
I don’t know how anyone who has played these games for hundreds of hours could even begin to make clear relative judgments about difficulty. Orphan is tough (mostly on account of its fairly badly designed latter half), but is it a tougher fight than O&S might’ve been five years ago? And how are we defining difficulty? Number of times died? The amount of struggle we exert within a fight itself irrespective of our attempt number? How frustrated we get?
Yeah, but even the general design for the Maneaters and Flamlurker have notable aspects that make them physically and atmospherically engaging the way mere tough arena encounters aren’t. In the former’s case, you have the setting’s intense darkness and slim footing, with your only safeguard being the center portion’s fire basin; and for the latter there are lava puddles to avoid and alcoves on the side you can use for respites.
if my feelings remain as they are now, ds2 may end up being my favorite dark souls game. it will require many words to justify this and i’m almost 100% sure no one will be even slightly convinced. sounds fun!
i have never played demon’s nor bb because i don’t buy consoles. i got a wii for $99 and before that the last thing i bought was a ps2
real tempted on ye olde ps4 tho