one of these games needs to have a scripted earthquake event, which shakes up all the scenery while you’re in the middle of it
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Grandpa’s posts made me install Dark Souls 1 on the old laptop and try to rub through it. Amazed how much of the geography I do not remember.
Surprise Dark Souls 1 is great.
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I just did Oolacile for the first time ever. Took a few tries to beat Artorias and I beat Manus in one go. I’m surprised at how modern and player-friendly Royal Wood and Oolacile Township feel. You’ll have to fight a group of enemies exactly once before finding the next elevator shortcut. It’s fine, but underwhelming. It feels like this is how they made most of DS3 levels. Anyway I saved the DLC for last and so now all I have to do is fight Gwyn again, which will put this playthrough at about 17 hours for completion, having skipped a few bosses. After that I’m gonna finish my repeat playthrough of DS2 probably 
I feel like I’m only doing this to sate some subconscious hunger for Elden Ring.
I agree with what @DaleNixon said which is that the great club kind of makes DS1 feel like an NES game. At +15 and 40 strength it one-shots most humanoid enemies in the game, except for endgame black/blue knights and maybe a few others, and it’s what minimized my roadblocks for an expedient playthrough. Like, it’s a way to actively choose to make the game easier, like every build choice affects difficulty, but when I look at the stat charts for any other weapon I go “I do not like the look of this more than the great club” so I just stick with the most powerful bambam tool. I’ve already beaten the game with a lightning claymore and I’ve made it pretty far with the moonlight spear and sorceries, so I feel just in just playing the game on easy mode
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Got to Andor Londo.
I cannot remember how you get more flasks
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The best part of Oolacile is the way you can lean over the canyon’s edge and hear the faint screams.
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You humanize yourself and kindle bonfires up to 10, once you beat Pinwheel in the catacombs you get the rite of kindling for up to 20
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Yeah I really love the sound design of Ooacile, I love hearing the faint humming and cackling in the township.
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Yeah, grandpa’s posts and this thread have made me, in the last week, both install Dark Souls on my laptop (it is still laughable in 2022 how necessary DSFix is) and play with it for a minute (I may play it some more, probably, maybe) and also DS2: Scholar of the First Sin (I only ever played the original version) on my desktop. I intend to make a good go at both, especially the latter, but we’ll see what happens when Elden Ring comes out.
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I have slowed down my playthrough of DS2, and today I reached the Undead Crypt.
Is it just my impression, or the Crypt, the Shrine of Amana and Drangelic Castle are a lot more boring than everything that came earlier? The levels are less complex and more of a test of resistence.
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crypt and shrine are two of the most king’s field levels in the series, imo. they’re definitely meant to test your endurance and combat consistency more than exploration, but I like that. I like that you can break the rocks to make things quicker at the cost of your weapon health
I actually think it’s a detriment that DS1 so often asks you to fish single enemies out of groups with their short engagement radius. DS2 makes this impossible for most of its levels, and amana is a prime example of teaching you how to engage each enemy while staying alert to dodge outside threats, until every single caster in the area is dead
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Amana’s mace knights also wake up really quickly and run exactly as fast as you do. Crypt has those giant shield knights obstructing narrow hallways. So they deny not only the single-enemy-pull depraved tactic slime mentioned, but also the run-past-things one.
I agree, but it’s above all a detriment to Demon’s. At least DkS1 introduced shared wakeup groups as part of the AI engine and doesn’t give you a Thief Ring
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DS1 has the fog ring that works in a similar way! I’m sure it’s not nearly as effective but it works, I remember sneaking past the painting guardians with it
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Yeah, you described what I felt when playing Amana. The “level design” there is not really level design, but enemy placement aimed to make you think about your strategy (third section) and generally endure (especially second section).
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Btw, what is the general opinion of The Duke’s Archives in Dark Souls 1? I didn’t mind it (although there were a few difficult spikes) but I remember that many people didn’t like it much.
I love it, it’s a proper dungeon and it’s my favorite place to invade
specifically i like invading there because people are generally sl60-75 by that point, and endgame armor with sl<100 generally provides really interesting and varied builds, and having to chase people around multiple floors with moving staircases and skeleton archers and channelers makes it not only a fun game of cat and mouse but feels properly balanced with the invader having lots of enemy help
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shrine of amana and undead crypt are my favourite areas in the game. honestly if it weren’t for amana i doubt i would have become interested in re-evaluating DS2 as a whole. all of the complaints typically levelled at the game apply there — it’s slow, linear and forces you to deal with multiple opponents at all times, but for once it all feels intentional and aesthetically supported; there’s a consistent thrust and flavour to the whole thing from the opening view to the boss capstone.
castle felt very cold, cluttered and unbalanced though
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I love that you can turn on the horrible gramophone music again in Duke’s Archives and go all the way back up. It’s actually quite challenging to go back and turn it off after returning to the area’s starting bonfire.
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Being at 90 percent of Dark Souls 2 (sotfs), I confirm that it’s my favourite after Demon. I prefer it to both DS1 (which I’d put after ds2) and Bloodborne (which has great aesthetics, but less interesting gameplay and level design apart from the sublime Nightmare frontier and the fishermen’s village in the dlc).
Ds2 is really great, and probably misunderstood when it come out (weird palette, agility system which needs to understood correctly to be able to play at the right pace).
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I am very jealous of those who came to Dark Souls 2 after launch and hence never had to deal with the original version of Shrine of Amana, which may have been the worst balanced area ever included in a Souls game (“Oh, you don’t have good ranged attacks, sucks to be you”). I’m glad that it apparently got sorted out for everyone else but as I said before I think a lot of people who pop up going “I don’t understand why Dark Souls 2 has such an iffy reputation” played it after likely at least a few rebalances knocked it into better shape. Like… there is a reason it needed the whole Scholar of the First Sin update while the other games kinda didn’t.
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