Nah I was at Flylighter’s brother’s place
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he lives in Canada, you wouldn’t know him
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Finished DS2 Sotfs!
I liked it immensely, especially the main game. What a wonderful trip!
I have mixed feelings for the post game dlc. I only really liked the first one (Crown of the sunken king), which was really nice, labyrinthine, full of interesting areas.
The other two lack… purpose. The Crown of the iron king is the better of the two, although the Blue Smelter Demon and Fume Knight are, imo, excessively punishing, at least for my battle sorcerer. I decided to quit those battles.
Crown of the ivory king (third dlc) is closer to an anonymous hack and slash game, and even more isolated/disconnected from the rest than the others. Playing solo, I hated the chaos battle with several enemies running after me (probably thought for multiplayer and several summons?) and the Burnt ivory king battle afterwards was really unfair at that point. Also disliked the frozen outskirts, it looked like some half baked scrap.
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something about the level design in Frozen Eleum Loyce was gratifying to me, i guess just having very long views and pathways that gently curved and folded inward. and i loved the whole lower level town/cave/valley section + the friendly phantom guy who betrays you. certainly not convincing as a place but the brightly lit plainness has like … an edible quality or something.
i also sort of took the cue from the fact that each bonfire cut off access to the path before it that i should just run through and activate them all first, which turned out to be the right move when later you are required to backtrack to the unfrozen spots. i did get a bit bored of how predictable the shortcuts were (excepting the snowball); just once i wanted a door to open from this side.
Brume Tower certainly looks cool, like a crazy Myst age, full of gears and levers and shit, but the concept doesn’t engage with the on-the-ground gameplay very strongly, so alienation sets in. by the end i was definitely like “what am i doing”
i agree that i pretty much cbf with any of the bosses in these two DLCs
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the double pet boss is literally the only boss in DS2 that i never beat, no regrets, that shit suuuuucks
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continuing to forge ahead in Demon’s Souls (PS3)
i’ve now defeated:
phalanx
tower knight (fuck those crossbow fuckers)
armor spider (i like the flow of this fight (once i figured out how to do damage))
flamelurker (dude got stuck on some geometry immediately and never got unstuck, RIP flamelurker)
dragon god (neat)
fool’s idol (cool fight)
maneater (this was extremely hard and i still feel lucky i won)
leechmonger (just got up in there and wailed on’em)
also: nearly beat old monk (was one hit away)
i am amazed that a massive amount of what i thought was “notable” about dark souls is already present in demon’s souls. i mean, i knew dark was a successor and close follow-up, but i didn’t realize how all of the areas in demon’s are prototypes and archetypes for areas in later souls games. nearly every “type” of environment that shows up in later games originated in demon’s, it’s fascinating and strange playing it now that i’ve already played through ds1-3 and sekiro
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you say this like it’s a bad thing
imo the cool thing about iron keep is that the enemies aggro from such a great distance that you can’t tiptoe your way through it like typical souls levels. it’s still one of the weaker areas in the game but I appreciate it in the general spirit of dark souls 2 willing to be weird and experimental with different ways to make the experience brutally difficult.
I also love the area with the big elevator that you can drop into the lava.
The last time I played through Demon’s Souls I kept thinking how much of the level design reminded me of 90’s FPSes. The mine level in particular could be taken directly from Thief. I don’t think any of the subsequent souls games have reached this quality nearly as consistently as demons does it. Irithyll dungeon in 3 is maybe the closest they’ve gotten.
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also the DLC of dks2 overall alternates between being brilliantly compelling and wretchedly miserable. it’s hard to recommend as a whole but it’s nice that it’s there in case you somehow think there isn’t yet enough of the main game.
dark souls 2 is basically the souls game you go to if you need there to be more and more dark souls. you could probably spend 100+ hours going through the main game and DLC if you’re being thorough.
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Elden Ring has definitely been jogging more positive memories of Dark Souls 2 than I remembered I had. I think if they had been about 50% more critical of their level design and not just shipped a ton of garbage (like, cut a quarter, heavily refine a quarter) it would be easily comparable to the best games in the series (just like how I think Sekiro is basically on a knife edge between perfect and cruel based entirely on how they designed the first few hours)
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oh my god Maiden Astraea was a great boss, demon’s is amazing
dirty colossus, maybe not as great but valley of defilement is such a important area since every subsequent game riffs on it in some way or another
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yeah dark souls 2 contains the best souls game in the series, it just also happens to contain the worst.
I’m holding off on posting/further reading in the elden ring thread for fear of spoilers (because I was on vacation last week I was only able to start yesterday), but I did want to respond to some of your comments about sekiro there. elden ring actually feels like it is building directly off of sekiro in many ways, and I’d actually include difficulty in that list. the first major boss fight feels much more like a sekiro boss fight in terms of difficulty and pacing, to the point where I had unlearn the instinct to deflect his attack flurries. it isn’t as consistently difficult as sekiro, but it includes similarly rudimentary, lightly emergent stealth mechanics for its setpieces. much of sekiro’s level design (particularly in the late game) was leaning towards being closer to the open world “enemy encampment” style setpieces that elden ring embraces. the combat ashes also feel like a more RPG-centric adaptation of sekiro’s skill trees and combat manuals.
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I’m loving elden ring so far but I’m not sure it can dethrone sekiro for me… I’m hoping that they make another game more like it. like bloodborne it doesn’t seem like it needs a direct sequel, and I’d be more interested in seeing miyazaki tackle another setting than another samurai game.
(though, I’m beginning to think part of the reason I like sekiro so much is because I always play dex builds in souls games, and sekiro basically forces you to play a dex build. what if he made a game where you have to play as a guts-like protagonist. that would probably be awesome, but would I like it as much??)
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I’m shocked at how much Elden Ring builds and re-mulches their older games, even for them. It just immediately opens built on top of Dark Souls 3 and doesn’t attempt to hide it but, like you said, the camp encounter design comes from the work they did (adapting western models) for Sekiro, they filled out open-world content with Bloodborne’s chalice dungeon (same find the lever, open the boss door structure, even some of the same tile layouts!). But I’m not super happy that they pegged game difficulty at late-Dark Souls 3, immediately. Guys. Guys. It’s a little excessive, especially next to how many overpowered tools they give you in less-controlled scenarios, with the horse combat and army summons.
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Well. The way I perceived it is that they put a small amount of midgame content on the highway close to the starting area. It’s there to teach you to walk off the main path, where there is nothing but early-game content in all directions. I beat the first boss I ran into in some cave with my starting Wretch club.
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The specific bits setting a concerning pace are the aggressiveness and attack set of those early gargoyles and their boss, the use of the tall black knights and their hyper-aggressive behavior, and the first critical-path boss and his moveset derived from back-half Dark Souls 3 bosses, a type I was never fond of outside Bloodborne and Sekiro which enforce a build type to play against them.
I’m not sure where Margit is supposed to fall, because his health pool and the level behind him indicates he’s level 15-25, but damn
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Yeah for those reasons I exited the first Catacombs and the Margit fight immediately and went to do something else. I thought getting ganked by gargoyles was pretty hilarious and found an easier cave next to it. I tested the damage level of a few hits on Margit to figure out what tier of boss he was, immediately concluding “OK about 2% of his HP. I’ll come back with an upgraded weapon then”
I dunno is the issue here that many players have a hangup with anything that looks like “giving up”? My psychology may be unusual here because, for instance, I routinely stop reading books a chapter in or turn off movies 20 minutes in if they’re not rewarding me enough for my time. I also sometimes don’t bother to beat the final boss of games if they made it more difficult than fun.
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strong agree with Broco here (and, for better or worse, I think this personality is morally superior and respect From for aggressively inflicting it on people)
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They’ve definitely been changing how they tutorialize and signal early game, going for more traditional scripted setups over the elegant level-design-based tutorials of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. I find it less successful, certainly less interesting.
I agree that asking the player to evaluate and run from a hard enemy has always been one of their virtues next to traditional level design, so interested in smoothing the curve. I’m having a harder time reading their intended routing here, though. Of course they don’t just put level markers over heads like other blunter open-world games but they’ve always been pretty consistent about health and damage levels to guide enemy placement, I might be getting my signals crossed from using a great sword. My goal is usually to sniff out intended routing rather than work around it, hoping to understand what experience they thought players should be going through – poking at alternate routes but not completing them to understand how they raised the rails.
I haven’t beaten 3 of the Souls games after getting to the final boss, understanding the hour or two I would need to apply to finish it, setting it down, and, having ‘seen it all’ (with these games driven by setting and world instead of plot), having no hook back in.
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yeah, I did this with both DkS3 and Sekiro, I’m the same way here.
and I actually agree that their judgment around the opening couple hours of their games has been seemingly getting a lot worse post-Bloodborne in particular – Sekiro almost fails entirely on this basis, DkS3 didn’t feel very good either, and the initial path they set you on in Elden Ring is at the very least kind of weird. I don’t really see Margit as a problem, though, they do everything they can/should to signal you in the opposite direction by that point.
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It’s been mentioned several times that the experience varies based on starting class a lot more than the Souls games. I picked Wretch, which naturally put me in the intended mindset of gathering resources before I attempt anything at all hard. The other classes give you an acceptable-looking armor and weapon, sending mixed signals.
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