My sense of direction is so fucked that I appreciate this game for showing people what it feels like when I’m trying to navigate a place.
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its another thing this game has in common with Kings Field especially 3+4 is these kinda meandering roads between zones that tbh probably melt away in the players memory too, just a couple minutes of hiking from one setpiece to another, in more or less silence
KF4 is incredible at that actually some of my favorite parts of it are the little torchlit walkways & caverns between the ancient city & the other areas where theres no music and no sound except wyverns flapping in the darkness
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reminds me while playing Elden Ring i dreamt of a similar game where each dungeon is surrounded by open field but they’re also connected in a continuous thread so that the main progression of the game is like a classic dark souls. somehow the idea of the fields being there to exit out to but entirely optional is very appealing.
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The ps1 kings field games with outdoor areas feel really weird and it’s cool
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ok made a Grinchs Ultimatum cleric and am pumping ADP and smashing everyone with 2 handed mace and I forgot how much I like this game. my mission here is to not get fucking brain worms about optimizing which is Very difficult for me. i think im gonna powerstance mace/morningstar and look for stupid pants
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okay what the fuck do you mean ‘THATS IT’ when you ballistaed the pursuer? he instantly fucking destroyed all of them for me it’s not just a simple end to the fight jeez o pete
anyway I didn’t know he’d force me into a fight behind a fog door I didn’t know those mean bosses because none of them so far had a boss behind them and getting locked into the fight with the guy eveyone hates was not what I was in the mood for and I got excited about the ballistas ending a fight but of course you left out the part where they’re made of paper and he just breaks them if you look at them
‘that’s it’ PISH
anyway he stole all my souls and I don’t rememeber how I got there so they’re gone forever
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i tried to ballista the pursuer for an ungodly amount of attempts and then gave up forever and found it easier to beat him without it. trying to do it over and over and failing without really knowing why was pretty frustrating lol, seemed like it should be more obvious once you know that’s the “trick” but i literally never hit him with it once, ever
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the worst thing about dying is like I can never get back to where I died because I don’t fuckin rememeber how to get ANYWHERE and all the maps of this game look like flowcharts which doesn’t help when I turn the wrong direction down the same corridor fourteen times
I’m struggling again I took a break and came back to things I hate
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In my headcanon, Pursuer deliberately decided to fight in the ballista room as a mindgame. It seems to be a trick in your favor, but trying to run towards it with your back to Pursuer plays into his strength instead.
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the most satisfying pvp interaction in this game is doing the pursuer fight as a phantom and killing the host with the ballista. no reward, just the love of the game
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The ambiguity between screw-up and malice sounds delightful. Did anyone ever let you do it to them a second time and eliminate all doubt
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just use the ballista is the same type of advice as telling someone to shoot where they are gonna be in online fps
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i don’t think so but now that you’ve mentioned it i can probably generate a false memory
i think following it up with the “this guy!” emote where you point at yourself with your thumbs makes it fairly clear though
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I have never agreed with “you gotta use the ballista” or “you gotta parry him” as tips for Pursuer those are all way more work than just throwing yourself at him over and over until you learn his patterns. He’s super predictable, once you get him down you can probably kill him blindfolded
-At medium-to long range he does a dash toward you, dodge to your left around him (“under” his sword swing). You have a moment to hit him now. (Or heal! Pursuer wants to teach you to dodge & create space before you heal, or he’ll dash up and kill you during your chug animation)
-When youre close, he does a 3-hit combo – dodge left, dodge left, dodge… LEFT. Hit him.
-Either that or he does his big lunge – again dodge LEFT to escape this, Always Dodge Left. Or just run the fuck away.
-If he gets you with the sword and you survive (+1 hollowing), he can do a big dark energy attack but it actually fucks him cuz it takes forever to charge, its just an opportunity to rack up a ton of damage!
at this point i get excited to see Pursuer now, he’s a fun lil diversion + free source of twinkling titanite & good rings
edit cuz i fought him right after this post by “left” i guess i mean like diagonal up-left. 7 in fighting game notation
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This thread motivated me to play DS2 again, and the last boss I beat was the Pursuer. For the first time ever in all of the times I’ve played it, I managed to get the ballista to work! As I mentioned earlier, I’ve never learned to parry in these games. One thing I really love about the Dark Souls series is I’ve always found them to pretty non-prescriptive in how you can approach most bosses
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That’s also how I ended up beating him. But it took dozens of tries on my first playthrough.
I think the main problem with fighting him like a Bloodborne boss is that people playing DkS2 blind probably haven’t leveled up agility yet. And there’s nothing ingame that hints you can get more consistent at dodging him just by investing in that stat instead of getting gud
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a lot of bosses are easier to fight if you aren’t always locked onto them in the Miyazaki Softography in general i think… you can block all of pursuer’s attacks with a heater shield also. you can block most of the attacks in all of these games with a heater shield its great. also you don’t always have to dodgeroll away from stuff sometimes you can just walk slightly out of the attack range for stuff, in fact it’s often better not to just try to dodgeroll everything. idk how ppl are playing of course but these are some things ive noticed people do when they’re like less experienced with the series
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the fight was like five seconds cuz after both the ballistas broke and I felt LIED TO, I was like well I’m not prepared for this at all, I accidentally healed two or three times when I wanted to do anything else because I was just vibing and getting my bearings after not playing for a while so he killed me and I quit. more mad about being locked into a boss fight just for going through a fog door but apparently thats a thing to expect, which would have been great for my mental state if I knew that
tldr I got locked into a surprise boss fight when I still didn’t remember the controls
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