I played more this weekend and poked my head into a couple of rooms. I haven’t run into any other bosses aside from the pursuer. Nevertheless, I have four areas I could be pushing into now. The game seems to reward my peeking because I’ve stumbled upon Bone Dust and Estus Flask Shards without meeting any serious skill checks.
I met a guy who sells sorceries and now I’m salivating for all the new ways I can point and click my way through this.
the casters there are so much worse! they punish you for indecisiveness before you can really figure out their deal
they are your rat covenant friends. they kill people who get pulled into your game
Amana is up there with my favorite levels in this series its very difficult but its all leaning on 1 specific challenge getting iterated harder & harder: magic-resistant ranged enemies positioned to fuck with you + fragile but fast and dangerous melee enemies + you cant see where its safe to tread without a torch… which will probably get put out if you dodge, cuz the level is 90% in waist high water. Its diabolical in a way i respect. and you either change your toolset (eg start using nonmagic ranged weapons) or you muscle through by being good & stubborn at your build.
AND its just really pretty & has the cool diagetic background singing. 2 is the most unironically beautiful Soulsb game, all of them have lovely moments & amazing views contrasted against the bleakness but DS2 has the most areas that seem meant to wow you
ohhhhh! nice
i noticed i was able to tank magic projectiles from the next mage better while i was backstabbing one, so i always went for that
forward momentum regained, Garl Vinland Velstadt down in one
went back to that door in the Forest of Fallen Giants now that I got that king bling and these guys sparkle now?
hm. pretty sure I know where to go next but probably shouldn’t spend my one day off for the next week playing this… … …
That sounds to me exactly like what you should do
I did go out for a bit of socialising that day and then came home and stayed up too late reaching the final boss so just about ha, no regrets. the first pair went down easy. got owned by Nashandra tho and put it down…will tackle again this week…maybe…think I can beat this one before year’s end though so that feels nice
I did it! Nashandra was a pushover really
thank you daphaknee for this thread. I’d booted this up before it was a thing, as a lark on the CRT but this got me to commit and a lovely time was had. game rules (but oh how I wish I had used a humanity before the end cutscene)
gonna mess around in NG+ a bit before bedtime
Oh good, I can tell my DS 2 final boss story now.
So she has an attack where several orbs form around her and do constant damage whenever you get near, and apparently you can destroy them but I never noticed this fact which seems like it’d a problem for obvious reasons. My mind went “well, it just means this is a time limit/DPS check”, looked at what I had and created the most glass cannon build I have ever slapped together in a From game. I dropped the shield and switched to two handing the giantest club imaginable, equipped only rings that would boost damage (I think one was a low health = more damage one), I think my equipment was shifted to only ones that might have even a slightest effect on damage, I believe I even cast a spell of some sort before the boss door for a boost. The end effect was that I basically was forced to rush in immediately, hit as hard as possible as many times as I could, dodge away, mash estus and repeat as there was basically no case where both the boss and me would both be alive after 45-60 seconds tops.
In no way should this have been a viable plan (in retrospect with more knowledge there were clearly better strategies) but I actually managed to defeat said last boss at a non-absurd level in that short window after 4-5 attempts, which by Dark Souls final boss standards is remarkably fast for me. It is why I now forever swear fealty to the cult of the giant club.
watching you all be play has been great because it’s the first time I’ve been able to be invested in what people are going through
Important update
Today marks the first time I’ve successfully used the binoculars to free aim my magic. It makes the game even easier to manage since I can take out ranged enemies before they become a nuisance. I feel very accomplished.
My elementary school mascot was a tortoise and he has been my role model ever since.
I am beating a boss about every 30 minutes. I’ve been alternating my levels between faith and intelligence but I’m not really big into hexing yet. I’m wondering if I should just reallocate my levels to intelligence and go full sorcerer, but why fix what ain’t broke?
I lit 3 primal bonfires. I think that means I’m 2/3 through the game? This game is big! I went back to Shaded Woods and it is much cooler than I thought. I just had to explore past the second bonfire. It feels nice to have all these options whenever I hit a wall.
After Demon’s Souls (PS3) & Dark Souls: Remastered (Steam), just started SofFS (Steam).
The game’s servers were down. (Had no outages in DeS–fan server–or Ds1.)
(Servers back; down time ~19 hours. No official word on Steam(*); the game’s server status URL was a 404 error.)
Offline Ds2 1st impressions:
A mashup of elements from DeS and Ds1 w/o their hallmark intricate vertical constructions and light touch; so far Ds2 = conventionally horizontal lumpy layouts, a heavy-handed approach to gatekeeping, story, & mood, w/ no new wow moments. Still, layouts aside, not entirely dissimilar to my feelings at the start of Ds1, so hope remains that even w/o Miyazaki, Ds2 will unfold wonders.
But early dedication to hiding entire areas–in contrast to DeS and Ds1 highlighting new routes–is off-putting; if not for a fan walkthrough, I would have missed the entrance to the only stage to which your newbie realistically CAN go from the main village.
Nicer lighting, except in plain castle interiors, where it’s worse.
Camera & movement are smoother.
Jump no longer does double duty w/ Run/Dodge on Circle button, whew.
But Run was stuck on after getting out of character creation, so my first combat had super-springy camera/movement & stamina constantly draining.
Combat vs human-like opponents felt smooth and satisfying, better than previous games. Combat vs others, though…
Felt mostly useless in combat until I got the hidden Morning Star, thanks to the fextralife wiki walkthrough–although once you know the trick of staying behind them to make them keep sitting down, cheesing the “ogres” is sorta straightforward anyway…
But I’m gonna feel down until I get a Zweihander. Or at least a Claymore. Or SOME kind of ridiculous two-handed sword–'cause Ds1 gave you multiple at the start.
Stats have multiplied & feel harder to access/read; I’ll have 6 key warrior stats to raise, vs the previous 4. 50% more grind?
So far, feels reactionary rather than evolutionary.
Using 1 mod:
PS4 Controller Icons from Dark Souls Remastered
– PS4 Controller Icons from Dark Souls Remastered at Dark Souls 2 Nexus - Mods and community
Replaced the default Xbox button icons, just like I did w/ Remastered. There’s a mod for PS5 icons, but I find their b&w harder to read.
~ ~ ~
(*) WAS using anti-sploiter mod “Blue Acolyte.” A recent plague of invading hackers injected spam items into inventory, crashing players who tried to repair. I’m pretending the server down time fixed it. Once I get hacked, I’ll put the mod back on.
i still feel now that Elden Ring, especially the Capital’s robust mega-architecture laced with golden banners and leaves, helps to shed light on the aesthetic ambitions of Dark Souls 2, such as the more grounded, “conventional” fantasy feel rather than dreamy and mythical, with little effort to shroud or conceal its composition: raw slabs of brick and wood and metal, more horizontal layouts, blinding-white crisp lighting, conspicuous royal colours like red and blue and gold (Heide’s Tower, Dragon Shrine).
rather than something alien that “missed the point” of the former games it makes more sense to me as a dry run for a vision much larger in scope, with fully-formed pieces but lacking context and framing, like a scrambled incomplete jigsaw
Wow, I beat the game this afternoon. I was surprised because the final boss felt very perfunctory. I assumed there was going to be a lot more trueskillz fighting demanded, but it had the same difficulty as many before it.
I really enjoyed the game. The level design is excellent. There are so many memorable moments. I loved that I didn’t have to become a reflex-tuned expert at dodging. There was a lot of give.
There are still DLC areas for me to explore. I tried the wintery one and I’m not feeling it, but the fire tower is cool. Idk, maybe I’ll keep playing for a bit more. I just feel surprised at myself that I actually finished the game when I’ve started and failed so many before.
Nashandra is a weird last boss, like a cross between a narrative focused “gimme” boss a la True Allant, a weird gimmick puzzle boss a la the rest of Demon’s Souls archdemons, and an actual challenge. im into it tbh and appreciate that it’s easy. I like how DS2’s degrading HP hollowing literalizes the curse slowly rotting your still-living body & mind, and i like that Nashandra explicitly wields that against you, as the one weakness of yours she can be assured of (UNLESS you beat all the DLCs first and do some other esoteric shit, naturally). i LOVE the cutscene after u kill Watcher/Defender where she steps through the fog gate to challenge you for supremacy – youre kind of the final boss for Nashandra if ya think about it~
also yeah that original ending is so anticlimactic lol. again, into that too. you were told at the beginning you’d end up standing before the gates of Drangleic without knowing why. now, all these many hours later, you’re winning and taking the kingdom’s throne… you guess? without knowing why. your motivations turn into rationalizations, for this thing you were gradually roped into doing
(Shadow Tower has a very similar ending, i mention mostly cuz Shadow Tower rules and anyone who likes this game should play it)
I remember the first time i beat the game and viewed the ending, as the credits started i turned to my friend who had been watching me and said “i dunno what that was about or why i did any of it”
souls protagonists are kinda like dogs and just do things arbitrarily
Furtive pygmy behavior
