in general iām getting the vibe that this is a very marmite game (which is really just peak From, imo), but i also donāt know why people feel like they gotta have this thing beaten and mastered and fully grasped not even a week out from release! i mean we havenāt even gotten the inevitable first rebalance patch!
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indeed
remember the initial reaction to DS2?
i certainly remember my initial reaction. and now itās one of my favorites!
Actually i think the only Souls game i didnāt bounce off of at some point was Demonās
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My takeās been largely aligning with Tulpaās, most of my hangups with Sekiro came to mind as they put it 1-10. Though Iām not sure how I feel about vit/atk/pose increases and what wouldāve been more idealā¦yet. Time needed to fully digest where it excels vs where the execution falls short. What I saw most was underutilized and missed chance/potential.
Yeah Iām the type that wanted to consume it vigorously right away! Mostly just from Demon Soulās and each successive game taking towards a month for me to ng+++ or go completionist. Some of me definitely wants to process asap. Aside from the 4 endings (I really hope you donāt have to do that many full runs) I think seeing all this game has to offer requires comparatively, a lot less time. Itās far and away a much much simpler whole than Souls, Blood.
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I know with Bloodborne at least you could backup your save if you wanted to see all the endings in one go. Itād require a little more work for this one from what I can tell but I donāt think itād take more than 2 runs max to see it all.
Walked backwards off so many cliffs
Died of old age, once
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Folks who have beaten this, what was the hour count at the end?
Iām within an hour from finishing the last boss, ~60 hours doing everything aside from a few optional bosses but Iāve left it idle probably about 5.
50 hours doing almost everything (didnāt fight the secret end-game boss) but Iāve let it idle around 5-7 hours
When is a good point to use Dragonās Blood Droplets? Or is there an easy to aquire a lot of them later into the game?
Iām just terrified the merchants might start dying if I donāt use droplets. Donāt know if I actually want to know the answer to that, ha ha.
Merchants replenish dragonās blood droplets pretty regularly, and they remain cheap throughout the game.
There is a better tutorial, right next to the temple. The undying dudeās got everything you want.
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Yeah you are rewarded for actually practicing the combat in this game instead of just winging it and picking it up as you go. Fighting Hanbei for a little while when i was confused about posture really helped me out and iād recommend that to anyone
Plus heās just a cool character. This game has some good NPCs so far.
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He gives more lessons the more you play and fight him
lots of discussion of tutorializing itt. personally, i like it better when From calls out as little as possible.
thatās what this thread is for
(my biggest criticism of the game thus far might actually be that thereās too much explained and given to you, too many tutorial pop-ups, etc.)
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I think itās more that the game is teaching people in such a way that it gets frequently misinterpreted. The snippets of rule explanations they force onscreen arenāt conducive to testing->understanding->applying and, worse, they seem to be seeding improper understanding.
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Weād really have to compare with the beginnings of earlier games, Iām trying to parse how much of itās the interpretation of said instructions and how much is old habit clashing with new design.
reading the kotaku TIPS for this game has been tremendously helpful, including their advice to do the optional tutorials Hanbei offers. Big difference.
Yeah, in this context we can compare specifically the ālevel design and pacingā teaching to the opening of Demonās (legendarily good), Dark 1 (very very good, if not quite the same level) and Bloodborne (interestingly hands-off, but with systemic variance and interesting ātestā points), and the āmechanics and button pressesā teaching to the floor words mechanic theyāve been using and how the systemic complexity; this seems like a case where the specific combat mechanics are trickier to learn as they go against normal metaphors and are under much more circumstantial than the RPG stats and upgrade trees in the Souls games.
Hanbei is a big step forward for them, but the design seems to be inherently counterintuitive in certain ways; and Iām not arguing that itās not the right decision overall for the game, but the first 5 hours are very important and it seems rougher here.
This is also tough because I have to infer teaching issues from stories players are telling; personally, I have to look for disrupted expectations and vague or contradictory language to check if it might be confusing people.
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