Board 8 > Yo im playing Dark Souls II for the first time [ATTN Fromsoft people]

(+) Yeah! (+)

Demon's Souls: "ok this is gonna sound crazy, but we should have some really irritating areas to make everything else feel a little more grounded and approachable."

Dark souls: "that worked out well. I think we can throw in a few more to help make the pacing more interesting and dynamic"

Dark souls 2: "lmao fuck it let's make every place the annoying place"

https://www.gamesradar.com/10-years-later-dark-souls-2-is-finally-playable-at-120fps-thanks-to-modders/

Well this is pretty remarkable timing

The Rotten is just some basement dweller playing with legos

I actually rather enjoyed the zone where the Rotten shows up, although finding the bonfire there is REALLY dumb if you're offline.

Isquen posted...
I actually rather enjoyed the zone where the Rotten shows up

Destroying every statue was just too annoying man. One tiny mistake and youre poisoned, which is punishing af in this game. Spiders and worms that can pop out and one shot you. Then if you try to go human, you get invaded by three different phantoms. Its probably my least favorite Fromsouls level ever honestly

So much of this games difficulty just feels so artificial and arbitrary. Doors that lead to bottomless pits, enemies can lock on to you, but you cant lock on to them, so range battle becomes worthless, weapons break ridiculously easy - I could keep going

Its like the DS2 devs got the memo that its supposed to be hard, while forgetting that its also supposed to be fair and fun

The Rotten is an excellent boss though, no notes

I can't disagree with any of that, but I'm a weirdo who has fun with aggravation (to a degree) so I enjoyed it anyway

Dark Souls 2 definitely does have a few too many mediocre zones though

Yeah but dont worry I am still definitely enjoying it for what its worth

After bingeing for like 12 hours straight today, heres the bosses Ive beaten so far:

The Last Giant
The Pursuer
Ruin Sentinels
Dragonrider
The Lost Sinner
Skeleton Lords
Covetous Demon
Mytha, The Baneful Queen
Flexile Sentry
Royal Rat Vanguard
The Rotten
Old Dragonslayer

now i sleep

You kind of already experienced it with your skeleton lords fight, but the game really does encourage you to have multiple weapons ready to go. And more than other souls games except for maybe bloodborne, lock on is not something you should be using all the time.

Bonfire ascetics are also genius and i wish other games leveraged that idea in some capacity.

I enjoyed 2, but still don't really jive with how floaty the combat feels.

Whats a dark soul ii???

User728 posted...

Whats a dark soul ii???

oh no not you again

TomNook7 posted...

oh no not you again

I can never truly die. I simply am.

Oh shit its the Bell Gargoyles

As soon as that music kicked in... I knew.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/c/cf5daa2e.jpg

TomNook7 posted...

Oh shit its the Bell Gargoyles

Worse than ever! I love the belfry though. I've never experienced something quite so chaotic and stupid as that area on release week

lol executioners chariot

visions of seems familiar

after the fight someones message just says

horse , man

And idk why this is so funny to me

also whew mastering the run up to that fight was tough

Just had a big scorpion kaiju battle between the manscorpion and the scorpioness

thats all for tonight

Bosses beated
The Last Giant
The Pursuer
Ruin Sentinels
Dragonrider
The Lost Sinner
Skeleton Lords
Covetous Demon
Mytha, The Baneful Queen
Flexile Sentry
Royal Rat Vanguard
The Rotten
Old Dragonslayer
Belfry Gargoyles
Executioners Chariot
Scorpioness Najka

The run up to the chariot fight was so bullshit for me as Faith/Dex to the extent that I wound up depopulating before the bridge before I finally managed it. Huge sadness that it was all for naught for me.

Isquen posted...

The run up to the chariot fight was so bullshit for me as Faith/Dex to the extent that I wound up depopulating before the bridge before I finally managed it. Huge sadness that it was all for naught for me.

Lol im glad it wasnt just me then.You cant just run past everyone, because phantom bro guards the door, and your animation walking through the fog is NOT safe against twenty dudes behind you

So it just became a matter of killing phantom bro, but you have to clear out everything leading up to him so you can focus on him

After a while i mainly just stuck to luring the big dudes one at a time with soul arrow. Literally had regular soul arrow, great soul arrow, and heavy great soul arrow all attuned, and used them all to play my build against every single one.

Then i just had to fight phantom bro at the end (also hard), and when he was finally gone forever, i could turn in my souls and do the run again and just run past everything straight to the boss

Turns out the boss himself was actually pretty easy lol, but fighting the horse at the end was really cool

UltimaterializerX posted...

If you stay in that covenant, its not a glitch when you see it.

Trust me. Youll know.

lmao i found it. Weird, but ill take it i guess

This topic has got me thinking about how I feel about DS2, and I think I managed to come up with something that rings true. Dark Souls 2 feels like an extremely well put-together mod or romhack. It gives me the same vibes of those fan attempts that are full of passion, respect for the original material, and a willingness to try weird ideas...but not necessarily the finesse to pull all of that off. Same vibes as Majora's Mask but less polished.

TomNook7 posted...

lmao i found it. Weird, but ill take it i guess

I don't think i know what this is about

When you go into Gyrms cave or whatever, and youre in the rat covenant, all the dwarves and elephant dudes will be standing around not doing anything. And also you cant attack them

Definitely thought it was a glitch until i googled it

KamikazePotato posted...

Dark Souls 2 feels like an extremely well put-together mod or romhack. It gives me the same vibes of those fan attempts that are full of passion, respect for the original material, and a willingness to try weird ideas...but not necessarily the finesse to pull all of that off

Thats definitely a good way to put it, though romhack might be a bit harsh lol

Aw yeah finally have access to boss weapons

Time to main the rottens giant meat cleaver

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/f5b6bb26.jpg

See, that's where I initially thought you had joined it. I went down there *first.* Turns out you can join the Rat Covenant there, too!

Found shulva sanctum city and wow this seems too hard maybe ill come back

The DLC areas are all brutal

Thats the DLC area? Oh shit

Found the jesters hat! Jester hat + two handing the giant machete = my goofiest fromsouls character yet

Yeah any time you transport to somewhere else, it's going to be dlc.

This is my second most played souls and i had no idea that that happened. That's incredible.

Alright fuck yeah i got every enemy cleared in the iron keep, explored everything, got like 20k souls, feeling confident my new weapon, now just gotta face the boss-

>invaded by ipwnfaces420

>hes just some naked dude with a knife throwing speech items

HELLO!

HELLO!

backstabs me and kills me instantly

HELLO!

HELLO!

HELLO!

I have a friend who started the game with me so we could play online together

But he got a little bit ahead of me, and soul memory fucked us lol. So we had to sit down, come up with a complicated formula, and i had to eat every single one of my boss souls (it felt wrong, but i already have my weapon so whatever), and i barelyyyy made it into the same soul threshold as him.

And then we spent all last night exploring Shulva, and man it was amazing! Its such a labyrinth of traps and puzzles and none stop enemies. Like a whole ass dungeon never before seen in fromsouls and the likes of which we havent seen since

And its funny because on one hand dark souls ii has all this amazing content, but on the other its blocked by convoluted bullshit like soul memory, and that just sums up this game so perfectly

I believe i am done with the iron keep! It was hard, but in a fun way. For the old iron king i just hid behind the wall and used magic lol. Except his damn lazer goes through the wall, but i just learned the tell for it and was good to go. Also when he tried to go into the lava, id run out to the opposite side of the wall and trick him into coming back out in the same spot lol. NOTHING CHEAP IN SOULS PVE

Unfortunately you're getting to a point in the DLC where I fizzled out. Which is a shame because I think the DLC is legitimately very good from what I experienced, but Dark Souls 2 is so long that by that time I was getting tired.

Yeah i only did the dlc's twice and i haven't touched it since ds3 came out so my memory of them isn't the best.

It's good that you're doing co-op with a buddy though, that should make the lows of the dlc's a lot more tolerable.

Actually we only got partially through Shulva. I cant go back and solo it on my own so im not messing with it yet.

Doing Drangleic Castle now. Just like Iron Keep, its hard but in a fun way. Just fought Dragonriders who were a pushover

there sure are a lot of regular old knights in armor bosses

Just climbed an extremely long ladder and at the top was a message that said visions of boss. In short hurrah for stealth

TomNook7 posted...

there sure are a lot of regular old knights in armor bosses

Veerrrry common complaint of DS2. I think the game would have benefited from cutting some of the less interesting places/bosses and keeping the pacing more tight. Then again, what I consider to be less interesting might be someone else's favorite, so it's a tough call.

TomNook7 posted...

I have a friend who started the game with me so we could play online together

But he got a little bit ahead of me, and soul memory fucked us lol. So we had to sit down, come up with a complicated formula, and i had to eat every single one of my boss souls (it felt wrong, but i already have my weapon so whatever), and i barelyyyy made it into the same soul threshold as him.

And then we spent all last night exploring Shulva, and man it was amazing! Its such a labyrinth of traps and puzzles and none stop enemies. Like a whole ass dungeon never before seen in fromsouls and the likes of which we havent seen since

And its funny because on one hand dark souls ii has all this amazing content, but on the other its blocked by convoluted bullshit like soul memory, and that just sums up this game so perfectly

Soul Memory is such shit. Especially since it's Souls earned and not Souls spent, including Souls you permanently lost. They wanted to solve the ganking issues of DS1, when the obvious answer (and the one they'd implement in later games) is to also match by equipment level.

Like for all the shit ADP gets, and rightfully so, this is the one that I don't see why they ever thought it'd be a good idea in the first place.

dlc spoilers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FigIAAYHoW8

Looking Glass Knight down, another pushover, and another regular armor dude, but the mirror that summons dudes was a cool touch, and the music was cool

The water area afterwards whew you cant run and theres witches shooting at you, while other enemies pop out and clusterfuck you whew. Hard but fun tho.

Demon of Song down too, first try yet again, but very cool design and cool music

Undead Crypt now

I forget how it works but Looking Glass Knight can summon players. I think it's exclusive to NG+ though.

Oh thats dope

!!Fuck the Shrine of Amana!!

The fact you got through it with minimal comment is amazing. I love how that place looks but THAT is the place I was "best equipped to handle" and it was still a clusterfuck, and I was playing it on the nerfed Scholar version.

Seriously I must've gone through 700 or so arrows my Faith/Dex playthrough before even getting to the Demon.

I mean Shrine of Amana is definitely not what it used to be if you played at release.

Edit: I don't know how Scholar compares to patched OG here. Usually Scholar is worse, but here it might be the same.

Lol nah it was definitely a struggle

Okay i cant run, but maybe i can make it
to this witch if i roll through her projectiles, oh fuck theres ANOTHER witch shooting me? Oh god now theres a dude with a spear, just gotta maneuver and not fall in the water, BUT NOW WHAT THE SHIT THERES TWO SPEAR DUDES CHASING ME- dead

I was not expecting the king to be like this