Dark Souls Impressions - The FINAL Update

4 more days

Have you got at least a few hundred gigabytes of HDD space, verb?

You're gonna need it.

What makes the game fun for me is the combat, and the whole not-knowing-what's-gonna-come-next. Right now, those are my biggest takeaways so far. I feel like I'm really on a perilous journey, and it's cool.

I feel you.

Just so many times I find myself amazed at how I had found yet another new area with a whole new sets of quirks and enemies. Nowadays the game seems so small, but that first playthrough it felt like some surreal never ending story.

]I see what you're doing by using my favorite game of all time as an example--but the comparison would only work if you lost all your missiles, super missiles, power bombs, etc. as well as your energy tanks, which you don't. Souls are that important in Dark Souls, and that's what makes it such a drag to lose them.

I feel like you dramatically overvalue souls. If you haven't spent your souls, that probably means you don't need them too much. If the souls gained from bonfire to bonfire seem like a lot to you, I'll tell you to save some stress that they're not really.

And hard souls being finite isn't that big a problem, their benefit is permanent because when you pop them, you should be spending them on permanent improvements.

Am I the only one that really likes dark souls 2?

Yes?

No?

I like it

Am I the only one that really likes dark souls 2?

Yes?

No?

it's a better pvp environment

I play dks2 whenever I feel like beating a game.

Dks1  always gave me a more impossible feel

I need to play ds2

I need to play ds2

If you do it on the 360 I'll play with ya, but you should play sotfs

I need to play ds2

If you do it on the 360 I'll play with ya, but you should play sotfs

tfw no 360

I need to play ds2

If you do it on the 360 I'll play with ya, but you should play sotfs

tfw no 360

ON HOLD

YouTube

Has Verb started the game yet

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Has Verb started the game yet

He died in the tutorial and gave up, I believe.

He was incapable of acquiring enough competence to further proceed.

Am I the only one that really likes dark souls 2?

Yes?

No?

No

Dark Souls 2 does a lot well, and has more content. The DLC returned to the intricate world design as well.

I need to play ds2

If you do it on the 360 I'll play with ya, but you should play sotfs

tfw no 360

Good

you want the Xbone/PS4 Scholar of the First Sin version anyway

I'm not gonna quote the whole thing, but weapon degradation in games never bothered me. It helped immerse me more, knowing I had to keep my weapons sharp and in top tier condition. In fact I felt it played more into Skyrim's shallowness that no matter what armor or swords you had, they were always in top condition, all the time. It was stupid for me.

As for the free time thing, idk why you keep saying free time. When I lose souls I don't go grinding again, I carry on, because you don't necessarily NEED the souls you lost. One level up won't change anything, and upgrading your weapons and armor is far more important.

So by the time you reached the next bonfire, you'd already have enough to do whatever. Any RPG if you ask me preys on your free time. Every. Single. One. You need to invest time for an actual outcome for them if they follow them by the basic book of an RPG.

It's not like a quick pickup game of sports where everything is handed to you, or Call of Duty where the playing field is always even.

That's how I feel about it at least. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer for this topic.

All right, I'm gonna resist the urge to break this apart--I'll just try to keep it short.

As far as immersion goes, I guess weapon degradation makes sense from that standpoint, but I consider it an acceptable break from reality. I just do. Just like I consider your inability to use your repairbox outside of bonfires an acceptable break from reality. Games don't have to be hyper-realistic or logical to be immersive, and I don't think Dark Souls would suffer much in the immersion department if the durability system were removed.

You bring up Skyrim--but Skyrim and Dark Souls are two completely different games. Skyrim probably could've gone with a weapon degradation system, because the rest of the game tries so very hard to be realistic--with the graphics and the physics and all that. The game's universe is specifically designed to be a simulacrum of our universe, with added magic, dragons, and all that good shit--and even the fictional elements are designed in a relatively modest, down-to-earth way.

Dark Souls isn't trying to be all that realistic. The gameplay essentially boils down to one thing: fighting. It's like a hack-and-slash without the mindlessness, but it's still a game about fighting. There's not a whole lot else you can do--unlike Skyrim. Unlike Fallout. So why exactly should your weapons degrade in a game that isn't trying to be overtly realistic and is all about fighting? Imagine if there was a durability system in Heavenly Sword. Or God of War. Or Zelda.

It's just incompatible with the game's format.

Moving on: "...You don't necessarily NEED the souls you lost. One level up won't change anything..."

...You're kidding, right? You absolutely need the souls you lost. They're everything. One level up doesn't turn you into a god, but the stats add up over time--that's... kinda the idea. Either way, one level up was the difference between me being able to wield my trusty Morning Star with one hand, or being stuck with my Scimitar. One level. So yeah, they absolutely do change things, and they absolutely are needed. They're everything. I don't even know how you could say this.

All RPGs prey on your time, sure, but some prey on your time more than others. This one does it the most out of any I've ever played, and I'm not gonna overlook that. Even then--just because a shitty aspect of a genre is present in all of its games doesn't excuse it. Not at all.

Now, for your other post...

Second, I don't find the souls aspect the difficult or easy part at all. That is the actual combat of the damn game and the only difficulty is by your own mistakes. The souls are an additional aspect.

Absolutely. That was poor phrasing on my part--I care far more for the challenge of the game's combat than whatever shitty punishment system they have. Obviously, they have to punish you somehow, but I just think what they chose is simply too much, and it makes the game less fun than it could be. I don't care what you say--an hour of your effort down the drain will never, ever be fun for me. Ever! And "getting good" at the game won't give me back that hour.

As I've been saying, I'd much prefer it if you didn't need souls to level up, but you do. If souls were just currency, and you lose your currency when you died, that would be better. Because currency is still important--you need it for merchants, you need it to repair, and you need it for the blacksmith. That's more than enough shit. Taking away your only means of getting stronger, though? Too much. And you lose your humanity on top of all that, too.

The bottom line is that challenge for the sake of challenge is stupid, and sadly, that's what ethos this game was built around.

That wasn't very short. Poorly-articulated, too. Sorry, I'm tired.

That wasn't very short. Sorry.

I don't feel that the Fallout games' method of degradation is that bad (I noticed you compared the DS one to Fallout 3 a couple pages back)

In Fallout, you find assault rifles and baseball bats faster than you can use them, and can repair them at any time. And merchants are common enough that on the offchance your weapon does break, you can buy a cheap replacement easily.

In DS, it sounds a lot more difficult (Rarer merchants, very expensive and can only be done at specific locations) and so different that I don't know if the two can really be comparable. Furthermore, in Fallout 4, there isn't any weapon or armour degradation and it just means that you end up overloaded with pistols and rifles and armour that you would generally keep for repairing your existing gear, but now is just dead weight/ the kind of thing you overlook when looting.

[Quoted that because I don't want to have to break apart the great wall of china)

Just something I thought about after seeing the repair topic come up again.

I agree with a lot of what you said Verb. As for the souls, while you need them for state requirements for some weapons, that one level will most likely set you back a little until you upgrade that weapon due to what you were using before probably having a +3 by it. Still, I didn't mean they meant nothing. I just meant they're not a make or break thing for you.

It mostly comes to your skills, as is apparent when people go through it staying level 1. More challenging obviously, but it's not a requirement. But it really is something you'd want, yeah.

Edit: I know I'm doing a poor job conveying what I'm saying. I guess that's because I agree with almost all you said so I'm too lazy to really argue against what I disagree with.

Imagine if there was a durability system in Heavenly Sword. Or God of War. Or Zelda.

Actually, weapon degradation has been touched upon in Zelda before. Wooden items, like the Wooden Shield and the Deku Stick, burn to a crisp if they're lit on fire. Deku Sticks also break if you whack them against a hard surface, or an enemy. In Majora's Mask, you can upgrade your sword to the doubly-powerful Razor Sword--but after one hundred strikes, the edge will go dull, reverting to the regular sword.

None of the other Zelda games play around with weapon degradation, though, as far as I know.

It mostly comes to your skills, as is apparent when people go through it staying level 1. More challenging obviously, but it's not a requirement. But it really is something you'd want, yeah.

Can't agree with "more challenging." In the case of playing through the game at level 1, that's more time-consuming than anything else.

After you've already learned your enemy's movements, attack patterns, hitboxes, et cetera, what is the difference between killing an enemy in ten hits, and killing the same enemy in one thousand hits?

Nothing--it just takes a fuck of a lot longer to hit him an extra nine thousand some odd times.

I can't stress that enough--just because it takes longer doesn't mean it's more difficult. That's part of the whole artificial difficulty thing. These people aren't making the game more challenging--they're making it take longer. That's it.

I know about the longer thing. I hate to bring it up again, but Fallout and Skyrim think harder = more bullet sponges. Yeah, no thanks.

I know about the longer thing. I hate to bring it up again, but Fallout and Skyrim think harder = more bullet sponges. Yeah, no thanks.

I have no idea why that sort of thing isn't mentioned in that TV Tropes article on the subject of fake difficulty. That's, like, the essence of fake difficulty.

Am I the only one that really likes dark souls 2?

Yes?

No?

I preferred some bits of it to DS1

Like the DLC

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