Dark Souls Impressions - The FINAL Update

Don't worry about having a "class" like other RPGs. You can upgrade everything to the max.

It'll take a while not playing PvP though. Killing a few dudes that get you a million Souls to level up with really speeds things up.

Good thinking. I forgot about that. If Verb doesn't want no pvp shenanigans then all he has to do is get past the level 120 range and he should be set. 120 was the optimal pvp level agreed on by the community.

I went to 140 on one of my characters and never saw another player again.

I'm level 325 I think and I constantly get invaded in the Forest. I haven't tried invading myself though.

That's the forest m8. It's a well known fact that no matter what level you are in there it's going to suck balls.

The Forest is great, is my point. It's always active.

I never really enjoyed spawning into the same world of the guy I invaded five minutes ago just to get ganked by three guys casting pursuers tbh.

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It auto saves basically after every action you do. And most importantly when you quit the game through the menus it autosaves then and there as well.

I actually have to hand it to From in that regard. If your game unexpectedly crashes for whatever reason, you'll lose very little progress unless you where fighting a boss. Like we're talking seconds. Open a door, game crashes.

Load up the game, you're sitting front of the door a few seconds before you open it. They do stellar work in that department, at least. I don't know of any other games out there that can save so often without significantly impeding your progress in-game with a wait time.

Another benefit of constant autosaving is that it's pretty much impossible to save-scum.

I don't understand this meme

Savescumming is a term to describe abusing saves to your advantage. For example, saving right before a speech check in Fallout or Skyrim and then just reloading the game over and over until you manage to pull off the 10% chance dice roll you were trying your hand at. Or saving at a certain point, running through an area to find out where the enemies and traps are at, then reloading your save and continuing the game while knowing what lies ahead.

ah okay, thanks best friend flee

save cum

Another benefit of constant autosaving is that it's pretty much impossible to save-scum.

I don't understand this meme

I talked about it in my Fallout 3 review. You can save the game at literally any point you want--and you can exploit that to your advantage.

e.g. Saving just before engaging in a speech challenge. If something doesn't go your way, you can simply load back your save state and try it over again until it works. That's save-scumming, and it's kinda lame.

edit:
ninja'd by flee, but my explanation is more succinct, so there

Goddammit, reading through this thread has convinced me to start a new DS character...

There goes my social life

Then again, remember here verb. You'll likely die in this game. If you're ever in a situation where you're in trouble or stuck in a pinch, there's a magic five letter word that will save you.

Death.

So you're saying you should die on purpose if it'll play to your advantage?

That is all too familiar.

Damn. This game really does dig and play into that old-school Nintendo game ethos, doesn't it?

save cum

Don't be fucking gross in my thread, you  disgusting  pig

save cum

Don't be fucking gross in my thread, you  disgusting  pig

Oh

Oh

should i tone down the banter

i wasn't sure how you'd take that one

Then again, remember here verb. You'll likely die in this game. If you're ever in a situation where you're in trouble or stuck in a pinch, there's a magic five letter word that will save you.

Death.

So you're saying you should die on purpose if it'll play to your advantage?

That is all too familiar.

Damn. This game really does dig and play into that old-school Nintendo game ethos, doesn't it?

Well, I can't really say that there's any point in the game where dying is beneficial to you. Except...maybe to save yourself from being afflicted with a certain status effect. But even still, that'd be unlikely.

But, what I am saying is that you'll never encounter a situation that you'll get stuck in a loop for. Aka saving in Fallout and finding out 2 seconds later that there's a pack of deathclaws behind you.

In this game, death isn't THE end. Like Flee said. Everything just continues.

Oh

should i tone down the banter

i wasn't sure how you'd take that one

Nah you're kewl, I know when one is joking

Well, I can't really say that there's any point in the game where dying is beneficial to you.

well, we just discussed one--getting yourself out of a bad situation you got yourself in

similar to how in castlevania, if you had low health near the beginning of a level, you could just jump off a cliff for the sake of getting it all back again and starting fresh

that's sort of what i was getting at

like, i get what you're saying--i just interpreted it funny, and tried to apply it to past experience with older games

because i've heard it stated a number of times before that the game is supposed to be modeled after old-school NES game philosophy, where games used to be cold and heartless and unforgiving--you had to figure the game out yourself

wooo kill the fat fish man

can you parry

can you parry

Sort of?

can you parry

Sort of?

Parrying isn't an essential skill. Get the enemy's timing down first, then practice parrying them.

Sex: Male ("Abilities not affected." I appreciate that heavily.)

funny u said this because ull never see anyone use female models speedrunning DS1 because of a very specific glitch used to duplicate consumable items. for some reason it only works with the male model, and being able to dupe an item that basically provides free souls for leveling while the runner is skipping 80% of the game is essential


also there are some armor set aesthetic differences, sometimes favoring male in coolness, sometimes favoring female in coolness

one male set had a hood while the female didn't
and in another set the female set had a pretty raven feather scarf while the male did not
#sexism

Aw shit I'm enjoying this already. Don't worry too much about parrying, I didn't use it until new game+

Spoiler

Because it took me that long to learn.

This thread has given me the biggest blue balls.

Arbiter of Judgement scum.

I aint a fun killer, I always roll dragon.

Literally a closet scalie.

Literally no fun allowed.

Metaphorically speaking, that is.

I literally metaphorically don't understand what you're saying.

Aw shit I'm enjoying this already. Don't worry too much about parrying, I didn't use it until new game+

Spoiler

Because it took me that long to learn.

This thread has given me the biggest blue balls.

Arbiter of Judgement scum.

I aint a fun killer, I always roll dragon.

Literally a closet scalie.

Literally no fun allowed.

Metaphorically speaking, that is.

I literally metaphorically don't understand what you're saying.

Literally metaphorically unironically just a prank bro.

can you parry

Sort of?

Parrying isn't an essential skill. Get the enemy's timing down first, then practice parrying them.

Basically just practice parrying anything with a spear, just shield out the rest and poke.

I'd like to know his current build so we can kinda know how he's going to play. I usually play the somewhat quick lad with heavy hitting weapons, kind of a best of both worlds thing.

Basically just practice parrying anything with a spear, just shield out the rest and poke.

I'd like to know his current build so we can kinda know how he's going to play. I usually play the somewhat quick lad with heavy hitting weapons, kind of a best of both worlds thing.

Usually, in any game that allows you to boost your stats, I try to make my character a jack-of-all-trades, even if it's not necessarily a good idea to do so.

Basically just practice parrying anything with a spear, just shield out the rest and poke.

I'd like to know his current build so we can kinda know how he's going to play. I usually play the somewhat quick lad with heavy hitting weapons, kind of a best of both worlds thing.

Usually, in any game that allows you to boost your stats, I try to make my character a jack-of-all-trades, even if it's not necessarily a good idea to do so.

Not a good idea in Souls, but once you unlock equipment upgrades your stats become less important.

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it took me until my 3rd character before i actually tried learning how to parry. i've found it useful for killing the smaller enemies in the Burg and Parish areas but i'd rather not try it on any bigger enemies and get demolished in the process...

clever dodging and blocking are still my go-to combat strategies

it took me until my 3rd character before i actually tried learning how to parry. i've found it useful for killing the smaller enemies in the Burg and Parish areas but i'd rather not try it on any bigger enemies and get demolished in the process...

clever dodging and blocking are still my go-to combat strategies

That's actually a sound idea since most people don't know what kind of enemies you can parry. You can parry everything  that's humanoid and relatively your size.

Picking it up right after making it to Firelink Shrine, I wasn't at all sure of where to go next, so I went ahead and did what Wanderers do best.

Found a little something that gives me humanity, which is pretty nice--but it also "greatly" restores my HP, so I didn't want to use it right away. Still Hollow.

As I explored the shrine, I found a couple of neat things, I guess--a morning sun (which is too heavy for me to use one-handed right now), some fire bombs, and a few magical bones that transport me directly to the last bonfire I visited. The shitty thing about bonfires, though, is that visiting one instantly respawns all enemies, which made the following series of events extremely annoying.

I came across this old graveyard. Sauntering past the tombstones caused a couple of warrior skeletons to reanimate, in true video game fashion. This is where I really had to start getting used to the combat in this game, because I was getting absolutely blown the fuck out by these stupid-ass skeletons, and it took me an embarrassing number of tries to finally take them out. AND then there were more skeletons.

I'm gonna try to run down my thought process during this little ordeal. First of all, the lock-on targeting system the game borrows from Zelda is an absolute godsend, but attempting to switch your targets on the fly can be rather... unresponsive. It's easy when the two enemies are close to each other, but the further away they get, the harder it becomes to switch your target, and that can be pretty frustrating. And that's not really my fault, either--the game doesn't respond to my desire to switch my target. I can see this getting annoying.

Second, I quickly learned that Dark Souls is not a button masher. Not that I expected it to be, but early on, I had a habit of pressing the attack buttons really fast whenever I spotted an opening, and what ended up happening, of course, is that I made myself open in the process, because the game registers too many inputs. Sooo, only press the attack button the precise number of times that is necessary. As a Street Fighter player, this won't be a hard rule to follow.

Third, blocking isn't everything. I can only block up to a point--as I was fighting these skeletons, occasionally, they'd strike my shield in such a way that I couldn't recover from it fast enough, and I was treated with a couple of follow-up stabs. I wondered why this was happening--and then I noticed that it must be my stamina gauge. Blocking hits takes from your stamina, and once it's drained, you can't block effectively anymore--and attempting to will just get you punished. So I have to find a way to manage my stamina while simultaneously laying into my enemies. Once my stamina gets low, back off and let it recover.

The tricky thing about that is... everything drains your stamina. Your sword swings, your shield blocks, and rolling/evading all take from your stamina, so you really have to make your decisions carefully. Plus, I'm fighting two at once, so I have to keep an eye on them both, just so that none of them land any sneak hits on me. On top of all that, they're all damage sponges. They seem to be taking way too many hits for enemies this early in the game. So I'm thinking to myself--"Am I in the right area? Is this where I'm supposed to be?"

Nonetheless, I continued to fight them, and fight them, and fight them until I finally took them out. I think it was my fifth or sixth try <_< But it was valuable--every time I fought them, I got incrementally better. It takes me back to Zelda II, where I was learning how to fight Iron Knuckles--they're hard, but they're not impossible--it's just a matter of outplaying the game.

So, in summary: your attacks are all incredibly laggy, and they leave you very open--so you can't be reckless. Play defensively, but don't block too often, or you'll get punished. Don't fuck up and take too many unnecessary hits.

I took out two more pairs of skeletons towards the lower ends of the cemetery, and picked up a nice shield ("Caduceus Round Shield") and a couple of "large" souls (souls have sizes?) that the skeletons must have been guarding.

...Then I came across a giant skeleton with a big fucking weapon--can't remember if it was a giant sword or a mace. Either way, I... wasn't at all prepared to deal with this thing, so I just booked it. To my dismay, however, it chased me all around the shrine. The giant crow that transported me to Firelink was sitting perched on top of the shrine--I didn't notice him before, and I'm just sitting there thinking, "Why the fuck isn't he helping me?"

With the giant skeleton thing on my tail, I decided to jump from the shine--to my death, of course, but I didn't really mind--as long as the thing isn't chasing me around anymore. When I respawned, however, I went back to where I dropped to discover that my souls were not there. I'm like, what the fuck?!

Maybe if you kill yourself, you don't get your shit back, or something. I can't think of any other explanation.

I didn't stop playing here, so consider this a half-update, I guess.

I was getting absolutely blown the fuck out by these stupid-ass skeletons

We all feel this pain.

"I came across this old graveyard."



I owe myself on a private bet.

Verb. Do you wanna know a little bit more about shields? It just has to do with certain mechanics is all, now that you know a little bit more about that whole deal.