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I've got adaptability at 20 and I feel much more comfortable rolling now. I don't know if it actually helps or if I've just gotten better at it. Supposedly it speeds up estus / lifegem animations as well.

I've never won a non-NPC invasion in DkS2 . The odds seem stacked against you in the places where you get invaded the most, but I might also just be bad at PvP. I did win a few in Dark Souls though.

It seems like the early game can vary in difficulty a lot depending on starting class, where you choose to go (not having the Ring of Binding in Lost Bastille makes it pretty rough) and your choice of gear. For me it started off being tougher than Dark Souls, for a while after that it got easier as I was clearing out areas I should've been in earlier, but now that I think I'm in the midgame it feels harder than Dark Souls again. It doesn't seem like you can overlevel as much (post Anor Londo you become overpowered IMO), because the dimishing returns on health and stamina come earlier. I guess I haven't hit roadblocks as big as the standout ones in Dark Souls, but the original game was actually the one where I beat most of the bosses in one or two tries. This game has a more consistent level of challenge I think. I don't know if the champion's covenant actually makes a noticeable difference, but so far I'm finding it just challenging enough. I overlooked the vitality stat for a long time, so I went shirtless to keep my equip load down. Now I've discovered that armor actually gives a decent amount of damage mitigation (it scales too!) and I don't know why I ignored poise for so long.

Other light sources work as well.

It was never so dark that I couldn't see without it so I didn't bother. That's a cool area though, and the dynamic between the jar throwing guys and the archers is neat.

If you just said no to him (didn't kill him) you can just talk to him again. There one particular NPC who has the most confusing question ever who gets more annoyed if you pick the wrong answer.

In case anyone else is playing with kb/m (I think someone here is), here's how to make it better: As for actual game stuff, I feel like I've made a good amount of progress. Got my first great soul!

Using autohotkey dramatically improves the kb/m controls, if you want I can post all the details when I get home. I'm still relatively early on (10 or so hours played), but speaking generally I don't think there's the same economy of design. Because the game is larger, it feels less deliberate. Enemy placements in particular. There are more enemies just hanging around, who are redundant in the sense that's there's no underlying idea behind their placement. They're not there to create a specific type of encounter and teach you something, they're just there to be killed. Maybe I'm holding Dark Souls in too high regard, but almost every encounter from Firelink up to the Gargoyles feels like it's there on purpose and is meaningfully different from the other encounters. That wasn't true for the entire game though, the late game areas were not as inspired. I feel similarly about the level design. In the Forest of Fallen Giants for example, there are still shortcuts, it's still an interconnected map, but it loses something by being so large. It's not as impressive that it loops around on itself when it takes all the room that it needs. Not saying it's bad, it's just not impressing me as much as the game which I think has some of the best level design ever haha, maybe it's unfair to expect that again. Despite bringing up a lot of criticisms I can't wait to go home and play some more.

My PC is 6 years old and it runs at a steady 60fps on medium. Dark Souls would often drop down to 20, sometimes even lower.

He took me quite a while to down as well. I'm a little surprised they throw something that challenging at you so early on. There are some places where you can heal but the timing is super tight. I had to learn all his patterns before I could beat him, which I don't mind, but my first time through Dark Souls I don't think I mastered a fight to that degree. I went on to fight I got the Large Club, which is my favourite weapon in Dark Souls, but the damn thing breaks so fast if you do the 2-handed R2 that pummels people into the ground. I guess it's an overpowered attack, but it's still a bit of a bummer. The game certainly isn't afraid to punish you.

I joined the company of champions so no co-op for me

This game feels surprisingly different from Dark Souls, I hope I'll get used to it but at the moment it's sluggish. Playing defensively and blocking a lot feels like a deathtrap because of how relentless the enemies are (especially in groups) and at the same time dodging seems like it's been nerfed. I cursed at the game quite a few times last night, whereas DkS never brought that out of me. It just doesn't feel as fair, I've gotten hit by enemies that are on a level below me whose sword doesn't even reach up to where I am, I got hit by the butt of a spear when a hollow was thrusting away from me, getting hit once leads to stunlocks half the time. Maybe it's because I'm trying to play it like Dark Souls when I need to be unlearning all my instincts. Not sure how I feel about the healing / health degradation either. It's probably less of an issue later on, but I'm not sure how plentiful the human effigies are so I'm afraid to use them. It just means that if get hit not to far from the bonfire I want to go back and reset, because to get through a section you have to be so careful about preserving health. It's more tedium than challenge. Fights also spiral out of control super quickly, healing in combat is a death sentence, group combat is much harder and more common.

The issue is that you can fight him at any point in the game. If you do it after the Gargoyles he's probably too hard (some of his attacks do a surprising amount of damage) and if you do it after Anor Londo he's a pushover.

They increased the amount of souls you get from bosses (and some enemies as well) by quite a lot in a patch. The Gargoyles used to give 1,500 now it's 10,000. So you probably get 25+ more levels without grinding compared to 1.0. They probably did that because people were grinding for souls, but it tipped the scales a little too far in the other direction. It something I wish they'd put a bit more effort into. Congrats! now go invade some people in the Parish! hehe Did you do it with zero poise?

I did something similar, I stacked damage buffs, Power Within, Bellowing Dragoncrest ring etc. The Crown of Dusk is a double edged sword though because it increases the damage you take from magic attacks, which means that they can 1-shot you in certain situations. I think I used Great Combustion, then pulled out my fire RF Club (they're weak to fire). You can go down to the Demon Ruins and get the Large Flame Ember without placing the Lordvessel, getting the red chunks can be annoying, but I think some of the Black Knights always drop them (go back to the asylum) and you can always clear out the lizards in the Great Hollow too (which is annoying to do but still). Also, remember to keep attacking even as they're dying, the hitbox doesn't disappear right away and you can get quite a few extra hits in. Another way to do it is to go fast roll and use the Red Tearstone Ring, which gives you a huge damage boost when you're under 20% health. The 4-Kings aren't as bad to dodge as you might think. I used that strategy for almost all the harder bosses. Once you've been to the Tomb of the Giants and killed Leeroy, you can use the Sanctus shield to combine the RTS ring with Power Within. How it works is that since the damage you take from Power Within is proportional to your max health, you can make the healing from Sanctus almost cancel the damage from Power Within, so you can stay in the RTSR health range. You have to curse yourself to get your health even lower to make it work, but everything 1-shots you at that point anyway. Since elemental weapons don't scale with your stats, damage isn't a problem really. The Reinforced Club does quite well, it just has pretty short range and you get sick of it after a while. The fun part about doing an SL1 run is that you really have to learn the bosses in and out. Might not be fun for everyone but I enjoyed it. Except Manus he probably accounted for a third of my deaths in that run. Regarding the DLC bosses and SL1:

The Catacombs is probably the most confusing area in the game. There are many different paths through it and lots of places where you fall through the floor and get lost.

My PC isn't great either, but if figure that if it runs on PS360 it'll run and look okay on my machine too. The min specs are E8500 / 9600GT, so a 2009 PC should be fine.

Did you miss the hidden bonfire after

That's BioWare for you. I don't think you can make a general statement that it's bad, but if you systemise something you are making a statement about it. That's something games should do more and be more conscious of, because it's a way of expressing things to the audience that's unique to games. What you mentioned is an example of everyone's favourite concept, ludonarrative dissonance; the explicit narrative is telling you one thing and the game systems another. It's a problem with the execution, not the idea.

Just finished up Tomb Raider II. Unlike the first game I actually played this one as a kid, not sure if that's why I enjoyed it more. I don't feel super nostalgic about it. Anyway, there are some unfortunate things about the game, in hindsight it's easy to see it as the series starting to head down the wrong path. It's pretty evident that they thought of Lara as an action hero, that's why they stuffed more guns in there, why they put in awkward vehicle sections, urban environments and human enemies (my final tally was 12847 rounds fired, heh). It starts of fantastic with the Great Wall of China level, but then it cuts to three levels of Venice and two on a not-oil rig. After that it gets better, a flipped over sunken ship might be the best idea for a chapter setting in all of the games (even though it doesn't make sense for all of those air pockets to be there) and the Tibet levels after that get back to the feel of TR I. There's some genuinely great level design going on in parts of this game, The Deck is probably the one I liked the most. Temple of Xian didn't quite live up to my memories of it (I remembered there being a giant spider, turns out it was just dog sized), but it's still pretty great. I'm honestly a little surprised how well these games hold up once you get used to the controls again. Why were designers doing more interesting things with 3D spaces two years into 3D being a thing than now? It's a bloody shame.

The mosquito are the worst part. A lot of weapons can't hit them, they respawn endlessly, mess up your camera and get stuck on geometry.

You can spend humanity to rank up in some covenants.

I don't care for almost any of Nintendo's stuff, Mario and Zelda in particular. Zelda is the one I'm most confused by, I have no idea what about it inspires such fandom. Last year I made myself play through Link to the Past and it was a chore. I might try playing OoT but I'm afraid I'll hate that too. I know it's silly, but even the names of things in those games bother me, like the Master Sword. Even Super Metroid, which I love, has that. Space pirates? Mother brain? I can ignore it, but I don't understand how people get invested in those worlds. As for Mario, I've never thought it plays all that well (blasphemy, I know). I've tried playing Super Mario World half a dozen times but I get so bored of it, and I don't like Mario as a character either. The silly sounds he makes that are supposed to be endearing get under my skin and make me annoyed. I don't hate fun or things for kids, it's just something particular about the way Nintendo does their stuff that doesn't click with me. Never liked it as a kid either.

That had some great music too. This one started playing in my head after I read your post Also (even better): Man, now I want to play Myth II. Such a great game.