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Huh, weird. Wasn't showing for some reason. Thanks.

You mean the 3rd

I hope Nick/Janel stream some Diablo II as well Even better soundtrack than the first game

Wait, which VOD?

One Swedish robot telling another to move out of the way. At least they're being polite "Du står i vägen, var vänlig flytta på dig." = "You're in the way, please step aside" What do you call those underground tunnels hospitals have btw? I can't find the English word for it.

The animation on those guys in Tseldora is pretty goofy, but I think Dark Souls 2 less polished animations across the board. Well, she's easy depending on where in the game you fight her. I don't like the fight because I think it's the least fun one to try to actually do well. The charge / forward stab attack she does has insane tracking and I think it's super cheap. On top of that the run back to the boss is maybe the most tedious in the entire game. When Nick was fighting Gwyn and complaining about it, some people said that his complaints came from him gimping himself, and I probably said something along those lines too. But I think a good boss in these games should hold up even if you do stuff like that, you shouldn't have to offset cheapness with levelling or gear. Smelter Demon, for example, is a much better boss in my opinion, even though it's harder. Although I think that fight has some serious hitbox issues, so it's not perfect. I hear you on RRA though, that thing was my least favourite boss my first time through the game. Also, I gotta say it seems like they toned down Shrine of Amana slightly in SotFS. I'm sure there used to be more than one mage in front of that first fog wall. Maybe a good change though. What's definitely a good change is removing those last two dudes in front of Velstadt's fog wall, who were impossible to pull. That was some straight up BS.

I watched the old HBO intro and there's a sound queue in it that I get a strong association from but I can't place it!! The harp at 35s-38s, it reminds me of some movie. It feels like something in space to me. Or maybe a Bond movie. If it sounds similar to anyone else please let me know.

I think Lost Sinner is my least favourite boss in all of DS2

His final play time was over 50 hours and that was with him being guided by chat through parts of it, so it still took a while

@Problem Machine, can't you join CoC to stop enemy despawns and farm pigs that way? I thought this was funny and half true "milesjacob : its amazing how exploring levels make him miserable just the way repeating boss fights does me "

You almost did an entire paragraph without any periods. Almost.

Stream started off well with Nick even listening to dialogue, and then it turned in to maximal cheatin' hitman. I hope he doesn't go through the entire game on sprint. btw I don't think this was posted: https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/CuriousPorcupineKippa

When you get to a boss you usually want to get back to fighting it rather than killing the same enemies over and over. Also, all those souls will accumulate inside the fog door and it can be distracting to have to worry about collecting your bloodstain every time. Going in with nothing to lose is less stressful. I tend to kill more enemies than Nick though.

Yup, it's on the opposite side of the play style spectrum. Haha, that's the opposite of my experience we'll see soon enough though edit: well I'm exaggerating slightly but I think they track too much

I didn't see the overhead track that insanely (I'll take your word for it) but I did see the thrust track. Yeah I'm not a fan of tracking either, that's actually my biggest problem with DS2. I've had enemies, not even bosses, do leaping attacks that track 180, and in general everyone behaves like they're on a turntable. Anyway, I guess I'm just reacting to the fact that Nick complains about missing/getting hit quite often even though it was a fair shot

When did Nick see vagrants? I watched most of his play through but not all :/ Also Nick, any chance of starting earlier today? Btw, I'm gonna disagree about Gwyn being a bad boss. The columns should work more consistently, I'll give Nick that, but I don't think there's any issue with his animations or moveset. Nick's right that Gwyn's attack patterns are unpredictable, however if you pay attention to the animations you'll always see what attack he's doing. You do have to consciously study the boss (which I think Nick said he doesn't like to do). Bad bosses are ones like Centipede Demon where the camera makes it so you can't see what's going on, or Bed of Chaos where things will just randomly kill you. In the end I think Nick showed that the Gwyn fight simply comes down to having good enough execution. Personally those are the bosses I enjoy. It would have been the exact same if he'd tried fighting Manus with the ring on.

Good job, skeleton Not sure I agree entirely. I think there's only one or two of those places where you might want to come back later. Even then they're very doable. Besides, doesn't SotFS gate your progress more with the things (you know what I mean)? I also read that you get the Dull ember super early. It's good to keep the fact that you always have multiple ways to go in the back of your head, I just don't think that every time you make progress you should immediately think to go somewhere else.

In a more normal play through his attacks don't really neutralize your healing though, because you typically heal a lot more health than he deals damage. So it's more of a thing of making your heals less efficient.

Sadly not. I have some suggestions for what Nick could try if he keeps struggling next time. He's probably aware of most of them but still: Shields. I know you said that you're not used to playing with them, but I'm not sure if you realize how effective they can be. The Black Knight Shield blocks 100% of physical damage and 95% of fire damage. It drops at a high rate from the enemies you fight (or don't) on the way to Gwyn, but you'd probably need to upgrade it slightly to reduce the amount of stamina it takes to block. You won't be able to block every attack (you'd run out of stamina), but it will make it so much easier to get an attack in safely and makes it so you can circle behind him. A shield that you do have, the Black Iron Greatshield (100% physical, 90% fire) probably would let you just stand in front of him and block every attack he does, but you'd need to level strength five times to equip it (that's about 200k souls). The only tricky part of using a shield is stamina management, which I don't think you've practiced much. Upgrading your Estus twice more would make it heal 750 health instead of 650. I'm not sure if this would make a difference but it can't hurt to try. People suggested this a hundred times already, but trading your yellow hat for a second ring of Favor and Protection (20% more life). I'm quite confident it'd make you more survivable than the defense ring you have at the moment. You do this back in the tutorial area the bird takes you to. If you want to keep fighting him your current way (which I think is fine), try to be more disciplined in when you attack. You know that the flying charge move he does gives you time to hit him twice if you dodge it (not the leap, the charge). His other attacks really don't, so you need to not get eager and just keep moving backwards from him, while circling the room and waiting for that attack. This is where a shield can help you because if you have your shield up and dodge too late you'll simply block instead. There's no need for you to be close to him, trying to dodge his sideways swings. In fact, his attacks do more damage the closer you are to him (correct me on that if I'm wrong), so backing away will help you take less damage even when you get hit. There is a way to get him stuck in a loop where he never attacks if you use a certain Pyromancy. I suspect you won't try parrying again, but if you do I'll just say that after a parry there is always time to heal, and when he gets up again he consistently does the same attack. First a left-right swing (which is hard to parry), and a right-left swing which is much easier. With the Black Knight Shield you can block the first attack and parry the second. You can parry with your shield raised too, so if you're too late you block (just like with dodging). The Silver Knights in Anor Londo are really good to practice parrying on, I honestly think you'd get it down in 10-15 minutes.

I will agree with you about the stats, they're vestigial element in Bloodborne. I'm almost a bit envious that you don't miss any of the stuff from Dark Souls. There's so much I like about Bloodborne, and it should be my favourite in the series, but the things that make it great aren't the "cut" features. Having build variety wouldn't make the game worse. For me it's not specifically build variety, but how character customization and item pickups affect the game. There are essentially no pickups in the game that have a significant impact on your character and this made me enjoy exploring the environments less, but it also made my second play through way less interesting. In Dark Souls the items scattered throughout the game serve as mini-goals that you set for yourself, and also create a sort of pacing to your run. For example, I might decide that I want an early +15 weapon and go straight to Capra without fighting Taurus demon, then kill Ingward and drain New Londo and finally go back to the Asylum and fight Stray Demon for the slab. There are endless ideas for how to structure your play through and the game encourages this. In Bloodborne, despite the open-endedness and many optional areas/bosses, there is nothing. What do I get for fighting Amygdala? Some chalice I'll admit to never even having tried. The weapon upgrades are tied to main story progress, they're not unlocked by items or NPCs. The only thing to go for is the Witch of Hemwick since she gives you runes, but runes don't have nearly the impact rings do in Dark Souls, they don't change how you play. All you have is the gameplay, that is the motivation to play. I realize how dumb it sounds to say that the gameplay isn't enough of a reason to play, especially in a game with gameplay as good as Bloodborne, but I think context can be just as important as gameplay. It's why daily challenges work, they frame the gameplay in a specific context that makes it more enjoyable. Again, I don't see why Bloodborne couldn't have this aspect when all the Souls games did it so well.

Hellkite is barely a fight. If it were a proper boss it'd be one of the worst in the game in my opinion, and it does insane damage without the calamity ring. CoC is the only way I've played DS2 actually, because I did it for my first playthrough and then I thought it'd be weird to make the game easier on subsequent ones.

Just want to say that if you block while sprinting you can't jump, so watch out. Also, that covenant that makes the game harder in Dark Souls 2 doesn't make the it that much harder. It's like going from Hurt Me Plenty to Ultraviolence, not Nightmare.

I'm sure ProblemMachine or someone else will point it out, but aside from the mainline progression you have left there is one (two) optional area(s) you could visit. There are no bosses there and people might say it's only for the lore. While there is a lore connection you won't give a rat's ass about, I'd say it's worth going there for the ambiance of the place, it's quite striking.

DS2 might have the most variance in player experience. At launch faith builds were extremely strong, to the point where a few casts of a single spell would kill most bosses, while people going for Dex builds hardly did any damage at all. It's also seen the most radical balance changes of all the games, especially when you take SotFS into account. So depending on when you played it, and how you played it your experience could have been very different from someone else's. Coming from DS1 I expected it to be easier, so I did try to make it harder for myself, did every playthrough in CoC etc. but there certainly are cookie cutter builds in all the games.

That's kinda crazy. I've seen it fall off the hole in the bridge, but even though it was hard to tell from that video it almost looked like it jumped over the 'railing'.