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I just saw they nerfed Ring of Life Protection in SotFS, that's good. I kinda want to play DS2 now even though it's my least favourite. Help! It's weird, I almost felt a bit of the hate leaving my body. I think I suddenly like that game way more.

You love the game so much and you've not beaten it twice? Tsk

It's tricky to say, because as you point out the first game tends to be the hardest one. Dark Souls is probably the easiest game to overpower with just gear. The poise mechanic can make you nearly immune to being staggered (you probably don't even notice it, but if you put on light armor your next stream you'd be getting staggered a ton), 20 Estus is the most of all the games (probably too much) and pyromancy is extremely powerful. I think your flame is only at something like +6 and despite that your Great Chaos Fireball is still useful. That glove goes to what is essentially +20, although you really have to grind to get it that high. Dark Souls 2 is interesting. I've heard people say it's easier, but personally I'd say it's harder (balance tweaks in SotFS notwithstanding, haven't tried it). I'm not going to go in to too much detail since you haven't played it, but to me the game felt like it wanted to play in to the idea that these games are about difficulty and it seems to take more glee in punishing you than the other games (it slips into the unfair territory too often if you ask me). There are a few design decisions specifically to counter cheatin' hitman, for example. You start off much less empowered, and if you were to pick Deprived in Dark Souls 2 too you'd really feel it early on (I dare you hah). The gear and character progression is tuned such that it'll take longer for you to become a wrecking machine, but at the same time there really isn't the same kind of progression wall type boss like O&S. I'd say many areas are more difficult, while many bosses aren't, at least the base game bosses. If I had to put money on it, I'd say you're going to struggle more with DS2, but it might not be in a pleasant way. If you don't find it challenging enough there's a covenant to make it harder. It's possible I remember this game as harder than it was because of a stupid challenge run I did. Dark Souls 3 sits somewhere in between I think. A first time player going in blind wouldn't struggle as much as they would with Dark Souls, because DS3 is made to be more accessible, but even if you know what you're doing it's not as easy to break the game and becoming utterly overpowered. Nameless King is probably the only very challenging boss, but on the other hand the game doesn't have any atrocious boss either, which I think every other game in the series does. It's middle of the road honestly. I'll briefly mention Bloodborne too. It's different from the other games in that you can't really do a tanky build, you're forced in to an active play style. The mechanics are tuned to accommodate that however. The first area can be very challenging, even if you've played all the other games, but a bit like Dark Souls I find that it's kinda easy to out level the game without meaning to. If you dig into the optional stuff there are some very challenging bosses though. My prediction is that you'll like Bloodborne the most, because it kind of is the best game even if it's not my favourite, and find DS2 the hardest. Welcome to the dumpy.zone.

Someone in the chat said Nick was overlevelled, and Janel said something like "but he never levels up!", which is a fair point. It's a tricky issue with these games. You have the most fun with them when you're just at the sweet spot of the power curve. It's not like Diablo where overlevelling just makes the game more fun. For O&S Nick was slightly underpowered, because he understood the fight well yet still struggled to win it, but for Manus he was slightly overpowered; I think Nick is good at the combat, but in that fight he didn't apply much skill, he won by having a large enough health pool and high enough attack rating. The problem with that is that much of the design that went into making the boss fight be an interesting fight is wasted on the player. In Dark Souls I think they probably give you too many Souls for boss kills, meaning that most players naturally overlevel slightly as the game goes on. Also, Nick is terrible for not saving Sif. As for the gravelording thing, it's a bug, you only get gravelorded in NG+

I found holding down 'w' for 90 minutes straight to be uncomfortable and that took me out of the game. That game barely has any interactive elements, which is fine, but very little interaction you do have isn't at all in service of what they're trying to do in my opinion. And it's not even that I'm against that kind of solitary movement through a space, I must've spent 100 hours just running through Chernarus in DayZ.

I was listening to Space Asshole on youtube, and there was a video in the sidebar that was a review of Space Station 13. Decided to watch it, and 15 minutes in I begin to faintly hear Space Asshole playing in the background. If youtube actually recommended the video because it knew that song was playing at some point that's creepy as hell. I mean I know it does content id stuff, but that's checking against a database I thought. edit: it seems like Space Asshole is actually in the soundtrack for the game, that's weird. It's a free game though.

Some people like to summon and others don't, but people tend to feel strongly about it either way. Watching someone stream a game is enjoyable because you're in a sense sharing the experience of the game, and of course people want others to have the same positive experience that they had with it. For some people summoning would ruin their experience, and they feel like Nick summoning ruins their shared experience (or at least makes it so Nick doesn't experience exactly what they experienced), so I get why people respond that way. I think most people know which category they fall into though and ultimately chat isn't going to influence that. Nick clearly did not want to summon, for his own reasons not because of chat.

There are some great Dark Souls fan posters

Heh, he went straight to Sif. I have to post the alternate cutscene Also, upgrading armor doesn't mitigate damage that much in Dark Souls.

Hm you're right, didn't think about that. That cutscene though :'(

Btw PM, if you really want to guide Nick somewhere I think you should get him to do the DLC before Sif so he gets the alternate cutscene

Hah well it's the nature of this game to disagree on this stuff. On my base level run I definitely did Ornstein last because if you hang out by his feet almost all his attacks miss you. As for weapons, I'd say the Gravelord Sword, he can (in principle) easily get the materials to get it to +4 or even +5, he has about the right amount of strength to 1-hand it if he wants to and it has a pokey R2. I think slow strength weapons would trip him up, except maybe the Zwei since it's kind of user proof when you have poise (but that'd be so boring to watch). Other option would be the Claymore which is super versatile, but I think its 1h moveset is the stronger and Nick likes to 2h. To be honest though, I think he'll do fine if he sticks with the Longsword because that's kind of the nature of this game. Nick is actually pretty good at the combat, and if he min/maxed his build/gear as well as conserved his souls more he'd walk all over even the DLC bosses. Ever since they increased the boss soul rewards overlevelling is the norm, so I'm glad he isn't doing that. He could even switch to a cool dex weapon like Quelaag's Furysword and he'd still be fine I think. And look, I don't mind anyone telling him to upgrade stuff or whatnot (though I think you might have a hard time getting him to go down the upgrade path you want :P), I just want to see him struggle a little while making his way through the game. With the rite of kindling you end up having a pretty large margin of error in the endgame I feel.

Nick's build was actually a moderately challenging one. I've seen much worse players say that fight is easy because they're over levelled and using a greatshield. Doing it without a shield is a lot harder, great job Nick! Also, not that it matters now, but I think Super Ornstein is a lot easier. Maybe killing Smough in the first phase is slightly harder though.

I'm catching up on last night's stream (wish I could watch it live but timezones) and I just want to mention the help vs not help thing again. I think Nick is actually doing pretty well, he's a lot further in to the game that I was at the same amount of hours played and he's not actually very high level. I also think he was doing well in Sen's so even if he misses the bonfire (which probably 10 to 1 he does) he's gonna get through the area fine; it's designed so you don't need that bonfire. While I get that it's really tempting to give directions I think it's obnoxious when chat spams directions in all caps. At least wait until he's struggling. Anyway, people are gonna do what they feel so I'll stop complaining about it now. edit: Nick at some point said he'd go on a 10 hour quest to remove that Silver Knight edit2: I thought it was quite amusing for the first four hours or so, but then I actually started feeling a little bad for Nick. I know that feeling of refusing to give up, your body aching and slowly getting worse and eventually realizing it's not going to happen. Really sucks.

Ah yeah he does, but to be fair he's behind an illusory wall edit: oh, also - there's actually someone making Dark Souls in Planet Coaster. Not all that far along yet though.

Ah you're right. What I was thinking about is using the Dung Pies to self toxic yourself, because that toxic effect has a much lower DPS and that does stop the blowdart toxic from triggering. Not super useful though. I have to say I'm disappointed Nick didn't get egg'd. Nick: those small maggots that spawn out of the dudes with the eggs on their backs before the spider boss, they can do a grab attack that infects the player with a bug. Initially all that happens is that your character scratches their head every few seconds like they have a really bad itch. Then after a little while a giant egg forms on your head. This egg eats half of all the souls you earn and will eventually grow even bigger. The only way to get rid of it is by using a quite hard to come by item.

You can avoid toxic by poisoning yourself, since you can't have both status effects at once, and poison really isn't too bad.

One of the things that annoyed me was how a lot of the attack animations, at least on the weapons I used, seem to take slightly longer than they should. I see my character having followed through with her swing, but I still can't dodge away for a few hundred ms because the animation is still playing, which makes the character feel unresponsive. Then there's adaptability, which I'm not a fan of. You say you don't like i-frames, but I think they're a necessity (especially with the problematic hitboxes). I played as deprived in both of my runs through the game, and there you really feel the low adaptability (well, all the way through on SL1). If you don't know the details of the mechanics it can easily feel like you're getting hit by a ton of stuff that you shouldn't be. There's that staggering mechanic when you run out of stamina and block (if I recall correctly) that leaves you out of control of your character for quite a while. Especially at the start of the game, before you get used to all that stuff, I think it can be frustrating. Also, the free aim on the greatswords can really throw you for a loop. Personally I thought everything felt a little off for the entirety of my time with the game. Regarding Ancient Dragon, I think the run up to the boss is actually the worst part heh.

Yeah, Dark Souls 2 is probably the game most prone to cause frustrations with the controls. It's the only Souls game I've ever been frustrated with. What you said about the rolls and consequences of your actions in Dark Souls 3 though I think applies doubly to Bloodborne. It's a fun game, I love playing it, but it lacks that aspect of having to be super deliberate about every action you take. Regarding Capra, I think it's fine to call him a bit bullshit, but I also think some people struggle with him just because of the sensory overload that happens as soon as you walk through that fog door. It's even worse if you don't have any poise at that point. If Nick had been sober, and maybe had a shield, I think he would've done a lot better. There's actually an easy trick if you get past the dogs, which is to stand in the top right corner of the room and just block. That will cause Capra to fall off, and you can just drop attack him repeatedly. Anyway, I think there are several bosses that rank higher on the bullshit-o-meter *cough* Ancient Dragon *cough*.

Rolling into enemies kinda stuns them in DS3, doesn't it? Personally I've never been bothered by the locked rolling directions in DS1, but I've mostly played that game on kb/m.

Kinda funny to hear Nick talking about how DS3 is more forgiving, while at the same time poise tanking everything in the game without even knowing it. It's crazy how much of a difference poise makes. I think he triggered bleed more times in his runs through the lower burg than I've done in all my playthroughs.

Omg, Oswald. I actually laughed so much it hurt. And then his reaction when he met Lautrec Btw Nick, that gate you spent ages opening. The first time you get there, there's a Hollow who runs to the switch and pulls it. If you're fast enough you can stop if from ever closing. Just a neat detail.

see, failure is the fun part Btw, the video on youtube (pt. 2) seems to start part way into the stream. It's also not part 2 hah