Dewar

I replayed the first tutorial level four times to pick up a decent number of the challenges, but I haven't gone past that yet.

I don't find the bosses all that fun in Dark Souls. I enjoy exploring the levels a lot more, so I'm generally willing to solo to get past something once I've been stuck long enough. If possible, I like to summon NPCs though, since you get some extra story out of it sometimes and it seems like a reward for doing some of the convoluted crap it takes to befriend NPCs in these games.

Xbox One

Getting the story of the game requires a lot of observation. The best advice is to read the description on every item, and to talk to NPCs again at later times as they might have different things to say depending on where you are in the game. You're not quite to the point where the story starts really kicking off either, so I wouldn't sweat it yet. As for your systems you don't understand:

That Halekulani cocktail sounds brilliant.

Not to mention there are also NPCs to summon and that's the only way to complete some storylines.

I'm way late, but I took a few shots at Starfighter tonight and ended up with 34,496,690. Better than everyone on my friend list that isn't posting on this thread at least, and half way to ElMuerte.

Oh man, I forgot to tune in yesterday At least I beat DS3 myself during that time.

Now all I can think of is putting a projector pointing at the ceiling so I can have a sandwich, lie down, and play some video games.

I think I'm going to go in mostly cold the first time, fail miserably, and then start watching some videos. There's something about the first few hours of a Paradox game where there are so many options and you just get lost that I really enjoy.

I beat everything in the game except the nameless king. Took about 50 hours or so. I'll definitely remember this game has one of hot and cold bosses. There were some pretty frustrating fights, and also some pretty ridiculously easy fights. I think it mostly has to do with the amount of room in the boss arena. With all the dodging they want you to do, they put you in some awful small rooms with some pretty tough camera angles. I suppose it's probably also a function of my build, since I need some distance to effectively cast spells and such. I would say that this is probably my least favorite Souls game (haven't played Bloodborn) but still quite a good game worth playing.

I wish that DS2 map showed more loops, deadends, and such. While I'll certainly acknowledge that it's based around a hub, perhaps to the detrement of the world, it's a fair bit more complicated than that. Especially having just played it with the DLC, there's a lot of different paths to take.

You can definitely hit the bridge yourself while you are still on it. Also, the unraveling process takes a little bit, so you could hit it, think it's not working, run out onto the bridge to defend, and then fall. Not sure if the skeletons can do it or not.

I realized last night that I never went to the Smoldering Lake. It's nice to go in overleveled and completely wreck a boss for once,

I guess this is coming out on May 9th? Arumba has said he will be able to play it on the 3rd, and maybe a week earlier than that if he's lucky, so hopefully we'll start seeing some full on (not developer lead) youtube coverage.

My wife has started watching that series to try and understand why I like Dark Souls so much. It's been very entertaining to jump in and watch episodes here and there.

Advice from all my years going to PAX prime... 1) If you're interested in panels, pick one or maybe two a day to go to. More than that, and you'll be spending a lot of time in line and maybe missing the line for one panel because of the other panel you went to 2) The concerts are incredible experiences that I blow off a lot but then kind of regret after. If you have any interest in music, hit at least one. 3) If possible, bring a small portable hiking chair. The smaller and lighter the better. I bought something similar to this: https://www.rei.com/product/896775/mountain-summit-gear-tripod-stool-camp-chair 4) Pack some cereal bars and a bottle of water 5) Don't bother waiting to play any of the triple A demos. With all the open betas and such, you'll be able to play all that stuff other places. 6) But take as much time as you can afford in the indie area. There's tons of stuff there that you'll never hear about if you don't take time to see it now.

My original time through DS2, I played as a dexterity/caster with occasional experimentation with dual wielding dex weapons. I was proud at the time since I didn't use a shield, after relying on it a lot in DS1. My second time through DS2 (still ongoing) I started as a heavy weapons dude, then moved to pole-arm and shield since I never really used spears before. In DS3, I'm going with dex and sorceries again, but this time I'm finding it a lot harder to make the time to safely cast spells, and feeling a lot more fragile than I ever have in the past. On the plus side, I'm finding the actual levels a lot easier than my friends, but the boss fights have been mostly destroying me.

Hmm, I didn't find DS2 to be that hard, I guess it's just the build I've selected in each one.

Personally, I find Dark Souls 3 to be the hardest of them all. I'm not sure I would advocate starting out with 3 if for no other reason than I can't imagine coping with the difficulty as well as trying to learn all the crazy systems that I've already picked up from past games.

Interesting, I wonder how it controls buoyancy.

Oooh, how new-user friendly is it?

I was sick all week, so I'd love to extend a week so I can take a shot at this.

Man, I was set to finally get Windows 10 on my main PC, went to install Win7 on a new SSD so I could upgrade it and get my license, but it won't install to that drive siting a vaguely useless error code. Now I'm left trying to decide whether to fight with Win7, or just pay for a Win10 license and see if it installs.

I'll just point to my previous whining in this thread and say I disagree. I found it harder than even the long war mod for XCOM 1.