Bjorn

I think it got mentioned in one of the Soul/Bourne threads, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to mention it here as well since not everyone reads those specific game threads. And yes, Demon's Souls is much more obtuse than any of the others. I still think the World/Character Tendencies are just some of the dumbest things. The idea of different areas opening/closing based on your actions is cool, but the way Tendencies are implemented makes it nearly impossible to figure out on your own, and you have to specifically play to cater to them. Ha, I also misunderstood you. Mechanically you'll be fine, it's not that much different. But the weapon upgrade paths and tendency stuff is just crazy hard to figure out on your own.

Given all the Bloodborne/DS2 talk, Demon's Souls is on sale for $6.80 ($5 for PS Plus members) on the PS Store this week.

I actually beat a guy in the Rat Covenant last night! Which I'm not sure I've ever done before, since Ratbros are usually unloading on you from a distance while their minions rush you. Lured him into that little side cave off the main room and he panicked once he was trapped in tight quarters with me. I also dropped an invader into lava in the Iron Keep in the big room with all the collapsible platforms, which is also something I had never managed to do to an invader before! I added the Warped Sword to my archer build, and damn I forgot how much I like it. I had played around with it briefly at some point, but never run it as a main weapon. I'm wondering if they toned down some of the boss fights in Scholar. I just demolished the RRA and Velstadt last night with my archer, which are two boss fights I've historically found challenging. I was probably over-leveled for the RRA, since I skipped its natural progression, but I was about the right level for Velstadt.

I agree, I find a real satisfying crunchiness to experimenting with a variety of weapons to find the one that's a perfect fit for the playstyle I want. And the DS2 DLC really upped the amount of things you can consider with a build, as more clothing now gives minor bonuses than ever, and some new rings can have some profound effects on what weapons are "viable" or not. I'm straight up addicted to Flynn's Ring, which adds up to +50 physical damage based on your equip load, which results in favoring builds that wear little to no real armor. That extra damage takes some average to good weapons and makes them great.

But they all look different! Fashion matters, dammit. I've just accepted that DS2 is my version of playing dress up with dolls. I'm okay with that.

Weapon variety is mainly a concern for me because of repeat playthroughs and PvP. If you've typically just played through a Souls game once or twice, the weapon variety is actually great. But there's not enough there for going back again and again to mess with different builds (between DS1 and 2 I'm in the dozens of playthroughs). It also means that you basically only see a handful of builds in PvP, which gets old. There's also the clothing variety, which allows for very little Fashion Souls. But mechanically its superb, and it might be the best world/lore they've built to date. Exploring continues at the same pace it always did, and combat is faster, but it feels like a natural extension of their previous systems. Oh, I did load up a bunch of rapid poison gems onto a Rifle Spear last night, and was never able to get it to proc on a few enemies I tried it on. So I don't think the poison applies to bullets on those.

I had half suspected as much, given the ridiculousness of that last sentence, but a man can always hope.

But Tegan, you can't neglect Cortana. She will be sad. I like how this basically amounts to Clippy asking you if you've heard about Clippy.

I'm trusting that it was Miyazaki, I just saw a link to that tweet. Maybe they're all his favorites! Like you never had a favorite child, you love them all equally.

You wear your politics on your butt.

Source

Somewhere early in this thread you can find a comment by me wondering what it would be like if the two or three people in the world who hated me the most decided to start posting shit about me online. It wouldn't be pretty. But by and large, my friends would describe me as a loving person, with good people skills, blah, blah, blah. But there are a few people who will tell you what a dishonest, arrogant shitbag I am (including one ex). I doubt any of us are universally praised or condemned by the people we have in our lives. To me, the interesting inclusion of Gjoni's friends in that piece is that of the ones who went on record, apparently none of them were freaked the fuck out by the Zoe Post, or even actively helped with it (something we already knew). That's just flabbergasting to me. I still don't know how to process that. I'm someone who actually believes in the communal value of gossip, when wielded responsibly. Gossip is one of the ways that we informally pass on information that can be valuable, and I can think of people who have been protected thanks to it. Gossip can also be devastating. Like any other tool, gossip can have both good and evil outcomes. Gjoni has at times defended what he did as a form of protective gossip. It's not. Carefully crafting a 9,000+ word multimedia dissection of your few month long relationship with someone is fucking scary. Like, it really doesn't matter what his friends thought of him pre-Zoe Post. The Post is the kind of thing that an obsessive stalker does. I've thought that since the day it went live, and I have yet to see anything that particularly disabuses me of that notion.

I'm not sure I've gone more than 3-4 months since first playing Demon's Souls that I haven't played one of these games. I get an itch to play one or the other for different reasons. If I ever become one of those people who just play one game (or game series) it will be the Souls games.

As tools, each of the status affects is potentially super valuable in the Souls games in players hands. In DS1, bleed was especially valuable for deep NG+ runs or low level runs, as it was always a fixed percentage of damage. So even if your weapon couldn't do a ton of damage, you could routinely take off big chunks of damage from many enemies, including about half the bosses (though bosses took a lower percentage hit than mobs). In DS2, bleed was nerfed to flat health damage, limiting its use in PvE but still leaving some utility in PvP with its Stamina damage. It was an attempt to re-imagine Bleed that wasn't a bad idea inherently, but it needed some adjustment/balance that it never got. Poison has always been an incredibly useful tool. It lets you stack constant damage on a surprising array of enemies, and proper builds can apply it within as few as 2-4 hits. In DS2, something like two-thirds of the vanilla game bosses can be poisoned, and most anything that can be poisoned can be made toxic as well. In all 4 games, poison has been one of the best ways to deal with troublesome NPC invaders/hunters, particularly since each game usually gives a poisoning tool like knives or arrows so that any class can benefit from it. With Bloodborne, poison knives have their place, though I suspect they are intended to be used in NG+ and Chalice Dungeons since you can't get a steady supply of them until very late game. Rapid Poison is one that people haven't figured out yet. It's the fixed percentage bleed effect from DS1 again, but so far proccing it is taking too long. It may ultimately be useful with fast weapons on deep NG+ runs though. Since it has often taken several months for the community to figure out the best way to abuse status effects, I'm not going to write off Rapid Poison yet. Huh, I wonder if either Poison effect applies to gun shots from the Reiterpallasch or Rifle Spear, since they are the only guns you can put regular gems on. That could be interesting. With the extra bullet runes plus bullet recharge through Viscerals, you might actually be able to do a big chunk of the game with just ranged weapons.

What's your SM at? I've done what I always do and have a variety of characters at different points of progression. I'm just bouncing around between DS1, DS2 and Bloodborne randomly right now because it's fascinating to compare the three. My roll timing in DS1 is atrocious. It's just different enough from DS2 that I have a hell of a time dodging shit. But my backstab skills have massively improved.

I played a bit tonight, and am pretty pleasantly surprised at how populated the Undead Burg is. Helped 3 people co-op the first boss. I never did co-op as much in 1 as I did 2, so it might be fun going through with a build more dedicated to helping people and just co-oping every boss and/or area a couple of times.

To be fair, I'm not sure you can post that video too many times. Not many videos exceed the expectations set by their preview image as much as it.

So I fired up DS1 over my lunch break, just making a new character and running through to the first fire in Undead Burg. I still super duper love this game. I never did get around to remaking my Dragon King Greataxe build from the 360 version, I may have to do that.

LOL I'm super happy this is happening.

Something lore-wise I noticed last night going through Old Yarnham:

I feel like I should really pick up a Wii U at some point. I haven't had a Nintendo system since the Gamecube, and I know there are plenty of games to justify it. Something like ASA is a big nudge in the direction of me getting one though.

Affordable Space Adventures sounds amazing.

A sweet Flintstone's ride will make anything better (and seriously, those wagons are awesome). I have someone screaming at me on eBay about how they're going to sue me over a $1.85 part because they had to have their repair person out twice, and they're going to file a report on eBay, and I'm never doing business on that site again, and blah, blah, blah. Wheeeeeee! I've done a bunch of business on eBay over the years, and honestly the number of deranged asshats has dropped considerably. Kinda makes me nostalgic for the old days, when I used to get people incoherently ranting at me on a monthly basis.

Run a themed build! I get such a bigger kick and challenge out of limiting myself to a particular theme. You could do Thor, blacksmith hammer and lighting (and other miracles). I don't actually care for either hexes or sorceries. Like Sno said, it's just boring. But my favorite caster I've ever run was inspired by Hastur/King in Yellow from Lovecraftian mythos. Limited to only yellow equipment, fire, poison and lighting (I found something that kind of justified that mix). So a poisoner build with pyro/lighting could be something fun to mix it up for you. Definitely different from straight physical damage.

I played for a bit tonight (another new character), the patch does seem to have greatly improved matchmaking. I had no problems getting summoned quite quickly for 5 different boss fights. I'm also not sure I realized that your Summoning Bell was basically infinite until you cancel it or return to the dream. I had assumed it would automatically stop after summoning a person or two, or after a boss. I summoned Father G for the Cleric Beast fight because I was curious to see him in action as an NPC. We trounced the beast, I barely used any heals and no bullets, so I decided I'd just run over to the Father's arena and kill him without returning to the dream. Didn't realize my summoning bell went back active as soon as I stepped out of the arena for the Cleric Beast. In the minute or two it took me to run over to Father G, I ended up summoning in 2 people. It was actually fun to just annihilate him with 3 people after how much I struggled with him with my first character. I still hate that you get summoned where you are, rather than where you were, but co-op does seem in better shape now than at launch.