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Dark Souls 3 {Dark souls 2 successor [Dark Souls successor (Demon's Souls successor)]} (Bloodborne's something)

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When you turn human, you get a boosted health bar, among presumably other online stuff. From a design view, this is rewarding the player for taking the step and braving online, instead of previous games, where it's penalizing you for being hollow. I think this is a subtle but interesting change in mechanics and player's thought process, as it makes players use it to help them finish off that difficult boss, instead of being forced to turn human because their health bar is too low. Also, it's the same thing as Demon's souls, but without the constant reminder of your hollowing every time you look at your health bar. I'd be interested to know if it increases the amount of online play and coop.

 

That is an awesome point I had not caught. Another interesting thing, there's a lot of Demons' Souls callbacks, especially in the main hub area. 

The shape of the hub is the same as the nexus, a big cylindrical room; the Maiden in Black returns to allow you to level up; there's a blacksmith; and the thrones resemble the archstones.

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The other interesting thing about that mechanic is the visual look, you glow when embered rather than looking dead and desiccated when hollow.  It's another positive re-enforcement rather than a something that feels like a negative punishment. 

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I've made it past the first lord. It was sooo intense.

Tangential/not explicit spoiler?

I had a big surprise during the fight but lucky I had a carry with me at the time. if I didn't have a buddy that time I'm not sure I would have made it heh.

 

Duck Souls is a gud game. Quack quack Quack.

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I tried to do something different this time around and play a caster, but around the time I hit the first major boss after the Tower bonfire, I just wanted to put on heavy armor and swing a giant sword. So, like with every Souls game before, I'm starting over with a different class after a few hours. Whee!

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I tried to do something different this time around and play a caster, but around the time I hit the first major boss after the Tower bonfire, I just wanted to put on heavy armor and swing a giant sword. So, like with every Souls game before, I'm starting over with a different class after a few hours. Whee!

 

It is the Souls way.  I ultimately end up finding casters to just be on the boring side after awhile, even though I try running one every game.  The new mana point estus flask will probably get me to try again though, shifting the risk/reward over towards tons of firepower but more limited healing.

 

 

Edited to add: Got invaded for the first time last night. Died, but gave him a run for his money.  Felt pretty good with a great axe going against a rapier, the one weapon class that usually destroys me.

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Not sure how far in you are, but there is a way to respec in the game. It's not quite as easy as Dark Souls 3, but it is there.

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How's the PC version at this point? It sounded like there were some game breaking bugs initially. Has that been sorted out?

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It's a unique pleasure of Dark Souls to enter a visually stunning space, admire it openly, and then realize that it's obviously a boss arena and backtrack to the last bonfire to spend some souls. I'm digging this way more than Dark Souls 2, which I ended up playing through four times, although it feels like it's missing a little bit of the special sauce that I remember from the first Dark Souls. Maybe I'm just not feeling secret blob-snakes and farmer kitsch? I hear the game moves past that, though.

 

How's the PC version at this point? It sounded like there were some game breaking bugs initially. Has that been sorted out?

 

I thought I was immune, initially, but then I found the Northern Armor set, which has an open helm, and my game promptly locked and crashed when I went back to a bonfire. It runs great, so long as I keep my knight helmet on!

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Went to a gamestop to buy the game (fuckers have killed the competition). They wanted €76 for it! I noped out of there.

Anyway, played a few hours. It doesn't feel 'off' in the way Dark Souls II did which is great, but I don't like the colour palette. It's so drab and desaturated, the game looks like Blood Souls. I guess it's running on the same engine.

It's a unique pleasure of Dark Souls to enter a visually stunning space, admire it openly, and then realize that it's obviously a boss arena and backtrack to the last bonfire to spend some souls. I'm digging this way more than Dark Souls 2, which I ended up playing through four times, although it feels like it's missing a little bit of the special sauce that I remember from the first Dark Souls. Maybe I'm just not feeling secret blob-snakes and farmer kitsch? I hear the game moves past that, though.

These games being so similar yet my response to them being quite different weirds me out. I didn't like the writing in Dark Souls initially, but I grew to love it. I never did in the other games and I don't think I will in this one (plus I'm getting a bit tired of the same tropes). Is it because I just like Dark Souls more, or is the writing actually better there? Personally I think there's something qualitatively different about the first one, there are things I can point to in order to support that, but in all honesty someone who didn't play it first probably won't feel the same way.

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 I thought I was immune, initially, but then I found the Northern Armor set, which has an open helm, and my game promptly locked and crashed when I went back to a bonfire. It runs great, so long as I keep my knight helmet on!

 

When I first started my game I created the sellsword style character and the game promptly crashed every time I got into the game proper as my character entered the world.

When I was looking at how to solve the problems two fixes came up. One simply said to create a Knight class and never, ever take the helmet off. The other was to set the lighting setting to Low. I did the latter and it completely fixed the crashing problem for me.

 

I know some bug fixes have gone out but right now I'm too chicken to see if that issue is fixed for me yet.

 

The worst graphical hitch I get is that every now and then my physical memory will climb to 89% usage and I'll start getting 1 frame every 5 seconds but that doesn't happen all the time . I notice it in the Shrine a bunch but usually after a few hours in. The most annoying thing I've found is that the grey fog walls come back to the shrine making it super hard to go outside there because the walls seem to let me pass through sometimes but not all the time..

 

Still having fun and it's a great game yadda yadda. I've found the winter zone which looks amazing but I need to go back through to the Cathedral.

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The most annoying thing I've found is that the grey fog walls come back to the shrine making it super hard to go outside there because the walls seem to let me pass through sometimes but not all the time..

 

My experience with that is that it happens when I first go to the shrine or rest at the bonfire, but then if I wait near the fog wall it'll eventually clear and I can go outside.

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Yeah its just loading the outside area, if you wait 15 seconds and the fog will clear

I'm liking this game a lot more now :tup:

I always want to have a good at everything build, magic and melee. I think this time around I'm going to leave the intelligent stat and magic well alone... Although I've just opened up pyromancy which I like to have in the back pocket.

I might actually level up a bow and use that instead of magic. Although I'll wait until I find that a better bow than the original.

Is it like past games where you can use boss souls to level up certain weapons? I've never bothered with that in the past as you can only access it really late in the game.

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Anyway, played a few hours. It doesn't feel 'off' in the way Dark Souls II did which is great, but I don't like the colour palette. It's so drab and desaturated, the game looks like Blood Souls.

 

Yeah, I had a big disappointment when I found a piece of the Xanthous armor set last night, and it just kind of looks like dull, stained rags than the bright, popping yellow it has been before.  It's like a stained bandage now, or the color of a used cigarette filter. 

 

 

Knock on wood, but my machine seems to be running it just fine, though I am on an AMD card, and the main source of the problem seems to be Nvidia cards.  I've swapped around head gear to my heart's content with no problems. 

 

 

The worst graphical hitch I get is that every now and then my physical memory will climb to 89% usage and I'll start getting 1 frame every 5 seconds but that doesn't happen all the time . I notice it in the Shrine a bunch but usually after a few hours in. The most annoying thing I've found is that the grey fog walls come back to the shrine making it super hard to go outside there because the walls seem to let me pass through sometimes but not all the time..

 

Oh, I have had this happen though, in fact it got me killed.  I had just walked up and hit an enemy once, and the game minimzed with a low memory warning.  By the time I canceled the warning and got back to the game, I was dead.  What's weird is the memory usage is just a spike, and I've had it happen in different areas now.  I've got no clue what's causing it, but it doesn't seem to be any terrible impact other than auto-minimizing the game due to that warning once every 3-4 hours of play. 

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I dropped the lighting setting to low and that seemed to fix it. Even though it is a bummer to have to do that, the game still looks great. Still, what a bummer, I hope this gets fixed soon, it was a really bad way to get introduced to the game.

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Is it like past games where you can use boss souls to level up certain weapons? I've never bothered with that in the past as you can only access it really late in the game.

 

Dunno. The only thing I know for sure you can do with boss souls is make certain weapons. For that you need an item from a particular (technically optional) boss and to talk to someone at Firelink Shrine.

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I had my first encounter with the Watchdogs of Farron. Glad that's back.

 

I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic in the above comment.

 

Overall, ten hours into the game, I'm harboring positive impressions. Important for me is that they finally figured out the stat system: there's no must-have stat, so I'm actually pumping up class-related stats earlier than pouring points into Endurance or Adaptability to make the game playable. I wonder intermittently if Luck is a "trap" stat, seeing that it serves just to get you items that you won't be able to use without leveling other stats, but it's not remotely as bad as, say, Resistance, in the first Dark Souls. I miss the risk/reward of keeping liquid Humanity around to up the drop rate, but it's probably better to have it all codified in one place, as opposed to having a valuable resource with additional hard-to-notice effects.

 

I like the level design of the first few main-game areas, generally, although fuck trekking through another swamp. The concerns about linearity are totally there, though: the best that it's gotten so far is the Undead Settlement, which seems to have separate paths but a few keys and one-way gates turn it into one big pretzel and that's cool. The other areas have mostly proven to have a more traditional pattern (well, "traditional" for other games) of open area, then bottleneck, then open area, with a few dead-end paths and one-way drops to give the feeling of more space. It's good but not remotely the revelation of, say, the Valley of Drakes linking up with Darkroot Basin, New Londo, and Blighttown.

 

I'm having a lot of problems with human-scale mini-bosses doing the 180-degree pivot swing still, which is very frustrating. I can only beat that one Black Knight one out of three times because of that, and I barely beat the Winged Knight way back at the High Wall because of the same. I also miss multiple targeting points on bosses, I don't see why Miyazaki got rid of that from Dark Souls 2.

 

I haven't gotten into the weapon skills much, because I am playing with a shield and am generally too rusty to experiment. I just got the Black Knight Shield, which allows for one-handed skill use, but it's too heavy until I put more points into Vigor. Vitality? The one that improves carry weight. I like the tweaks to the forging system: the material qualities from Demon's Souls are back, theoretically letting you make any weapon good for any build, but of course it's probably best to make a greatsword Heavy, a rapier Sharp, and so on. I'm drowning in titanite shards, though, and that lets me push more than one weapon with a moveset I like up, to see if I like its progression scheme too. Overall, good changes.

 

I am scared of the poison swamp and will probably be giving myself the rest of the day off from the game because of it. The 20,000 souls I just lost in my last duel with the Black Knight (why do I want to farm his stupid, heavy armor) has nothing to do with anything.

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I'm definitely either finding that Black Knight harder than his colleagues in Dark Souls, or it's just been long enough that I forgot they were always hardcore.

 

Vitality is the one that improves carry weight - I like wearing relatively heavy armour but fat rolling is even more of a liability in this than it has been in the previous Souls games, so I actually have Vitality up at like 30 while all my other skills are currently <20.

 

I'm now trying to jack my dexterity in order to use a spear made from a boss soul that recovers HP after killing enemies. The idea of infinite vampiric sustain appeals to me.

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Guess I spoke too early. Even with the lighting settings changing the game is still freezing on me. Guess I am not playing this game until it gets patched.

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His moveset is identical to the one in the Undead Parish in Dark Souls. They were always hardcore tbh.

The carry stat seems kinda useless to me, because the only penalty for carry weight (until 70%) is decreased roll distance. Same stamina recovery, same iframes. I probably won't put any points into it.

Regarding the world/level design, I think that just like in Bloodborne the individual areas are well designed but they way they're stiched together leaves something to be desired. It's how I thought it would turn out when I heard they were includingn fast travel from the start. I just unlocked a major shortcut between two areas and I'll literally never use it because its only purpose is to show that the areas actually are connected.

This game sprawls, and while it can be impressive to see the scale of the world and the environments in it one of the things I liked most about Dark Souls was the economy of the level design. The levels aren't huge, they're actually quite small, but they make good use of every little part of that world. When the levels are as large as they are in this game there gets to be a lot of surperflous stuff. Maybe designing Lordran was hell, because it's the only time they've done something like that, but by giving themselves the constraints that they did they ended up making something singularly great.

I'll never be able to walk through the world of this game in my head. When you make something this big every part of it can't be memorable.

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I wonder intermittently if Luck is a "trap" stat, seeing that it serves just to get you items that you won't be able to use without leveling other stats, but it's not remotely as bad as, say, Resistance, in the first Dark Souls. I miss the risk/reward of keeping liquid Humanity around to up the drop rate, but it's probably better to have it all codified in one place, as opposed to having a valuable resource with additional hard-to-notice effects.

 

I also miss multiple targeting points on bosses, I don't see why Miyazaki got rid of that from Dark Souls 2.

Multi targeting is still there but so far reserved for the truly big bosses.

I don't really understand luck either but you can alter a weapon's quality to scale with it. My first instinct was that luck would scale crits as well as magic find but I don't really know if crits exist in DS or if that would instead be tied to Dex.

Yeah its just loading the outside area, if you wait 15 seconds and the fog will clear

I might actually level up a bow and use that instead of magic. Although I'll wait until I find that a better bow than the original.

Oh ok I thought it was a bug.

I've found a nice bow with a multi arrow special. It's early enough in the game but it would be a complete stroke of luck to find it unless you received a minor spoiler after watching one of the VaatiVidya video's on Dark Souls 3.

Along that lines if you hold down on the D-pad your item slot will quick switch to the first item in the que which makes for easy estus use and doesn't punish you as much for holding too many items.

Btw some guy made a pretty great breakdown on

. The best take home message is that every armour slot offers the same amount of flat damage reduction for magical or physical whether you're wearing Havel's or deprived rags; flat damage reduction does scale as you level so don't feel too underwhelmed when you first notice the amount.. What changes between armour sets is percent damage reduction which is applied after the flat reduction. Apparently that falls off towards 25% reduction. You can find the numbers in two columns with flat on the left and % on the right.

So always remember to wear something in every slot. If you like having a free headslot there are some headgears that don't hide a lot. Still a bummer for some people but with head slots specifically you'd take 10% more phys damage without anything in that slot; up to 50% more damage taken if you're completely naked. 

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You guys finding any illusory walls? I don't have PS+ and therefore no messages and I haven't found a single one yet :(

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There's one in the rafters above Firelink. Can't really remember any others off the top of my head. You don't even get messages without PS+? That's annoying.

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There's one in the rafters above Firelink. Can't really remember any others off the top of my head. You don't even get messages without PS+? That's annoying.

It was almost enough to make me return the PS4 I got for bloodborne. What a gyp.

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You guys finding any illusory walls? I don't have PS+ and therefore no messages and I haven't found a single one yet :(

 

ALL SORTS OF 'EM.

 

Well, one sort of them (the DS1-style wall that you reveal by rolling into/attacking), but there get to be a decent amount of them as you go on.

 

 

When you turn human, you get a boosted health bar, among presumably other online stuff. From a design view, this is rewarding the player for taking the step and braving online, instead of previous games, where it's penalizing you for being hollow. I think this is a subtle but interesting change in mechanics and player's thought process, as it makes players use it to help them finish off that difficult boss, instead of being forced to turn human because their health bar is too low. Also, it's the same thing as Demon's souls, but without the constant reminder of your hollowing every time you look at your health bar. I'd be interested to know if it increases the amount of online play and coop.

 

Right now this seems to be narratively different from human/hollow form in previous games. You stay looking human the whole time, but using an ember enkindles(?) you. You can actually go hollow, depending on a few certain actions, and it shows as a gradually advancing decay of your appearance, similar to the progressive hollowing in DS2.

 

 

Here is a Hot Tip for DS3 players that someone mentioned on twitter, and which I would never have noticed otherwise: go into the Settings menu and switch the HUD setting to 'Auto'. 

 

It's a new feature which automatically fades out all the HUD elements when nothing's going on. It all comes back when you hold L1 to raise your shield, then it drops away again. I think it looks and works really well, at least for casual mooching through the world.

 

This is even more nuanced than it seems at first. When doing nothing, the whole HUD fades, and when using weapons and shields it will all come back, but if something smaller happens, only the bit in the HUD related to it shows. Did you fall and take some damage? The HP bar shows up long enough to let you know your current health. Have you been running around a lot? Stamina shows up when it starts getting low. Same with using or switching items and equipment - the icons pop up to let you know they're switched, and then fade again.

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