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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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I've just got the 'HELLOOOO' stone, and a gesture that makes my man shout 'HEY', suffice to say I'm now pretty annoying during multiplayer :)

12 hours in and I'm loving this game now :tup: only just killed my second proper boss

I've noticed I've got 2 dark sigils in my inventory so I did a little reading up on them, they're tied to some secret third ending... But I haven't a clue what's going on in the story anyway.

Why am I quested with killing the lords of cinder, what's supposed to happen when if I do?

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I'm moving through the game really slowly, my time says I've played for ~17 hours and I'm about through the poison swamp area.  That's not surprising at all for how I tend to play these games, my first playthrough moves at a crawl, with lots of backtracking.  I've also spent a couple of hours easily co-oping bosses, partly for fun and partly to accumulate Embers and Sun Tokens (assuming they have some covenant role to play eventually).  I haven't done any intentional PvP, but I have been invaded 3 times and managed to win two of those.  I love early days of a Souls game PvP before it eventually becomes all really good people. 

 

Overall I think I'm similar to Gorm, I'm positive on the game but with some caveats.  The linearity is mostly bothersome to me because of thinking about future playthroughs.  I don't care that the game is linear on a first playthrough, but with both DS1 and DS2 I'd sequence break all the future playthroughs to get the gear that I really wanted to mess around with.  It seems like future playthroughs are going to have a slower start, which is a bummer.

 

I love, love, love, love the new covenant system.  Being able to swap on the fly is great.  A dedicated covenant slot rather than having rings you have to equip is great.  Just everything about it is an improvement. 

 

I had felt like it was on the easy side until I got to the swamp, which has felt quite a bit more challenging.  I'll be curious to see if that continues, or if the difficulty ends up dropping back down once I've leveled up a few times and upgraded my axe again. 

 

The change to each piece of armor giving a flat damage reduction is disappointing to me.  Historically I've often run with at least one, if not two, pieces of armor removed.  Often the helm and chest pieces.  It may be that over time I'll get good enough at rolling it won't matter, but for now it feels pretty necessary to have something in every slot. 

 

I've also been disappointed by what feels like a dearth of good Str weapons.  I feel like I"ve found a bunch of interesting looking dex weapons, but only a few Str weapons.  That might be bad luck, or it might be a "Grass is greener on the other side" thing too.  I got the Great Axe very early, and have seen nothing that's come close to temping me to move away from it.  The Butcher's Knife I thought would be exciting, but it seems a bit underwhelming stat wise. 

 

To some extent, the game feels like the real Dark Souls 2 in terms of sequels.  It picked up some things mechanically from 2, but lore, story and characters all seem to have been drawn from 1.  It feels like total fan service, but I have to admit I kind of "Squeee'd" when I saw the blacksmith in Firelink. 

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For strength weapons, give the boss soul weapon of the second boss a go. But yeah, I hear the Greataxe is good.

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I've also been disappointed by what feels like a dearth of good Str weapons.  I feel like I"ve found a bunch of interesting looking dex weapons, but only a few Str weapons.  That might be bad luck, or it might be a "Grass is greener on the other side" thing too.  I got the Great Axe very early, and have seen nothing that's come close to temping me to move away from it.  The Butcher's Knife I thought would be exciting, but it seems a bit underwhelming stat wise. 

 

The Cathedral of the Deep has had at least three Greatswords and the Heavy Club as item finds, FYI. I think you're supposed to go there before the swamp, feels like?

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Haha, I believe I"ve completely missed the Cathedral of the Deep somehow, entirely.  I gotta go back to the Path and check out and see if I missed something. 

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I've also been disappointed by what feels like a dearth of good Str weapons.  I feel like I"ve found a bunch of interesting looking dex weapons, but only a few Str weapons.  That might be bad luck, or it might be a "Grass is greener on the other side" thing too.  I got the Great Axe very early, and have seen nothing that's come close to temping me to move away from it.  The Butcher's Knife I thought would be exciting, but it seems a bit underwhelming stat wise. 

 

I've been running with the Butcher Knife for a little while and while the stats aren't the greatest, the health recovery has been really nice to have. And I figure that the A scaling will make up for the "meh" stats as I level up. The moveset is pretty fun too. Faster than you'd think it would be for a giant hunk of metal.

 

EDIT: Actually, I just switched over to the first boss soul weapon. It is really slow but damn does it hit hard. And it looks funny with my skinny little dude carrying it one handed.

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The Cathedral of the Deep has had at least three Greatswords and the Heavy Club as item finds, FYI. I think you're supposed to go there before the swamp, feels like?

I finished it tonight and thought it was harder than the swamp. I also took the worst possible route through the swamp, spent ages down on the floor of it.

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I finished it tonight and thought it was harder than the swamp. I also took the worst possible route through the swamp, spent ages down on the floor of it.

 

I spent three or four hours in the swamp, getting lost and having those goat guys jump on my head. It was deeply unfun and I'm hoping that the Poisonbite Ring that I found in the Cathedral will make it suck less.

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So I managed to get the game to run by running it on the lowest possible graphics settings. I wonder how much longer I'll stick with the game though. I think I might just be fatigued with this series. While there are some things that are slight improvements to the game, I'm not feeling like this one really offers anything exciting to the formula. I'm getting a little tired of bosses where you just roll behind them to defeat them.

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Why am I quested with killing the lords of cinder, what's supposed to happen when if I do?

 

So all of the lords of cinder have previously linked the fire. For some reason they've been revived now from their tombs. But instead of relinking the fire (which to be fair probably means their oblivion) they've buggered off across the lands leaving the world to grow dark again and the flames to gutter.

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The Cathedral of the Deep has had at least three Greatswords and the Heavy Club as item finds, FYI. I think you're supposed to go there before the swamp, feels like?

 

So yes, I had in fact completely missed the Cathedral of the Deep, this arguably makes some more sense than what I had done.  It certainly feels like doing at least part of the Cathedral before the Swamp was likely the intended route.  I had really wondered how I had gone so long without fighting a boss. 

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So yes, I had in fact completely missed the Cathedral of the Deep, this arguably makes some more sense than what I had done.  It certainly feels like doing at least part of the Cathedral before the Swamp was likely the intended route.  I had really wondered how I had gone so long without fighting a boss. 

 

I actually just finished the Cathedral, then cleaned up the lower Swamp. I was panicking with the Cathedral for the first third of it, until I found how all the paths linked together and got a picture of it in my mind, which seems to be a very common dynamic between me and Dark Souls. I find the feeling of choosing forks in games really stressful in general, but it's interesting how it's usually resolved in Dark Souls in particular: anxiety as I realize that two paths diverge and neither is a dead end; relief when I kick down a ladder or open a one-way door; pleasure at traversing the new shortcut and confirming that there are now just two routes to the same place. The Cathedral's good for that dynamic, even more so than the Undead Settlement.

 

Meanwhile, I'm fairly sure that I've killed everyone and grabbed everything in the Swamp, but I will probably never return there because it feels so trackless to me. I think it's a big circle? At one point, I headed right from the bonfire and ended up somewhere that was where I'd headed left before. Anyway, I finally figured out that I had to extinguish the flames (a rare moment where Miyazaki and his team are forced to spell out the player's objectives at the entrance to the level because it's too obscure otherwise) and got out of there. Thank heavens, farewell!

 

I also wasted some titanite getting the zweihander to +3 before deciding that I don't like its moveset. There's been a decision with most greatswords and ultra greatswords to give them all the same (or broadly similar) movesets when one-handed and only make them unique when two-handed, which I don't like at all. I like the aesthetics of swords in this game, but the R2 for each and every one of them is this forward stab that never quite reaches as far as it looks like it should. Without the overhead slam, the zweihander is just a longer, worse-scaling claymore, which... meh, no thanks.

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It is probably the most annoying swamp level they’ve done, and they’re all annoying to some degree. I do love the bridge area above it though, if we count that as part of the same zone.

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Meanwhile, I'm fairly sure that I've killed everyone and grabbed everything in the Swamp, but I will probably never return there because it feels so trackless to me. I think it's a big circle? At one point, I headed right from the bonfire and ended up somewhere that was where I'd headed left before. Anyway, I finally figured out that I had to extinguish the flames (a rare moment where Miyazaki and his team are forced to spell out the player's objectives at the entrance to the level because it's too obscure otherwise) and got out of there. Thank heavens, farewell

 

Oddly enough, the new sad man at firelink (whatever his name is now) explicitly tells you what you're supposed to do there.  I've tried to make it a point to circle around and talk with everyone at Firelink once every three or four times I'm back. 

 

 

 

Still just trucking along with my Great Axe though, even after having found some swords.  I am curious about this pair of double maces I found though.  Kind of a high dex requirement for a Str weapon, but I'm tempted to raise Dex to try them out. 

 

Apparently joining the covenant (or maybe using it after joining) that lets you re-spec breaks an NPC questline though, which is frustrating.  I definitely want to see where Sirris' quest goes since she's someone who pops in and out of Firelink.  I'm glad I had read that when checking up on re-specing after finding that covenant last night.  I had been tempted to burn a respec to try them last night,but it sounds like I'm still a few hours from the next leg of Sirris' quest. 

 

 

I'm quite digging being a Blue Sent, got summoned for help 4 times last night and beat the invader 3 times.  The one non-win the invader ran and hid and I got tired of looking for him.   I love PvP, but I know there are a lot of people who don't, so crushing the asshats who invade them is quite satisfying.  Twice last night is was just a good duel, the host backed off and just let me take on the invader, which is honestly for the best, since the host's primary job is just to stay alive. 

 

 

Oh, I also stop-watched the stamina regen from the Grass Crest Shield last night.  It seems to be between 0.2 and 0.25 seconds faster regen.  Not a ton faster, but worth it for me right now where I have the weight to equip it and wasn't using a shield anyways. 

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76000 SOULS DOWN THE DRAIN

 

FUCK YOU IRITHYLL

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I'm getting a little tired of bosses where you just roll behind them to defeat them.

 

Of the five (proper) bosses that I've fought, only the first three had me roll behind them. The next two aren't unique to the series (a teleporting mage and an endless horde) but are different and interesting.

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The only game in this series I've played a bit is Dark Souls -- and for 1 hour only. Given that I don't spend that much time gaming these days and will not likely play through the whole series at this point, but I just upgraded my PC and now want to post-justify that upgrade, would you recommend that I start playing Dark Souls 3 instead of Dark Souls?

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I've not played any Dark Souls and would also like to hear people's answer to your question.

 

That said, for myself, I think I'm gonna start with Dark Souls 1. My reasonings being:

  • The original Dark Souls is, and will probably continue to be, the biggest cultural point-of-reference in the series.
  • If I bounce off of Dark Souls hard after repeated attempts, at least I didn't pay $60 for it.
  • If I really like it, I have more games in the series to look forward to without the awkwardness of having to go backwards

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My favorite is Demon's Souls for the PS3, but the original Dark Souls is a close 2nd. That being said, if you're looking to play the game right at this moment you're probably better off with Dark Souls 3 because Dark Souls 1 doesn't appear to work at the moment.

 

http://kotaku.com/nobody-knows-why-dark-souls-1-for-pc-has-been-offline-f-1771610424

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Well, it works, just no online component it seems.  Which is in and of itself an interesting way to play the Souls games.  I originally went through Demon's Souls in offline mode.  It becomes a more haunting, empty place when there are no messages, no ghosts, no bloodstains, no sign of the rest of the mass of humanity playing.  It's not better, or worse, but it is a different experience. 

 

FWIW, I think starting on Dark Souls is probably the best entry point, mostly because I like the world design of its first half so much.  Demon's has some of my favorite individual environments, but as a whole, I think Dark is stronger. 

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It's certainly a valid way to play the game, but one should definitely have the option to engage with the online components, they are such a staple of the game.

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My favorite is Demon's Souls for the PS3, but the original Dark Souls is a close 2nd. That being said, if you're looking to play the game right at this moment you're probably better off with Dark Souls 3 because Dark Souls 1 doesn't appear to work at the moment.

 

http://kotaku.com/nobody-knows-why-dark-souls-1-for-pc-has-been-offline-f-1771610424

 

WHAT

 

Well, okay, maybe this is a good thing. I had talked myself into buying and playing Dark Souls tonight but maybe instead I can better myself and lead a more fulfilling life.

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I've not played any Dark Souls and would also like to hear people's answer to your question.

 

That said, for myself, I think I'm gonna start with Dark Souls 1. My reasonings being:

  • The original Dark Souls is, and will probably continue to be, the biggest cultural point-of-reference in the series.
  • If I bounce off of Dark Souls hard after repeated attempts, at least I didn't pay $60 for it.
  • If I really like it, I have more games in the series to look forward to without the awkwardness of having to go backwards
Those are good reasons. I would add that Dark Souls III is heavily referential of Dark Souls (and to a lesser extent Dark Souls II). So to me it makes more sense to play the original one first.

I also think that, even though the other games fix some problems with Dark Souls, it is in many ways the best one in the series. At least in the ways that matter to me.

As for the online being broken, I think it's fine to play it anyway. You'll miss out on the messages and the ghosts, which while being neat are mostly background elements, as well as the co-op / PvP which you may or may not engage in, but it something you can always return to later. You can still summon NPCs if you get stuck on a boss.

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Fashion Souls: Working my "Hollow Darth Revan" look.

 

OcyELuI.jpg

 

I had my first real moment of exhaustion playing this game in the Cathedral of the Deep. I was so relieved when I found a shortcut back to the bonfire I had been using. But the map just seems to keep going and going. 

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NB: If you're planning to join the Watchdogs of Farron, keep in mind that the range for PvP matchmaking is (roughly) +/-10 SL and +/-2 weapon & shield level, making the sweet spot for that covenant SL 35 to 40 and +3 weapon/shield. I'm feeling this hard right now, as someone who is SL 55 with a +5 claymore and was looking forward to the Wolf Knight's Greatshield that's the final reward of that covenant...

 

I'm going to try again, at peak hours with my +3 zweihander, and if that doesn't work I'll just be sad.

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