Dark Souls(Demon's Souls successor)

[Bjorn]

Have fun storming the castle!

 

I never actually found them that bad. There are multiple ways up there for every build type. Just remember to play to your strengths and all tools you have available. There are a few spells/items that most players ignore that are crazy useful in just a couple of locations.

[Dewar]

There are a lot of them, but not really in that precarious of locations. If you can get past those, you're inside in warm (not at all) safety for a while.

[Trip Hazard]

The ninja build that I started playing with a couple of weeks back has been going from strength to strength recently. I found a whole set of Shadow gear in Blight Town, as well as an Iaito (I love Blight Town so much) so now my guy really looks the part. Not that keen on the two-handed strong attack, which winds up for just a touch too long, so I may trade it in for the Uchi later on, if I can remember where to get it.

 

My next task is to cut

Priscilla

down to size, although having said that, I'm not sure that that will be in keeping with the heroic ninja I had hoped to embody. 

 

Edit: goodly doesn't mean what I thought it meant

[Bjorn]

I think you can do that and still be a good Ninja. 

 

Priscilla portrays herself as not-evil, and perhaps even a victim. But she's also an immortal being feared by the gods themselves who rules over a vicious, ruined land full of monsters with not a redeeming feature in sight. I think it's another spot of environmental storytelling letting you know that the narrative you are being delivered is maybe not accurate.

[Trip Hazard]

Very true!

I was watching one of Emmarel's videos recently and when Priscilla delivers her speech about her land being "peaceful" and its inhabitants "kind", the video had been cleverly edited to cut back to all of the horrible, fucked up, murderous shit that assaults you in the Painted World

 

So yeah, I might do her in. Besides, bitchin' dagger.

[BadHat]

Not that keen on the two-handed strong attack, which winds up for just a touch too long, so I may trade it in for the Uchi later on, if I can remember where to get it.

 

Gotta either kill the Undead Burg merchant or buy it off the Forest Covenant vendor.

[Bjorn]

Anyone else debating on buying both the console and PC versions?  I am, as I ultimately want it on PC, but I really, really don't want to have to wait a few weeks for the PC version to come out. 

[Dewar]

I'm considering it, yes, but I also don't like the PS3 controller.

[Bjorn]

I don't mind the PS3 controller, played plenty of things on it.  Though I would likely get the 360 version, as I've got way more friends on there.

 

In other DS2 news, there's a themed bar/cafe for a couple of months to promote it's release in Japan. 

 

I wish we got nice things in the US.  I would cosplay to go to a bar and get served a drink by Anastacia. 

[Dewar]

Oh, for some reason I thought that it was PS3 exclusive. I might pick it up on Xbox, but it's not exactly convienient for me to play it on my TV anymore. Still, being in the wave of discovery with everyone else might be pretty cool.

 

Edit:

 

Hmm, old article, but it doesn't sound like the PC version will be that much later than the console versions.

Good news and bad: the good news is that there's a new Dark Souls 2 trailer and it features lots of killing and dying and resting at bonfires. The bad is that Dark Souls 2 won't release until after the console editions, which have been confirmed for launches on March 11 and 14 in North America and Europe respectively. According to a Eurogamer report, game director Yui Tanimura hopes to release the PC edition in the same launch window.

"For the PC version we're simply saying March - we're trying our best for PC and console," he said. "The reason we can't announce the specific date is we're working on more options on how to make the PC version optimal." Tanimura also assured PC owners that problems with the Dark Souls port won't be repeated, as the current game is being developed with both consoles and PC in mind.

[Bjorn]

But they still haven't set an actual date for it, which is mildly concerning.  If it's ultimately just a week or two, I'll probably wait, but if they announce a date and it's more than that, I'll probably just buy on console first.

[Squid Division]

The delay might be the tipping point for me. I'm not very happy with the PC version's connection issues, so I was kind of waffling. Maybe the dedicated servers will make it better, but who knows. I'll probably pick it up on PS3 then on PC when it goes on sale at some point.

 

I think the Dark Souls II thread is going to have to be named 'Dark Souls II (Dark Souls Successor)'

[BenLuke]

Dark Souls 2: Prepare to Die Harder?

[Bjorn]

It could be 'Dark Souls II (Dark Souls successor (Demon's Souls successor))'

[N1njaSquirrel]

How about 'Dark Souls II (Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition successor (Dark Souls add-on edition (Demon's Souls successor)))'?

[Dewar]

For me, the X360 version of Dark Souls already had some pretty bad framerate hits, and I'd be really concerned at how Dark Souls 2 is going to perform.

[Bjorn]

I had Demon's Souls on the PS3, Dark Souls on 360 and PC.  I can't say that any of them were technical masterpieces, and everything struggles with framerate issues in some parts of Dark Souls. We're just going to have to hope that the new engine fixes at least some of the technical problems they had with level size and number of enemies.

 

We could get historical with the title: 'Dark Souls II (Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition successor (Demon's Souls successor (King's Field spiritual successor)))'?

 

Did anyone ever play the King's Field games?  I remember really despising King's Field 2 at times.  Vicious traps, unlabeled keys you had to backtrack to try on every door, easy to get lost.  And yet I kept coming back to it again and again.  

[Dewar]

I had Demon's Souls on the PS3, Dark Souls on 360 and PC.  I can't say that any of them were technical masterpieces, and everything struggles with framerate issues in some parts of Dark Souls. We're just going to have to hope that the new engine fixes at least some of the technical problems they had with level size and number of enemies.

 

We could get historical with the title: 'Dark Souls II (Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition successor (Demon's Souls successor (King's Field spiritual successor)))'?

 

Did anyone ever play the King's Field games?  I remember really despising King's Field 2 at times.  Vicious traps, unlabeled keys you had to backtrack to try on every door, easy to get lost.  And yet I kept coming back to it again and again.  

 

Anecdotal of course, but I didn't have any problems on my PC, though that might be DSFix I guess.

[Bjorn]

On PC, it's been a mixed bag.  I had some framerate dips in Blighttown, but not as severe as I did on the 360.  But I had far, far, far worse problems with connecting to other players on the PC, though the community mods/fixes helped that. 

[Dewar]

I guess I was playing late enough in the cycle that I assumed that any connection problems I had were related to just not a lot of people playing. I was successful connecting to folks about 1/2 the time.

 

On the 360, I was getting horrible frame drops every time I killed anything larger than a black night (I assume because of the particle effects) and intermittant drops pretty much anywhere there was a long sight distance. On PC, I had a few problems in Anor Londo, but it was pretty much flawless.

[SGP]

What's the status of Games for Windows Live and Dark Souls on the PC? I was so unhappy with connection problems and then people playing with altered characters that I haven't returned. I have it on the PS3 but bought the PC version to spruce up the looks a bit.

[Bjorn]

I never had much of a problem running into people with modded characters, though it appears that others did on a regular basis.  My connection issues got a lot better once I set up port forwarding as well, had forgot about that part. 

 

As for GFLW, MS has never confirmed that it's shutting down, that rumor got going and I never saw them comment on it.  Which would lead some credence to it.  And the increasing number of devs/pubs who are patching out GFLW support, it would seem that even if the rumor isn't true, games abandoning it will kill it anyways.  Unfortunately neither From nor Namco have commented on patching it out for DaS.

[Dewar]

I'm fairly certain that Dark Souls will ride Games for Windows Live all the way until it crashes in flaming wreckage. At this point, removing it would be a ton of work and I think they'd rather just make Dark Souls 2 multiplayer better rather than retrofit such a broken system.

 

That being said, if you download and install the newest GFWL package from MS (not using the one packaged with the game) it's fairly stable.

[Bjorn]

Possibly, but From has also kept the servers for DeS running for more than 4 years now, far longer than they ever intended on running the US/Europe servers for the game.  That gives me a little hope that they will keep the online component going in DaS. 

[Yasawas]

Sony foots the bill for the Demon's Souls servers as I understand it, it was only ever the US one they announced they were going to take down and that was an Atlus decision. Apparently they think the cost is worth having a unique exclusive, and it was not long after the US server fiasco that they put it out on PSN and subsequently PS+ in both regions so I can believe it.

 

I'll be getting Dark Souls 2 on PS3 because I'm poor. I was thinking it's ages away but I realised earlier this week when I was booking leave for work that it's just two months. Two months! Two wee months until every other game becomes irrelevant until about November.