melmer

Dark Souls 2 (Dark Souls successor (Demon's Souls successor))

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This game feels surprisingly different from Dark Souls, I hope I'll get used to it but at the moment it's sluggish. Playing defensively and blocking a lot feels like a deathtrap because of how relentless the enemies are (especially in groups) and at the same time dodging seems like it's been nerfed. I cursed at the game quite a few times last night, whereas DkS never brought that out of me. It just doesn't feel as fair, I've gotten hit by enemies that are on a level below me whose sword doesn't even reach up to where I am, I got hit by the butt of a spear when a hollow was thrusting away from me, getting hit once leads to stunlocks half the time. Maybe it's because I'm trying to play it like Dark Souls when I need to be unlearning all my instincts.

 

Not sure how I feel about the healing / health degradation either. It's probably less of an issue later on, but I'm not sure how plentiful the human effigies are so I'm afraid to use them. It just means that if get hit not to far from the bonfire I want to go back and reset, because to get through a section you have to be so careful about preserving health. It's more tedium than challenge. Fights also spiral out of control super quickly, healing in combat is a death sentence, group combat is much harder and more common.

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Yeah, for all that it looks like Dark Souls, the details of combat feel a lot different.  I'd say that a lot of your concerns will go away with a few more levels, some better equipment and learning the DS2 systems better. 

 

They definitely nerfed dodging, not near as many I-frames.  But backstepping is now a better defensive move and has some really nice I-frames in it.  Your equip load is radically different now, which is hard to tell at first.  There is only one hard breakpoint, you get a fat roll at 70 percent.  Your stamina regen speed and the length of your roll is now a linear progression from 0 to 70 percent.  Poise is no longer the uber-stat it was, allowing you to tank your way through any attack.  The agility stat (raised with Adaptability and Attunement) affects things like the speed that you drink your estus and the I-frames of rolling, though there is a lot of debate about how useful it is.  You can definitely see a big difference in drinking estus though. 

 

I like the health loss from hollowing, though it honestly stops being a major issue once you're through the third or fourth area and have some effigies built up and plenty of co-op opportunities. 

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I joined the company of champions so no co-op for me :P

 

:tup:

 

I did about a third of my first playthrough (off and on) in the Company, but wanted to do a fair amount of co-op and play with other Covenants to just stick with it.  

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So I died a bunch on the Pursuer. I still haven't beaten him myself, but I decided to drop my summon sign and help some other people take him down. After getting my humanity back from killing him with two other players, I decided to summon some people in to fight with me. Unfortunately, the first guy I summoned shot me in the back with a ballista. Video games.

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 Video games.

 

Fuck yeah.

 

So over my lunch break I double checked Windows update, and had some minor updates (just a few to Internet Explorer 11 and some general security updates).  Nothing that seems like it should affect a game.  Installed those, tried Dark Souls 2, and it fired right up. 

 

Video games.

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Well, that's it folks, it's confirmed that the PC version is the best version that will ever exist.  When you invade/summon on the PC, it shows your character name, not your account name like the consoles.  So name those characters well people. 

 

I'm going to have to make my own Ninja Turtle now.

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You use Human Effigies from your inventory to become human, don't burn them in a bonfire (a bunch of people wasted Effigies not realizing this).

Holy shit, thank you. I knew the human effigies had to turn you human from the stuff at the beginning, but I didn't think to use them from my inventory. I burnt one at a bonfire, say it said "Invading is blocked" or whatever, and thought I had just figured wrong.

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And the "your shield is always raise thing" is super strange to me.

You've probably already figured this out, but the shield thing is a bug. I got it too, restarted my game, and shields worked normally again. If you notice your stamina recovers SUPER slowly because it thinks you never let it down.

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You've probably already figured this out, but the shield thing is a bug. I got it too, restarted my game, and shields worked normally again. If you notice your stamina recovers SUPER slowly because it thinks you never let it down.

 

Yeah, it seems to be back to normal for me now. That makes a lot more sense than just a random change to how the game works with super slow stamina recovery and always raised shields.

 

So, random lore question:

 

Are we supposed to take the re-used enemies/locations as a sign that this is Lodran in the future or past or something? After fighting Ornstein, I figured something was up, but I'm not sure what. I guess not knowing is part of the whole Dark Souls experience.

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You can get humanity back by aiding someone in coop. Since I enjoy doing that anyway, that was my method of choice for my 2 playthroughs on PS3.  Effigies are also not that rare. You can buy them from several NPCs and you get some from time to time, if go back to the Old Ladies you meet for you character creation. 

 

I was under the impression that this was a bug, as it wasn't guaranteed that you'd get humanity when aiding someone. I found I got humanity 1/4 times I helped, and then after an update, not at all. (As they fixed it)

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So I died a bunch on the Pursuer. I still haven't beaten him myself, but I decided to drop my summon sign and help some other people take him down. After getting my humanity back from killing him with two other players, I decided to summon some people in to fight with me. Unfortunately, the first guy I summoned shot me in the back with a ballista. Video games.

He took me quite a while to down as well. I'm a little surprised they throw something that challenging at you so early on. There are some places where you can heal but the timing is super tight. I had to learn all his patterns before I could beat him, which I don't mind, but my first time through Dark Souls I don't think I mastered a fight to that degree. I went on to fight

the Ruin Sentinels, which was another tough fight. The first guy is quite easy to dodge, but when it's 2vs1 it gets way harder. Had to be very patient with those two, I'm glad I finally got a 100% block shield or I would've been toast.

I got the Large Club, which is my favourite weapon in Dark Souls, but the damn thing breaks so fast if you do the 2-handed R2 that pummels people into the ground. I guess it's an overpowered attack, but it's still a bit of a bummer. The game certainly isn't afraid to punish you.

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I've only had a chance to spend about an hour with the PC version since getting it working today, but I have to say it looks terrific, and that framerate is a huge difference vs the PS3 version. 

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Yeah, the PC version has a rock solid framerate even at high resolutions and all the settings turned up. My computer isn't even that incredible. 

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I just had to buy a big screen for this. My 15 inch laptop screen was fine for me so far but this game just demands real estate. 27 inch go!

A lot of the sluggishness goes away with ADP at about 20 I found.

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Yeah, the PC version has a rock solid framerate even at high resolutions and all the settings turned up. My computer isn't even that incredible. 

My PC is 6 years old and it runs at a steady 60fps on medium. Dark Souls would often drop down to 20, sometimes even lower.

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From a purely technical standpoint, i have no complaints with the PC version of Dark Souls 2. Loads fast, runs smooth, looks great. (Crashed once when i first loaded it up, but not since then.)

I'm playing with a mouse and keyboard right now, however. That's not how i want to do it, my intention is to play with a gamepad, but i don't have a wired 360 gamepad available presently. So mouse and keyboard it is, and those mouse and keyboard controls are pretty terrible. At its core, i don't think Dark Souls is the kind of game that benefits from a keyboard and mouse, and i didn't expect that it would play particularly well with them, but there are some things there that just seem bizarre. For one thing, you can't do guard break/jump attacks when mixing mouse and keyboard commands, but if both commands in the combo are mapped to the keyboard, they work fine. (Whaaaa?)

The UI is the real problem though, the lack of any keyboard/mouse tooltips for the menus and the weird implementation of right click commands. When initially setting up the game, i kept hitting esc and wondering why my settings weren't saving, having not yet realized that the game wanted me to right click and hit "back" in the right click menu.

I don't think these things should necessarily be held against this game since i don't think this is a game that should be played with a keyboard and mouse in the first place, but... You know... Nitpicknitpicknitpick. They are things that are there and are dumb.

Anyways, Dark Souls 2 is pretty rad, you guys.

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Using autohotkey dramatically improves the kb/m controls, if you want I can post all the details when I get home.

 

I'm still relatively early on (10 or so hours played), but speaking generally I don't think there's the same economy of design. Because the game is larger, it feels less deliberate. Enemy placements in particular. There are more enemies just hanging around, who are redundant in the sense that's there's no underlying idea behind their placement. They're not there to create a specific type of encounter and teach you something, they're just there to be killed. Maybe I'm holding Dark Souls in too high regard, but almost every encounter from Firelink up to the Gargoyles feels like it's there on purpose and is meaningfully different from the other encounters. That wasn't true for the entire game though, the late game areas were not as inspired.

 

I feel similarly about the level design. In the Forest of Fallen Giants for example, there are still shortcuts, it's still an interconnected map, but it loses something by being so large. It's not as impressive that it loops around on itself when it takes all the room that it needs. Not saying it's bad, it's just not impressing me as much as the game which I think has some of the best level design ever haha, maybe it's unfair to expect that again. Despite bringing up a lot of criticisms I can't wait to go home and play some more.

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As far as I'm concerned the Forest is as least as clever as the Undead Burg and has an excellent encounter diversity. Only the turtle knight branch feels a bit tacked-on.

It's just really hard to impress somebody as much with something good the second time. What mainly impresses me about 2 so far is that they've managed to keep the quality up.

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Not saying it's bad, it's just not impressing me as much as the game which I think has some of the best level design ever haha, maybe it's unfair to expect that again. Despite bringing up a lot of criticisms I can't wait to go home and play some more.

 

This is pretty much how I feel about the game.  If I try and not think about DS1 at all, DS2 is one of the best games I've played in the last few years.  If I think about DS1, then I start to get disappointed in some aspects of it. 

 

 

Only the turtle knight branch feels a bit tacked-on.

 

It does serve a purpose, but it feels like maybe they had some other plan for that area originally and it got scrapped.

 

 

I'm still actually having some crashing issues on the PC though.  It turns out that the updates mentioned earlier got the game running on a monitor, but it still crashed when plugged into my TV.  Finally ended up with a workaround of turning on the onboard sound and having the TV and monitor hooked up at the same time.  I could just play in the office on a monitor, but now I'm just being stubborn about getting it working in the room that I actually want to play in. 

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I think the early level design (the forest, and the tower area, all I've played) is really great. Dense, with tons to discover. I've spent hours just running around looking for things.

 

Dark Souls 1 had really good early level design, but I think the areas leading to the final four bosses are all pretty universally bad, and scrap most of what makes the beginning so much fun. Instead of twisty, secret filled vertical areas they become straightforward areas that have some sort of gimmick to make them more difficult. Dark Souls 1 is still one of my favorite games of all time, but the second half of the game is a pretty big drop in quality, in my opinion. 

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In case anyone else is playing with kb/m (I think someone here is), here's how to make it better:

Download AutoHotKey.

The first time you launch it, it will pop up a txt file. Replace the contents with this:

#NoEnv
#IfWinActive, DARK SOULS II
F2::Suspend

LButton::H
RButton::G
MButton:
Shift::3

WheelUp::
{
Send {1 down}
Sleep 20
Send {1 up}
return
}
WheelDown::
{
Send {2 down}
Sleep 20
Send {2 up}
return
}

;Guard Break
XButton1::
{
Send {W down}
Sleep 20
Send {H down}
Sleep 20
Send {W up}
Send {H up}
return
}

;Jump Attack
XButton2::
{
Send {W down}
Sleep 20
Send {G down}
Sleep 20
Send {W up}
Send {G up}
return
}

Just note that if you use the script above you can't use the mouse in menus, unless you use F2 to disable it. I changed some of the bindings in-game, so you'll need to adjust that either in the script or in-game. For example, I bound '1' and '2' to cycle targets and '3' to block (light left hand attack). I think 'O' to lock on is there by default. I know it seems weird to bind shift to press '3' to block, but it's because shift is a modifier key so it messes with other things otherwise.

 

The control-mapping above gives:

LMB - attack

RMB - heavy attack

Mouse3 - lock on

Scrollwheel - cycle targets

Mouse4 - guard break

Mouse5 - leap attack

Shift - block

 

Personally I use 'E' to parry, 'Q' to use items, 'F' to interact, 'R' to change main weapon and 'Tab' to change potions etc.

 

Using this not only makes some of the mappings better, but it removes the input lag that's there without it.

 

As for actual game stuff, I feel like I've made a good amount of progress. Got my first great soul!

Went back and did No Man's Wharf, I like that area except for the not-spider things. For some reason they remind me of the black headcrabs from HL2. I was going to buy the Poise ring from the merchant, but he disappeared! I also managed to kill the Gargoyles (must've taken me 10 minutes or more) and eventually Lost Sinner, who wasn't that much of a challenge. I suppose it's harder if you can't light up the room.

 

I got the thing that lets me unfreeze statue people, but I've found two statues. One blocking a bonfire and one a lever, seems like an obvious choice but maybe they're trying to trick you.

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So i am really, really loving Dark Souls 2, but there is one thing in particular that really stands out to me. In the first Dark Souls, because the game took time to make sure you had views of your surroundings that clearly illustrated your current location relative to the other areas in the game, and because you had to first exhaustively explore those areas through their elaborate interlocking passages before being allowed to teleport around, you ended up having a really very clear mental picture of the geography of that environment. By being able to just have this implicit understanding of how all the pieces of that world fit together, it felt like just one huge contiguous place instead of a lot of smaller pieces. I am getting no such sense of place from Dark Souls 2, each location feels like it exists off in its own corner by itself.


It also feels like physical damage types are a much bigger deal in this game too. In addition to my sword, i've started carrying around a mace to deal with the larger and more heavily armored enemies, something i don't think i would have ever really felt pushed to do in the first Dark Souls. (Scaling bonuses seem to kick in much more significantly at much lower levels too.)

I haven't been invaded yet...

 

I think what they're doing with torches is neat, but if there aren't any areas that are as oppressively dark as some of the darker areas of the first game, i don't think it's going to matter all that much. (Those areas in the first game were super intimidating, they were real highlights, so i would hope there's something like those in DS2.)

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So far I've found at least one (nautically-themed) area where using the torch made a huge difference.

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