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

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Question about endgame things

I just killed Ancient Dragon, I've been in all the memories and I've killed the Throne of Want duo too. Do I just have: final boss, Vendrick and Darklurker left?

 

As long as you killed the other optional bosses (smelter, chariot, old dragonslayer, gargoyles, etc) then yeah, that's everything. After you kill vendrick, there is a place in amana you can get to, if you were not already aware

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I've always been a proponent of degradation systems, it's one of those asshole mechanics that forces you to be a little more mindful and feel a little more frail, and it seems to me like it's perfectly in line with the kind of experience Souls is about.

 

 

Question about endgame things

I just killed Ancient Dragon, I've been in all the memories and I've killed the Throne of Want duo too. Do I just have: final boss, Vendrick and Darklurker left?


Presumably, i guess? There's a lot of optional bosses you might have missed along the way, i'd say just go take a look at a list of the bosses in the game, there's not much left to spoil.

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I really like the new degredation system. The vasty majority of times, it is way less intrusive than most other systems. As long as you don't completely destroy your weapon, you'll never notice it and never have to mess with it. But then, when your weapon IS destroyed, you really have to think about how you want to approach filling your need for a new weapon. It makes you tactically think about having more weapons equipped, and being weighed down by more equipment slots, etc. And then sometimes your weapon breaks midfight and you're frantically trying to bow someone and it's great.

 

It's also much better than the Dark Souls system, which basically just made you toss 10 souls at your equipment every other bonfire you sat at. A pretty non-system, and purely there to give you a chore to do.

 

Also, as other people have said, I think it balances strong but weak durability weapons nicely.

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I actually do have one problem with the durability system, it's that if you co-op you're basically going to have to use a bonfire after or use a different weapon. I'll drop my sign and then continue playing solo until I get summoned and I usually have to either use a worse weapon while waiting to be summoned or use it while in the other player's world so that when I fight a boss and get back to my world my weapon isn't broken.

If I'm just trying to kill bosses for tokens and there's a bonfire nearby it's no big deal, but sometimes I'll just drop my sign randomly when I'm playing and keep going, and then drop it again wherever I am when I get back from being summoned and do the same thing.

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I actually do have one problem with the durability system, it's that if you co-op you're basically going to have to use a bonfire after or use a different weapon. I'll drop my sign and then continue playing solo until I get summoned and I usually have to either use a worse weapon while waiting to be summoned or use it while in the other player's world so that when I fight a boss and get back to my world my weapon isn't broken.

If I'm just trying to kill bosses for tokens and there's a bonfire nearby it's no big deal, but sometimes I'll just drop my sign randomly when I'm playing and keep going, and then drop it again wherever I am when I get back from being summoned and do the same thing.

 

I'm not entirely sure what you mean.  Do you mean when you fail a co-op mission?  Because successful co-op restores all your equipment to new (as long as it isn't actually broken). 

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On degradation, I fall right in the middle. I'd prefer it if, as Terri says, it was purely tactical as to which weapon you'd use, but then some weapons are so versatile that you could use them pretty much anywhere. Is DS1, I'd carry one weapon through almost all of the game and never experiment that much of go out of my comfort zone, and that was bad. The old system of just sitting at a bonfire and clicking down a list to fix things was boring and stupid, and the new one is better, cutting down on the busywork and actually making degradation into a proper mechanic.

 

There have been a couple of occasions where my main weapon has been breaking after seeing some good use, and I feel I've progressed far enough that I want to push on to the next bonfire so I'll switch and vary things up. I adapt my tactics and I feel more scared and vulnerable, and that's a good feeling, and I do agree that in a souls game it makes perfect thematic sense to have these scavenged weapons crumbling in your hands. Then there have been other times when my weapons have worn down so quickly that I'm barely away from the bonfire, so I go back to repair and have to redo what I've done and ughhhhhhh. This has been happening less the further I go, though, as I now have more secondary weapons to fall back on. 

 

I think I'd really like a system where weapons degrade more or less depending on what you're actually striking. A few undead soldiers wearing rotting doublets? No problem, carve 'em up. A turtle guy with metal scales? Bust out that high durability hammer. It would also help to provide a good mixture of opponents in an area, which is always more fun. 

 

Oh, and your weapons should degrade slower when you're a phantom. We're helping someone out, give us a break!

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Ran into the Pursuer last night, clearly much later than I was intended to face him.  It always surprises me when you run into a boss out of sequence how easy/difficult it can feel versus when you're supposed to encounter them.

 

Unfortunately what I thought was going to be a new path to take dead-ended shortly thereafter, and now I'm not sure where to go again.  Guess it's time to go exploring in areas I haven't been to for a while!

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Ran into the Pursuer last night, clearly much later than I was intended to face him.  It always surprises me when you run into a boss out of sequence how easy/difficult it can feel versus when you're supposed to encounter them.

 

Unfortunately what I thought was going to be a new path to take dead-ended shortly thereafter, and now I'm not sure where to go again.  Guess it's time to go exploring in areas I haven't been to for a while!

 

Are you sure about that?

 

There's a couple of things you can examine in the area behind the Pursuer, did you look at them both?

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I fought the flexile sentry on NG+ and was..

caught off guard by two additional enemies in the arena, enemies entirely new to NG+, i'm pretty certain. Had a couple close calls, but once i cleared out those two smaller enemies, the flexile sentry was still a total piece of cake.



To elaborate on my earlier comments about degradation, i will mirror some of what has already been said in that i especially like the durability system in DS2 because it both cuts back on the busy work of item maintenance while simultaneously making it more of a factor that you have to pay attention to.


I hope this bug with weapon degradation gets fixed though, i guess that's why my weapons are mysteriously losing half of their durability under certain conditions? After all the issues it caused Dark Souls, i'm surprised From made another mistake about tying things into updating at every frame tick. It shows their console-focused history though, where they could rely on the framerate being predictable. (There actually is an option in DS2 to lock the framerate, isn't there? For now, that might actually fix the issue, though obviously that's not ideal.)
 

I think I'd really like a system where weapons degrade more or less depending on what you're actually striking. A few undead soldiers wearing rotting doublets? No problem, carve 'em up. A turtle guy with metal scales? Bust out that high durability hammer. It would also help to provide a good mixture of opponents in an area, which is always more fun.

 

In a sense, there already kind of is. When fighting normal pve enemies, physical damage types actually matter. Using strike damage against big heavy armored enemies will get you a kill in fewer strikes than anything else will, and therefore cause less durability damage to your weapon.

Also, it was discussed much earlier in the thread, so a couple more notes about mace versus club: I have both to +10 with 50 in str and the mace still does more damage for me. I presume the 15 dex i have for the mastadon halbred is enough on the mace's e scaling for dex to put it over the top, but even without that, it must be pretty close. Combined with the greater poise damage, my impression is that the mace is the superior weapon, despite the wonky hitbox on its light attack.

That mastadon halbred, however, has an attack rating of over 600. That thing is wacky.

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I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean when you fail a co-op mission? Because successful co-op restores all your equipment to new (as long as it isn't actually broken).

Does it? Alright then, this is what I was hoping would happen, I guess I just never noticed it unless I failed and it wasn't restored so I assumed it never did.

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Also, it was discussed much earlier in the thread, so a couple more notes about mace versus club: I have both to +10 with 50 in str and the mace still does more damage for me. I presume the 15 dex i have for the mastadon halbred is enough on the mace's e scaling for dex to put it over the top, but even without that, it must be pretty close. Combined with the greater poise damage, my impression is that the mace is the superior weapon, despite the wonky hitbox on its light attack.

 

Yeah, the Mace is the superior weapon, but I still like the club for hollows, particularly when you are going through an area where you might aggro multiples of them.  That wider R1 swing is super useful.

 

Someone finally nailed down how Soul Memory matching works.  That goes a long ways towards explaining my experiences with moving in an out of range during a couple of my characters.  Sometimes signs would suddenly all disappear or suddenly an area would go from being empty to having a ton of signs.  I had been assuming that it was a percentage system, but having fixed ranges makes sense. 

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got invaded for the first time this morning.  Big heavy with a 2hander,  I just blocked and ripped him up with my scimitar when he was recovering, he really wasn't prepared for that.

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The big slow weapons are pretty harmless in pvp, guys running around with those ultra greatswords thinking they only need to land one hit are damn near worthless as opponents.

Also: Those findings about the matching ranges are pretty valuable. For the hell of it, here's another useful reddit thread. (I'm sure at least some of you are already familiar with this, but i don't think i've seen it linked in here before.)

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The big slow weapons are pretty harmless in pvp, guys running around with those ultra greatswords thinking they only need to land one hit are damn near worthless as opponents.

 

Except for phantom range and lag.  Usually when I get tagged by an ultra weapon, there's a good foot or more of space between me and the weapon. 

 

Also the higher level meta has discovered that a particular scimitar is the king of parrying.  The parrying frames start as soon as you push the button and last a bit longer than most other parry items.  One way for Str builds to counter-act parrying is to two-hand ultra weapons.  You can't parry a 500 hammer being dropped on your head.   Hidden weapon is also fun to use on ultra weapons.  Carry an Avelyn in your left hand to distract them, then crush them with that large club.

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I've learned not to trust the positioning that much, i back way the hell up when i need to recover stamina. I really wish the netcode was better. The fighting engine is so much improved, and there aren't any of the connectivity issues that Dark Souls had, but it can still turn into a total mess because of latency.

From's been pushing hard for these big online-centric experiences in their games, but their netcode has always been just short of terrible.

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the regular scimitar's parry isn't quite instant, but there is a very very very rare weapon that does have actual instant parry.

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the regular scimitar's parry isn't quite instant, but there is a very very very rare weapon that does have actual instant parry.

 

Yeah, the Monastery Scimitar.  It's one of 5 possible (maybe more?) random drops from a red phantom who only spawns once per cycle starting on NG+.  And it the bonfire you need to Ascetic also respawns a boss.  There are tricks you can use to save ascetics, but that's not the kind of thing you should need to do.

 

I'm honestly a bit frustrated with some of the rare equipment drops.  So you want something to be rare, cool.  But to make something so rare that it requires burning dozens of Bonfire Ascetics for a chance to get it?  That's kind of ridiculous. 

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It's bad enough if you want a weapon, it gets ridiculous if you want an armor set. There's a set i'd like to try out with my character, but having to farm a non-respawning NPC phantom by pushing an area deep into NG+ difficulties while at the mercy of low percentage drop chances on each individual piece is just nuts.

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The only super rare stuff that is really appealing to me are the Onion knight set (want bad, want very bad but it's another one time spawn) and the unique pieces of gear that drop from

 

the extra dudes who show up in the Flexile Sentry fight. But at least with those you can run in, kill them, see if they drop anything, then save/quit or homeward out.

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It's interesting how much of a difference the scaling bonuses on the armor pieces makes. On peripheral pieces like the gauntlets, i get nearly as much protection out of the scaling bonus as i do from the base damage resistances. (I use the Alva set, which i've been thinking about replacing with something a little heavier, but i'm not sure what i should go for.)

Seems that there's never any scaling for the elemental resistances though, which would make it even more important to pick armor with higher elemental resistances.

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I really haven't paid a lot of attention to armor values, other than when I've needed fire resistance or some specific affect (like more Faith/Intel or a spell slot).  Which is something to think about.  Some of the gear that gives special bonuses have stat requirements, but most of the time you still get the bonus even if you don't have the stat for it, the armor value just isn't as good.  I've tended to just wear whatever I think looks cool and is the right weight. 

 

I really like the Smelter chest piece, but no other parts of that set.  There are very few helms I like.  Most of the time I just run without one.  I like running around bare chested with Havel's gauntlets and a nice set of pants for my punching build. 

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Finally finished it, took me 58 hours but I tried to be as thorough as I could. I ended up with 553 deaths which is more than my all bosses SL1 run for the first game! Kinda crazy. Unlike that run though I would say the majority of deaths weren't to bosses. Had to hope out of the Company of Champions for one boss but otherwise I stuck with it.

 

Darklurker was my favourite boss by far. The only thing I dislike about the fight is that each attempt costs you a human effigy. I didn't run out, but it's stressful.

 

On the whole, I'm a little down on the game, more than I thought I'd be. The Vendrick and Nashara fights were both kinda lame and I didn't like the ending itself. That dialogue from the Emeral Herald was so, for lack of a better word, gamey. The same is true for most of the dialogue in the game, NPCs will start spitting out their backstory just like in every other RPG. In some respects it's inarguably a better game, there's no Lost Izalith equivalent, but it just doesn't have that special something which permeated the first game.

 

I don't want to put Miyazaki on too high a pedistal, but I honestly feel that his touch is what's missing. The first game felt like it was the product of someone's vision the way no other game I've played has felt. Dark Souls 2 almost feels like it didn't have a director. It's a collection of good areas and well designed enemies, but it doesn't come together all that well and quite honestly it's never very evocative at all. Apparently the for Dark Souls returned for this game, but the music is not in the same league, not even close. Obviously Miyazaki didn't write the music, but I think having someone with a strong vision will help a composer make better music. The boss themes in Dark Souls almost always fit the fight itself really well, both in mood and pace. Most boss fights in Dark Souls 2 don't give the impression that anyone even thought of the mood!

 

It's mostly the same mechanics, just a game with less soul (no pun intended there). It's not a game I would go around evangelising like I did the first one, I'm not gonna nag someone to play it. I like the mechanics less overall. The hitboxes have issues and for me the game occasionally lost its sense of fairness. There is nothing worse than getting hit by something you know you shouldn't have. I don't like what they did to dodging either, in a lot of cases it's not even stamina efficient to dodge. Even when it is, the lack of iframes makes it much more of a gamble, not to mention that getting hit once is much worse in this game because of how easily you stagger and how hard it is to heal. Also, the inventory desperately needed an option to highlight new items.

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I think the optional bosses right at the end are pretty weak, but the fights immediately preceding those were my favorite in the game. (I loved the looking glass knight fight.)
 

If you're specifically just talking about the hitboxes when mentioning fairness, i'll give you that, DS2 has some weird hitboxes in places. (I do think the dodge and estus recovery needed to be nerfed a bit though. Being able to easily tank hits by chugging estus in DS1 is lame, and with the dodge tied into a stat now, it can actually end up better than the first game's, can't it? Just at the cost of needing to make it a focus of your build.)

Related to wanting the game to highlight new items in inventory, there's also the thing about the status screen not showing adjusted elemental resistances. You to have to flip through the stats on the equipment screen to find those. There's lots of weird little UI things like that, though i'm sure i'd find lots of similar things in the previous games if i went back and looked. I'm also still not sure how i'm supposed to read stats for the spell catalysts/charms/flames. Maybe the pyromancy flame is just a weird exception that confuses everything else, but that stuff is way less clear that the magic adjust stat in DS1.

 

Regarding the absence of Miyazaki, i'd have a hard time making any judgements about how his absence affected the game without having played Demon's Souls and even just knowing how things changed between the two games he was hands on with. If nothing else, i get the impression that Dark Souls 2 is a little less bleak and hopeless than his games were. It's definitely important to point out, though, that a large majority of the teams from the first two games remained intact for Dark Souls 2.

 

Still, taken purely on its own merits, Dark Souls 2 does feel a little at odds with itself, i think. It clearly wants to establish its own identity, but maybe ends up feeling a little constrained by being beholden to what was probably among From's most financially successful games ever. (Some of the callbacks to the first Dark Souls feel pretty forced.)

 

As for the OST, i've kind of gone through the same arc with both soundtracks. I didn't like them at first, but they slowly grew on me. There are more songs in DS2's soundtrack though, and perhaps relatively fewer stand out.

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