|
On January 02 2014 05:02 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I like Demon's Souls a lot less than Dark Souls already, and I only have about 9 hours in the game. Stonefang Tunnel is awful.
I had the same when I first started playing demon souls. I actually retried it this week however. (On my first dude I got stuck on flamelurker). Today I cleared the shrine of storms however and I can tell you it gets so much better. Stonefang tunnel is a probably the worst area of the entire game. Any dark souls fan will enjoy demons souls it just takes a while believe me. I really disliked the game at the start actually, now I love it  .
|
On January 02 2014 07:11 solidbebe wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2014 05:02 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I like Demon's Souls a lot less than Dark Souls already, and I only have about 9 hours in the game. Stonefang Tunnel is awful. I had the same when I first started playing demon souls. I actually retried it this week however. (On my first dude I got stuck on flamelurker). Today I cleared the shrine of storms however and I can tell you it gets so much better. Stonefang tunnel is a probably the worst area of the entire game. Any dark souls fan will enjoy demons souls it just takes a while believe me. I really disliked the game at the start actually, now I love it .
If Demon's Souls wasn't worse then they did something wrong with the sequel. It is still a good enough game to warrant a sequel.
|
It's not even a matter of worse or better, the games really are just very different, in atmosphere and feel mostly.
|
Well, Dark Soul and Demon Soul are basically the exact same game in a different environment, it's strange to like one and not the other :D If you don't like a level on Demon Soul, just do another and come back later.
It's like starting dark with blightown. (even tho darkfang isn't that bad imo)
|
Maybe you're smarter than me but i found stonefang a lot less sucky when i realized the common enemy was hugely resistant to certain damage types which to me wasnt obvious :-) i think for me that was the biggest improvement from demons souls - dks a bit better at clueing you in that smth is going on. The only real gripe i had with dark souls in that regard was the crystal caverns
|
^well, to be honest it is stated in the very first developer message in the level that "next enemy is vulnerable to piercing attacks". Having played Dark Souls first, I was surprised that Mail Breaker actually had its uses.
In Dark Souls there really isn´t any difference which physical damage type your weapon deals. Not really sure if I prefer that or not.
|
On December 29 2013 19:08 maartendq wrote:
I recently decided to have another go at the game, after having sworn to never touch it again because I found it ridiculous (I never got past the Taurus Demon in the past). Right now I'm in Anor Londo, and while I have been having a great time, I do have some complaints about the game.
My main complaint is that, unless you're someone who likes to read item descriptions the story and lore is pretty much inexistent. This is kind of sad because the backstory is actually quitte good! However, figuring out how to properly play is something that will take new players a long time. Forcing them to piece together a story from vague item descriptions may be a bit too much. I'll be honest, I play this game with my laptop next to me just to look up information.
A second one is that the game relies a bit too much on learning the positioning of each enemy, and in which order to lure them out. It takes away a lot of the skill required for combat and replaces it with endless trial-and-error. My best experience so far was in the Undead Parish, when I accidentally aggro'd two balder knights and had to fight them simultaneously. It was tense, and I felt badass after defeating them with only a sliver of health left. Afterwards I found out that you can just lure them out one by one, which makes the fight a lot easier. The other ones basically just watched how I butchered their colleague. While that made sense as a game mechanic, it made a lot less sense in terms of realism. The game's best moments are when you have to fight different types of enemies who attack you at the same time. It forces you to be on your toes, to time your attacks really well and to make sure you don't get surrounded. One on one, however, most enemies are really easy as soon as you figure out their movement patterns. I found this to be especially true for black and silver knights: as imposing as they look early in the game, as soon as you realise that all their attacks are really slow and very telegraphed, knowing when to attack and when to block or roll becomes really easy.
To be honest, my perfect RPG would be the world, story and lore of Morrowind combined with the gameplay of Dark Souls.
epic name bro goes over lore pretty well plus he has alot of dark and demons souls stuff
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4825DBA198EBE9B9
so it does excist
|
On January 04 2014 19:49 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2013 19:08 maartendq wrote:
I recently decided to have another go at the game, after having sworn to never touch it again because I found it ridiculous (I never got past the Taurus Demon in the past). Right now I'm in Anor Londo, and while I have been having a great time, I do have some complaints about the game.
My main complaint is that, unless you're someone who likes to read item descriptions the story and lore is pretty much inexistent. This is kind of sad because the backstory is actually quitte good! However, figuring out how to properly play is something that will take new players a long time. Forcing them to piece together a story from vague item descriptions may be a bit too much. I'll be honest, I play this game with my laptop next to me just to look up information.
A second one is that the game relies a bit too much on learning the positioning of each enemy, and in which order to lure them out. It takes away a lot of the skill required for combat and replaces it with endless trial-and-error. My best experience so far was in the Undead Parish, when I accidentally aggro'd two balder knights and had to fight them simultaneously. It was tense, and I felt badass after defeating them with only a sliver of health left. Afterwards I found out that you can just lure them out one by one, which makes the fight a lot easier. The other ones basically just watched how I butchered their colleague. While that made sense as a game mechanic, it made a lot less sense in terms of realism. The game's best moments are when you have to fight different types of enemies who attack you at the same time. It forces you to be on your toes, to time your attacks really well and to make sure you don't get surrounded. One on one, however, most enemies are really easy as soon as you figure out their movement patterns. I found this to be especially true for black and silver knights: as imposing as they look early in the game, as soon as you realise that all their attacks are really slow and very telegraphed, knowing when to attack and when to block or roll becomes really easy.
To be honest, my perfect RPG would be the world, story and lore of Morrowind combined with the gameplay of Dark Souls. epic name bro goes over lore pretty well plus he has alot of dark and demons souls stuff https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4825DBA198EBE9B9so it does excist
I've already watched a lot of his videos. The reason for my criticism is that I like the game a ton - it's the best game I've played in a very long time, and I haven't even gotten the lordvessel yet - and that I hope that Dark Souls 2 will be even better.
The lore is interesting. It's not the best in video game history and it tends to be a bit incoherent at times, but it has a lot of potential. I loved the fact that pretty much everything in the game world is hostile to you in one way or another. That heavily reminded me of Morrowind. You just feel lonely. Your survival depends on your own ability to adapt, not on the handholding and guidelines of NPCs. Still, Morrowind doesn't hide its lore as much as DS does, and I didn't have to play that game while keeping a bunch of wikis open.
|
true the game is convoluted in nature probably more than it needs to be.
|
On January 05 2014 05:43 semantics wrote:
true the game is convoluted in nature probably more than it needs to be.
That's basically the main issue I really have with this game. Making certain bits of information really vague is an annoyingly artificial way of adding difficulty to a game. A game should be difficult for gameplay reasons, not because developers can't be bothered to design a proper tutorial or write a proper manual.
The best example I can think of: The Witcher 2. It was also very light on in-game information, but at least the game came with a very in-depth manual on how various in-game mechanics worked. At launch TW2 was at least as hard as Dark Souls. CDProjektRed patched out a lot of the difficulty because they realised that they had gone a bit overboard with it. The thing is, if people asked stupid questions, you could just tell them to go read the manual. In Dark Souls, you can either tell them to continue doing stupid things until they get it right, or tell them to spend a couple of hours reading wiki pages and watching youtube videos.
Case in point: the Taurus Demon can be a bitch for starting players, unless you know exactly how to deal with it (pine resin + drop attack). Sure, you can try to beat him the hard way (which is tough because movement on those ramparts is extremely limited and you're still relatively weak) or try to find out yourself that you should've picked the master key or bought the resident key from the undead merchant so you can go collect the pine resin. Now, another problem with tackling that boss is that you have to plough through a TON of enemies to get to him, and that you have to keep doing that until you manage to kill him. Because of these enemies, chances are that you will have used about 3 or 4 estus flasks already. Again, not a problem for seasoned players but very frustrating and annoying for newbies.
I'll be honest here, I got stuck at the taurus demon for months until I caved in and decided to just read one of the many wiki pages. I had to do the same thing to learn what humanity is for and what kindling bonfires does, and to find out that the bell gargoyles are a whole lot less difficult to kill when you've got solaire throwing lighting spears at them.
I can really appreciate a game that requires you to figure things out yourself (as mentioned before, I love Morrowind), but in Dark Souls it feels more like laziness than conscious design. Either provide a very thorough manual or design proper tutorials. The way Dark Souls is designed now it can only be enjoyed by people who have got a lot of time on their hands, especially at launch when the wikis are still empty. It's a pity because the swordplay is by far the best in any game ever. It's precise and very satisfying. If you die, it's your fault in 95% of all cases.
As a sidenote, I still fondly remember the time when games were sold in these huge cardboard boxes filled with all kinds of information. The Age of Empires 1 box included a complete tech tree printed on high-quality glossy paper. Age of Empires 2 came with a manual explaining every single unit as well as their historical background, and another tech tree. The same thing goes for the first Empire Earth game. Reading the manuals of these games was almost as fun as playing the games themselves.
|
What you say seems to be a principle yet i have to say the obscurity of DS gave me extreme pleasure, it was the the dissonance in current gaming that gave me weird type of pleasure. I felt like in old times and it felt good.
If we were in different times i would completely agree with you, but in current state of gaming, the obscurity, is the gem of DS. And yea i don't disagree with you actually as i wiki'd and youtube'd some parts of DS when i played, but after learning some of the game i actually cannot wait to sink my fangs in DS 2 without spoilering anything.
It is true that few things could be done differently without destroying the helplesness theme of DS, but i would rather see obscurity present in DS2 rather than experminenting on user friendliness and destroying the wanted obscurity in the process as a side effect.
I think we are way past the times when we can expect close to perfect games, what i always see is trade-offs and in that regard Dark Souls is way above dozens of "acclaimed" games by current generation of gamers. It speaks to my childhood-me that tried games while battling many barriers (little knowledge, language barriers etc). I rejoiced playing DS while screaming in frustration a beautiful dichotomy i would say.
But all of that wouldn't metter if DS wasn't a beautiful game, i just love that even bypassing the gameplay aspects it presents the extremely pleasuring some sort of neo-gothic theme, and i loooove the way it handled presenting the world.
And in that regard Witcher 2 was slightly dissapointing to me, it felt kind of cookie cutter to me. Witcher 1 was way more distinct in the feel. And this i believe what means to be iconic, it is sometimes not perfection, but distinctiveness, putting all weight in one option and seeing it succed.
I remember well the times of manuals, while the game was installing you sunk in the read, really, really well done manuals. But i believe this one is partly a fault of industry and general shift in media. In times when it's easier to google something than open the book, you get it. I admit i'm a victim of that too.
|
On January 05 2014 09:32 DinoToss wrote:
But i believe this one is partly a fault of industry and general shift in media. In times when it's easier to google something than open the book, you get it. I admit i'm a victim of that too.
I'm pretty sure anyone who appreciated "oldschool manuals" like the ones that came with fallout, warcraft 2, TIE-fighter, C&C etcetc. would dissagree with you there 
|
About to head onto Sen's Fortress. Still using the drake sword(not upgraded) with full stone armor. Is there a better weapon to prepare for the fortress?
|
On January 05 2014 21:18 KezseN wrote:
About to head onto Sen's Fortress. Still using the drake sword(not upgraded) with full stone armor. Is there a better weapon to prepare for the fortress?
If you have found the "large ember" in the Depths, I would advice you to upgrade another weapon to +6 or higher. You will find alot large shards in Sens Fortress and you`ll be able to upgrade it further with a Smithbox in bonfires.
Reason for this is that while Sen´s Fortress can still be cleared with Drake Sword, it will fall off hard after that. Only place where you can upgrade a basic weapon to +6 is the blacksmith before Sen´s Fortress, so if you get stuck in Anor Londo, you´ll have to go back.
|
On January 05 2014 21:28 Altsa wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 21:18 KezseN wrote:
About to head onto Sen's Fortress. Still using the drake sword(not upgraded) with full stone armor. Is there a better weapon to prepare for the fortress? If you have found the "large ember" in the Depths, I would advice you to upgrade another weapon to +6 or higher. You will find alot large shards in Sens Fortress and you`ll be able to upgrade it further with a Smithbox in bonfires. Reason for this is that while Sen´s Fortress can still be cleared with Drake Sword, it will fall off hard after that. Only place where you can upgrade a basic weapon to +6 is the blacksmith before Sen´s Fortress, so if you get stuck in Anor Londo, you´ll have to go back.
I think i gave that large ember to the blacksmith guy just before the fortress. I dunno what happens after cus he doesn't say anything afterwards.
|
That means that now, you can ascend normal weapons from +5 to +6 using a large shard (by talking to that guy, it is a different dialog option then upgrading from 0 to +5), and afterwards upgrade them even further to +10.
|
On January 02 2014 08:48 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2014 07:11 solidbebe wrote:On January 02 2014 05:02 Excalibur_Z wrote:
I like Demon's Souls a lot less than Dark Souls already, and I only have about 9 hours in the game. Stonefang Tunnel is awful. I had the same when I first started playing demon souls. I actually retried it this week however. (On my first dude I got stuck on flamelurker). Today I cleared the shrine of storms however and I can tell you it gets so much better. Stonefang tunnel is a probably the worst area of the entire game. Any dark souls fan will enjoy demons souls it just takes a while believe me. I really disliked the game at the start actually, now I love it . If Demon's Souls wasn't worse then they did something wrong with the sequel. It is still a good enough game to warrant a sequel.
A lot of people think Demon Soul is way better than Dark (usually you prefer the first you played, I started with Dark then I bought Demon and I prefer Dark, but Demon soul is still an amazing game, basically the only game that can be compared to Dark souls, at the very least way better than any other game)
|
On January 05 2014 08:14 maartendq wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 05 2014 05:43 semantics wrote:
true the game is convoluted in nature probably more than it needs to be. That's basically the main issue I really have with this game. Making certain bits of information really vague is an annoyingly artificial way of adding difficulty to a game. A game should be difficult for gameplay reasons, not because developers can't be bothered to design a proper tutorial or write a proper manual. The best example I can think of: The Witcher 2. It was also very light on in-game information, but at least the game came with a very in-depth manual on how various in-game mechanics worked. At launch TW2 was at least as hard as Dark Souls. CDProjektRed patched out a lot of the difficulty because they realised that they had gone a bit overboard with it. The thing is, if people asked stupid questions, you could just tell them to go read the manual. In Dark Souls, you can either tell them to continue doing stupid things until they get it right, or tell them to spend a couple of hours reading wiki pages and watching youtube videos. Case in point: the Taurus Demon can be a bitch for starting players, unless you know exactly how to deal with it (pine resin + drop attack). Sure, you can try to beat him the hard way (which is tough because movement on those ramparts is extremely limited and you're still relatively weak) or try to find out yourself that you should've picked the master key or bought the resident key from the undead merchant so you can go collect the pine resin. Now, another problem with tackling that boss is that you have to plough through a TON of enemies to get to him, and that you have to keep doing that until you manage to kill him. Because of these enemies, chances are that you will have used about 3 or 4 estus flasks already. Again, not a problem for seasoned players but very frustrating and annoying for newbies. I'll be honest here, I got stuck at the taurus demon for months until I caved in and decided to just read one of the many wiki pages. I had to do the same thing to learn what humanity is for and what kindling bonfires does, and to find out that the bell gargoyles are a whole lot less difficult to kill when you've got solaire throwing lighting spears at them. I can really appreciate a game that requires you to figure things out yourself (as mentioned before, I love Morrowind), but in Dark Souls it feels more like laziness than conscious design. Either provide a very thorough manual or design proper tutorials. The way Dark Souls is designed now it can only be enjoyed by people who have got a lot of time on their hands, especially at launch when the wikis are still empty. It's a pity because the swordplay is by far the best in any game ever. It's precise and very satisfying. If you die, it's your fault in 95% of all cases. As a sidenote, I still fondly remember the time when games were sold in these huge cardboard boxes filled with all kinds of information. The Age of Empires 1 box included a complete tech tree printed on high-quality glossy paper. Age of Empires 2 came with a manual explaining every single unit as well as their historical background, and another tech tree. The same thing goes for the first Empire Earth game. Reading the manuals of these games was almost as fun as playing the games themselves. I would tend to agree. They approached it like a traditional cartridge experience from the 80-90s era, but the problem is that most of those games won't ever clock in at even close to an average of 60hrs for playtime. Whether it's one design concept or the other, the result is that far to many incredibly critical things in Dark Souls requires you to either spend a lot of trial and error yourself (and in this day and age, who's gonna bother), or go to the wiki or forum boards to get clues or hints on how to progress. Older games were either simple enough that you didn't need extra info, or were always giving you small clues strewn around, and left it up to your mind to put the pieces together.
There are so many small or subtle ways in which Dark Souls could have been better without compromising the difficulty, but for whatever reason, didn't. I also think that the crappy UI plays a huge role in the WTF that is DS at times (most certainly on PC).
I also figured for those who might be curious, my thoughts on Dark Souls can be found Here in my blog, as I just recently finished it a few days ago.
|
On January 05 2014 22:32 Simberto wrote:
That means that now, you can ascend normal weapons from +5 to +6 using a large shard (by talking to that guy, it is a different dialog option then upgrading from 0 to +5), and afterwards upgrade them even further to +10.
Ah cheers man. I just gota find them large shards. Btw i found a lightning spear from those mimics and i think ill use this weapon from now. Drake sword kinda wearing out its usefulness
|
Lightning Spear can take you very far if you need it to (and if you enjoy using it). Upgraded normal weapons can be better, but that also budgets for a good scaling weapon and dumping into the appropriate stats as well.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
