Dark Souls

[Ghambit]

Really hating this game is being stuck in The Depths, cursed, with 1000's of souls lying in the middle of a few dozen basilisks even deeper...  surrounded by the rotting stone corpses of the jackasses that did the same thing as you.

[Falconeer]

SKIP THIS POST. It's just another love letter from a biased, enthralled gamer.

So, I Just completed Anor Londo. This is really one of the best games ever made.

I was probably expecting the worst from Anor Londo after Nerf's warning, but nothing tops Blighttown in my personal Top 10 of oppressive places. Oppressive "experiences" would be more correct. Blighttown comes after the Depths, and I was already very uncomfortable with everything. I wasn't really looking for a happy place, but the unnerving descent into the pit of the muddy hell made for one of my most (morbidly) memorable gaming experiences. That said, I promised myself I would have never went down there again... so imagine my joy when I learned about The Hollow and Ash Lake...

Anyway, Anor Londo is gorgeous. Also, the game is immense. I have no idea how close I am to the end, but it feels like there's a lot of stuff still, and I already have 75 hours of /played. Now, notable things I fell in love with in the last 2 hours:

-- Beware -- Spoilers --

I can understand some people feeling frustrated with having to do the same level every time you die until you can do it "right" and survive. It's that crazy thing about Dark Souls that makes you feel like the game is training you into becoming a Jedi or something, and that you have to do it over and over until you make "the perfect run" for each level. But while I absolutely love that "you can beat it, it's just your fault moron" feeling which is pushing me to endless marathons, it's understandable that not everyone has hours of free time to invest in a game where you might have made zero progress after 3 hours of tackling a difficult area.
Regardless, Dark Souls is more amazing than people who think it's amazing think. It's intense, rich, dark, evil and unique. Brutally beautiful, it never ceases to amaze and actually gets better and better the deeper into it you sink, the closer to the core you get. It's a game I would rate 9 out of 10 right out of the box, a perfect 10 after a couple of days, and a fat, glorious 11 by the time you approach the ending.

There is just nothing like it, and hardcore or not, this is an immortal piece of gaming history.

[ahoythematey]

I agree with everything you said, falconeer.  Blighttown is actually a really well designed area, but the framerate problems I've had kind of soured the experience for me.

Anor Londo, btw, was an interesting experience.  For some reason, I developed a mental block and just could not beat the boss with my sorceror.  I'd keep spending humanity to revive so I could summon some help, only for that to end in more deaths.  That's assuming I even get back to the boss, since half the time I would be invaded by some jackass wearing a ring of fog as soon as I revived, making me waste even more time.  It wasn't until I had spent about 12 or so humanity that my brain started functioning again and I realized I should be doing this in offline mode.

I love this game.

[El Gallo]

I agree with everything you said, Falconeer.  EverQuest is the greatest game ever made.   

(I kid, I kid)

(kinda)

[ffc]

Here's google translate for patch 1.04:


There's a bunch of other balance changes.  JP should get the patch Wed (Nov 2) at 12:00am, no clue on US PS3 / Xbox.  Some highlights I read about include: rate messages by pressing select, less wonky lock-on switching, online level range increased, and I think / hope that weird occasional delay upon pressing attack is fixed.

[Falconeer]

Ahoythematey, I had pretty much the same problem but I really couldn't beat the double-boss alone. I am full melee and I couldn't find an effective way to deal with those two beasts at once. Ironically, the second part, when you face just one but tougher, was easier to solo for me. So yeah, I needed to be alive but everytime I revived I got invaded pretty quick, so my strategy became to run as fast as possible to the boss area where I usually could summon someone to help me repel the invasion, and that worked after a few attempts. Also, when I am not in the forest which godlike morons twice my level I fare pretty good in PvP. Honestly, I wonder how the hell you are supposed to do those two bosses offline as a melee (uhm... summoning knight Solaire to tank off one of them maybe? I guess so).

Question: how can they invade so easily? I understand you can join some evil faction and invade at will, is that the case? Which one? Cause from what I gathered the cracked red eyes to invade other worlds are not so easy to come by, so how do they invade at will?

[ahoythematey]

Well, Soltaire would help tank, even if he's not very good at avoiding damage, but I eventually had run out of humanity and wasn't interested in running back to the rats to farm some more, so it was through attrition that I beat them.  Thankfully, I had some pretty high INT along with homing soul mass and soul spear, so I was able to do a ton of damage quickly before having to do the old run and shoot dance.

On invasion: certain covenants have their own ways to invade, and there's also the cracked red eyes and red sign soapstone that don't require the invader to be in a covenant.  I'm not certain, but I think there is/was a glitch that allowed players to dupe items/souls, so that might be one reason why invasion is so common.  Another could be that Anor Londo seems to be a favorite area for invading.

[Falconeer]

When I need humanity I just put down my summon sign and wait to be summoned. Takes some time here and there but I love myself a Boss battle where I have nothing to lose and only (eventually) souls and humanity to gain. I would kill myself before going back to rat-land aka basilisk-world to get anything.

[Velorath]

Honestly, I wonder how the hell you are supposed to do those two bosses offline as a melee (uhm... summoning knight Solaire to tank off one of them maybe? I guess so).

Defeat the guy with the spear first.  You can block most of his damage, and he moves a bit faster than the other boss, so you can lead him away a bit, although it isn't always easy.  After you beat him and the big guy gets stronger, I found out you can often circle around one of the broken pillars, keeping it between you and him.  Many of his attacks leave him open for a bit, and the only thing you really have to worry about is that aoe lightning drop he does which can be hard to get away from if you're wearing heavy armor.

[Hawkbit]

Saw a snippet that they have shipped (sold?) 1.5million copies.  Hopefully a third one is in the works.

[Falconeer]

One of the biggest European online seller cut the price today from 49€ to 41€. I wonder what is that supposed to mean, success or failure.

[Morfiend]

I agree with everything you said, falconeer.  Blighttown is actually a really well designed area, but the framerate problems I've had kind of soured the experience for me.

I am currently going through Blighttown right now, and for me the hardest bit is the framerates on those moving bridges. Also, yesterday my system did something very odd, I hit the bonfire in blighttown, and all of a sudden FPS got low, then all sound went away, then when I tried to exit out it froze up completely and my PS3 got really warm. I ended up having to pull the plug on the back to even get it to shut down.

I havent had a chance to fire it up again since then, I hope my saves are ok.

[Morfiend]

So yeah. The status of my save games is unknown. The status of the disk drive is dead. I am super bummed right now. I want to play.

[ahoythematey]

 

That makes me want to grab some psn+ and turn my DS saves into cloud saves.

[Falconeer]

PSN+? Cloud saves? How does that work? Is it a Dark Souls thing or does it work with any savefile for any game?

[Falconeer]

So, who was more heartbreaking for you to kill? Maiden Astrea or Crossbreed Priscilla?

Also,

[Ghambit]

PSN+? Cloud saves? How does that work? Is it a Dark Souls thing or does it work with any savefile for any game?

It works with any savefile, including those copy protected like DS.  Which means you can play your games on an PS3 located anywhere.  Also gives you various perks and what-not; exclusive betas, etc.  It MAY give you premium access to some of their other widgets like Qriocity (their music player), but I'm not sure.

[Ghambit]

So I'm in a veritable state of limbo right now.  Cant decide where to go after killing the 'gaping dragon' (with help of course).  The Garden seems a bit much (so I boned home) and I despise Blighttown, which also seems a bit much (I'm a lvl 23 sorc; dont quite have enough oomph for the spell-ammo I have).   I sneak-attacked the 1st few dragons in the valley, but got pimpslapped back after that.
I'm thinkin about doin a grindy soul-run  and hitting some of the old knights I bypassed to save up for the dragoncrest ring.  Also thinking I MIGHT be powerful enough to  What say you?

edit:
So after collecting 10k souls I promptly died to lightning drakes and then fell down the VoD elevator shaft to get em.    Looks like I'll be grinding the berg for now till I get the ring.  Then hit Btown.

[ahoythematey]

If you're looking to do some soul grinding, there is no better place than darkroot garden.  With 20,000 souls, you can buy a key off the blacksmith just before the titan demon, and this key allows you to get into an area where you can farm souls at a rate of 7k per every two-three minutes, and it's right next to a bonfire.

[lesion]

Bought this recently.

A) Fuck ghosts.
B) I need to sleep.

[Falconeer]

Artorias Tomb is a very hard area at the level you are at. Yes, you can farm souls there non stop due to stupid AI, but it's up to you if you feel like doing that or not. Nothing too bad with it, it's not a bug or anything, but if you get addicted to leveling up that way you are gonna trivialize the game, in a way. So yes, use at your own discretion. I didn't do that, but I still farmed trees for a good 5 levels. They drop anti-poison stuff which is so needed anyway.

[bhodi]

If you're looking to do some soul grinding, there is no better place than darkroot garden.  With 20,000 souls, you can buy a key off the blacksmith just before the titan demon, and this key allows you to get into an area where you can farm souls at a rate of 7k per every two-three minutes, and it's right next to a bonfire.

Anor Londo 2nd bonfire in the castle has better throughput. 900 souls for each of the 3 knights, and you do runs at least 3 times as fast.

[Falconeer]

Well sure Bhodi, but he's level 23. Do you want to send him to Anor Londo at level 23?

That spot though? Lovely. I enjoyed smashing those 4 knights with two unstoppable slams of Dragon Tooth for hours.

[Ghambit]

Mega-spoiler alert.
So I just ended up grabbing the 10k souls I needed from the Undead Bridge FireDrake by:

Next step, killin the knight that drops that endurance ring (which'll let me wear heavy armor) after mastering blighttown.  Between that and the dragoncrest I should be set midgame.

[Morfiend]

Being done with Blighttown, and the deeps, is like being born again. At the same time, that was gloriously suffocating, morbidly oppressive. And a part of me will miss it and will talk about it to those miserable ones who are not playing this game.

I just finished Blighttown last night. And while climbing my way out, all I could think of was this post, and how right you where, and how I knew exactly what you felt.

[ffc]

So, who was more heartbreaking for you to kill? Maiden Astrea or Crossbreed Priscilla?

Also,

I think Maiden Astraea was harder to kill. 


Plus, THE MUSIC. SO GOOD.

[Lounge]

If you're looking to do some soul grinding, there is no better place than darkroot garden.  With 20,000 souls, you can buy a key off the blacksmith just before the titan demon, and this key allows you to get into an area where you can farm souls at a rate of 7k per every two-three minutes, and it's right next to a bonfire.

Anor Londo 2nd bonfire in the castle has better throughput. 900 souls for each of the 3 knights, and you do runs at least 3 times as fast.

Throughput on Darkroot is better.  You can go from the bonfire -> kill the caster -> bonfire in less than 30 seconds.  Nets 2k a run on first play through.  That said I havent found anything that even remotely compares to the manta farming on 4-3 from Demon's Souls.

[Falconeer]

You know, I really have a hard time accepting that Skyrim has a 20 pages thread and didn't even launch, and Dark Souls is struggling in its 8th page. What is wrong with humanity?

Granted, I haven't played Skyrim yet, but who did? And to define the trailers underwhelming, after playing Dark Souls, would be being extremely polite.

Also, I am posting this in _this_ thread cause I don't want to raise a flaming fuss in _that_ one, but I am really disappointed in this generation of gamers.

In more relevant news, any update on that patch we are waiting for?

[Velorath]

You know, I really have a hard time accepting that Skyrim has a 20 pages thread and didn't even launch, and Dark Souls is struggling in its 8th page. What is wrong with humanity?

We have a lot of posters here who are primarily PC gamers.

[Kail]

You know, I really have a hard time accepting that Skyrim has a 20 pages thread and didn't even launch, and Dark Souls is struggling in its 8th page. What is wrong with humanity?

We have a lot of posters here who are primarily PC gamers.

Yeah, can't post (well, shouldn't post) about a game I've never played and will never see.

Also, don't fall in to the trap of equating discussion with game quality.  Otherwise you end up believing that SWG is the greatest game of all time.

[ffc]

In more relevant news, any update on that patch we are waiting for?

Japan got 1.05 since 1.04 did something wonky.  Everyone else is still on 1.03. 

[Ingmar]

You know, I really have a hard time accepting that Skyrim has a 20 pages thread and didn't even launch, and Dark Souls is struggling in its 8th page. What is wrong with humanity?

We have a lot of posters here who are primarily PC gamers.

And not only that Dark Souls is a sequel to a game that was an exclusive on the lesser-owned console. Also, last time I bought a game that everyone was praising because it was hard, I got Etrian Odyssey 2.

[Job601]

I am exclusively a pc gamer, but reading the thread for this and its predecessor are almost enough to convince me to buy a console.   It seems like this is the kind of game the pc crowd in general would really like.

[Morfiend]

I am exclusively a pc gamer, but reading the thread for this and its predecessor are almost enough to convince me to buy a console.   It seems like this is the kind of game the pc crowd in general would really like.

This is the kind of game everyone who loved gaming 15 years ago would love. Its full of secrets and real decisions and skilled gameplay. No hand holding here, no quest arrows, and lots of death.

I will say again that I find this game to be much more forgiving that Demon's Souls. Probably in a good way.

This game is like soothing ointment for the burn on your soul that is 2 weapon carry limit, and auto regenerating health.

[Job601]

This is the kind of game everyone who loved gaming 15 years ago would love. Its full of secrets and real decisions and skilled gameplay. No hand holding here, no quest arrows, and lots of death.

I will say again that I find this game to be much more forgiving that Demon's Souls. Probably in a good way.

This game is like soothing ointment for the burn on your soul that is 2 weapon carry limit, and auto regenerating health.

I am so jealous of people who can play this game.