Dark Souls 2 released

[Rennn]

Dark Souls 2 has now released in North America, and it's getting almost perfect scores from... well... everyone. I've never seen a game have so few negative scores on Metacritic. Most of the ratings are between 9-10.

The common consensus is that they actually made the game harder, removed annoyances and farming, and delivered a world 2-3 times the size with greater polish all around (on a brilliant next-gen remake of the Phyre Engine).

 

On the PS3 it's sitting currently at a 90/100 Metascore and a 9/10 user score.

 

Combine this with the fact that From Software is promising improved MKB controls, HD textures, and an unlocked framerate option for the PC release, and I suspect I'll just be able to uninstall most/all of my other games...

Edited March 11, 2014 by Rennn

[hoofhearted4]

yea, its the same game but newer. idrk how else to put it. i got it cause i pre ordered it, but ive only had a chance to play maybe an hour (that includes cut scenes and character creation lol) so not long. but yea, it looks nearly identical, just smoother, plays and feels the same, just smoother. it literally is just Dark Souls 2.0 (which is what it should be). i was really really hesitant about ever getting this game, after my extreme Dislike of Dark Souls. but after reading they really brought back the feel and stuff from Demons Souls, mainly the "Nexus" feel, i decided to get it. ive read about the improvements theyve made to PvP which excites me, as i hate PvP and the changes make it seem much more balanced. and improvements throughout the game, and nothing i cant say i didnt like.

 

im excited to get to play this game a bit more today. (on PS3) a faith build, as i did in the previous two Souls games...but we will see. im still playing South Park: The Stick of Truth (PC) lol. and im having a blast with that game.

 

 

i will say two thing i currently have on my mind about this game. ive gotten a couple more hours in, though my progress doesnt reflect it. ive mostly been dubbing around, talking to people, and slowly progressing. the first thing is, and i noticed it since the get go, but grassy areas have this white gleam to it, and it annoys the freaking crap out of me. its supposed to be the moon/sun/light in general glistening off leaves and rocks, but it looks like complete crap. idk if itll be prevelent in other areas, esp indoor areas, but right now, its bugging me.

 

the second thing is when you die you lose a percent of your total health, up to 50% it seems. i understand this is a reflection if your hollowing process as well as a mechanic to make the game harder, but its also very annoying. when enemies do damage that would only seem balanced based on your full health, when your at 50% health receiving the same amount of damage, its quite a toll. ive run through almost all of my lifegems, which i wouldnt say are rare, but not common either. you may find one drop in every 10-15+ enemies. im playing a Cleric and i get extra heals, but with only 50% health, and one hit taking 50% of that away, you run through your heals very quick.

 

ill also note, that leveling up early is much more expensive and as a Cleric im not suited for very many weapons this early. i dont even have the correct stats for my starting weapon. i start with 5 Dex and my starting weapon needs 6 i think, and 3 Additional STR. most weapons im finding need more DEX or STR then i have. and leveling up starts at almost 1000 souls, granted it seems to only go up by 100 souls or so right now. but so far ive only managed to gain 5 levels (i thjink), and i still need to gain 2 more to be able to wield a sword haha. enemies dont drop a lot of souls either.

Edited March 14, 2014 by hoofhearted4

[Beriallord]

They turned it into "casual souls". I'm seriously disappointed with the game. I've already beaten it on PS3, and I'm considering trading the game in already.

 

This game is NOT harder. Its considerably easier than Demons Souls and Dark Souls 1. No boss in the game took me more than 3 attempts, and I beat the vast majority of them my first try.

 

I'll explain why its easier:

 

They raised the equip burden % to mid roll to 70% burden. This means its quite easy to use a greatsword + great shield + heavy armor and still have rolling capabilities. I did exactly that. Also they give you 4 ring slots now. Ring choices used to be a hard decision, now its far less difficult.

 

Also there is a ring of life protection in this game, it does what the ring of sacrifice does, but you can repair it for 3000 souls. Let me explain how much 3000 souls matters toward mid game. Its basically nothing. If you die, you won't lose any souls and you'll keep human form, then all you gotta do is spend 3000 souls to repair it. You not only won't have to worry about ever losing another blood stain, but you'll always have full HP too because you'll keep human form. And with 4 ring slots, there is always room for a ring of life protection.....

 

Also spawns are removed from the game after you kill them about 15x. This means someone could methodically clear the entire map out of enemies just farming for drops a few spawns at a time. Eventually they have a map completely devoid of all threats. Part of the struggle in Souls games was having to fight your way back to your blood stain, and now you can just farm till they all disappear. If anything this rewards farming even more if you're looking to simply make the game easier.

 

Also you'll gain plenty of soul levels in this game. By the end of the game you should be around 130-150 range somewhere. And this is with maps largely intact with enemies. Its a waste of time to farm enemies for souls considering you can use an item and make the last boss respawn and farm him for a ton of souls, and he is pretty easy too.

 

They dumbed down PVP to make the game more appealing to casuals. They did this by implementing "soul history" - basically PVP and coop aren't based on Soul level anymore, but the gross amount of souls you've obtained in the game. Doesn't matter if you spent them, or lost them. All just to save someone's butt from being hurt by a min-maxed invader. There was already a fail safe method of preventing that - play offline.

 

Also there are items in the game that mitigate backstab damage. So now people can get greedy mashing R1 without serious repercussions. More appealing to the casuals. PVP is rather dull and bland now. Backstabs were a way of dispatching really terrible players quickly. I guess the good news is if you sucked at PVP in Dark Souls, you might find things a little better in DS2 because they included so many crutches for casuals to use.

 

There are no permanent invasion items now either. Anyone remember the red eye orb? Doesn't exist in DS2. You have to farm cracked red eye orbs now. So they basically nerfed random invasions. That was one of the most fun aspects in the previous games was randomly invading, and now they make you jump through extra hoops and limit items required to do what I had fun doing in other games. I'm not interested in joining a covenant just to invade one zone, I enjoy moving around.

 

All in all, they gave us a game that is less hardcore than the previous games.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Beriallord

[Rennn]

I'm worried about a few of the changes you mentioned, but I almost can't tell if you're trolling about the second half of your post. Decreasing backstab effectiveness and decreasing invasions are some of the best things that could happen to the series, considering people used them to cheat so often. Plus, with lag considered, people backstabbed me in Dark Souls when they were standing 10 feet in front of me. Anything to decrease that is an improvement.

 

it's worth mentioning that no boss in Dark Souls 1 took me more than 2 attempts, except for the Bed of Chaos which took me about 18 tries because I didn't know the collapsing floor wasn't random. Most of them took me one attempt. The Capra Demon killed me twice, the Gaping Dragon killed me once, eh... Let's see... The second Asylum Demon killed me twice. I got Gwyn easily the first time, but he killed me repeatedly on NG+ since I didn't level my health or armor at all from the beginning of the game so on NG+ they were one-hit kills. Same for the Four Kings.

 

I'll be getting the PS3 version in about a week, I suppose I'll find out then.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Rennn

[Beriallord]

I'm worried about a few of the changes you mentioned, but I almost can't tell if you're trolling about the second half of your post. Decreasing backstab effectiveness and decreasing invasions are some of the best things that could happen to the series, considering people used them to cheat so often. Plus, with lag considered, people backstabbed me in Dark Souls when they were standing 10 feet in front of me. Anything to decrease that is an improvement.

 

it's worth mentioning that no boss in Dark Souls 1 took me more than 2 attempts, except for the Bed of Chaos which took me about 18 tries because I didn't know the collapsing floor wasn't random. Most of them took me one attempt. The Capra Demon killed me twice, the Gaping Dragon killed me once, eh... Let's see... The second Asylum Demon killed me twice. I got Gwyn easily the first time, but he killed me repeatedly on NG+ since I didn't level my health or armor at all from the beginning of the game so on NG+ they were one-hit kills. Same for the Four Kings.

 

I'll be getting the PS3 version in about a week, I suppose I'll find out then.

 

I don't troll, I give my opinion, and I am a disappointed with this game. I was expecting something better than this. They took one step forward with Dark Souls, but then took 2 steps back with Dark Souls II.

 

The backstab mechanic wasn't the problem, it was server lag. And the lag worked in your favor as well. In a laggy game you can cream someone with dark bead or pursuers and get a oneshot kill on them.

 

Mobs disappearing and PVP and coop being based on "soul history" is a fact at this point.

 

For being a new game, getting invaded is almost non-existent. I've only been invaded once randomly, all other invasions I got were in the bell tower. They've essentially killed invasions. The soul memory combined with limited invasion items ruined the replayability of the game for a lot of people. I don't replay souls games to keep doing the story over and over again. Its boring after about the 2nd or 3rd time.

[Rennn]

 

The backstab mechanic wasn't the problem, it was server lag. And the lag worked in your favor as well. In a laggy game you can cream someone with dark bead or pursuers and get a oneshot kill on them.

 

 

I know the game mechanic itself can't be blamed for lag and hacks, but nerfing the over-exploited mechanic is still the most practical way to fix it. Saying FromSoft should have just done away with lag, for example, is very unrealistic and idealistic. Open world online games will always/almost always be laggy for a large percentage of players, developers need to plan around that, not ignore it or hope it goes away.

 

The rest of it, I have no opinion on, since I haven't played the game yet.

[hoofhearted4]

this game has A TON of lag. everywhere. when i coop with people, its just lag up the wazoo. enemies and phantoms skip. health bars drop all at once because of lag. but Lag is noticeable even without coop. if i press the menu button, it takes a few seconds of the menu to pop up. if i cancel someones dialogue, it takes several seconds for the game to register what im doing.

 

as far as PvP goes, i could care less. Dark Souls PvP was junk, i rarely participated. as Rennn said, it was just all lagstabs, and min-maxed characters. people didnt want a challenge in PvP, they wanted wins. their new system however does ruin it for those who enjoy PvPing as new toons will have to purposefully collect souls to get to a certain point. instead of SL120 or something, youll instead be aiming for a mark of 100000 souls or whatever it may be. because of this, they should have a counter that tells you how many souls youve collected total.

 

however i am one of the ones who makes role play toons on successive play throughs. i go with themes, using certain weapons, and play. and low level greifers always made this difficult and boring. to me, the challenge of the game isnt what draws me. ill use coop phantoms to beat a boss. ill use glitches (after ive beaten the game) to obtain weapons on a new toon, just so i can roleplay. i like the feel of the game. the mechanics, and the theme. thats why i play. idc about invading, or difficulty.

 

as far as bosses go, ive barely been able to play, ive just gotten passed the Tower of Flame's bosses. but i dont think Dark Souls or Demons Souls bosses were hard, its all about them having high health and doing high damage, so its a matter of survival, not so much skill. how long can you kite. how long can you get one hit in before you have to dodge/raise up your shield. not to say, if you arent playing with a shield or some other play style that it doesnt require skill but yea you see my point. and its because of this i just call in phantoms, because i dont enjoy that kind of fight where its one hit then block, one hit then block....though i will say boss' health do scale up with more players involved. but it doesnt make them harder, just takes a little longer to kill, and even then, 3 players hacking at a boss, even with more health, doesnt take long.

 

the roll burden im unbiased on. itll make it easier to make thematic toons with but i never really had a problem with that. 4 ring slots is OP though, ill agree.

 

lastly ill comment on the disappearing enemies. i personally havent farmed to a point where enemies disappear, nor have i died enough to kill enemies enough for that to trigger. between the 3 Souls games, the only enemy i really Farmed was Red Phantom Black Skellies in 4-2 in Demons Souls for Pure Bladestone. and Silver Knights in Annor Londo for souls, and the Black Knights in the end for their chunks. however, i think this was a stupid implementation regardless. farming is a part of the souls series. whether it be for items or for souls. or on the other hand, having enemies ALWAYS respawn does add to the difficulty. its about mastering their moveset, and learning the game through repetition and trial and error, not having the game offer an easy way out or cut out farming because god forbid.

 

i havent gotten far in this game at all like i said, just havent had time. so maybe ill dislike it the more i play, or maybe ill enjoy it the more i play, who knows.

[Vagrant0]

Short response:

Will wait for PC release, balance patches, DLC, and for a >50% discount on Steam.

 

Long response:

 

The invasion mechanic could probably use a wider range of available players, but really, is probably only rare because there aren't as many people trying to actively invade since you cannot farm Effigies or retain/regain humanity infinitely until you're already late into the game, or NG+. The other reason why invasions are rare is because there are fewer reasons why you would want/need to remain fully human. Mix both with the much larger world, greater number of bosses, and it's pretty clear why there aren't as many PvP choke points that can be used to haze new players. I imagine that most of the PvP will be NG+ stuff where you're at the higher end of the soul pool and cannot rely on levels, twinked equipment, or other lameness for winning. I also imagine that this would make things like the dragon covenant have greater appeal since those people who want fair duels to cluster around points. For every player who liked being invaded while they were trying to go through any section in the game, there were countless players who hated this aspect of the game and who didn't want to be as penalized (invading players could close various gates or shortcuts in your game even if they were not, themselves, much of a threat) just because they were offline.

 

I'd be tempted to say that the farming mechanic is probably one of the better changes. Let's be honest here, if you're dying to the same groups of mobs more than 15 times, chances are that you have learned about all you can from that situation and are probably being killed by the copious amounts of cheese deaths, like poison jars, corrosives, arrows, ledges. It really isn't making things much easier for very underskilled players since it doesn't apply to boss fights, and still requires that the player spend significantly longer amounts of time in any one section just to have any sort of progress. Sure, that was the learning curve of earlier games, but what we get instead is essentially a power cap so that people cannot just farm their way to be vastly over-leveled, while also limiting the amount of souls and items used for repairing and upgrading... Again, forcing them into NG+. But, would have liked to see a mechanic which would cause cleared spawns to refresh in areas that still had a boss if a large number of possible spawns became cleared (essentially allowing people to clear out that one mob that is ruining their weekend, but not just brute force their way through).

 

About the only thing I'm not too thrilled about is that much more of the combat focus seems to be on blocking and normal attacking, instead of parry and backstab. This is probably where the whole "this game is too easy" thought comes from. Enemies in DS1 seemed both more robust in terms of health, and better defended in terms of AI, to the point where normal or power attacks were just not a good idea except with bosses or some PvP. In DS2, most enemies have fairly wide openings in their combos that you can get an attack or stagger in, making combat less about the opponent in front of you, and more about all the other things running around that may be shooting things at you. Unfortunately, cannot see this part changing much unless the game also adds a component to make animations and movements faster based on number of completions, total souls gained, or something like that... Which would probably not end well in the case of consoles.

[Rennn]

 

About the only thing I'm not too thrilled about is that much more of the combat focus seems to be on blocking and normal attacking, instead of parry and backstab. This is probably where the whole "this game is too easy" thought comes from. Enemies in DS1 seemed both more robust in terms of health, and better defended in terms of AI, to the point where normal or power attacks were just not a good idea except with bosses or some PvP.

 

I'm actually very glad to hear this. I almost exclusively relied on normal and heavy attacks in Dark Souls 1, only parrying certain enemies like sword wielding silver and black knights (staggering them was too inconsistent to rely upon), and only backstabbing the giant club wielding infested barbarians in Blight Town (their health was high enough for respawning enemies that they were boring to whittle down). Although I had to two-hand my sword to deal significant damage at times, I never really had a problem up to NG+++ using primarily normal and heavy attacks, and it always struck me as an exploit when people talked about how they kited and backstabbed everything in the game. If Dark Souls II is more focused on the basic attacks, that strikes me as a good change.

 

Or at least, if not a good change, then a change that will make people play more like me. :whistling:

Edited March 21, 2014 by Rennn

[hoofhearted4]

i dont really like how parrying is in DS2. i actually got pretty good at it on DS1 (on enemies, not PvP) i actually made an Estoc build where i parried most enemies i could. you can still take damage while doing it and backstabbing. but because theres actually a time lapse to when you can reposte after you parry, its not worth it as you could be taking damage that entire time. i liked that little bit of invulnerability from BSing and Reposting. it made it worth it.