Dark Souls Review/News

[hoofhearted4]

Can you sell weapons? It's a good game, I still don't understand a lot if it like humanity or the online stuff. Just killed the butterfly so that's how far I am. Also this isn't a pretty game and I think this is the worst running game on seem on the 360. It runs like crap. Fire is scary not because it hurts you but because the fps drop is huge.

 

Progression is slow haven't found a good place to grind. I'm a lvl 37 Warrior using a spear and shield 7 or 8 hours in

 

You can't sell weapons.

 

Of course it's the worst running game on the 360, that's like a 7 year old console, and it's ported from the PS3 version, so the 360 version gets compressed textures and no real antialiasing and still runs worse. The PS3 version slows down as well, but it's not as severe. I suspect that the PC version won't slow down at all for most people, considering the age of the consoles at this point.

 

It's not a game you can really grind at, that's the point. You advance through skill or you can't advance. The game lasts about 80 hours on the first playthrough, assuming you don't try to find most of the secret places and lore, which are just as well hidden as the game is difficult.

 

um yes you can sell weapons. you just gotta ring the Two bells first for Frampt. most sell for like 100 souls, but a couple sell for like 5000. and most of the boss souls sell to him for more then you can consume them for. as well as the lowest soul (consume for 200 and sell to him for like 400 i think. idr).

 

and yes you can grind. the very first bonfire (after the firelink shrine) is a good place to grind early. then once you drop the ladder from the dragon, its a quick amount of souls if you run up and let the dragon burn the bridge. then Anor Londo with all the Silver Knights is where i grinded my first play through. and the most popular grinding spot, the Darkroot Garden. i forget how many souls you get, but its in the 5 digits.....and there is a walk through im currently watching on YT of a guy going through it. hes almost at 500 deaths nd like 300+ hours. he sucks as it. and the only reason hes finaly at Gwyn is because hes grinded soo much and is like 20 levels above the norm and using Magic, which is OP for PvE. so yes, grinding can cause the game to be much easier.

 

Ah... I never found out how to sell weapons. I decided to wait for the PC version before trying to find everything, and that must have been one of the things I missed. I assumed it was like in DS.

 

The few areas where you can grind though, you end up outlevelling pretty fast. Even in Demon's Souls, it didn't work for long to farm all the storm beasts in the Storm King Boss zone. At low levels you could get like 20k souls per run, but within a couple hours of gameplay you end up needing to grind again and hitting a wall when you can't find a new place. That's why I said you 'can't' grind, though it's not totally accurate. You can grind a bit, but even grinding is dangerous and it only helps up to a certain point. No amount of grinding will help someone who can't play the game anyway, so skill is definitely a key factor in progressing. One of the nice things about the Souls games is that if you're experienced you can level up very fast, and advance on skill to areas where you can level up even faster. It helps alleviate the 'just one more level' headache that you find in most rpgs, because you know that if you can just reach the next area you could discover something amazing and/or powerful and jump forward several levels very quickly.

 

I've heard some people say they spent 140 hours on a single playthrough. Even then it's impossible to see everything in that time, because joining certain factions and doing certain things will change what's possible in a single playthrough. If it's anything like KF4, people will be discovering new things years from now and trading maps on fansites, lol.

 

idk. it Demons Souls the fastest way to grind was to shoot the first reaper in 4-2. would net you like 8k in like 10 seconds. kill yourself rinse and repeat.

 

as i said, the play through ive been watching, hes been at it for 300+ hours, almost 500 deaths. hes just not good at this game. but he cleared the Painted World, New Londo, and Tomb of the Giants rather quickly once he got the Moonlight Greatsword, and the Crystal Magics. and like i said, hes like 20 levels higher then normal. somewhere up in the 80s if not 90s.

 

as far as more to discover, i doubt it. pretty much everything has been discovered in Demons Souls. and it had been that way for a while. only thing people were discovering at the end, was ways to sorta cheat the game mechanics, like pivot casting or how to dupe items. and some of the unknown mechanics like stamina regen penalties on armor. nothing really new to the game. Dark Souls is basically the same way now. ive seen everything in the game. ive seen every boss and every area. ive gotten every weapon and armor. (though not every upgrade path to every weapon) ive platinumed the game. ive done both endings. and ive done some PvP (which you need to for platinum). i highly doubt there is something hidden in that game that no one has seen yet.

 

also joining the covenants doesnt really change your play though. only joining the Chaos one changes anything cause it lets you skip a part of the game. most of the rest are designed for PvP and as such dont change anything. and the remaining few dont change anything, they just give you a couple of spells.

 

however, all this talk of Dark Souls, kinda makes me wanna go back and play it....if only i wasnt just resucked into Ratchet and Clank the other day :P

[Rennn]

Idk if there's anything people haven't found in Dark Souls yet, but the people in this forum (big spoilers): http://www.preparetodie.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=21351 can't seem to decide on what exactly you can do with a certain pendant. I know every secret has probably been found by a few people, it was probably the same with KF4, but many of them aren't common knowledge.

[Aegrus]

I'm inclined to agree with Rennn on this. Whereas Demon's Souls was quite unique for one of From Software's games as far as I know, (the world was closed off into loaded zones) It was kind of an odd game for them to make, as it doesn't really fit into either of the two franchises that they're best known for- King's Field and Armored Core.

 

Dark Souls, meanwhile, plays very much like the open-world King's Field games, and most if not all of the guides for those games (that have been out forever, and have had a die-hard group of fans forever) are still incomplete.

Edited June 30, 2012 by Aegrus

[Aegrus]

Also, Dark Souls is supposedly "3 to 4 times as large" as Demon's Souls. Here's a link.

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1021078/dark_souls_world_three_to_four_times_bigger_than_demons_souls.html

Having played both, I find myself inclined to disagree with that, but I've never known From Software to exxagerate. (I'd estimate the world size at roughly twice that of Demon's Souls.) Usually, it seems like they undersell themselves. It makes me wonder if some of the content is just really well hidden.

 

Edit-----

 

The thing you have to understand about the King's Field series (and, I'm guessing, Dark Souls, since they are so similar and have so many easter eggs), is that From Software NEVER does something for no reason. There were tons of hidden variables in King's Field 4 and earlier that tracked the strangest things. Dropping or using seemingly random items in front of characters sometimes opened up new options and the like. Hitting or activating random walls sometimes opened secret passages or loot caches, for example. The most complete King's Field sites in the world are still incomplete. Random bits of character dialogue that seemed completely superfluous later turned out to be hints at alternate events in the game that were only discovered years after the games released.

 

In Dark Souls, you can trade things with npcs such as Snuggly the Crow by dropping items, though no one ever tries it with anyone except snuggly, for some reason- but in the King's Field games, as in Dark Souls, you could technically trade with anyone. The game would never tell you anything about it- you just had to try it, and see what happened. That's one of the reasons why From Software always allows multiple playthroughs. And there are items (such as homeward bone) that make fast escapes out of seemingly impossible situations plausible. In Dark Souls, there are still unexplained items and mysterious bits of character dialogue similar to those in the King's Field games, so I highly doubt that we'll discover all the secrets for quite some time- maybe ever. I've gotten conflicting accounts on many common events from many people- some of them even think that it's possible to almost entirely skip Blighttown. One of them missed all but a little of it by accident on his first playthrough. I know for a fact that eight of the bosses in Dark Souls are optional, though almost no one agrees when I tell them that.

 

Hey, there was an easter egg in 3D dot game heroes (also made by From Software) that required you to hit a random rock over 200 times with your sword, without any instructions telling you what to do- and without any confirmation of success, so a cave would open somewhere (it never told you where) in the game's landscape. Anything's possible after that.

Edited June 30, 2012 by Aegrus

[hector530]

Made it to brighttown holy crap this place lags. I really wouldn't call it playable. This game can't handle fire or water and Brighttown has both and its a big area which makes it worse

[hoofhearted4]

Made it to brighttown holy crap this place lags. I really wouldn't call it playable. This game can't handle fire or water and Brighttown has both and its a big area which makes it worse

 

its Blighttown. L not R :P

 

and idk. i know Blighttown lags, but ive NEVER had it to the point where it cost me a death or even bothered me at all. the times i saw it lag a little only lasted for like 2 seconds tops. and honestly, it only happened to me like once or twice. that i remember. it either stopped happening to me, or was so unnoticeable to me that i..well..didnt notice it lol.

 

idk. i just see a lot of people say how its like the end of the earth 1 FPS and stuff, just thought id put my personal experience out there. which would be, ive never even noticed it.

 

deff no worse then the times FONV's FPS on my PC would drop. :P

[hector530]

Its a used 360 copy idk maybe that makes a difference but it gets less 5 fps down in the mud

[hoofhearted4]

well thats the problem. its the 360 copy. ive heard a lot of issues about the 360 copy because it itself is just a console port from the Ps3. that could be the issue.

[Rennn]

Yeah, the PS3 version reaches 13 fps in Blight Town if I recall correctly, while the 360 version can reach 3 fps in Blight Town. It is the lowest fps part of the game, however. The only other spot that runs almost as low as Blight Town is the Gaping Dragon boss fight, and even that isn't as bad.

 

13 fps is one of the reasons I'm going to get the PC version.

[hoofhearted4]

Yeah, the PS3 version reaches 13 fps in Blight Town if I recall correctly, while the 360 version can reach 3 fps in Blight Town. It is the lowest fps part of the game, however. The only other spot that runs almost as low as Blight Town is the Gaping Dragon boss fight, and even that isn't as bad.

 

13 fps is one of the reasons I'm going to get the PC version.

 

see, as i said, and this is just me. while i did hit those slow chugs in Blighttown, it was only for like a split second or two. and almost always only when i was on the woodwork...i think...it was so unnoticeable to me, that i honestly cant recall exact times i got it. but i do remember it happening...i think...then again it coulda happened in a walk through i watched and that might be what im thinking of.....but ya, i never had an issue in the Gaping Dragon Boss fight, and not so sure i ever had any issues in Blighttown :P