Dark Souls 2 - Bring the Pain

[Chick]

Anyone who's not been living under a rock for the last coupe of years will know a few things:

Dark Souls was a successor to Demon Souls, eventually ported to PC from Consoles - Half the PC world loves it the rest threw a tantrum about the Graphics and how you need a controller to play it properly.

It's also famous for being very tough, especially on new players, and having very little scripted progression, resulting in it feeling lacking in direction causing peopel to occasionally freak out and rage about it.

That said, it's one of the best Action/RPG / Hack'n'Slash games ever made. (imnsho) even Yahtzee feels it's excellence.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/8802-Dark-Souls

Anyway - the much anticipated sequel has been out for a while now on both last-gen consoles and now Glourious PC Master Race Edition. I've put about 70 hours in or so now and can say that it's utterly glorious and you should buy it immediately. With a few caveats. You still need a controller, the K/M support is pretty poor - the game simply isn't designed around it. Once in game it reacts a bit differently, general character movement / attacks do feel noticeably different, some say clunky, but some do like to complain about just about anything >.<

Level design and atmosphere is amazing, the game is massive and is still growing on me daily. Magic is expanded, swords improves, archery is excellent, etc etc etc. There is all the hidden depth you would expect from From Software - AND you can gank noob gankers all day.

It starts of a little more forgivingly but is in no means "easy" - though it's first few bosses on each path are definitely simpler to defeat than some of the early DS ones.

It's at least a solid 9/10 at this stage and still warming up - and iv'e not finished it yet.

Buy. It. Now.

 

[Zeus]

does it still have half the difficulty in the actual gameplay, and half the difficulty in navigating the ui and working out what the stats are supposed to do?

 

[Chick]

It's a lot better explained, they've stripped out a load of useless stats and all (most) items have proper, or at least properly translated fluff text, and all stats have a little "help" text next to them. It's still Dark Souls though, so the bizzare opacity is part of it's charm

 

[Zeus]

oh ok, that does sound a bit more worth an effort then - might have to give it a go.
i recently noticed i had far cry 3 on steam and have never played it though, so have been playing with that the last few days

 

[Chick]

It's definitely more accessible than previous ones, but don't be fooled into thinking it's "easy" or "nice"

Speaking of FC3 - have you got bored of the emo yet? if so - pick up blood dragon. trust me on this.

 

[Emmon]

A decent controller and the game would be �50 bud, i cant justify that on a game especially with an MOT drawing near (peers out of window gingerly to look at car). Ahh, its ok think its asleep.

But i totally see where you are coming from, been watching few people stream it together since it came out and its an utter joy to watch. It actually makes me wish i had a social PC setup with a big projector or something and people could take it in turns (life by life) in a front room and we'd all cheer when we get a boss down, then that person would get the name "bosskiller" if they did a few times and that would translate into the real world when we call them "Hey Bosskiller! You're boss at killing.. Bosses!"

We could play little games like whoever can fit the most hula hoops in their mouth gets to choose what we do with the titanite shard and we'd start picking on each other a bit for dying and losing souls without retrieval but eventually it would become "us vs game" and we'd begin cheering each other on and doing football celebrations after we down a boss.

So untill i can make that happen i'll wait, like i waited 4 years to play Skyrim because i wanted the hardware to do it justice. Sometimes a game comes along that isnt just a throwaway spare money opportunity like "oh wow 80% off" steam sales or a pay-to-alpha in a genre you think is pretty cool (but obviously not as good as 21 months down the line when its finished) But instead you can almost smell the special by watching a bit of it.

I also think as a set of games demon souls to dark souls 2 are important. And the fact they sell well makes me smile.

 

[Soupytwist]

does it still have half the difficulty in the actual gameplay, and half the difficulty in navigating the ui and working out what the stats are supposed to do?

They've sorted out a lot of the problems. The map is more streamlined - there is no longer that constant feeling of where the hell am I supposed to be/this game is only playable with a guide. The combat is much better balanced - they've brought back magic as a proper build, infact several builds - Dex builds are no longer stupidly overpowered. Every build I've tried has had its own strengths and weakness - which is how it should be. On the negatives it lack a truely great boss fight, and for a Souls game you could argue its a little bit too easy (or though this can be seen as a positive!).

Demon Souls remain my favourite game in the series, and one of my favourite games of all time - but DS2 feels like a proper sequel. Never understand the love for DS1 one, the map was a total mess (which gave the game a cheap difficulty) and often felt unfinished, the combat was completely broken -taking away magic builds was just plain weird. Also Blight Town........

 

[Zeus]

Speaking of FC3 - have you got bored of the emo yet? if so - pick up blood dragon. trust me on this.

i'm a fair way through it now, so he's not so emo - he's still an idiot, but not so emo.
it did amuse me early on though - whenever your told to go do something he's like 'ohnoes, but there'll be pirates there! i'll have to fight them! ' - even though i've already slaughtered like 200 pirates just for shits and giggles exploring the island before i did much storyline...

 

[Sorontar]

FC3 - the joys of shooting a cage and watching a bear clear the camp for you

 

[Aaelon]

FC3 - the joys of shooting a cage and watching a bear clear the camp for you

Yeah used to love doing that, I even collected all the treasures on the map, OCD much?

Back on Dark souls, If I buy the first one can I still play it? I hear Games for windows is borked? I was ready to buy it in the sales for 6 quid but was looking up info for this, went back and it was full price again

Already got it on the xbox but I hear with a mod it looks reet good on the PC.

 

[Chick]

Do you have a pc compatible X360 controller? If not honestly don't bother. the K/M controls are doable but make the game totally un-fun since the learning curve is like being thrown off a cliff on fire.

otherwise - yeah go for it. They have bodged something to make it keep working 'for a while' apparently.

Mods wise, you need dsfix. that sorts you out.

or just get DS2. it's not better, but it's new and hip adn cool - or doews the 35 quid pricetag put you off?

 

[Aaelon]

The price tag doesn't put me off if you are meaning me with that comment

I just want to play the first one, Its on my to-do list

 

[Qpid]

Totally agree on the controller issues, Kb/m port from the 360 isnt the best I've seen. I spent a week faffing and strugling with keyboard setup before switching to my Xbox controller thinking I'd have to 'get used to it', but picked it up within an hour, felt very fluid and natural.

Be Warned: Its a complete time sink - I've spent hours and hours just running around searching every nook and cranny for fat lootz, hidden areas, secret rooms, more souls - even optional bosses! Returning to areas youve completed because you have found a key that opens up more rooms in a previous zone... its just so well thought out map wise its brilliant.

I think its easier than the original (still a challenging game though!), but feels a load bigger and I think it has more interaction from the multiplayer aspects - that side of it just seems so much smoother and easier to integrate with. It also feels a lot more fun.

On the original I'd be left fuming if someone killed me from invading me, where as now I am left (even if I die) feeling 'hmmm that was a good fight', the summoning and being summoned element feels easier and worth partaking in where I always struggled solo previously.

You can also get (fairly early on in game) a Ring of Life Protection that allows you to die and not lose souls you've collected, it does however break upon death which costs 3000 to fix but relieves the stress of losing 100k souls! So far I have 3 of these and another that also protects against Petrification, so they're not too rare and its still only my first playthrough.