Dark Souls: Initial Thoughts

[crono738]

I beat the giant Bull Demon thing, but now I'm stuck by the dragon with no idea where to go, do I brave the fire it spews out and try to run past it? Do I backtrack? What do I dooooooooo? T_T

Also that Black Knight in the first area is bloody brutal, I'm not even sure why he's there... >.>

EDIT: Also, I have no idea how to use those shards that give combat bonuses to my items, they would be useful if I knew how to use 'em.

Also, there's a lot of crap in my inventory, I just wish I could sell it instead of being forced to drop it. T_T

With the dragon, there's a set of stairs about halfway up the bridge on the right. All you need to do is sprint to them and run down to be safe. When you get there, make sure to find the shortcut back to one of the bonfires in the room at the bottom of the stairs.

The black knight in the first area is guarding a decent ring that boosts defense when your health gets low.

You can buy a storage box that you can access at bonfires to dump the random useless crap you pick up.

Hope that helped.

 

[crono738]

I have a question if anyone can answer . I want to level my sheild . My current balder sheild +5 s stat are 82/0/0/0 . I want to acension it to divine sheild which stats are 59/108/0/0 ( or something like that ). Will that make my sheild more resistant to magic attacks ? If so is it all kind of magic( fire and lightninf ) or just one kind?

It should be more resistant to magic attacks. Unless I'm mistaken, the magic defense stat is just for spells like soul arrow, so it won't protect from fire or lightning.

 

[Gentleman_Reptile]

Um, it is hard, I haven't even made past the opening of the first level.

If only I knew how to take down the giant skeletons, thenI would be set.

You're going the wrong way is your main problem, you're supposed to head up first.

Quick derision from the subject of Dark Souls.....but what in sphincter-clenching christ is your avatar picture of?

 

[IronicBeet]

This is just bizarre.

People say 'this is a manly man's game' and that it's 'realistic' - no invisible walls to protect you from falling of ledges, for example. But when you die you come back to life (as we all do, of course) and can start again. Unlike Oblivion or Dragon Age (those games people say are for pussies, now that DS exists).

Surely if death is so common in a game, as it apperas to be in DS - you will die a lot they say - then it must have no meaning. The player doesn't fear death, as he might in DA or Oblivion (which is the sort of trepidation the developers of DS want the player to feel), he just fears the tedious repetition of task to progress. That's something else entirely.

Except you do fear death. If you've built up a shitload of souls, or gotten some humanity from killing a boss, you're gonna be scared shitless of dying. You die a lot, but it doesn't mean you don't have a lot to lose as well.

 

[IronicBeet]

First negative thoughts:

Why do they let me pick an appearance when my character is hideously deformed anyway?
The camera angles on the second boss on the narrow bridge get confusing if you go near the lock on button.

First positive thoughts:

This game is awesome. Beautiful graphics, great gameplay, great soundtrack, just love it.

Jesus.

You know the humanity you got off of that corpse by the well when you first got out of the asylum? Use that and cash it in at the bonfire to turn yourself into a human.

How is it that people can't figure this out?

 

[IronicBeet]

I mean this in the nicest possible way.

Maybe you're just not very good at this kind of game.

Everything you're complaining about, is what everybody else in this thread loves about the game. The camera is fine, maybe you're the problem.

Maybe it's not for you, nothing wrong with that, but treating what everybody else likes about the game as faults?

Come on dude.

THe irony of gamers is something that never fails to amaze me.

First I get criticised for not playing the game.
Then I play it and explain my state of play (which is presented entirely objectively; i brought teh game knowing full well I might not enjoy it and would sell it on later, that's fine) and get told 'maybe you suck'.

Well of course I suck; does that surprise you? This is the hardest game on the 360 bar none. You seem surprised that I might find this difficult.

The game does have faults, and chief among them are the piss poor placement of checkpoints. There is simply no excuse for that. Whether you like that or not is really irrelevant. If the game had sensible checkpoints do you mean to seriously suggest you'd complain?

Man, if you think that it's unfair that the checkpoints are too far apart, you should find a way to play Demon's Souls. Game doesn't even checkpoints. If you die, you start at the beginning of the level, son.

You die a lot so you can learn what what to do. It's trial-and-error a lot of the time, I'll admit, but that was the case with a lot of old school games (Which is what this game is aiming for) and you didn't see people complaining about those.

EDIT: Oh, wow, triple post. Sorry about that.

 

[Corporal Yakob]

Bloody hell I want this game but have no money! >:I

But whats all this hummanity and zombiefied status I've read about in this thread?

 

[Atheist.]

Bloody hell I want this game but have no money! >:I

But whats all this hummanity and zombiefied status I've read about in this thread?

Humanity affects item drop rate, can be used to kindle fires (Increases your flask capacity), or to revive yourself. Similar to in DeS if you die, you lose the ability to summon people into your game. I believe it has an effect on NPC dialogue as well. But when you're undead, you look like a zombie basically.

 

[chstens]

It's FROM Software. They couldn't consistently design a decent menu if their lives depended on it.

Yeah but at least Demon's Souls' menu looked nice and didn't resemble something you'd see in an RPG made in the late 90's/early 00's. It's just ugly as fuck man.

I actually kinda like the menu's aesthetic. It represents the sort of game I wanted to get out of Dark Souls. Dark, dreary, old school difficulty.

Definitely getting that, too. As Darksiders was the best Zelda game I played in a long time, I feel like this is the best Castlevania game I've played since Circle of the Moon

Demon's/Dark souls doesn't have old school difficulty, it's very new school, in fact. Sure, games were harder back in the day, but they were also incredibly unfair, meant to keep you playing for as long as possible, to drain your wallet of every possible penny (They kept doing this during the first console generations because developers kinda stuck to the "old ways"). Demon's/Dark Souls difficulty is very fair, you know exactly why you fail.

 

[Casual Shinji]

snip.

Ummm first thing , are you human? You can only summon and see soul signs if your human . Second thing , they are mostly around bosses , players tend to help other for bosses or somewhere tough . I've seen quite a few and it was the only way i could beat the boss before the demon ruins

That might be it, but I've seen more stories about people having trouble joining/invading others players.

And I could use all the help I can get since at the moment I'm boxed in by that gargoyle demon you fight on the roof, the Carpa demon, and the Darkroot area.

And speaking of the Darkroot area, anyone have any idea how to defeat those diamant ogres? My sword attacks can't chip away even 1 point of health from those bastards.

 

[krazykidd]

snip.

Ummm first thing , are you human? You can only summon and see soul signs if your human . Second thing , they are mostly around bosses , players tend to help other for bosses or somewhere tough . I've seen quite a few and it was the only way i could beat the boss before the demon ruins

That might be it, but I've seen more stories about people having trouble joining/invading others players.

And I could use all the help I can get since at the moment I'm boxed in by that gargoyle demon you fight on the roof, the Carpa demon, and the Darkroot area.

And speaking of the Darkroot area, anyone have any idea how to defeat those diamant ogres? My sword attacks can't chip away even 1 point of health from those bastards.

I would suggest not fighting the ice golem guys in darkroot garden yet . Personally iv'e rung botha belles and haven't passed through there . As for the gorgoyles i had trouble there too . Word of advice , if your human , you can summon a NPC to fight with you , it makes the fight 10x easier , only because he can be a scape goat for you . I didn't knoe this so i fought them as hollow . Other than that theres 3 things you can do . 1) cut off gorgoyles tail , it does quite a bit of damage , limits his attack range and gives you a pretty good starting axe .2) keep both gorgoyles close , because if you are too far well they breath fire which has a wide range , much easier to block halberds than blocking fire so yeah .3) if your really patient ( this is what i did ) , id lure both gorgoles on the left or right side of roof , have 1 use his flame breath ( which takes a couple of seconds ) and while hes doing that ,lure gorgole number 2 to the oposite side of the roof , that way i couldn't get hit by fire and got a few hits on the gorgolyes who isn't spewing fire .

NOT the best strategy ... But if you don't have any humanity that's all i got .

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm at the capra demon. I could spend some humanity and try the soul stone or perhaps join another's game, but is there an incentive? If i kill the boss in someone else's game, does it count for my game? If not then, to quote the pope, fuck that.

I haven't played co-op with anyone yet. But if it's anything like Demon's Souls, you''l probably get the same amount of souls plus your humanity if you're a hollow, aswell as the Boss being defeated in your own world.

I would suggest not fighting the ice golem guys in darkroot garden yet . Personally iv'e rung botha belles and haven't passed through there . As for the gorgoyles i had trouble there too . Word of advice , if your human , you can summon a NPC to fight with you , it makes the fight 10x easier , only because he can be a scape goat for you . I didn't knoe this so i fought them as hollow . Other than that theres 3 things you can do . 1) cut off gorgoyles tail , it does quite a bit of damage , limits his attack range and gives you a pretty good starting axe .2) keep both gorgoyles close , because if you are too far well they breath fire which has a wide range , much easier to block halberds than blocking fire so yeah .3) if your really patient ( this is what i did ) , id lure both gorgoles on the left or right side of roof , have 1 use his flame breath ( which takes a couple of seconds ) and while hes doing that ,lure gorgole number 2 to the oposite side of the roof , that way i couldn't get hit by fire and got a few hits on the gorgolyes who isn't spewing fire .

NOT the best strategy ... But if you don't have any humanity that's all i got .

Thanks for the tip.

I guess I'm just a bit anxious to turn human since it's so easily ripped away from you. I spend most of my time Demon's Souls as a phantom aswell for the fear of being invaded by black phantoms.

 

[ultrachicken]

It's hard, and the game doesn't tell me anything! I wasted a freaking Fire Keeper Soul because I thought you were supposed to "Use Item" >.<

Also I have no freaking idea where to go after ringing the first bell! I even killed the Moonlight Butterfly.. Where to now!?

Remember the bridge with the dragon in the Undead Burg? Near the beginning of the bridge, there was a locked door. With the key you got from defeating the Moonlight Butterfly, it will now open. At the end of that new area is the Capra Demon. Kill him and you get a key to the Depths, which is to the left of the boss battle entrance. Also to the left is a shortcut back to Firelink Shrine, so you should open that up before you go hunting the Capra, because he is one mean fucker.

Once you get through the Depths, your next stop is Blighttown, which contains the second bell... sort of. You'll see.

Anyways, I'm really enjoying Dark Souls in comparison to Demon's Souls. While the controls seem to have suffered, namely the auto-lock system, which is atrocious now, the open world structure combined with the infinitely improved aesthetics makes me much more determined to explore and keep on trucking. In Demon's Souls I fought because I wanted to win, but in Dark Souls I'm enjoying the path and the destination.

 

[ultrachicken]

While I do like the game, it has a few questionable design choices compared to Demon's Souls.

- You have to buy the ability to write/rate messages. It's only a 100 souls, but still, this should've been in the game right from the start just like in Demon's Souls.
- The Soul Sign thing-a-ma-jig is easily missed, because you have to speak to some random dude - twice - in order to get it. Yet again a feature that was there from the get-go in Demon's Souls.
- And when you do get the Souls Sign there's hardly anyone accessing it, because the game runs on a different server system than Demon's Souls. I don't know the gist of it, but where in Demon's Souls you would trip over Soul Signs left and right, and could seek out your friends' Soul Sign easily using psn messaging or whatnot, in Dark Souls there's not a "soul" in sight. I've been playing all day today and I haven't seen a Soul Sign anywhere.

All I can hope for is that From Software releases a patch that makes the co-op component of this game actually work.

The rewards for joining certain covenants [http://darksoulswiki.wikispaces.com/Covenants] are increased abundance of soul signs. Plus I think that since there are now checkpoints, it makes sense that the devs wouldn't want the boss fights (most of which aren't even very difficult) to become complete cakewalks by allowing Soul Signs to cover the floor.

Though the White Soapstone being available only by talking to the Sun Warrior guy is inexcusable, in my opinion.

 

[Googenstien]

Took yesterday off because of sunday football.. but all I could do was think about the game. I am up to Blighttown and in my low 30s. The piece of advice I can give anyone is use Humanity to become human and summon in help for bosses.. there is no reason to not.

Generally I will clear my way to a boss fog and then look for the bonfire or backtrack to the old one. Then I will use 2 humanity to reverse hollow and then kindle the bonfire, I need at least 10 flasks. Then I make my way back to the boss area and look for summon signs and I always find them (way of the white covenant)

Also, if you want practice on the boss you drop a summon sign near the boss.. and help others kill the bosses. You get Humanity and souls for doing so. I see no reason to horde Humanity and fear being human.. the only place I got invaded was in The Depths and I smoked the guy for some reason without taking hits.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

frame rates my only issue
everything else, game play and graphics is an improvement on a game i loved

 

[Googenstien]

Took yesterday off because of sunday football.. but all I could do was think about the game. I am up to Blighttown and in my low 30s. The piece of advice I can give anyone is use Humanity to become human and summon in help for bosses.. there is no reason to not.

Generally I will clear my way to a boss fog and then look for the bonfire or backtrack to the old one. Then I will use 2 humanity to reverse hollow and then kindle the bonfire, I need at least 10 flasks. Then I make my way back to the boss area and look for summon signs and I always find them (way of the white covenant)

Also, if you want practice on the boss you drop a summon sign near the boss.. and help others kill the bosses. You get Humanity and souls for doing so. I see no reason to horde Humanity and fear being human.. the only place I got invaded was in The Depths and I smoked the guy for some reason without taking hits.

I've seen no summon signs. I tried one myself for the capra demon, but nothing came of it.
I really have not much understanding of the fnctioon of humanity and have found, at most about 3 points so far. So it's a game mechanic that's entirely redundant afaic. What's the point then?

Which Covenant are you in? that is your faction and which covenant you are seems to decide who you see in ghost form, which msgs you see on the ground and which summon signs you see from people.. probably also which phantoms can invade too. Not clear on how this all works, like if you only see other msgs and summon signs from the exact covenant you are or if they are all aligned in some manor.

I actually think Dark Souls' online mechanics are better than Demons Souls, but I can see how it will confuse new players to the game. Humanity is no where near as limited as the masks that you had to consume in Demons Souls in order to come out of soul form.. there were only so many per each run thru of the game. In Dark Souls you can get Humanity as mob drops, and by assisting others kill a boss/demon.. so technically its an unlimited supply in each play through.