Dark Souls is awesome! (Yes, I know I'm late to the party)

[remnant_phoenix]

So I just recently decided to give the original Dark Souls a go after the discussion largely shifted from "It's so hard!" to "It's a more measured and thoughtful approach to Zelda/Metroidvania," and I love me some Zelda and Metroidvania.

So yeah, the game did put me through the ringer for quite a while. But then I figured out how to kill the Taurus Demon on the rampart without the help of a guide or anything else, which was awesome! And then I experienced my first enigmatic encounter with an NPC and I thought "I must know more about this world..." and it was awesome! And then I got invaded, but after using the respectful kneeling emote to defer that I was clearly outmatched, this player gave me a +10 Longsword and a 200 Attack fist weapon, and helped me out for a while. Emergent multiplayer gameplay. Awesome. Then, after a string of great successes, I was cheap-shotted by an weenie and had a falling death...and then I realized that I couldn't reclaim the 12,000+ souls that I dropped when I was downed by my initial fight with the Bell Gargoyle... The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat... Awesome.

As for discussion, tell me, is Demon's Souls/Dark Souls II better/worse/same in the approach to environmental storytelling? Is Demon's Souls/Dark Souls II gameplay better/worse/same?

Or, just share your favorite Souls "this is amazing!" moments.

 

[Asita]

I can't say that I've ever actually played the game myself. I always kinda turned my nose up at the Demons Souls franchise as "I Wanna Be the Guy in 3D" (which is to say difficulty purely for difficulty's sake). I recently came across something that has made me reassess that view.

Spoiler

Long and short of it being that the franchise's famous difficulty actually works spectacularly well in reflecting the nature of the story. Your character is undead, they cannot be [permanently] killed. They can, however, be hollowed, losing their free will and sanity, and this process can be staved off simply by having a goal or purpose to strive for. There is a daunting task before the Chosen Undead, and you the player represent that undead's will to go on. Every death brings you closer to hollowing, and every perceived wall makes it more tempting to leave a game behind, giving in to the apparent hopelessness and despair of the world, reflecting the hollowing process. It's actually quite brilliant.

 

[the_dramatica]

Souls 2 is worse in terms of environment, and bloodborne has a few setpieces that are very polished but doesn't grasp the scale of dark souls. Havn't played demons souls but from what I hear it should be worth a play through.

 

[Aerosteam]

Not sure about Demon's Souls as I haven't played it, but here's everything DSII does better than the previous game:

Upgrade system
Sense of characters hollowing out
Cosplaying (partly because a lot of bosses are humanoid)
Weapon variety
UI
PVP
Shields

That's all I can think of. Really everything else was done better in DS.

 

[Redryhno]

Depends, Dark Souls 2, while it doesn't have the best boss design(dudes in armor is honestly a pretty apt descriptor for most of them), has more memorable mook and environment designs as far as I'm concerned. Dark Souls just has a bunch of variations on Hollow dude here.

Gameplay wise, they cleaned up alot of stuff. Some people don't like that Estus isn't an instant heal and that lifegems exist, I don't mind all that much and I never liked using healing in the first place. Hitboxes were made closer to the models and animations, and outside of a handful of fights(mostly optional now that I"m thinking about it...strange) there aren't any insta-die glitches.

Story-wise, DS2 builds on alot of things from DS1, believe it or not, you're largely going to many of the same places as you did in DS1, just CENTURIES after. Personally, I think it's fucking brilliant, with a much more involved story than "Gwyn needed a hug and nightlight as a child"(SUPER-simplifying it I know, but it is sorta the event that kicked off alot of the other things that happened).

Bloodborne, on the other hand, is very nice, but...just sorta dropped the ball on alot of things. It's a pretty good game, but if you want to play as anything other than dodgey mc stabbity boom, you're shit out of luck, and it's a pretty game, but it all starts to blend together except for some things like bridges and a handful of the named buildings. And the story is very much like Dark Souls, but...feels like it's missing a heart. Everything largely just feels like it's...there. Not to say that there's not emotions, but it's alot more like it all happened, and then you move on.

Also, as an aside, I have three things to say. If you haven't fought O&S yet, kill Smough first if you want the better drop, you'll thank me if you like Ornstein's weapon, and. How do you have trouble against the Taurus demon? I can get the Asylum and pretty much any other of the starting bosses, but he's so simple to fight...and don't sweat the 12k souls lost. It's gonna happen more than a dozen times and you'll probably net most of it back on your way back to the boss room each time as you move through the game, with ever increasing amounts.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Welcome! You are in for a lot of dying, but also some great boss fights and world designs and just...great stuff all around.

Personally, I think Dark Souls is better in terms of atmosphere and story, but for some reason I play Dark Souls II so much more. I can't explain it, except that the combat in II feels a bit crisper. It's also nice being able to carry six weapons instead of just four.

And 12,000 souls? Ha ha. That's nothing, my friend. Wait until you get further in the game. You are in for some great experiences I believe. Good luck.

 

[mysecondlife]

Congratulations are in order!

One advice: Don't spend souls on stats past 40. Great diminishing returns.

EDIT: I only played Demon's Souls apart from Dark Souls. As for environmental story telling, I think Demon's Souls is bit better. Gameplay wise, Dark Souls but only slightly. Can't go wrong with both though.

 

[shrekfan246]

I can't say that I've ever actually played the game myself. I always kinda turned my nose up at the Demons Souls franchise as "I Wanna Be the Guy in 3D" (which is to say difficulty purely for difficulty's sake).

Yeah, that's a problem with the internet dialogue that surrounds the franchise. It's basically impossible to recommend a Souls game without mentioning that, oh yeah, you're probably going to die. A lot. But the games rarely ever get unfair about it, and that's the thing that's most difficult to get across without having someone actually play the games themselves. It's daunting, the games do an awful job of conveying information to the player, and Dark Souls is, in my opinion, honestly the one that punishes death the least. But they're incredibly clever games once the player can finally break the entry barrier.

More OT: Demon's Souls is a bit less open in comparison to Dark Souls, owing to the fact that it's hub-based and gives you five different locations you can visit at your leisure from the start. None of the locations cross over with each other, and they all progress in relatively linear fashions, though the areas themselves are still very large and have some winding paths and shortcuts. Not everyone agrees, but I consider it to be more challenging than Dark Souls for a few reasons.

First, while you can farm for healing items, they add to your overall item burden (oh yeah, there's an item burden as well as equip burden that you need to manage) and the most basic ones will quickly become useless if you're leveling up your health (which you should do because it increases your burden limit). Also, being "Undead" in Demon's Souls means you have 50% of your total health (75% with a certain ring you can get relatively early on) and your damage output can be influenced based on the "tendency" (a mechanic that's not explained at all) of your character/the world you're visiting. Weapons/armor are also far less common to find while you're exploring (and if your item burden is too high when you try to grab them, they'll disappear forever if you have to return to The Nexus to free up space), and you need to find a blacksmith who can be pretty easy to miss to upgrade the vast majority of them.

Being the first game in that style From Software made, the UI is also far less refined; while it still gives most of the same information that is provided in Dark Souls, little of it is outright labeled and certain small things are not organized nearly as well (such as comparisons or how weapons scale while upgrading). Camera and locking-on are more fidgety, gathering souls is generally far slower, etc. etc.

Where Demon's Souls excels is most certainly in the atmosphere. It feels far more oppressive and tense than Dark Souls ever does, and the overwhelming feeling of despair tends to permeate every area of the game. If you appreciate the feeling of loss and victory that Dark Souls provides, Demon's Souls still has that in spades, and it's not so dated that it would feel awful to play in comparison to Dark Souls. In fact, I'd say that playing Dark Souls first would give you something of an advantage, as you'd already know the basics of how to control everything and generally how the stats work.

I could probably say a lot more on this subject, but I've spent longer than I should have on this post already. D:

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Bit of a saga my Dark Souls experience. Was my first and only Souls game. I tried it due to the nagging itch, got to the graveyard and got hacked up by skeletons. Thinking this was the easiest path, I kept at it for a *very* long time. Then finally chucked it and didn't look back until about a year later.

My closest and one of 2 only gaming friends told me to get it. Took the dive on PC this time. Installed the fix. Took a different path from the graveyard, managed to finish the game. Had some tough fights, but they got much easier. Those 2 gold guys, dragonslayer and the chunky dude gave me a very rough time. But when I finally started summoning help they were a breeze. Even the 4 kings and last boss were single attempt affairs.

The only thing I don't like about the game is the punishment for death. I don't even care about losing the souls that much, as I did fair bit of grinding. It's the trekking all the way back. It's a cheap way to make a game hard and take too long to finish. And your impatience is punished with MORE patience testing. It's the reason I stopped playing Dead Rising, and why I nearly quit at Anor Londo with those bastard knight archers on the chapel. Even entire Blighttown was heaven compared to that one stupid section.

It's a beautifully done game, story, graphics, atmosphere, sound, controls, everything, 9/10. But the punishment for death put me off playing any others in the series up till now.

 

[Redryhno]

It's a beautifully done game, story, graphics, atmosphere, sound, controls, everything, 9/10. But the punishment for death put me off playing any others in the series up till now.

Yeah, that's largely my biggest problem with the series as well. It's never doing the boss fights again, losing the souls, or the wasted items, it's ALWAYS getting back there through the army of mooks.

But in any case, you might want to look into DS2 if you really enjoyed DS1, bonfires are alot more numerous(to a somewhat ridiculous degree) and many bosses have bonfires very close to their entrances if they aren't just right at the fog door. The only downsides are that some of them you only find by exploring(though I personally sorta consider that just a reward for not just going straight to the boss) and optional bosses have the same problems as DS1 did in that you have to trudge through alot of shit to get another shot at them.

 

[Fox12]

There are several moments that really stand out to me. The first is:

Spoiler

When Lautrec betrays you. You lose the best bonfire in the game, and it really bothered me that he stabs you in the back. Then you get your sweet vengeance, and... you feel kind of bad for him. He was working for the Goddess fina, who he loved. We don't know if she loved him, or if she's even still alive, but if you examine his armor then you realize that it has two arms wrapping him in its embrace. He has a ring that you can wear, but if you ever take it off, then it breaks. It's a wedding ring. You never quite figure out what his deal is, but you get the feeling that he's a good person who is doing bad things for love. A love that may be unrequited.

Or:

Spoiler

Solaire's character arc. It's so subtle, but I love the idea that he's the exiled son of god, seeking his own path, and his own meaning in life. Or maybe he's just a deranged zealot pretending to be something he's not. I'm inclined to believe the first one.

My favorite:

Spoiler

The ending. Going through that fog gate, and hearing that music, floored me. Then you see Gwyn's name. Gwyn, Lord of Cinder. This isn't an epic fight. This isn't a great, final struggle for glory. This is you finishing off the emaciated corpse of a once great king so that the world can die in peace. There is no salvation, there is no hope, there is no light. It's over. Everything you've done, every monster you killed, every enemy you defeated, every god you cast down, every mountain you climbed was for nothing. It doesn't matter. No one will remember you. A game never captured that sense of nihilism so hard before, not even Silent Hill 2. You struggled harder then in any game you've ever played, and it doesn't mean a thing.

As for other games:
Bloodborne is consistently better overall, since it fixes some of the problems in Dark Souls. The gameplay and world design is fantastic, and there isn't a single dull area in the entire game. No blight town's here. Unfortunately it doesn't reach the heights that Dark Souls does. DS is definitely the better game.

Dark Souls 2 was made by a different group, and it shows. Not bad, but it's a pale imitation of the original.

 

[Raggedstar]

Fellow Souls virgin here, though I started playing them this year. I generally don't consider difficulty to be a selling point and I rolled by eyes at the more obnoxious people of the fandom, but I bought it on Steam sale as a challenge (and it was only $5.50, so no big risk). I definitely felt the beginner wall after I left the asylum (cleared the asylum on my first attempt without dying) and didn't quite break it until around Shitetown. After that, it was pretty smooth sailing and I barely even touched the guide I had for quick reference (mostly for hidden bonfires and a general impression of direction. Bosses were 100% a surprise though). By that point, I started to appreciate the design, the characters, and the beauty of the world (and when you find those kind of shortcuts that remind you how well laid-out the map is. Mmmmm, that feels good). Once you know the rules Dark Souls plays by, the difficulty is pretty digestible. I even make it a point to never summon anyone for Ornstein and Smough as a personal challenge. Beat Dark Souls about 2 months ago and I'm somewhat in love with it. So ya, pretty positive experience with me . Maybe I'll come back later with my favourite parts, but this post is getting pretty long.

Regarding your question, I'm playing Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin right now (for people familiar with the game, I beat Freja). Coming fresh off of DS1, I'll add to the sentiment that it's not as good. By no means bad, but definitely on the story and world-building (you know, the best things about the first game) are very weak. I heard the complaint it feels like fanfiction, and it's pretty valid. It lacks the soul the original had and isn't as well put together (or it tries to force the source material in a place it should be). The closest I've found to a developed character with an arc (in the way of, say, Solaire or Siegmeyer) so far is Lucatiel. Everyone else is kinda there for the sake of being merchants or telling you where to go. Bosses are pretty uninspired so far, with many of them being variants of "dude in armour", one that is almost a carbon copy of a boss in DS1, and one that IS a carbon copy of a boss in DS1 (likely for fanservice). The only things I can see that have been improved in DS2 is better PC optimization, cleaner interface, better covenant system (as in you can join/quit and save your progress), and maybe a better multiplayer system. On the other negatives, farming is also a bit complicated since enemies will despawn if you kill them too many times (which is fine if you're a newbie trying to get by, but really terrible if you're looking for rare drops). Not a huge fan of the soul memory or hollowing systems either (I would've been ok with the latter if human effigies weren't so rare. Humanity in DS1 grew on tre-er...rats). While you do have fast-travel to any bonfire you light, you do lose that "Metroidvania" layout and the wicked shortcuts. Possibly a game worth your time and money, but it's not as well designed.

Never played Demon's Souls or Bloodborne, but I have the former and REALLY want the latter.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

I haven't finished either Dark Souls 2 or Demon's Souls yet, but I'll share my impression from what I've experienced so far.

In some ways, I like Demon's Souls' environmental storytelling better than Dark Souls. It's got a creepier atmosphere, and everything's surrounded in a lot more mystery. There's seven Archstones that you use to transport yourself between worlds, and if you're like me, you're going to spend most of the game wondering what's behind the shattered eighth one, and how it got destroyed. The Nexus (The home base where all the Archstones are) is absolutely fantastic visually. I spent a good half hour exploring it before I even started the game.

As for the gameplay, it's different in some regards, worse in some regards, and better in a one or two ways, but is more or less the same as Dark Souls.

Dark Souls 2 was a huge step down in atmosphere and environmental storytelling. I don't give a damn about the story, and frankly I'm not even sure what the story is at this point since it lost my interest quite early on. The gameplay is a slight improvement on Dark Souls. I'd buy it if you want more Dark Souls gameplay, and can deal with most everything else being kind of lackluster.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

It's a beautifully done game, story, graphics, atmosphere, sound, controls, everything, 9/10. But the punishment for death put me off playing any others in the series up till now.

Yeah, that's largely my biggest problem with the series as well. It's never doing the boss fights again, losing the souls, or the wasted items, it's ALWAYS getting back there through the army of mooks.

But in any case, you might want to look into DS2 if you really enjoyed DS1, bonfires are alot more numerous(to a somewhat ridiculous degree) and many bosses have bonfires very close to their entrances if they aren't just right at the fog door. The only downsides are that some of them you only find by exploring(though I personally sorta consider that just a reward for not just going straight to the boss) and optional bosses have the same problems as DS1 did in that you have to trudge through alot of shit to get another shot at them.

Thanks for the weigh-in on DS2, been debating whether to give it a shot. That does sound a lot better with the placement of bonfires, one of my bigger concerns. With tight exploration games like this I'm a bit of a completionist, which could drive me nuts if those optional bosses are real far away. Well at least it's not ALL the bosses. But we'll see, I might get lucky and go in there prepared enough to one-shot 'em (or at least 2 or 3 times). Something to consider if the backlog ever gets under control. Cheers for that!

 

[joest01]

The good news is that you cannot go wrong!

Demon's has the best atmosphere. They should bring back the nexus and world/character tendency! I actually liked the gameplay better too because it had dual wielding, no poise stat, and a roll that worked without ninja flipping. It also had the best competitive pvp in the series. Pretty sure that last part is over

Dark2 is a step up from the previous games in gameplay. The story is plenty convoluted and at times a little more heavy handed. But the excellent gamplay, variety and sheer size of the world make up for it. You can sink months into this and still find new aspects.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

The Moonlight Butterfly for the first time. As a boss fight it's rather lackluster, but as a setpiece for building atmosphere and setting the tone of the world it's unparallelled. It's ethereal, otherworldly and uncaring.

Stepping into the bottom of New Londo after you drain the water, and the plunge to fight the Four Kings is also quite the experience, and really drive home the darkness of Lordran. Just wait until you get there...

I'd say Dark Souls is the best of the three (haven't played Bloodborne), but each of them have their strengths. Dark Souls II is the strongest gameplay wise, and removes a lot of the needlessly unintuitive shit from the formula, but its story, level design and atmosphere just can't match its predecessors. Demon's Souls has the strongest atmosphere of all of them, and Maiden Astraea is an unforgettable boss fight and a masterclass of conveying atmosphere. But it's the most unforgiving of all of the games (one death and you lose half your health bar, and Humanity is really, really hard to come by) and feels rather short and small in comparison. DSII is strong in all those departments, but its upgrade system is rather unintuitive, a lot of the mechanics are poorly explained if at all, the menus are clunky (they're the same in Demon's, but there you're not constantly heaped new items and equipment), and the long runs to some of the bosses (Bed of Chaos, you *****!) can get tiring.

 

[Loonyyy]

I can't say that I've ever actually played the game myself. I always kinda turned my nose up at the Demons Souls franchise as "I Wanna Be the Guy in 3D" (which is to say difficulty purely for difficulty's sake). I recently came across something that has made me reassess that view.

Yeah, it's really strange. The game is hyped up for it's difficulty by a portion of it's fanbase, and it is difficult, don't get me wrong, but it's about this mood, this atmosphere of nihilism and depression.

My best moment with it was just this one streak, this one run between two fires, that took me the better part of an hour to get right, avoiding damage, picking off enemies. Really had that sense of perfection going when I finally finished it.

I would really recommend playing it to anyone who hasn't, it is difficult, but there are ways around that, and the difficulty serves a purpose.

I would say that I'm a little less enthralled by the story though. It's very hard to follow what happens, and the low-key storytelling does lose something. If you take breaks, or don't keep careful track of the characters, it's really easy to lose track of it.

I really like the combat, it just feels right, getting the timing right, and mastering avoiding damage is great, and when you encounter a new enemy, learning a new way around it is very rewarding.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

How do you have trouble against the Taurus demon? I can get the Asylum and pretty much any other of the starting bosses, but he's so simple to fight...

1) I'm playing as a Knight and I didn't realize that I had the over-50%-weight-slow-dodge-roll until AFTER the fight.

2) It took me a few deaths (with that slow dodge) before I figured out the jump-off-the-roof-attack strategy.

 

[asdfen]

demon souls is better/on par with Dark Souls. the enviroment is awesome.
Dark Souls 2 is more about difficult combat than exploration of an alien hostile world. Much worse of a game than the previous 2
If you have a PS4 try Bloodborne.