Huh, the halberd in Dark Souls was considered OP?? I quit Demon's Souls pvp after all the hate mail about my halberd, but in Dark it wasnt very good as far as I remember. I used a Lucerne for a while but it was just ok. The rare drop halberd from the gargoyles was win if you knew how to use it. Anyhoo, I fully agree with you. Let everyone figure out their own way to play. Friend of mine likes to play pyro/magic and I get a laugh out of his toons but heck, different strokes for different folks.Loonyyy said:
Dark Souls is awesome! (Yes, I know I'm late to the party)
- Thread starter remnant_phoenix
- Start date
Nah, the Halberd's not OP, just better than the longsword. It's one of the first weapons you get early on that really ups your power level, thanks to its reach, and the arcing swing. It's not so good in invasions etc, since the people doing that typically have better builds. The Zweihander's a step up from the Halberd, and considered by some a bit OP. Upgraded Halberd will do for a substitute if that's your style. It's just a dig at the "maybe you should think about that for a few minutes" condescension, the longsword isn't even great.joest01 said:
My personal favourite is the Dragon (Great?)sword. It's been a while, I lent my controller to a friend, but I built into strength just to use it, it's got phenomenal damage, and has a ranged attack that's pretty cool. Had to completely redesign my fighting style for it, but now I play like I'm one of the bosses. Works very nicely with Havel's Ring and Stone Armour, but that makes dodging very tricky. I'm thinking of running a new build for something lighter. Makes Sif a challenge and then some.
@Redrhyno:
Nah. What we've got here is a fire and forget comment condescending to a newbie with all of that usual Dark Souls elitism, and I don't see why I should endeavour to respond to that patiently. If they want a dick measuring contest, I'm going to point and laugh when they drop their pants, and hopefully they'll pull them up and go away. I'd rather stick up for the people that they're having a go at, then have yet another illuminating Dark Souls elitism conversation. Talking "responding in kind", you do exactly that to me(Missing my point entirely), after complaining that I have done that to them. The oroborous is real. So save it.
Dark souls 2 isn't as good with environmental storytelling (to it's credit at least it doesn't hide and important info dump NPC who shows up at the ending by requiring you to do things in a completely unintuitive order or he is gone until NG like DS dose) and everything doesn't feel as connected. A lot of the bosses are just "dude who works for the king". It dose have some hidden stories but no sudden realisations that make you feel like a monster or sad for them like DS1.
The combat however feels better. Duel wielding is now very viable and spellswords are less of pain in the ass to do. Some of the weapons have interesting mechanics built into them. I usually don't like very heavy weapons but I actually had a lot fun with the fume ultra great-sword with it's aim-able swings and block built into an attack. It's just a shame it doesn't have an on demand sweep attack.
My biggest problem with it that I can't get f-kin guard break to actually work consistently. Jump attack will work but not guard break and that's the one more likely to mess you up if you do a normal attack instead of the move you want. Although this only really matters in PVP.
The combat however feels better. Duel wielding is now very viable and spellswords are less of pain in the ass to do. Some of the weapons have interesting mechanics built into them. I usually don't like very heavy weapons but I actually had a lot fun with the fume ultra great-sword with it's aim-able swings and block built into an attack. It's just a shame it doesn't have an on demand sweep attack.
My biggest problem with it that I can't get f-kin guard break to actually work consistently. Jump attack will work but not guard break and that's the one more likely to mess you up if you do a normal attack instead of the move you want. Although this only really matters in PVP.
I was "late to the party" for both games. It did mean I got to play them with any improvements/additions included and enjoy the wealth of information on the web. I greatly enjoyed them overall, but TBH I could do without the difficulty. Granted, beating bosses was immensely satisfying after umpteen attempts, but there's a lot of frustration on the road to that victory.remnant_phoenix said:
My favourite aspects are the exploration and the combat. I've not played anything, certainly not in recent memory, that has the nuanced combat of DS I & II. The differences between weapons, such as weight, range, speed and movesets is extraordinary and makes melee much more interesting. I loved my Fire Great Scythe +10 in DS, but the new "reaper" category in DS2 was across the board horrid. They looked crap, performed crap and could eat crap for all I care.
I find it amusing that games offer so many armour sets, many of which have great aesthetics but all of which are pretty much pointless. Considering how much damage one takes even with full, enhanced armour, it's no wonder the games are called "Fashion Souls", being that the only choice to be made with any actual value is whether the player likes the look or not.
As for DS2, I really liked it. It took me 90 hours for my first playthrough, much higher than I saw others post online, but I probably died a lot more. I loved my Dark infused Silverblack Spear and gravitated toward a dark/dex build. My criticisms of the game are: the multiplayer mechanics are absolute bullshit. I sincerely hope they don't keep a similar thing for DS3. Soul memory, name-engraved ring and soapstone...all absolute bullshit. Just let me matchmake or search a lobby in a seperate interface. The Gutter is a horrid area...although it does have a sweet looking "grim reaper" style armour set. The enemy "weapon tracking" is also bullshit. They literally pirouette in front of your eyes, their giant axes and arrows curving in mid-air to hit you *after* you dodge. I also didn't like the weapon degradation mechanic. I think it made the game worse relative to DS, not better. I didn't spend all my crafting mats and time farming them and my Spear so it could sit broken in my inventory. I also didn't like the health penalty and increasing hollowed state tho I didn't lack for effigies in fairness.
Saying that, the areas are great. There's nothing quite so spectacular as Anor Londo (I loved that area in DS), but there are some great ones. Each has it's own distinct look and feel, different enemies and hazards. There are some crappy bosses (Sir Alonne can f**k himself with his own sword) but some great ones too. My favourite thing tho as I said is the exploration. You can see how much attention went into the level design, everything is expertly crafted and there's so much stuff to find. I loved finding new armours and weapons (most of which went unused), finding entire new parts of areas I'd already been to (Forest of Fallen Giants, holy crap), running back to an area with a newly acquired branch to find something new...so good!
Get the Scholar of the First Sin edition, it has many improvements and the three DLCs included. It's very good.
You mean Kaathe, right?
Honestly while he is very important to understanding the lore of the game, he isn't terribly crucial for the player to find the first time around. The game's lore is just something you can dig into if you want, most players probably didn't piece anywhere near close to a picture of the full plot on their first playthrough as it was.
But yes, after playing through Dark Souls 2 close to release, I just found myself really disappointed. not that it was a horrendously bad game but almost everything that was extremely strong in the first game was worse (lazy difficulty with a bunch of imba enemies stacked in one location, horrible weapon tracking, clunky rolls thanks to the agility stat, world didn't fit together right, NPC's weren't nearly as interesting, the soundtrack felt utterly phoned in minus a few songs, some areas are even worse than the worst parts of dark souls (fuck shrine of amana and drangleic castle, both were horrible), etc).
Nashandra in particular was a horrible final boss, the "foreshadowing" of her being secretly evil has no subtlety, and the player has no emotional attachment to her whatsoever. on the other hand, allant and gwyn were introduced and hyped up as soon as the game began, creating a powerful subversion of expectations when you finally did meet them and see how far they had fallen. gwyn is still one of my favorite bosses ever, while Nashandra was an underwhelming ending to an underwhelming game. thankfully aldia exists now, but if any of you haven't played dark souls 2 before the DLC, imagine how you would feel if nash was the final boss.
the souls series have always been games that do both a lot of good and a lot of bad, but as experiences, they were unmatched and much more than the sum of their parts. dark souls just...is what it is, if that makes any sense.
thankfully everything we've seen and been told about dark souls 3 looks like a return to form, so i'm excited.
Well, yes and no. The poise that you get from the sets in Dark Souls 1 makes a big difference in that it can, for example, allow you to estus heal and attack uninterrupted. i am told it matter less dark souls 2 but i haven't really noticed it. It actually mattered MUCH less in demon's souls because there was no poise so you got stunlocked no matter what. might as well just have the fast roll and dodge everything. of course, this didn't stop me from learning how to fat roll through everything, which i find easier in demon's souls for some reason, might just be practice.
but yes the aesthetics are a big part of it. To be quite honest I feel that the Souls games have the best fantasy art direction of pretty much any game, western or eastern, and to me that is a big part of the games' appeal.
the only artists who can really compare are the ones working on FF XIV (all hail based yoshida and tsubasa). This is especially noticeable in Dark Souls 1 because if you read the Design Works interview there was a lot of thought put into the designs that go beyond them just looking cool, like how Lautrec's armor symbolizes his devotion to his goddess and how the black knights' armor was made so it that looked as if there couldn't have actually been anyone in it, to make them more inhuman and frightening. Even in Dark Souls 2 where the art direction didn't have the same guidance at least a lot of the sets still looked pretty cool. Finding a cool new armor set and walking around in fabulous armor with an awesome weapon, wandering around well-designed levels is like half the fun for me. The enemies are also often pretty strange and creative, especially in Dark Souls 1, what with the weird stubby mushroom people, the basilisks, the clams, the blind tentacle dragon with butterfly wings, the dragon whose middle is comprised entirely of rib-cage teeth, some wizard with an ENORMOUS hat, etc. the game has such a distinctive artistic vision that i couldn't help but fall in love with it.
Fun fact: I haven't beat Demon's or Dark Souls in NG+ but I have beaten Dark Souls 2 in NG+. I don't know if that's a compliment or indicative of the game's quality when I was able to beat NG+ with the EXACT SAME WEAPONS and occasional buffing when I realized "Oh, this boss has much more health now and might actually kill me, better buff my weapon just to be safe."
Screw it, I'll mention the things that I did love about Dark Souls 2 just to balance the karma that game receives:
1. Heavy weapons and magic are MUCH MORE VIABLE. In Dark Souls 1, Great Axes and Great Hammers could be too slow and almost never hit an opponent in PvP, same with any school of magic, so making the heavy weapons swing faster and the spells shoot quicker was definitely a smart move.
2. Occult and Divine type weapons were stupid and too obscure to actually matter, so creating the new Dark type of damage was a good idea..
3. Honestly I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I think it was a good idea to make Fire and Lightning damage reliant on Faith, because now you couldn't just upgrade your weapon to either of those without investing stats and be a super Vitality/Endurance build with an easy route to high damage output. It was definitely better for PvP's sake.
4. NOT being pushed straight into NG+ after beating the final boss, as well as being able to buy limitless amounts of upgrade materials from an NPC right next to the central hub, boy was that a relief.
Other than that, I think Dark Souls 2 will forever be remembered as the Devil May Cry 2 of the Souls series. I actually never played Devil May Cry 2, but I never heard any redeeming qualities about it either except for the fact that Dante looks the coolest in that one.
Screw it, I'll mention the things that I did love about Dark Souls 2 just to balance the karma that game receives:
1. Heavy weapons and magic are MUCH MORE VIABLE. In Dark Souls 1, Great Axes and Great Hammers could be too slow and almost never hit an opponent in PvP, same with any school of magic, so making the heavy weapons swing faster and the spells shoot quicker was definitely a smart move.
2. Occult and Divine type weapons were stupid and too obscure to actually matter, so creating the new Dark type of damage was a good idea..
3. Honestly I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I think it was a good idea to make Fire and Lightning damage reliant on Faith, because now you couldn't just upgrade your weapon to either of those without investing stats and be a super Vitality/Endurance build with an easy route to high damage output. It was definitely better for PvP's sake.
4. NOT being pushed straight into NG+ after beating the final boss, as well as being able to buy limitless amounts of upgrade materials from an NPC right next to the central hub, boy was that a relief.
Other than that, I think Dark Souls 2 will forever be remembered as the Devil May Cry 2 of the Souls series. I actually never played Devil May Cry 2, but I never heard any redeeming qualities about it either except for the fact that Dante looks the coolest in that one.