Suave Charlie said:
Just want to jump in; how much of a time sink is this game?
Been really looking into it because it looks brilliant to be honest, but I'm curious about how much bang I'll get for my buck?
And also is it the sort of game that's best in marathon stretches or little and often?
You can do it in both marathon stretches and in little bits. To me, there isn't much of a difference. I pre-ordered
Dark Souls back when it was released the first time and to this day, about a year and a half later, I still play it.
To put things into perspective, I've had 6 90+ hour characters, 8 45+ hour characters, 5 25+ hour characters and enough 6-10 hour characters to fill every character slot 3 times. Of course, I
really love the Souls series. Souls to me is like
Ōkami to Daystar Clarion. So depending on how much you love the game, it can be
quite a time sink.
Crapra Demon only killed me twice. He killed me the very first time I went to fight him because I was caught by surprise. He rushes you the moment you enter the area(but anyone telling you that Crapra kills you before you gain control of your character is lying because you get your control back LONG before he can hit you at all), has a Poison Dog on both his flanks and the area in which you fight him is cramped. And that's putting it nicely.
Now when I fight him, I ignore Crapra and immediately slay the two dogs. The dogs are
much faster than Crapra is so as long as you avoid being hit by the big boss, the dogs themselves become little trouble.
Of course, you can also cheese him by running up the stairs on the left and kill the dogs as they follow you up, since Crapra's path finding has a hard time reaching you while you're at the top. But cheesing is for losers.
I see people complaining ALL OVER THE PLACE about this game. And it's been rebalanced since its initial release. I remember playing it before ANY patches were made. I dare anyone with a console version to play it completely unpatched, if they haven't already.
Dark Souls was significantly more difficult before its rebalancing.