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I think a big of element of what I didn't like about DS2 was the introduction of other healing items besides the estus flasks. I loved those flasks - they made the game feel part survival horror, as you walked further and further away from your bonfire, the Estus flasks became your only light, and represented a burning candle that wore down as you took damage and had to consume your very, very limited supply of them. They were your only lifeline, and reaching the next bonfire to get them back was paramount. In DS2 it's just 'lol I have a hundred Also in Darks1 you couldn't use healing items in another person's world - this made you reliant on them to provide healing with their own flask, with was a cool symbiosis as you took hits for them and they healed you. Morpheus has a new favorite as of 21:13 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 19:49
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Morpheus posted:In DS2 it's just 'lol I have a hundred herbs om nom nom full health bitches'. Well, this was yet another feature bought in from Demons Souls, with the endless healing grass you could acquire!
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Nov 3, 2014 20:08
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Morpheus posted:DS2 Estus Flask + Lifegems Did they ever explain why they brought lifegems in? Like you said, the estus flask in Dark Souls really gave the game an excellent sense of tension and dread with managing your health, but with Dark Souls 2 they made the same mistake as Demons' Souls, where once you get a near unlimited supply of grass/lifegems, it kills the tension. I didn't use lifegems on principle, but I wonder if there was an official reason reason for it; perhaps making the game more accessible to newer players?
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Nov 3, 2014 20:29
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FutureCop posted:Did they ever explain why they brought lifegems in? Like you said, the estus flask in Dark Souls really gave the game an excellent sense of tension and dread with managing your health, but with Dark Souls 2 they made the same mistake as Demons' Souls, where once you get a near unlimited supply of grass/lifegems, it kills the tension. I didn't use lifegems on principle, but I wonder if there was an official reason reason for it; perhaps making the game more accessible to newer players? I don't know about official but I think that lifegems exist so that you can heal between fights and save the estus flask uses for healing a boatload of health in the middle of a fight.
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Nov 3, 2014 22:50
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What's dragging Dark Souls 2 down for me is the Twin Dragonriders fight. Fuckers won't die! I've tried poisoning them too but I still bite it before one of them can get drained all the way.
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Nov 3, 2014 22:55
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Who What Now posted:What's dragging Dark Souls 2 down for me is the Twin Dragonriders fight. Fuckers won't die! I've tried poisoning them too but I still bite it before one of them can get drained all the way. protip for that fight: As soon as the fight starts, run to the left side of the dragonrider on the far side of the room, so you're between him and the archer. He'll whack the pillar the other one is standing on and knock him down, at which point you can basically destroy the archer because he's got very little health.
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Nov 3, 2014 23:17
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FutureCop posted:Did they ever explain why they brought lifegems in? Like you said, the estus flask in Dark Souls really gave the game an excellent sense of tension and dread with managing your health, but with Dark Souls 2 they made the same mistake as Demons' Souls, where once you get a near unlimited supply of grass/lifegems, it kills the tension. I didn't use lifegems on principle, but I wonder if there was an official reason reason for it; perhaps making the game more accessible to newer players? I think they did it to bridge the gap for the now-fewer estus flasks. They went Metroidvania for their estus buffs, rather than the more structured style from Dark Souls. I like that style, but it was very harsh at first; one weak estus flask is NOT enough. So lifegems were probably a way to lessen that blow while still making it a significant handicap; you can resort to lifegems instead of estus, but they're just not as good, and you don't have easily replenished supplies of them like you do estus. So, at least early-game when you don't have many, it becomes a significant choice: do you use an estus and risk not having one when you really need it, or do you use a lifegem and risk running out of something you don't have a reliable supply of? I agree that they probably should have dropped off as you continued through the game and estus became more plentiful, but they had a place early on when you barely even had any of either.
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Nov 4, 2014 01:22
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death .cab for qt posted:Some bosses didn't even get proper introductions. Like Smelter Demon? Literally in a hallway leading into the second half of a large room, he doesn't get a boss arena, he gets a vestibule. It's like bumping into Satan for a boss fight at the breakfast nook in a holiday inn The boss for one of the DLC's is a smelter demon that's been shaded blue
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Nov 4, 2014 01:31
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death .cab for qt posted:They have some really neat boss designs and ideas, but Smelter Demon/Old Dragonslayer just miss the mark. If Old Dragonslayer was actually difficult, it would be an awesome fight that comes out of nowhere, but the thing that made BigO such a scary fight was the wear down from fighting them both at once, then having to fight a super charged Ornstein. This is just supercharged Ornstein, which isn't a hard fight. Ornstein being relatively weak and honestly a very easy boss is more or less the point.
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Nov 4, 2014 02:09
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I always thought Super Ornstein was the hardest part of O&S 
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Nov 4, 2014 03:13
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The Mega Man X talk reminded me of one of my favorites - Mega Man X4. I think it was the first one on Playstation. Graphics were great, levels and power ups were fun, and it wasn't too difficult. What sucked is that the final boss is on a completely different planet, difficulty-wise. I've played through the game a handful of times with no real problem, but once I get to Sigma 2, I'm stopped dead. This guy makes it look way easier than I remember.
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Nov 4, 2014 03:50
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The Moon Monster posted:I always thought Super Ornstein was the hardest part of O&S If you use Solaire for the first part of the fight he's a loving nightmare.
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Nov 4, 2014 04:06
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Risk of Rain's difficulty curve is a straight vertical line for new players.
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Nov 4, 2014 04:16
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The Moon Monster posted:I always thought Super Ornstein was the hardest part of O&S Look at this loving scrub
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Nov 4, 2014 05:22
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The Moon Monster posted:I always thought Super Ornstein was the hardest part of O&S He is, but a lot of Dark Souls bosses are extremely well balanced and designed in ways that put thought into how the bosses can be used to teach the player, and escalate the challenge throughout the game. For instance, Ornstein and Smough are a step up from the Gargoyles, who are the first multiple-boss fight in the game. That boss eases you into the concept of a two-enemy fight, because you have two pretty similarly patterned Gargoyles that will attack you, while also staggering their entrance--you get time to learn the first Gargoyle's patterns, and then the second one appears to shake things up. The strategy is to beat down the first one as quick as you can, before the second one shows up. If you do this quick enough, it makes the rest of the fight fairly easy. Otherwise, players might end up balancing strikes between two Gargoyles, wasting time (to a degree, since the other will still die faster if you deal some damage to it) while also risking taking damage. Then, once you kill one, you wrap up what's left of the other's healthbar. O&S punish you for not taking the lesson from the Gargoyle: Focus down only one of the two enemies. This time around, both of them come right out the gate, and you immediately realize that you have to learn two simultaneous patterns while focusing down one of the two. If you don't focus your attacks on just one, as quickly as possible, you will get your rear end handed to you once the second phase begins, because the other gets all their health back. It becomes a war of attrition, because even the slightest fuckups against the two of them are punished by Ornstein's constant attacks slowly whittling you down, or an outright death stroke by Smough's hammer. And, if you kill the slower, easier-to-pummel enemy, you get a stronger version of the super-fast hard-hitting rear end in a top hat that probably opened the fight by jabbing his spear square into your skull. The cool part is that isn't even the last fight--the next one is Four Kings, where you now have to take this knowledge, again, to kill those guys. Because now you know that you have to rush down single targets in these fights, otherwise you get overwhelmed. You have to be mindful of magic attacks (like Ornstein's spear) because they can hit you even while you're keeping the other enemies at a distance. Instead of just being "fairly difficult" if you don't kill the single targets quickly enough, it's a death sentence. Once all Four Kings come out, you're definitely screwed, no question about it. At that point it's just a fight against how quickly your health bar will deplete. Dark Souls 1 was really loving good at teaching the player, and putting considerable thought into boss presentation and design. Capra Demon even teaches a lesson, to always go through fog gates on your guard--which pays off when Ornstein super slides at your face. They even have a reminder/fake out of this with the Iron Golem, since he almost always swings that sonic boom attack at you when you first walk in, but there's a convenient pile of rubble to block it. Luisfe posted:Ornstein being relatively weak and honestly a very easy boss is more or less the point. Being "the point" doesn't make it any better, it just means they deliberately designed a lovely boss for no reason other than a pointless fanservice callback that you tear through like wet paper. I killed Ornstein before I even killed the Last Giant, and the Last Giant gave me way more trouble. It's not like they need to make Ornstein an easy boss--his whole purpose in DSII is to block off the Blue Sentinels covenant. Not to summon help if you're invaded--to be the guy that gets summoned to prevent invasions. Absolutely make that boss harder, it would be hilarious and give players a challenge for them to either plow through if they're experienced, or come back to later (since it's relatively close to a bonfire). God dammit, even whining about DSII makes me want to go back and play more of it 
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Nov 4, 2014 05:34
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All bosses in DS2 should have been Ornstein and Smough Edit: Anyone who defends Capra Demon as anything but a piece of poo poo fight is crazy. DS1 also had tons of poo poo like the Hellkite Wyrven, Ceaseless Discharge, and Bed of Chaos. gently caress, I mean 3 of the bosses were literally the same dude. kazil has a new favorite as of 05:38 on Nov 4, 2014 |
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Nov 4, 2014 05:34
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kazil posted:All bosses in DS2 should have been Ornstein and Smough It's seriously insane how well-designed the entirety of Anor Londo is. You can tell that area got a lot of polish over time. It demands you learn to pull aggro on enemies, it punishes you for rushing headlong into fights with multiple enemies. Everything up to that point has been manageable--thieves, hollows, trees, even the snake-men. But you seriously cannot juggle multiple gargoyles, sentinels, or silver knights. Plus, you can spend all day parrying the silver knights. 
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Nov 4, 2014 05:39
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kazil posted:All bosses in DS2 should have been Ornstein and Smough Also the easiest, most boring, and stupid looking idiot. UltraVariant posted:Risk of Rain's difficulty curve is a straight vertical line for new players. It's not so bad if you're playing on separate computers, but going alone or sharing a screen in couch-play is pretty much impossible until you get a varied party under your belt, yeah. I ragequit that game for a few months after I first got it. Acute Grill has a new favorite as of 05:44 on Nov 4, 2014 |
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Nov 4, 2014 05:41
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death .cab for qt posted:Plus, you can spend all day parrying the silver knights. I did. I memorized their locations. I gave them names.
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Nov 4, 2014 05:46
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Screaming Idiot posted:I did. I memorized their locations. I gave them names. Anor Londo is terrible and if you're spending enough time there to fight the enemies, you're spending more time there than the developers did. There's a reason everything is super easy to roll past.
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Nov 4, 2014 05:49
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kazil posted:Anyone who defends Capra Demon as anything but a piece of poo poo fight is crazy. Nah, Capra is a well-designed fight. It's a difficulty spike that's forcing you to think calmly, prioritize danger, and either learn to roll or learn to prepare ahead of time with spells, miracles, firebombs, what have you. By that point in the game, you've picked up enough firebombs (and probably not used them) that I'm pretty sure you can almost outright kill the Capra Demon with just those. Otherwise, alluring skulls work on him. Asylum Demon/Stray Demon/Firewhatever Demon are all inexcusably bad, as is the rest of that area. Now that I think about it, I never realized that Old Iron King is just Ceaseless Discharge II--I never fought Ceaseless in a straight up fight, I always cheesed it
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Nov 4, 2014 05:49
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death .cab for qt posted:Nah, Capra is a well-designed fight. I don't want to make this personal but you have the worst opinions ever.
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Nov 4, 2014 05:50
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kazil posted:I don't want to make this personal but you have the worst opinions ever. Ask me about how the silver knight archers were a good thing  e: Speaking of poo poo that brings games down, I've been playing a fair bit of Contraption Maker on Steam, and the poo poo bringing it down is how lackluster it is compared to The Incredible Toon Machine. Sure, the incredible toon machine had some horrible, eye-gouging graphics choices, but everything animated like a saturday morning cartoon, it had so much character. Contraption maker just...looks so bland. It looks more like the original The Incredible Machine, so launching a rocket into space using a candle that gets rolled on a conveyor belt by a cat chasing after a mouse manages to look boring. bawk has a new favorite as of 05:59 on Nov 4, 2014 |
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Nov 4, 2014 05:52
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Dark Souls 2 does have some issues with bosses, but I think the good ones more than make up for the bad ones. The derivative bosses can suck, and there's nothing quite reaching the heights of Smough and Ornstein, but I start forgiving it when it whipped out things like the Executioner's Chariot, the Skeleton Lords, the Old Iron King, and the Duke's Dear Freyja. Not all of them are immaculately designed, but they're still great fun. What I take issue with in Dark Souls 2 is actually the level design. Something understated that I really enjoyed from DS1 is that each area is different. When you go through the Undead Burg/undead Parish you mostly see the same stuff; human-sized zombie enemies, maybe a little taller, charging you up-front with some meager ranged support. It's simple, but it works, and you start getting used to it. But then, you go to Darkroot, and things change; suddenly things aren't fighting you up-front, the enemies are stealthy. They aren't hitting you with a lot of kind-of-damaging attacks, they're aiming to hit you once and make it count. It's harder not because it's just straight-up more difficult, it's harder because you're facing something entirely different. And that continues throughout the game. Nothing else hits you with poisons like the Depths and Blighttown do. You're never as wary of attacks coming from any angle, and striking right past your defenses, as you are when you're in New Londo. The rest of the game has traps, but nothing relies so much on them as Sen's Fortress. Every area in Dark Souls throws a different pitch, and even the ones that are similar don't play exactly the same game (the Duke's Archives may have the same melee-with-ranged-accompaniment as the Burg, but the magic damage, the staircases and the vertically-aligned rooms changes your approach completely). Dark Souls 2 has much more issues with that. Some areas have variation: Heide's Tower has the giants, and the Iron Keep's a great melding of traps and lethal foes. But a lot of the areas struggle immensely with the idea of breaking from the Undead Burg model of 'human-sized enemies charging you in melee with ranged accompaniment'. A lot of the settings can very, and I think it's a gorgeous game, but half the areas feel exactly the same to fight through.
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Nov 4, 2014 06:10
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UltraVariant posted:Risk of Rain's difficulty curve is a straight vertical line for new players. Yeah, even with some decent luck with drops I'm lucky if I make it to the second boss. poo poo is insanely hard. If it would save while you play on the easy difficulty I'd enjoy it a lot more.
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Nov 4, 2014 14:36
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The Moon Monster posted:The giant bosses in that game all kind of suck really, but imprisoned is definitely the worst. I've had some really bad moments with him in particular. During a timed mission - he was in one of the tunnels in the sacred grove (the small cave like one with the stairs) and Shiek was about to do the killing blow...and the guy took no damage. Apparently Shiek trying to pull off that move where you empty the stamina bar got cancelled because of the low ceiling. And then I lost because there wasn't enough time left. There's also a kill 1000 enemies mission where four of them show up. Thank God for Volga's dragon smash thing. Also its completely random when they'll expose their weak point. King Dodongo likes to either do it every two seconds, or once for two minutes. Manhandla's seed spit attack can go gently caress itself.
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Nov 4, 2014 15:25
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kazil posted:All bosses in DS2 should have been Ornstein and Smough I think O&S and Capra Demon both deserve some credit as the 2 boss fights that I'm never really confident I can win on any given try. As much as you know what you have to do, they're so little room for error in each one, and what works on one try won't on another. Capra, I'd agree, is kind of a lovely deal. For instance, you can go in there one time, and dodge roll his first attack, take out the dogs on the stairs, and it's no problem. Go in there next time, do the same dodge-roll, but, whoops, there's a dog in your way this time; it staggers you, then Capra beats you like a railroad spike. Not like I couldn't just throw on heavy armor, but, eh.
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Nov 4, 2014 16:15
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scarycave posted:Manhandla's seed spit attack can go gently caress itself. You can block this attack completely and it will leave you in perfect position to counter with the boomerang.
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Nov 4, 2014 16:19
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RyokoTK posted:You can block this attack completely and it will leave you in perfect position to counter with the boomerang. Block? I mean, yeah, you could be a giant wuss and block. Blocking in a Warriors game, lookit this guy. If you're not wielding a Defenseless weapon then you're not a real Hyrule Warrior.
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Nov 4, 2014 16:22
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Got to play Trails In The Sky recently and it's a really good game but the fight system drags it down for me. For once, one of the main features is a very detailed game world that's nearly constantly reacting to all the stuff that's happening during the plot. This doesn't really concern monsters though, they're everywhere to the point when I'm constantly skipping fights hoping this wouldn't come back to kick me for not grinding enough. Secondly, the AI will go out of its way to incapacitate just one of your characters. They'll pummel on them until at least one person on your team faints which is really irritating since all the KO'd people in your party don't get XP at the end of the fight. I also hate when you get to fight fluffy bunnies and golden turtles and poo poo like that but this criticism could be aimed at most JRPGs.
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Nov 4, 2014 20:31
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Yeah, even with some decent luck with drops I'm lucky if I make it to the second boss. poo poo is insanely hard. If it would save while you play on the easy difficulty I'd enjoy it a lot more. I'm not sure if they've since fixed this, but last time I played RoR, you could do a run on Easy, then launch + quit out of a Normal game and it would properly unlock all of the stuff you grabbed on Easy. Making Easy not save anything by default is really lovely though. Why bother to even have it as an option if you can't participate in the core gameplay loop with it? I'm guessing they don't want you easily unlocking stuff on one difficulty and carrying it into another, but there are far better ways of preventing that. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 21:01 on Nov 4, 2014 |
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Nov 4, 2014 20:59
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oldpainless posted:Look at this loving scrub What part of that fight do you find the most difficult? UltraVariant posted:Risk of Rain's difficulty curve is a straight vertical line for new players. I played this for about 25 minutes then just gave up. I'm sure if I persevered and built up my skill I could eventually get the hang of, but on the other hand I could just play a different game that actually respects my time. There are plenty of roguelike-likes that aren't anywhere near as newbie hostile. The Moon Monster has a new favorite as of 01:01 on Nov 5, 2014 |
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Nov 5, 2014 00:54
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Cleretic posted:the Old Iron King While I agree with most of what you have to say, the Old Iron King is just straight up the balrog, with a random instant death pit in the middle of the arena that he can knock you into with one hit. He's terrible.
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Nov 5, 2014 01:31
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The final boss fight in Shadow of Mordor is super unsatisfying. The basic premise of the game is that this guy called the Hand of Sauron kills Talion (the main character) and his family, causing Talion to become linked to a wraith becoming undead. You spend the whole game trying to track him down and kill him, finally getting to him at the end. Then the Hand just kills himself. This makes sense from a story standpoint as it causes the wraith to bind to him instead of Talion. Doesn't change the fact that you don't actually get revenge against him.
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Nov 5, 2014 02:21
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Captain Lavender posted:The Mega Man X talk reminded me of one of my favorites - Mega Man X4. Ugh, you just gave me flashbacks. I can beat most of the bosses in this game without taking any damage at all, up to and including the first two forms of Sigma. But holy poo poo that last form is just evil - I've only beaten it using the cheat that gives you infinite Nova Strike or whatever the ultimate armor attack is called.
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Nov 5, 2014 02:22
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GIANT OUIJA BOARD posted:While I agree with most of what you have to say, the Old Iron King is just straight up the balrog, with a random instant death pit in the middle of the arena that he can knock you into with one hit. He's terrible. Yeah, and the Duke's Dear Freyja is effectively Shelob. I wasn't talking about the visual design, I was talking about how they played. And for better or worse, nothing else in the game quite plays like the Old Iron King.
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Nov 5, 2014 02:35
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Cleretic posted:Yeah, and the Duke's Dear Freyja is effectively Shelob. I wasn't talking about the visual design, I was talking about how they played. And for better or worse, nothing else in the game quite plays like the Old Iron King. For the better, since the Iron King is essentially designed for ranged combat almost exclusively, making it a pain for melee-only characters (like mine). Edit: Freja has a lot less in common with Shelob than the Iron King does with the Balrog.  vs 
GIANT OUIJA BOARD has a new favorite as of 08:27 on Nov 5, 2014 |
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Nov 5, 2014 08:21
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GIANT OUIJA BOARD posted:For the better, since the Iron King is essentially designed for ranged combat almost exclusively, making it a pain for melee-only characters (like mine). He's definitely easier with ranged weapons, but he's incredibly easy with pure melee since he can be attacked during or after any of his attacks. Either after he slams his fist, leaving his hand vulnerable for literally seconds, or during his fire attacks. I didn't like him though, since all of the "Old Ones" were way too easy and balanced for newcomers to the Souls series. Which is totally fine, just not optimal for anyone else.
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Nov 5, 2014 09:35
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Jordbo posted:I didn't like him though, since all of the "Old Ones" were way too easy and balanced for newcomers to the Souls series. That little thing dragging Dark Souls down: the 'learn to play, noob' fanbase. 
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Nov 5, 2014 09:44
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The Moon Monster posted:What part of that fight do you find the most difficult? All of the first half. Its a very difficult fight. I died at least 20 times to them.
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Nov 5, 2014 15:01
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