Dark Souls III: The Ringed City DLC - We just can't stop talking about DS2

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Dark Souls III: The Ringed City DLC - We just can't stop talking about DS2

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Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Playing this for the second time and I've been mostly enjoying it but wow the Demon Ruins area is awful. It feels like a bad Bloodborne chalice dungeon. I'm pretty sure I've seen the same Catacombs set-pieces 20 times each now and the quadruped Ghrus remind me of mini Blood Starved Beasts with their spastic swiping and overly-aggressive pursuit. I just want out of this bullshit maze!

# ¿ Jul 8, 2018 13:35

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 15:24

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

I've done every Soulsborne game this year, Dark Souls 3 being my current and last, and Dark Souls 2 isn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be. My main issue with it is that you start out so weak and lovely that you basically have to just have faith that eventually you'll become a tanky killing machine and stop getting stun-locked to death by every other hollow. No part of the game was as hard as the Forest of the Fallen Giants for me.

TyroneGoldstein posted:

Demon Ruins was kind of a slog. It did really feel mailed in although I like the payoff of finally getting to that drat turret.

Getting to the other side with 0 Estus and realizing there's no bonfire at the same instant you see bonewheel skeletons in the distance is a uniquely Dark Souls experience.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2018 16:38

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Dodging attacks is extremely easy in Dark Souls 3, but countering them is harder than Bloodborne because the dodge tends to put you further away. Also, the lack of the HP recovery mechanic from Bloodborne means it's a lot harder to safely attack a fast enemy with high poise since you won't be able to get the HP back if you fail to stagger them. It means that battles with fast high-poise enemies tend to be more protracted with me dodging 10 of their attacks for every one of mine that I can safely land.

I find myself clearing out areas over and over again in Dark Souls 3, which I never had to do in Dark Souls 1. A lot of the enemies in Dark Souls 3 are just too dangerous to leave alive, which makes repeated exploration tedious, and dying after clearing everything out for the Nth time really sucks.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2018 22:00

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Dark Souls 2 is a chill game where everything feels kind of like a dream and you can go at your own pace, do whatever you want, and you'll eventually get through it. Bloodborne has more of a high-stress nightmare vibe with a lot of beasts and shrieking. Past the first playthrough or two, it's not really down to which one's a better game, but which one is more pleasant to spend time in. I only have like one Bloodborne playthrough per year in me.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2018 21:28

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

CordlessPen posted:

the covenants are seriously poo poo.

I kind of like them being low-impact swappable items in Dark Souls 3. Covenants in Dark Souls 1 are based around devoting yourself to a single one per playthrough (given that you lose progress in one by switching to another) which basically means I never end up caring about any of the covenants. Generally I just become a Sunbro for the gold phantom and never level it up because I never play with Faith. I've actually equipped and participated in all of the covenants I've found in Dark Souls 3, so even if the covenants themselves are less cool than Dark Souls 1, it makes finding a covenant shrine actually feel like I found something I might be able to use.

"Fan service" is basically the appropriate summation of the negative aspects of Dark Souls 3 to me. Most of it's just little design things. I rolled my eyes in Demon Ruins at the ridiculous number of statues of Stray Demon and Taurus Demon copy-and-pasted around. In a similar situation in Dark Souls 1 there'd probably be a single statue and it'd be in a thematically appropriate configuration, whereas in Dark Souls 3 it's basically "REMEMBER THESE GUYS FROM DARK SOULS?" wallpaper. Ironically, I think they could have made it more successful by leaning a little bit further into the fan service on a larger scale. It's cool that DS3 takes place in the same region as DS1, just many generations later, so of course most of the familiar places are gone or unrecognizable, but I wish they'd kept it just a little more familiar. Farron Keep seems to be the New Londo area in Dark Souls 1 (given the presence of Dark Wraith Knights and the fact that the boss is the Abyss Watchers), but since there are no recognizable landmarks or geography, it just makes me think about Dark Souls 1 with no real payoff. It would be cool if the basic layout of the land was the same, but the structures and people had changed, so you could clearly draw a comparison between the worlds of Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 3.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2018 17:47

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Reusing maps outright is a bit lazy (and Anor Londo III is just kind of a lazy fan-service area anyway), but did anyone complain about Oolacile and Darkroot Garden being recognizably the same place? That's the kind of stuff I mean. I don't want to run through all the same areas, but it would be at least cool to be able to say "hey, this is where I fought X in Dark Souls 1" or whatever.

Also, New Londo and Darkroot are right next to each other, and both New Londo and Oolacile connect to the Abyss, so Farron being built on top of both of them is reasonable.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2018 18:07

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

I'm pretty fed up with Irithyll Dungeon. The jailers are extremely bullshit with their automatic HP drain and zero-windup stun-locking firebrand attack. On top of that, it's just another loving glorified sewer that lacks any of the spooky charm of the original Tower of Latria. Basically the Catacombs and Demon Ruins again with a slightly different tileset and even worse enemies. I've really enjoyed the entire game up to now (other than Demon Ruins, which just feels a bit tacked on) but once I stepped through that mist wall at the start of Irithyll, the game seems to have veered into self-parody. I literally laughed out loud when I was picking off all the jailers one by one from the adjacent room and they just kept coming like some kind of Dark Souls clown car. The only thing keeping me going is knowing that there are unopened shortcut doors that I will eventually be able to use to circumvent this absurd bullshit. Anyway back at it

# ¿ Jul 11, 2018 00:16

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Why is literally every chest in this game a Mimic? I'm not even kidding, I have no memories of opening any non-Mimic chests. They also have extremely lovely grab hitboxes. I've died multiple times from being behind them when they do their grab lunge and end up teleporting into their mouth for an instant death. How many Mimics are there in Dark Souls 1, like three?

# ¿ Jul 11, 2018 14:25

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Happy Noodle Boy posted:

Mimic chests breathe and the chain is pointing the wrong way from regular chests. Once you know what to look for it�s pretty easy to not die to them. You can also say a joke out loud and see if they laugh.

Yeah, the chain is a dead giveaway. It's not a matter of being tricked by them since there's almost zero chance of being tricked by a Mimic in a game where the majority of chests are Mimics. It's mainly an issue with Mimics being able to grab you with their lunge when you're behind them (I can't tell if it's an instantaneous 180 or if it's just a bad hitbox, but either way it's pretty bullshit for an insta-death move). Plus they have near-infinite poise and suck pretty bad as far as enemies go. Irithyll and the Profaned Capital are particularly lousy with them.

abraxas posted:

I legit wish this was a mechanic in game. Even if they just reacted to your gestures (or one specific gesture) or something would be awesome.

That's how they work in Nioh, which I thought was pretty cool.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2018 16:13

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Blighttown is demoralizing, but that's only half of the equation. Its ultimate payoff is when, after potentially hours being stuck in a godforsaken swamp, you go up the elevator and see the literal light at the end of the tunnel, and gradually realize you're coming straight up to Firelink Shrine through the back door. That's the kind of payoff that the subsequent games gave up by being fully warpable. Those games are consumed in bonfire-to-bonfire chunks, so the next bonfire is always the most important goal. It's not just a checkpoint or respawn point, you're actually unlocking the next chunk of the game and moving on from the previous one. There might as well be a "Level Complete" screen every time you touch a bonfire in Dark Souls 3. Dark Souls 1 bonfires don't have the same connotation of progress, just respite. I particularly like the fact that a bonfire is a home base where you can do everything you need to (level up, reinforce weapons, repair) and Firelink is more of a conceptual hub than a literal one. It makes warping feel less necessary, as any bonfire can be home.

Not to poo poo on Dark Souls 3 or anything, I just finished a playthrough tonight and quite enjoyed it, but the core gameplay cycle is much different from Dark Souls 1. Actually it has a lot more in common with Demon's Souls, which I guess was intentional given all the direct homages, Firelink Shrine itself included. I'll take Tower of Latria over Irithyll Dungeon any day though.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2018 04:01

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Just bookmark all three, having separate separate threads for things is the whole point of a forum. Here's hoping there'll be a Demon's Souls Remastered thread next year.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2018 22:57

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

morallyobjected posted:

coming from Bloodborne, it seems like DS3 is a lot more liberal with bonfires than BB was with lanterns. I've been running around the Undead Settlement ~~killing things~~ trying not to die because I can't for the love of me get the parry times down and I've already come across like three different ones, and I'm sure there are some others in places I haven't explored yet. In BB you're lucky if you can find like two in one area this size.

Indeed. BB's headstones are basically like the equivalent of DS3's "locations" (the categories on the warp screen), and there are five in BB (counting DLC) and about 30 in DS3, some of which have more bonfires than most of the headstones in BB. The lantern distribution in BB is pretty similar to the bonfire distribution in Dark Souls, i.e. they aren't meant to demarcate sections of areas like progress checkpoints like DS3, they're just scattered resting/travel points. In DS3 you can pretty much track your progress linearly by how many bonfires you've unlocked.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2018 18:17

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Simply Simon posted:

This reminds me way back when I was trading items in Diablo 2 and violently hated it because I'd write "hello, how are you?" and the response would 80% be "throw your loving items on the ground I don't have all day".

Sounds like a real "Doctor, it hurts when I do this" situation

# ¿ Aug 17, 2018 12:08

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Coming from fighting games

This is probably why you like DS3 the best.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 23:01

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

The reason I consider DS3 the worst in the series is probably the exact reason that the people who say it's the best say that: it's too focused on fast-paced combat, moving quickly from encounter to encounter in a linear fashion, with careful exploration being a secondary goal gatekept behind skill checks. Pretty much the entire reason I like Dark Souls in the first place is the exploration, the slow dance combat, and especially slowly opening up connections between all the different places in the world.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 23:08

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Also I can only take so much of crumbling stone buildings and gravestones. Bloodborne, for all its greatness, suffers a little from this as well, but it more than makes up for it by having the spirit of Dark Souls world design in it which Dark Souls 3 forsakes almost entirely.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 23:21

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Nothing says "not treating it like a fighting game" like having spreadsheets of moveset frame data on hand.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 23:25

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

I never understood why people single out the Iron Keep elevator when the entire game is laid out like that. DS2 takes place across an entire landmass and you're regularly going from one place to another place seemingly many miles away (judging by the world map) just by walking down a passageway. I just took it as an abstract representation of a journey (or a fragmented memory/dream of a journey) as opposed to a literal implication that those things are connected that way. I mean, look at how far Heide's Tower is away from Majula when you look over the water, versus how you actually get here.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2019 14:17

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Technically No Man's Wharf is a totally optional area. It's one of my favourite areas in the game though, and not very long.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2020 18:29

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

People used to be able to trade for (most likely duped) Pure Bladestone which made it not so bad, but now that the servers are gone...yikes.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2020 04:30

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

King of Solomon posted:

I feel like the servers being down probably makes doing the World Tendency events a lot harder, too.

From what I remember, going online actually made them impossible because going online would force the world tendency to the average online world tendency. I'm pretty sure you could make it impossible to get the pure white tendency stuff on a particular playthrough if you logged into the servers while your own world was in a pure white state but before you did the events, since it'd get reset back to grey-ish with no way to raise it anymore.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2020 04:52

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

GutBomb posted:

I might be wrong but I�m assuming bluepoint is just using a modified dark souls 3 engine for this. If that is correct I would imagine movement is going to be consistent with those games.

I don't think so. For one thing, the Dark Souls 3 engine is FromSoftware's engine, and they have nothing to do with this project. But aside from that, Bluepoint have their own in-house Bluepoint Engine that they've used for many of their games including Shadow of the Colossus. From what I understand, the SotC remake is based on the original game code with various parts of it replaced by their own engine for stuff like graphics and input, so I think Demon's Souls is likely going to be a similar story. I wouldn't expect the core gameplay feel to change much, as it's likely still going to be some version of the original code running underneath for things like combat and animations.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2020 04:42

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

DS2 is fun and has a good world but it looks like dogshit and is way too long.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2020 16:38

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Sulyvahn is the first boss in the game that feels a little overtuned to me. It's a bit annoying when half of his sword swings feel like they have some weight behind them and it takes him a bit to move them around, and other times he just flips it at you with zero windup like it's made out of styrofoam.

Luckily I'm using Sharp Sellsword Twinblades this playthrough which are insane when two-handed with 40DEX and wrecked the poo poo out of him despite playing pretty badly. Also wrecked Aldrich solo, something I've never done before.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2021 01:33

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

axolotl farmer posted:

It was trickier in DS2 where you destroy the treasure if you hit a non-mimic cheast with a weapon. No pokes just to be safe there!

You had to really beat the poo poo out of it to destroy it. One sword swing wouldn't break it. Maybe if you're using a huge 2H weapon or something I guess.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2021 14:34

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

It is totally possible for the chests to be destroyed by accident, but I've never accidentally destroyed one while checking if it's a mimic

# ¿ Mar 2, 2021 15:38

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Saul Kain posted:

Thanks. I�m familiar with Cheat Engine. That makes sense. That doesn�t get you banned from online services? I don�t really want to use Cheat Engine until I�ve finished a run normally.

I'm pretty sure if you go online with Cheat Engine or use hacked items (even if you yourself aren't cheating, but someone drops it for you) you can get "penalized" which basically means you get put into a separate online pool with all the other cheaters and hackers. If you just play offline I don't think anything should happen.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2021 16:20

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Man I hate the Twin Princes fight so much. The only real enemy here is the camera. Nothing like an enemy teleporting directly behind you where you can't see them mid-attack and taking away another two minutes of your life while you ride a long rear end elevator yet again.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2021 16:40

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

And Tyler Too! posted:

I like invading Archives because it becomes shutes & ladders but for keeps.

I got invaded during my first trip to Archives this run and the guy just kept trying to bait me to run up some stairs instead of fighting. It's been a few years so I didn't remember much, and after awhile some phantoms showed up to help so I followed, figuring we could handle whatever was up there. It was just a trick to get us into a room full of wax priests and we all got covered in wax and immobilized and easily picked off :negative:

# ¿ Mar 7, 2021 15:24

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

I was having trouble with the Princes but then I turned my camera sensitivity up to 10 and the fight became easy. Probably not a sign of a great boss mechanically speaking, but it is an interesting gimmick and the move set is fun.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2021 05:44

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Mescal posted:

I raised one and it's blocked off. No illusory walls on the side I can find access to by where the one guy tried to trick me.

I don't think you can get across from that area - you have to progress some more and at some point you can get up on the rooftops where you'll have access to the rafters and can drop down on the other side.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2021 06:11

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Aidan_702 posted:

This always seemed a bit of a plot hole to me - if linking the flame causes the curse to disappear (for I dunno a few thousand years before the flame starts to fade again) then how is he still alive at all?

I wouldn't think too hard about it. Dark Souls 3's world is a hodge-podge of things from the Souls series that intentionally don't logically belong together in time or space. This becomes explicit in the second DLC where you're literally walking around on piles of discarded Dark Souls levels in a gigantic dumpster and you fight the first boss underground in the ruins of the original Firelink Shrine.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2021 17:03

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

I finally managed to solo Darkeater Midir last night for the first time ever. I don't think I ever even found him before, let alone fought him. It took around about 10 attempts over the course of two evenings. I just barely clutched it out with zero estus left by the end and he still had a sizable chunk of health but he did his wild flailing laser attack which I somehow managed to avoid and during his little rest afterwards I caused him to stagger and got a critical attack on his head which took out his entire remaining health bar. I had already basically written the attempt off as a failure since I ran out of estus and had very little health left, so I was pretty flabbergasted when I suddenly won.

I only have vague memories of doing the DLCs from when they first came out, and I remember struggling with Gael so I was mentally preparing for another night of attempts, but after Midir, Gael took about 3 minutes to kill on my first attempt. It felt like my muscle memory from fighting Artorias was kicking in and somehow carried me through. I capped off the evening with Soul of Cinder (a complete pushover by comparison), thus completing my first Dark Souls 3 run beating every boss solo. I can't decide if I want to do an NG+ run now or move on to something else, possibly another Sekiro run since I haven't played it since it came out. Some part of me wants to platinum the game, but another part doesn't want to deal with all the finnicky NPC quest poo poo you have to do. Is there an NG+ checklist somewhere that tells me an exact order?

# ¿ Mar 24, 2021 15:12

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Reality Protester posted:

How does Firelink connect with High Wall of Lothric? all the other levels (so far) link together naturally but the initial teleport is really jarring.

I think I'm going to start a new guy. I got my first pyromancer guy to road of crucifixion but I missed the mound makers covenant and it sounds like a hoot. also the typical new character build mistakes.

Theoretically it's behind Lothric, so the side of it you see from outside Firelink is the opposite side from the part you see and interact with in the rest of the game (hence why you can't see Firelink from anywhere). But the fact that you can visit the Firelink Shrine in its dark and abandoned state via a contiguous path from within Lothric leads me to believe that teleporting to and from the actual haven of Firelink may not be a simple matter of relocating yourself spatially.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2021 02:20

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

The worst "part" of Dark Souls 2 is how loving long it is. I can't imagine playing it on NG+ because by the time I'm finished NG and the DLCs, I was ready to move on like 15 hours ago.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2021 15:44

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

DS2 is not the prettiest game anyone has played

# ¿ Oct 28, 2021 13:57

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

I don't think Dark Souls 1 looks bad at all, except the eye-searing lava in Lost Izalith. That's an art direction issue though, while Dark Souls 2 has systemic issues with its lighting seemingly stemming from when they ripped out the torch mechanic that they showed off at E3. I'm glad they got rid of that aspect of it, but the actual lighting engine looked way better in the E3 demo. After they removed it, everything just looks like it's lit by a flat ambient light in a lot of areas. My guess is rather than relighting the entire world, they just raised the minimum light level in the darkest areas, which makes anything not directly lit up by a dynamic light source look really flat. Whenever there are a lot of torches around, it can look good, like No Man's Wharf, The Gutter, Undead Crypt - those areas seem to have a minimum light level of zero, so the contrast looks right and you get dark corners and shaded areas. But then other areas like Lost Bastille and Forest of Fallen Giants, everything is lit at the same ambient level (even indoor vs outdoor) and it looks really bizarre.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2021 14:31

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Basically every area in the game is geographically discontinuous from each other and connected via nonsensical hallways (it supposedly takes place across like an entire landmass). People just single out Iron Keep because it's the most obvious. Ever noticed you can see Heide's Tower in the far distance across the water from Majula, but then you walk down a hallway and you're there? Whatever technical reason they had for doing it, it works with the "fragmented dream" theme of the game.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2021 17:47

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

I think they'll probably fix most of the games, but I wouldn't hold my breath on PTDE.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2022 04:13

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 15:24

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

I don't see what the Japanese text adds regarding Havel. The offical translation is pretty clear that Havel was a bishop who was a companion of Gwyn and that the gear is worn by "Havel the Rock's warriors" rather than only Havel himself and that the watchtower basement is a prison for an old hero turned hollow, locked up by his friend (the divine blacksmith who was holding the key). There's plenty in the official text that supports the notion that the person you fight is not Havel himself. Is there anywhere in the game that he is actually unambiguously referred to as Havel The Rock, like it says in the article? As far as I remember I just surmised his identity by the fact that he drops Havel's Ring. If anything the fact that you find Havel's gear in Anor Londo regardless of whether or not you kill the watchtower guy is a testament to the fact that he died there and is not locked up in the Burg.

Volte fucked around with this message at 04:57 on May 11, 2022

# ¿ May 11, 2022 04:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Dark Souls III: The Ringed City DLC - We just can't stop talking about DS2

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