Dark Souls

Atomic Postman

Atomic Postman

Vault Archives Overseer
In celebration of the recent change from the terrifyingly awful GFWL to Steamworks, let's have a Dark Souls thread!

I recently finished a 2H Zweihander playthrough wherein I attempted to do every area, boss and NPC sidequest. It was an absolute joy, re-learning mechanics and combat to suit the Two-Handed playstyle was a thrill and rejuvenated my enjoyment of the game.

To get conversation and discussion started, I ask you these questions:

Who is your favorite NPC?

What is the best part of Dark Souls for you?

Which is your favorite boss?

What is your favorite weapon/playstyle?



As for favorite NPC, I'm caught between Laurentius and Solaire. Though the Crestfallen Warrior always has a special place in my heart for being the Dark Souls NPC.

For me the best part of Dark Souls is the phenomenal sense of atmosphere and world building. I've yet to see a game convey a setting so easily and perfectly with so little words as Dark Souls has.

My favorite boss is easily Dragonslayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough with Knight Artorias coming in close second.

After my recent playthrough I've gotta say the Two Handed Zweihander build I made was just pure fun to play, probably my best experience with the game so far.


Is everyone excited for the sequel, Bloodborne? (Wish they would have stuck with Beast Souls, just so we could have had the "Souls trilogy")
 
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Dark Souls 1 is one of my favorite games of all time. I have the artbook in my hands right now. I've finished off most bosses in Dark Souls 1, but haven't played much co-op. Add me on steam if you want to play with me:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Akratus/

Who is your favorite NPC?
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Solaire of course!

What is the best part of Dark Souls for you?
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Everything until getting the Soul Vessel.

Which is your favorite boss?
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In gameplay, the Gargoyles. They have the most hard yet do-able challenge for me.

Story-wise I can't help but have a soft spot for Sif.

In art design it must be Ornstein.

What is your favorite weapon/playstyle?
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Halberd and shield. Melee all day erry day.
 
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This game is now Steamworks supported but I still cannot get it because of regional issues. I thought GFWL was to blame for that one, but it seems that isn't the case.

Fuck Dark Souls. I wanted to play that game so much, but apparently, the game doesn't want me to play it. So yeah, fuck it.
 
Akratus said:
That certainly does suck. What issue do you have specifically?
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You tell me.
Trying to access it through Google:

An error was encountered while processing your request:

This item is currently unavailable in your region


It doesn't even show up in the search bar in my Steam client. Everything's normal with the sequel though.


 
That is a strange issue that you have their, Atomkilla, and a very tragic one too. Dark Souls is ultimately my most treasured gaming experience,an absolutely fantastic game in every regard.

I wouldn't recommend the "sequel" Dark Souls II, though.

It's not a bad game by any means but it is a very mediocre one and jumping into it from Dark Souls 1 makes it seem horrendous. It is not a good place to start the franchise at all.

If you own a PS4, I would recommend Bloodborne next March, it's a spiritual sequel to Dark Souls created by the same team as the first one and Demons's Souls, unlike Dark Souls II. I think it will be a more fitting sequel than Dark Souls II itself.


Everything until getting the Soul Vessel.
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Never really understood this complaint.


I actually liked the second half of the game, I liked the openness and the choices you were provided.


Sure, Lost Izalith was a bit shit and the Bed of Chaos was pure cheese, but Duke's Archives, Tomb of the Giants and New Londo made up for it, in my opinion.


Plus that final area of the game.....
The Gwyn fight....
was Godlike atmospherically, symbolically and gameplay wise.


Which Serpent did you side with, Akratus? (Spoilers from here on out)

I personally sided with Frampt.

Obviously, you are simply prolonging the inevitable and sacrificing yourself to a thousand years of burning alive. Despite that I thought it was the better choice than Kaathe due to seeing the products of the Dark in the forms of New Londo and Oolacile. Sure Kaathe is right, the Gods are felled and an Age of Freedom and Mankind is begun, but at what cost? Humanity goes wild and Mankind transforms into the horrific wild creatures of the Abyss.

The way I see it as well is that the Chosen Undead will likely burn longer than Gwyn in the Kiln due to the fact that the Chosen Undead likely has an extremely strong soul on top of all the mighty souls he has consumed throughout the game. An additional point is that the Gods won't have much of a power over everyone as the large majority of them are dead. (Though I suppose the "smaller" Gods like Flann, Fina and Velka are still plodding about, but who knows what state they are in.)
 
I couldn't play Dark Souls 2. I wanted to, but the mouse buttons have a delay. It utterly destroyed the controls for me.
 
Yes, I beat the game with it. DSfix and DSmfix (mouse fix) were paramount in this.

I was even a little proficient in backstabbing, and certainly proficient in parrying. Though only for regular mobs, I sadly beat the king only by letting another player doing all of the fighting after getting too frustrated by hours and hours of attempts. (Since I sucked at parrying him and had a shitty character)
 
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Well it's been a few years since I picked up Dark Souls, so I'd have to delve into the dark recesses of my mind to come up with the answers to the topic questions...

Favorite NPC: I suppose the NPC I enjoyed fulfilling the character arc the most of would be Logan. His monicker is just plain funny, and if you use Sorcery he provides the best in the game. But from learning about him from his disciple to finding him in Sen's Fortress to freeing him once more in the Duke's Archives to watching him slowly waste away into madness as Seathe's magics overwhelm his mind was really an interesting spectacle of a story. Solaire's tragic ending is also a great NPC story, but since it's optional (since you can save him) it's necessarily his canonical end, but Logan will always lose himself and end up fighting you, buck naked, if you follow his arc all the way through.

Best part of Dark Souls for me: Simply the UI and control improvements over Demon's Souls, really. Being able to access (an increasing list) of emotes from hitting select instead of holding down X for a number of seconds was a great idea. Sure that moved messages to an item rather than the select button, but that was okay. The jump from a running start was a great addition. A few more kinds of attacks added to better combat in many ways. While I liked that Dark Souls was a continuous world, it felt much smaller in scale than Demon's Souls. For one thing, it WAS smaller, because localized worlds you'd teleport to allowed for much larger maps in the first game, but for another, simply the act of teleporting to a world rather than walking there made it feel that much more grandiose and epic. It was cool to be able to walk from the depths of New Londo all the way to the heights of Sen's Fortress, but the novelty came at the cost of that smaller world. But if the UI and control improvements were "patched into" Demon's Souls, that would be 100% an improvement that I'd swoon over, so I love that aspect of Dark Souls!

Favorite Boss: Toss up between Ornstein and Smough and The Four Kings. Both were incredibly challenging because they took you on in numbers, but both fights had their own particular quirks on top of that formula. O&S were two separate bosses, and the second half of the fight would depend on which boss you killed first. The second fight was partially a handicapped battle because you HAD to wear a mandatory ring to even set foot in The Abyss, and though they shared one life bar they could come at you all 4 at once if you didn't dispatch them quick enough. For the longest time I HATED The Four Kings fight, but after the 1.10 patch and actually growing at the game, then going forth with various challenges, I came to really enjoy fighting them. But the music and atmosphere and drama when facing Ornstein and Smough still makes my heart soar every time I reach that point in the game. So, really, it's hard to say which of the two I loved more.

Favorite weapon/playstyle: No favorite weapon, per se, but my favorite playstyle was easily the "EpicNameBro Challenge", in which you basically played as your starting class. You could equip rings, and you could upgrade and un-equip any of your starting items for any given encounter (but no upgrading Pyromancy Flame), but you couldn't increase your soul level, you couldn't use elemental upgrades, you couldn't buy new equipment, so for all intents and purposes, you WERE your starting class. It was endlessly more fun than a SL1 Challenge, which could get easily cheesed by abusing the shit out of Pyromancy. Beating the Gargoyles as a Knight was tons of fun. Fighting Ornstein and Smough as a Knight was ultimate challenge of the game. Because I had no method to record my run, I couldn't submit my results to ENB to get immortalized in his list of Epic Challengers, but the experience was well worth it. =)

AlphaPromethean said:
Is everyone excited for the sequel, Bloodborne? (Wish they would have stuck with Beast Souls, just so we could have had the "Souls trilogy")
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But we already have the "Souls trilogy", starting with the epic Demon's Souls. =P

Seriously though, that game blows Dark Souls out of the water for me, in every way. I love both, but the first one is just better in most conceivable ways, barring the obvious UI improvements Dark Souls made, of course.

But to answer your question: I wasn't even aware there was another sequel on the way. I hadn't picked up DkS2 yet, and I'd heard it was getting DLC pretty regularly, so I thought that would be the latest Souls title for a while yet to come.
 
I actually didn't like Demons's Souls nearly as much as Dark Souls. Though I will say Demons's is superior to Dark Souls II.


I really wasn't a fan of the setting and story compared to Dark Souls, atmosphere wise I also preferred Dark Souls.I also liked the interconnected and amazingly designed land of Lordran better than the sectioned Nexus system used by Demons's Souls. I found the Estus and Bonfire system to be superior to Demons's Souls easily abusable Grass system and trivial "restart the entire level" respawning mechanic.

As I said earlier, I wouldn't recommend Dark Souls II. If you want more Souls games I would jump straight into Bloodborne, Dark Souls's Gothic Horror themed successor.

They recently had a public Alpha demo and they've been showing off bits of gameplay here and there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wtf8udG3mjM
 
AlphaPromethean said:
Akratus said:
I couldn't play Dark Souls 2. I wanted to, but the mouse buttons have a delay. It utterly destroyed the controls for me.
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Holy shit, you beat Dark Souls 1 with a Keyboard and Mouse?

I have heard it compared to pulling teeth.
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I feel far much comfortable with K&M than pad.
and I didn't install anything.

although I didn't played Demon's soul, it looks better than DS1 for stage design(or length), boss and story. beside, story of Darksoul lead to nothing.
 
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That's so strange, the game was very literally designed for a controller and no thought was put towards a keyboard and mouse.
 
Honestly, if they ever "remastered" Dark Souls I, I wouldn't want it on the Dark Souls II engine. I found the art direction in that game to be horrific and so distant from Dark Soul's bleak style.


You can bet on a Dark Souls III, the current Director said that there would be news on Dark Souls III before Dark Souls II is even finished.
 
AlphaPromethean said:
I actually didn't like Demons's Souls nearly as much as Dark Souls. Though I will say Demons's is superior to Dark Souls II.


I really wasn't a fan of the setting and story compared to Dark Souls, atmosphere wise I also preferred Dark Souls.I also liked the interconnected and amazingly designed land of Lordran better than the sectioned Nexus system used by Demons's Souls. I found the Estus and Bonfire system to be superior to Demons's Souls easily abusable Grass system and trivial "restart the entire level" respawning mechanic.
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I found the Estus system far more abusable and much less thought out, personally. Duels weren't won in DeS by some lame lagstab maneuver (those in DkS that carried on longer than 5 seconds rarely lasted more than 10-20 anyway) and your phantoms weren't dependent on you sucking down a flask to save them. The "Umbasa Bros" popularized the honor system where no invading phantom was ever attacked nor did it attack the host until both parties bowed, and any fights were to carry out in the order of phantoms vs phantoms before the host was ever attacked. This was, of course, not universal, and plenty BP players would run past the defending "team" and resort to becoming an obstacle for them to overcome, and that was fun as well. It made for really interesting games, because a single player could enjoy being part of a scenario for over 10 minutes at a time. It could get boring, if the defenders weren't accustomed to the honor system and just cowered until the invader decided to leave, but those were thankfully uncommon instances.

I understand that the changes in DkS were designed to improve, but they didn't. Being able to "chug" Estus combined with the Poise system introduced new abuses into the game where invaders would slash away lethally at their target only for them to stand unphased, ready to counterattack with their broken lagstabs or a crushing blow with some oversized weapon now that their adversary is completely drained of Stamina OR simply stand there while their phantoms dispatch the invader, equally as immortal because of the constant chugging. Now of course, this was limited to 20 charges, but that was almost always more than enough. Unlike DeS, I rarely encountered groups who would abide by the long-established honor system, despite the fact that the Umbasa Bros moved on into DkS as well. The new system was simply far too abusable, and the larger popularity of the game, with its newer playerbase, introduced a large population of players both totally oblivious to the honor system and unwilling to adopt it.

The entire concept behind the Souls series PVP was always "whatever you want", so naturally this isn't to say that the honor system was something players had to do. The opposite, in fact. It was adopted by players, but if they were to choose not to abide by it, the games totally supported that. That's a given. But it was always more fun when they DID follow it. And I never found running as far away as possible in the hopes you can eat a grass was EVER as abusable as that damned Estus Flask. I really can't say enough how much I hated the stats changes in DkS. They were terrible ideas.

Personally though, I enjoyed Demon's Souls' atmosphere more because this wasn't a land of undead where time didn't exist with the same rules as the land of the living; this was a place where people actually LIVED, so its bleakness was all the more disturbing. The dual choice ending wasn't easy to get locked out of (that always annoyed me about Kaathe vs Frampt), although that did mean it was much more simplistically achieved. But then again, the "dual choice" was applied to multiple sections of the game, such as becoming White or Black tendency, and whether your actions made the worlds White or Black tendency. The combinations of your choices, which NPCs you rescued or killed, and in what order you performed all these tasks, made for an incredibly dynamic story. For instance, while Ostrava was always doomed to die, the manner in which he died was still left up to the player. Old King Doran's fate was equally a decision of the players. But these were 2 much more simplistic side stories compared to what became of Biorr, what became of Yurt, Mephistopheles, and the player's part in their organization. DkS had some similarities to these in Lautrec, Solaire, and Siegmeyer, but they were more like easter eggs, because their stories were so easy to overlook and ignore completely, and also somewhat convoluted to complete.

But ultimately, our opposing preference for DkS/DeS map layouts is a perfect example of "one man's meat is another man's poison". You like the openness and interconnected manner the map was setup; I felt that it was nifty but ultimately damning to the game's immersion by making the game world feel so restrictive and small. Your meat, my poison. My meat, your poison. XD

Sad to hear that you wouldn't recommend DkS2. I knew from what the devs were saying while it was in the making that it would be "more mainstream", but so was Dark Souls compared to Demon's Souls, so I was hoping it would still be enjoyable to play, and still recognizably a Souls game in much of its spirit. =/
 
Well, I bought DkS2 anyway while I was out buying a new PS3 controller for myself (some of my more demanding games are just DESTROYING my controllers, not because I do anything to them out of rage, but because the repeated, fast-paced, rabid button-pressing and inputs have just totally worn out the controllers over the years of use, and NGS claimed another casualty earlier this week, with my 4th controller unable to distinguish between button inputs, so I needed a new one...) despite the overall recommendation not to, from AlphaPromethean, if I understood his suggestions properly.

But I'd asked enough friends about it over the year it's been out, and they kept coming back with "worth playing", so I thought it couldn't hurt. I STILL haven't bought the Artorias DLC for DkS (cause it's DLC for the original console version, unlike the PC port which comes with it) so I might get around to completing that part of the story, so I suppose I can leave the DkS2 DLCs largely alone if I find the game overall unsatisfactory, or grab em if I indeed liked it.

Time will tell.
 
Dark Souls II isn't a bad game, really.

In fact it's one of the better games to come out of 2014.

But, the reason I have expressed distaste for it is that it was a major disappointment and a huge step down in every aspect from Dark Souls.

It lacked some of the things that made Dark Souls one of my favorite games, and jumping into it for the first time immediately after finishing Dark Souls left a bad taste in my mouth.
 
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