Dark Souls I, II and III

[Sean]

Dark Souls II closed beta on PS3 in October.

https://www.shacknews.com/article/80794 ... is-october

[Todinho]

Just wanna say that Sen's fortress is hell but I insisted to get every item I could see out of spite!Then upgraded the uchigatana to +10 and I can destroy pretty much anything easily,so much so that the Iron golem went down without much trouble,now Im in Anor Londo.

[James]

The Uchigatana is a fantastic weapon, and it has Bleed effect too (quick hits in succession will build Bleed in enemies).

Marching ever forward, Anor Londo has the potential to be frustrating. Don't let the archers get to you!

[Todinho]

I wanna know who's smart idea was to put precision plataforming in this game ,before that thou I was spoilled about the painted world and that you can miss it so I went back to the Asylum got the doll and managed to kill the stray demon in 1 try!(uchigatana FTW!) went back and got into the painted world(not without dying to those catwalks first of course)im gonna say the painted world might be my favorite part of the game so far it's like a microcosmos of the entire game full of things to do in a relative small space there I did some co-op and got invaded by that weird boss from Demon soul's(im wearing his armor now btw) the phalanx call back was also cool and oddly enough I just died to the whell skeltons once,got to the end and since the boss wasnt in the mood to fight me I just let her be and went back to Anor Londo.

Got invaded a couple of times but managed to defeat 2 of them so it wasnt so bad but then I got to the archer's bit....I really dont know how to do that the proper way I just kept trowing myself until i finally was able to get through.After that I met up with solaire and onion knight and explored the castle(my second favorite area in the game now), invaded lautrec and got killed by his friends a couple of times until I finally got the bastard and went in to fight the best boss fight in this game yet! The music alone is awesome but the fight itself was some of the most fun I had in the game so far,the pyromancy was very usefull especially the great chaos fireball and once you figure how to dodge and damage the big guy correctly the fight becomes a walk in the park on the second phase,and now I can warp beteween bonfires!(something I really wished the put in the start of the game,also I now understand the hundred messages about chest's in this area)

[Alex79]

I finished this a few months back, and it's still my favourite game ever.

I've been playing through Demon's Souls the last few weeks though, and it's good, but it's not a patch on Dark Souls. You can see where a lot of the great ideas came from though. Demon's Souls was going great, then all of a sudden it's like it ran out of steam and they were just like, 'ok stage 4, don't bother with any gameplay on this stage, just jump straight to the boss'. On every 4th stage. Dunno what that's all about.

[Chopper]

Pacing, innit?

I loved that about Demons - each of these simpler stages is preceded by an horrific level or boss (Flamelurker, Maneater, 5-2 etc) right up to the final battle being preceded by the False King and then...

I think the developers were having a bit of fun, while also mixing it up and confounding your expectations. I would put Demons as the superior game though...

[Alex79]

I'm actually lost in the game now. I can't seem to progress on any of the stages. There doesn't seem to be a route away from any of the archstones I've reached, other than the first stage, which I'm blocked by a seemingly unkillable dragon!

[Todinho]

I'm actually lost in the game now. I can't seem to progress on any of the stages. There doesn't seem to be a route away from any of the archstones I've reached, other than the first stage, which I'm blocked by a seemingly unkillable dragon!

Yeah that was why I stopped playing Demon's souls I just couldnt progress boletaria castle further and I had already completed all other worlds besides the swamp and I could never get out of there so I just gave up,that said I do like the structure of demon's souls better than dark souls it's cool to have the open world but it's very easy to never get anywhere.But if im not mistaken that Dragon is killable but you can avoid him if your talking about the one in boletaria 1-2.

In other news this session has been depressing,I explored Anor Londo a bit more and discovered the smith and now I have the chaos blade and if the uchigatana made destroyed enemies the chaos blade +5 turns them into a joke(if your not an idiot like me that likes to run in to enemies attacks everytime),revived the fire keeper but she doesnt seem too happy about it and decided that I was probably strong enough to deal with the ghosts down there,there I found 2 folks an old jerk i had to kill and a nice fellow who said I had to kill 4 kings in the abyss,so I went to do that I went into the forest met cat told her to go to hell and faced Sif,in the end of the fight he was just limping it was kinda of sad but I had to kill him.

So I went back entered new Londo(got killed by darkwraiths a bunch) and went in to fight the four kings.....yeah that was painfull,cool fight thou,then i emt another giant snake that told me the other one was lying what he said made enough sense so I went with him,even though if by what I gathered he's the cause for the four kings to be here in the first place,after that I went back to boost my covenant and got chaos firestorm!I went in further in the ruins and took care of both demon firesage,and centipede demon(both destroyed by the chaos blade) and last I got a sunlight maggot that I looked up I could trade for a ring that let me understand the spider-woman,well she thinks Im her sister that I killed.Now im just looking for ways to upgrade my chaos blade further.

[Alex79]

Nah it's the dragon in Bolateria 4 I'm talking about.

How many stages are on each area? 5? I literally cannot see where to go on them. For example the Tower Queen one on stage 4 after defeating that yellow glowy boss with the giant curtain round his head, I can't see where you do. There are just loads of non destructible chairs in the way!

[Todinho]

it has been awhile since I played but I think it's 4 with boletaria being the exception with 5 I think but I stopped boletaria after defeating the penetrator so it might be only 4,but after you beat the final boss of each world your pretty much done there all you have to do is return and explore the other worlds.

[PressEscToExit]

Nah it's the dragon in Bolateria 4 I'm talking about.

How many stages are on each area? 5? I literally cannot see where to go on them. For example the Tower Queen one on stage 4 after defeating that yellow glowy boss with the giant curtain round his head, I can't see where you do. There are just loads of non destructible chairs in the way!

You're actually pretty much done with the game, there's 4 stages in each. The blue dragon in 1-4 is optional, you really need mad archery equipment to take him out + high enough Dexterity to use it. You can just run past him into the building he guards if you time it right.

[Alex79]

Oh right ok, so is there a kind of 'ending' or do I just stop playing...? Seems a bit weird!

[PressEscToExit]

Yeah, once you've beaten the boss in 1-4 it'll take you into the proper endgame stuff. The structure of that game is definitely a bit unusual, I'm sure I spent a bit of time hacking at the Old Monk's chairs too

[Todinho]

So I got to bed of chaos.....let's just say that the fact that my controller came out intact is a miracle and leave it at that,before that I went to Anor Londo to see if the smith could upgrade my chaos blade more(he couldnt) while there I decided to go to Duke's archives for more misery,those archer's are so cheap they do so much damage and there's a bunch of them and dont even gt me started on those golem's in the crystal area but I rescued siegymeir daughter and killed Seath yay!oh wait he dead now aftr charging a bunch of eyes&mouths and is never gonna meet her then of course I got to the best designed boss battle of all time(thank god for that shorcut otherwise...) so I went back the swamp to talk to the witch there she thanked me and all but then i met laurentius there and he tried to kill me.

Now I just dont care anymore I went to Anor Londo killed the giant woman since im not gonna do what she wanted anyway then and all of a sudden everything went dark and another fellow said he would kill me so that was cool,I am now in the catacombs getting destroyed by unkillable skelletons in a maze.

[Woodfella]

^ See! What about that doesn't scream best game ever?

[Todinho]

It's over! At last the quest of the chosen undead comes to an end,the road was hard and full of frustration but in the end it was all worth it,my final session was matter of clearing the catacombs which ended up being really easy especially the boss that died in 4 slashes,the problem was The tomb of the giants that now is my most hated part of the game dodging there is nearly impossible and those goddammed dog skeletons are a pain in ass,other than that though I met good'ol patches in there so I proceeded to immediatly kill him then I met that saint lady killed her friends,and so i went on to kill Nito the fight itself was not a big problem but gettign there was horrible to say the least,nothing like having to walk past skelton babies that give you toxic,luckly I only died once so not a big problem Nito was easy as long kept rolling and slashing.

After that i decided to clear up some loose ends I killed that miracles guy for abadoning that womam(and for hummanity)I went back to anor Londo(look's really cool at night) and killed Gywdolin in 3 strikes and tried to kill the dragon and after being burned a couple of times I decided to leave him be.So it was time to face the the big man himself and it was kinda of sad he was just a worthless husk made of cinder(I think) so me and Solaire quickly destroyed him(by the way has solaire beaten the game already and it's just here for laughs?) for the ending I just left the flame die because in the worst case cenario better to rule in hell than serve as fuel for a bonfire.

So Yeah this is probably one of the best game of all times I really liked it,I also really like how the story also follows the game design philosophy and makes you look at the details for it remided me alot of super metroid not only in that but in the exploration aspect as well that it's way more important than it was on Demon's souls that said I think this game can be alot more cheap(bed of chaos,archer's,crystal cave,tomb of giants...) than Demons souls was and I still prefer the structure of that game over this one,but nothing can really take away the brilhant moments of this game and discovering most of them by myself was priceless.I think I'll try o finnish Demon souls again now but I'll try not spam the thread again XD

[PressEscToExit]

Congrats, Todinho! It's been great fun reliving the game through your eyes, especially with all the casual murder of NPCs I was always too scared to kill those guys in case they were going to give me something cool later on. Except Patches, obviously. Fuck Patches into the sun.

[James]

Congratulations! Reading your updates has been great fun.

There is no way to go toe-to-toe with the Hellkite Drake that I've ever seen. There are two cheap and lengthy ways to do it, but neither is much fun.

Oh, and please do keep us posted on Demon's Souls - the skills you learned in Dark Souls will serve you well as you re-acclimatise to Demon's Souls. Can't wait to hear how it goes.

[Todinho]

I'll try to keep these brief started Demon's souls again I just completed the tutorial and Boletaria 1-1,1-2 and im finding the game to be too easy I actually managed to kill vanguard straight up and I only died 2 times(1 for falling thanks to lock on)other than that the game feels alot lighter the dark souls and parrying and backstabbs are much easier to perform Im also trying to pay more attetion to the story since I didnt really did the other times I played but the only thing I really noticed is that Ostrava is a coward.

[papapishu]

I don't know if it's just me, but Dark Souls does something to me that no other game has done before.

Normally when I finish a game I never look back, some rare ones have had me occationally start them back up and play a few minutes, but with Dark Souls it's something completely different. I'll start up another game from my Steam list and play for a few minutes, then find myself thinking "what am I doing here? I could be playing Dark Souls right about now" despite my 360+ hours (according to Steam, which I keep telling myself is lying) into the game and somehow I still feel like I need more.

Trying to complete the different NPCs individual storylines, theme-invading for comic relief, playing through with random restrictions such as SL1, no-shield or anything else you can come up with, there's just no end to the possibilities.

Right now I'm considering making an archer aiming for a combination of Composite Bow and Black Bow of Pharis as main weapon, possibly keep a Bandits Knife as a backup if I run out of arrows but mostly trying to stick to the bows.

Dark Souls 2 will surely be the end of me, I will never again see the light of day